The Bird and the Blade

by Megan Bannen

  A swarm of people follows behind us like a parade, growing and swelling as we make our way into the heart of this tragic opera playing itself out in Khanbalik.

  “So, do you actually know this Turandokht bitch?” Timur asks me out of the side of his mouth.

  “No.”

  “I guess that means you can’t put in a good word for us?”

  “I don’t suppose I could, my lord. I’ve managed to screw over pretty much everyone by this point, including her.”

  “Good girl,” he says, and then grimaces. I think a few of his remaining teeth were knocked loose in the altercation. His gums are bleeding. I reach for his left hand, which pokes out from underneath the ropes that bind him, and I clasp his fingers in mine.

  “Sunrise isn’t far off, little bird,” he says. “Let’s try to live another day.”

  I look to the eastern horizon as the guards drag us through the jeering crowd, but the sky is black as iron.

  “Out of the way!” one of the soldiers shouts. The market square is so packed with bodies that we have come to a full stop. He uses the blunt side of his spear to push past the people blocking our way. When that doesn’t work, he switches to the sharp end. A woman in the crowd screams, and the masses slowly separate to make room as we push forward.

  Any hope I was entertaining of the sun rising before we made it to our destination disintegrates when we arrive at the foot of the dais. The braziers still burn. The drum tower looms above us. The only difference now is that the moon is gone, making the entire scene dimmer.

  Khalaf is already here, wreathed by a guard unit as he awaits the arrival of Turandokht. He doesn’t bother to look over at us. I’m sure he got wind of our arrival, but he fixes a bored expression on his face, pretending that he doesn’t know us.

  Zhang also waits for his perfect mistress in the square, and his eyes gleam when he hears our guards call, “These people know the stranger’s name!”

  We’re all going to die. All of us. I promised Khalaf that I would keep Timur safe. I promised Timur I would keep Khalaf alive. I’ve failed them both. Everything I’ve done, the sum total of my life, has ended in failure. And I’m scared. I’m so, so scared now.

  Zhang comes over to confer with our captors. He glances my way but doesn’t seem to recognize me. He was right when he said that I am so small and plain as to be invisible. How ridiculous that even now it hurts my feelings.

  “Where did you catch them?” he asks the guards, who have already begun to celebrate with a skin of qumiz.

  “They were hiding in an alley just off the square.”

  Zhang nods and ambles toward Khalaf with a nasty grin spreading across his face. He can hardly contain his smug superiority.

  “What is it?” Khalaf asks, as if he has no idea what’s going on.

  Zhang inclines his head in our direction. “Your friends.”

  Khalaf looks over Zhang’s shoulder at us. “I don’t know them.”

  “Don’t you?”

  Khalaf’s faux serenity shows signs of disintegrating when he sees the soldiers push me and Timur forward. I keep my chin tucked tightly against my chest in a desperate attempt to escape recognition.

  I am a dead woman.

  “Those poor people don’t know my name any more than you do,” Khalaf insists. “Let them go.”

  “I think not.” Zhang turns and points at Timur. “You, what is this man’s name?”

  Time stops. Timur stands straight and tall next to me, defiant, saying nothing. The guards jostle him, and he grunts in pain. He falls forward, and since his arms are bound, he lands face first on the ground.

  “No! Leave him alone!” I shout as they heave my beloved old goat to his knees. Timur is not going to die for my mistakes, and neither is Khalaf. I’m not hiding my face anymore. “I’m the one you’re looking for,” I tell them all.

  My eyes meet Zhang’s, and his lips thin with a cold, murderous rage as he recognizes me at last. I’m terrified, but I’m not sorry. Not even a little. My fiery rebelliousness fuels a courage I didn’t know I had. The war of wills has begun, and sunrise will determine the victor.

  “Bring the girl forward,” Zhang commands my captors.

  The entire population of Khanbalik stares at me as the guards push me forward, but it’s Khalaf who breaks the horrid silence.

  “You know nothing, slave,” he says with a voice that cuts like honed steal.

  Slave.

  The word is a slap to the face.

  Khalaf glares at me with a hatred of which I never thought him capable. He truly believes I’m about to sell him out.

  And it makes me livid.

  I raise my head and look him straight in the eye as I both promise and admonish him, “I’m not going to tell them your name, my lord.”

  I watch his face blanch as understanding begins to dawn on him. His hate and anger slowly evaporate, and stone-cold fear takes their place. He’s still looking at me when he tells Zhang, “Let her go.”

  “Hmm,” Zhang answers, beginning to enjoy himself now. “No.”

  My eyes are still locked with Khalaf’s. I can see the moment he comprehends what it is I’m willing to sacrifice for him, as visceral as a stab wound. He turns so violently on the chancellor that a couple of guards have to jump in to hold him back.

  “I swear, she doesn’t know me!” he shouts desperately at Zhang while Timur bellows, “Let her go!” But it’s too late.

  “Gag them both,” Zhang orders with a lackadaisical wave of his smooth hand, and the guards obey his command. They try to bind Khalaf up, too, just like his father, but he struggles hard against them. Timur, still kneeling on the ground, turns his head to the side so that he can see what’s happening.

  Zhang never takes his eyes off me. It’s clear he didn’t expect to see me here, now, and it’s equally clear that he has every intention of breaking me to pieces until he has what he wants. It’s crazy, but I’ve been worried about this moment for so long that, now that it’s happened, I feel relieved, unburdened.

  “The name,” Zhang commands in a dangerously soft voice.

  “No,” I answer just as softly. It feels so good to tell him no, to deny him what he wants.

  He grasps me by my frazzled braid and twists my head back to look at him. We stare at each other nose to nose. He may not know exactly what I’ve been doing since I left Khanbalik, but he does know that I failed him and his khatun and that I must be punished for it.

  “You don’t know his name,” I tell him, reveling in my defiance even as his tight grasp brings tears to my eyes. “You never have and you never will.”

  He swings around to look at Khalaf, yanking me so hard by the scalp that I cry out in pain. Khalaf shouts in protest through the cloth tied over his mouth as he struggles to free himself from the men who hold him. And all the while, Zhang’s mind is hard at work behind his clever eyes.

  Pilaf. Kumar. One of those unpronounceable Turkic names.

  Zhang turns his attention back to me. I think I see fear in his eyes.

  “Maybe I should tell your perfect khatun about what you’ve been up to, little Zhang,” I taunt him recklessly, luxuriating in this new power I hold over him.

  He lets go of my hair and swings his arm, striking me full in the face with the back of his hand. He’s no soldier, but it doesn’t take much to send a hollow-boned bird like me floundering across the dirt. A high-pitched buzzing noise balloons in my ear.

  “The name!” he shouts.

  I was right. He is afraid. I roll to my knees and, growing drunk on his fear, I tell him savagely, “I don’t have to obey you. You’re nothing to me.”

  Zhang grabs me by my braid again. It feels like he could tear my skin from my skull. He points to one of the guards and says, “You there. Your dagger.”

  “My lord?” the man asks.

  “Your dagger. Give it to me.”

  My newfound bravery evaporates as quickly as it appeared, and all I can think is No-no-no-no-no.

 
The man takes a dagger from his belt and hands it to Zhang, who drags the point of the blade down my left cheek. I scream as my flesh splits open in agonizing increments. Somewhere beyond the buzzing in my ear, I can hear someone rage in helpless protest, Khalaf or Timur or maybe both.

  Zhang throws me to the ground. The pain of the cut reaches far beyond the line he carved into my cheek. It spreads like oil over the left half of my head, burning, nearly unbearable. Blood trickles down my chin and drips to the dirt. He grabs my shoulders with hands like talons, but a commotion from the other end of the square stops him. A path forms in the crowd, and the masses give birth to an ornate sedan chair, carried from the palace by slaves. A unit of bodyguards surround the palanquin on all sides, pushing onlookers back to make room. Zhang releases me and hurries forward to head up the welcoming committee as the slaves set down their burden. Turandokht steps out from behind the silk curtains like the sun emerging over the dark horizon.

  “My khatun, we have the name,” Zhang says over her hand as he grasps it subserviently in his own.

  “What is it?” Her own desperation is palpable.

  “This slave knows.” He indicates me as two soldiers pick me up under the arms and carry me forward with my feet dragging across the dirt. “I will personally rip the name from her throat.”

  Hot urine pours out of me. My face throbs and bleeds.

  “Let her go,” Turandokht tells my guards.

  “But my khatun . . . ,” Zhang begins.

  “Enough. I said let her go.”

  The two men reluctantly obey, moving aside as Turandokht approaches. Unsupported, I fall to my knees.

  “No,” I croak. I don’t want to kneel before her.

  Khalaf’s struggle against his captors carries on to my left, but she doesn’t bother glancing in his direction. That’s how little he means to her. It kills me that he’s nothing to her when he is everything to me.

  “I’ve already solved the riddle,” she tells me. “I know he must be the son of Timur Khan. I simply need his name. Save yourself. Your freedom in exchange for one name. But if you refuse, my men will have you whipped to death.”

  My defiance rebounds. “Then whip me,” I say as I struggle to my feet. I’m not addressing her by title. I’m not showing obeisance. I won’t bow and scrape to her. We’re equals, she and I.

  “There is no need for this. If you tell me his name, we will both be free.”

  In the most ludicrous example of incongruity, I begin to laugh. If my face didn’t hurt so badly, I might have slipped into hysterics. “Oh no,” I tell her, giggling. “I’m going to keep that boy alive.”

  “Why? What could you possibly have to gain? The future of the empire is at stake. Can’t you see that?”

  The lack of recognition in her eyes as she regards me kills my laughter. I worked in her house, served her food, washed her dishes, but she never saw me.

  No one ever saw me except Khalaf.

  He cries out, guttural and incomprehensible behind his gag. His face is flushed with effort as he strains against the men who can barely contain him.

  “I don’t care about countries and empires,” I tell Turandokht. “I love him. And that’s all that matters.”

  How simple it is, so easy to say now that it is said. In this moment, everyone, everything grows still and silent, even Khalaf. The very air is listening to me.

  “I love him enough to give him up,” I say, and since there’s nothing left to lose, I allow myself to look at Khalaf, to love him without hiding it. “He’s a gift. And now he’s my gift to you.”

  His face above the gag is a constellation of emotions, so muddled I can’t read any one of them.

  I turn back to Turandokht with unaccustomed bravado rising giddily inside me. “You have taken everything from me—my family, my home, my freedom. Now you will take him, too. And you don’t even know my name. Well, you won’t have his name either. His name belongs to me as much as my own.”

  Turandokht hardens as if she has turned to ice in front of me. “I want that name,” she breathes.

  It’s all the permission Zhang needs. “Let her be whipped. Let her be flayed. I’ll tear the name from her skin if I have to.”

  Torture.

  My words were brave. My body isn’t. I can’t face this.

  Khalaf rages against his bindings once more. Three men try to hold him captive, and it’s not enough. He’s screaming through the gag, the same muffled word, over and over and over as his bindings grow looser against his fight.

  Two syllables.

  One word.

  Khalaf!

  He’s saying his own name, weeping it, soaking the gag with spit and tears.

  He’s trying to save me.

  He’s willing to die so that I may live.

  Khalaf! he screams.

  He fights hard. He almost has the muzzle off, and then what? I didn’t come all this way to watch him die for me.

  I look to the east, but there’s no hint of sunlight there to greet me. I rise to my feet and take a few steps toward Khalaf before two guards step in front of me and halt my progress.

  Khalaf wails into his gag. The tendons of his neck strain against his skin. He struggles until he slumps with exhaustion. His eyes find me, screaming his apologies and his regret and his agony.

  And his love.

  He loves me.

  We look at each other, see each other, unhidden and unapologetic. It’s like bursting from the water’s surface and taking that first breath of air when you thought you were going to drown.

  He hangs limply in his captors’ arms, pouring out all the love he never let me see until this moment.

  A gift.

  A gift, my mother whispers in my ear. I turn to find her standing beside me, as lovely and graceful in death as she was in life. I’m so relieved to see her here, now. I’m so grateful to have her at my side when I need her the most. Remember your gift, Daughter, she tells me.

  My mother’s words stir up the memory of Khalaf in the desert, holding out a dagger to me. Promise me you’ll use this if you have to.

  All my ancestors are here now, standing at my back, silent and peaceful. My father steps forward, the lines of his body comprising a softer man than I remember in life. I never realized until this moment how much I resemble him, how much of him lives in me. He extends a ghost hand that I can’t hold. It’s time to come home now.

  I hear the memory of singing. Jasmine flower, your willowy stems clustered with sweet-smelling buds.

  I know what I have to do. I stand up straight and hold myself the way my mother taught me to do, and I face Turandokht.

  “You’ll see,” I assure her. “Someday, you’ll understand what it is I gave you.”

  I look at Khalaf one last time. “‘And wilderness is paradise now,’” I tell him.

  “No!” he begs me in a hoarse, muffled voice through the slipping gag. He shakes his head. His whole soul is telling me no, but there is only one way I can save any of us now, and he knows it.

  They only tied my wrists, so I can reach the dagger with ease. I pull Khalaf’s gift from my belt.

  “No!” he screams through the gag.

  All this time I thought I couldn’t kill anyone, but I was wrong.

  Come home, Daughter.

  Come home.

  My ancestors reach out, stroking gently at my arms, my undamaged cheek, my soft, fine hair.

  Weiji’s voice is last, floating somewhere nearby, separate and alone.

  I want to go home.

  I take the dagger and shove it as hard as I can up underneath my breastbone and into my heart, just the way Khalaf taught me. I watch him burst free of the guards as the blade sends pain searing through my chest. Khalaf cries out, and I collapse in anguish at his feet. He’s there beside me, ripping off his gag and stuffing it against my wound as if it could possibly stanch the blood. His hand is on my heart.

  I didn’t know anything could hurt like this. I begin to go blind with pain. My vision
grows gray around the outside edges, but I can still see him leaning over me. One of his braids has come loose, and his hair tickles my cheek, the one that isn’t ruined.

  I sing.

  Fragrant and white, everyone praises your beauty

  Let me pluck you down

  And give you to the one I love

  “Jinghua,” Khalaf says so gently to me in that lovely voice of his, the sweet sound of my name in his mouth.

  I breathe a single word so that no one can hear but he and I.

  “Khalaf.”

  It begins with an explosion and ends in a whisper.

  And then I die.

  35

  I DRIFT OUT OF MYSELF AND through Khalaf’s body, swimming across his grief and that huge expanse of love, like a bottomless reservoir. I thought it was only a trickle when, in fact, he carried an ocean inside him. There’s so much of it.

  I hover over the scene, billowing in death like gauze in a soft breeze. I see Khalaf’s head bent over my tiny body. It’s incredible that something so small and insignificant could mean anything to anyone.

  “Jinghua,” he calls to my body. He lays his hands on my skinny arms and gives me a gentle shake. “Jinghua,” he calls again, plaintive. He shakes me harder, as if I were only asleep, but of course I don’t wake.

  “No,” he tells my body again and again. “No. No. No. No!”

  He wraps his arms around my body and lifts it against his. His loose hair grows damp in my blood. He holds my shell in his arms and releases wracking waves of grief into the crook of my neck, nuzzling his face against the dissipating warmth of my body as if his love could bring me back to life. I experience the sensation like a boat bobbing on the waves of the sea.

  The crowd stands in cowed silence as a gust of wind blows through them. I can’t feel it, but I can see it tugging at their robes and ripping at the Great Khan’s crimson banners. The eastern sky grows pale with pinks and oranges, and my spirit starts to stretch and thin.

  Only the dead can see me now. They gaze up at me expectantly as I float higher and higher.

  Someone has set Timur free. He staggers over to my body and falls to his knees next to his son. Timur picks up my limp hand where it hangs free from Khalaf’s embrace. My eyes are open, empty.