“And I will take the woman as well,” the sheik said, “since the horse will not go anywhere without her.”
“No, you will not!” Jaufre said, reaching for his sword.
“I am sorry,” Farhad said from beside him, and drove his sword into Jaufre’s back.
He heard Johanna scream. Heard Shasha cry out. Heard Félicien say, “No no no no no!” Heard Hari om.
Felt himself falling.
Twice in two days, he thought.
Johanna, he thought.
And then the black rose up to engulf him and he thought no more.
16
“You are a samurai, are you not?” the baron said. “More specifically, a ronin, I believe it is called? A samurai who answers to no lord?”
Gokudo, bound hand and foot but demonstrably alive, gave a curt nod. His topknot was missing, as was his quilted armor, leaving him dressed in trousers and a simple tunic.
“I thought so,” the baron said. “We tried invading Cipangu. Twice. You defeated us, both times.” He smiled. “It takes a great warrior to defeat a Mongol army.”
Gokudo, who had been shown the body of the hapless soldier who had been substituted for his own, said through dry lips, “Thank you, my lord.”
“Yes,” the baron said, “indeed, you owe me gratitude for your life. Such a bloodthirsty child she is, the daughter of the honorable Wu Li.”
Gokudo spat out a hate-filled curse and called the ancestry of Wu Li’s daughter into serious question.
The baron strolled forward and leaned down to say in Gokudo’s ear. “The honorable Wu Li of Cambaluc was my very good friend.” He stood straight again and kicked Gokudo once, very hard, between his legs. The guards standing around the inside of the ger laughed heartily.
Gokudo’s mouth opened in a silent scream and he doubled up on the baron’s carpet, scrubbed not entirely clean of blood.
“That is the last time you will insult him in my presence,” the baron said pleasantly, “is that understood?”
Gokudo managed a nod.
“Good. I have no doubt his daughter was perfectly right. Such righteous wrath! She was a torch lit from within. If she were anyone else’s daughter…” He looked down at Gokudo again. “No, you killed him, that much is certain, and your life is forfeit thereby. So is the so honorable Dai Fang’s, if it comes to that. I shall have to see what I can do about that when next I return to Cambaluc.”
The baron sighed. “There is an ineradicable stain on my own character for sparing you, and for sparing the Sheik Mohammed, who conspired with you, and indeed for sacrificing of one of my own men in your place.”
It did not appear as if that stain weighed heavily upon him.
“However.” The baron’s flagon had been refilled and he drank deep. He looked again at the bound man trying not to choke on his own vomit on the floor of the baron’s ger. “It may be that I have a use for you.”
“I cannot return to Cipangu, lord,” Gokudo said, gasping for breath. “I will be slaughtered by my enemies the instant I step foot on shore.”
Ogodei waved this comment away as inconsequential. “You have skills I believe I will find useful in many places,” he said. “Come, get up.”
A nod and Gokudo’s hands and feet were free and he was assisted roughly to his feet, where he stood, swaying. “Thank you, lord,” he said, bowing as deeply as he was able without falling over.
Ogodei nodded, accepting fear and deference as his just due, and smiled. “You are ronin no more,” he said.
“No, my lord,” Gokudo said.
By the Shores of the Middle Sea
Book II of Silk and Song
—
Dana Stabenow
1
Talikan, Spring, 1323
JOHANNA HAD NEVER BEEN SO BORED.
There was no lack of comfort in the harem, that was true enough. The blue-tiled floors had been built over a hypocaust, and were warm both winter and summer. So was the water in the rectangular bath that stretched the length of the main room. The silk cushions were large and comfortable, if a little gaudy in their brilliant red and orange and purple and green stripes, and so were the beds. The food was plentiful and most of it delicious, if the cook did have a heavy hand with sugar and spices. Each inmate had her own room and her own personal servant. The larger suites, assigned to the sultan’s favorites, had their own kitchens, their own fountains and some their own heated pools.
There were no doors to these rooms, of course. Who knew what those women would get up to behind closed doors, if they had them?
They got up to plenty without them.
Concubines had been a feature of life in Cambaluc, too. Johanna’s own grandmother had been concubine to the great Kublai Khan before being given in marriage to her grandfather, the honored Marco Polo. It was natural for men of power and wealth to accumulate women much as they did other possessions, as a way of measuring themselves against their peers and as a means of demonstrating their elevated status in society. More women also meant more heirs of the body, although Johanna, familiar with the stories of internecine warfare among the descendants of the Great Khan, wondered what any man needed with that many sons. Too many heirs only guaranteed long and extremely bloody fights over who would one day occupy the throne. Those fights inevitably spiraled out from court to city to countryside, and never ended well for the innocent bystander. Johanna’s own grandmother had died in prison after one such dynastic disturbance.
But in Cambaluc, concubines could walk the streets unveiled, could shop in the markets, could visit their friends and relatives, could attend the horse races and bet on the outcome. They traveled, with personal guards of course, the number according to their consequence, but one saw them everywhere, Chinese and Mongol alike. The Mongol concubines could even own and ride their own horses. Here in Talikan, under the absolute rule of Sheik Mohammed, the only time the concubines left the harem was when the sheik called for their presence in his rooms for the evening.
With one exception.
The knock landed heavily on the other side of the great mahogany door, the sound echoing off the tiled walls. Before the second knock fell Johanna was on her feet and running. The third knock sounded and she was standing before the great door, fidgeting, waiting for Kadar, the chief eunuch, to deign to open it. He disapproved of Johanna’s daily excursions to the stables and expressed his disapproval, in so far as he dared flout his master’s will, by delaying as long as possible her departure.
She heard the sound of robes swishing over tile, and turned to see Kadar approaching with a deliberately unhurried stride. Concubines peered from behind him and whispered furiously among themselves, watching the Easterner with her odd-colored eyes, who had never been invited into the sheik’s bed, not even once, be granted yet again this unheard of, this extraordinary, and some even alleged this blasphemous freedom. She didn’t even wear a veil outside the harem!
After six months one would think her mornings out would occasion little comment, but no. Their lives were so monotonous and so entirely absent of event, they had so little else to talk about.
And she was here as a result of betrayal, kidnapping and blackmail. They might not speak of it directly, but they knew—and she would never forget. The sheik and his son and their men had ambushed her party on the trail down from the high pass through the mountains because the sheik had wanted North Wind, and because the big white stallion wouldn’t go anywhere without Johanna.
She remembered again the blade of Farhad’s sword sliding so easily into Jaufre’s back, and closed her eyes against a wave of nausea. She took a deep breath and let it out, slowly. When she opened her eyes Kadar was sweeping past, and she stiffened her spine because it was a point of honor never to show weakness before the chief eunuch. A tall man of massive girth with a broad, impassive face clad in skin the color of tar in which no single hair could be found, he ignored her to shake back the elaborately embroidered brocade of his long, wide sleeves and draw the filigreed bro
nze bolt on the door. The bolt was more an ornamental badge of Kadar’s office than it was any serious kind of deterrence to forced entry. The locks on the other side were far more substantial.
Johanna had refused all attempts to indoctrinate her into the Islamic faith, to the further scandalous twittering of the harem inmates, but she had embraced the opportunity to learn Persian, because another language was always a useful skill. When she discovered that Kadar meant “beloved” in that tongue she had been hard put to it to conceal her amusement. As with everything else in the harem, excessive mirth could draw unwanted attention.
The door began slowly, oh so slowly, to swing wide. Johanna was leaning forward, almost on her toes, every fiber of her being yearning toward the other side.
“Nazirah! Wait!”
A small, slim figure slipped through the crowd of women and rushed forward. She had dark flashing eyes, an infectious smile and a merry disposition. She reminded Johanna of Fatima, a childhood friend.
“Hayat,” she said, striving to sound patient. “What is it?”
“Only this,” Hayat said, seizing Johanna’s hands in her own. “I need more indigo. Could you ask the guards to stop at the dyers’ shed on your way back?” Hayat dimpled at Kadar. “You don’t mind, do you, Kadar?”
Even the chief eunuch was not proof against Hayat’s wiles, as indeed few of them were. Nevertheless he said sternly, “The master’s orders are specific, Hayat, as you well know. Nazirah is to go directly to the stables and to return directly to the harem.”
Johanna felt a scrap of paper transfer into her left palm. Her own closed over it. She gave Kadar a sunny smile that was not meant to be friendly and the chief eunuch was not so foolish as to take it so. “The dyeing shed is along the way,” she said to Hayat. “If they have it, you will have indigo when I return.”
She turned back to the door, smoothing back her braid and brushing the front of her tunic. In the process she slipped the scrap of paper into her sash.
With conscious ceremony Kadar bowed her through the doorway. Was the bow a little too exaggerated, a little over-elaborate? No matter. The door shut behind her with a thud that resounded off the blue-tiled walls of the harem’s antechamber, vying with the trickling water of the inevitable fountain for precedence.
She felt rather than saw the two armed guards falling in behind her, fierce with scimitars and daggers. She knew the way by now and her pace quickened, until she was almost running again by the time she reached the next door. She didn’t wait for the guards, she flung it open and burst into a walled garden. She threaded through roses red and white and pink and yellow—forever after she would associate the scent of roses with a feeling of imprisonment—and reached yet another door in the wall on the other side. She didn’t wait for the guards to catch up with her, she hammered on the door with her fist. “Ishan! It’s Johanna! Open the door!”
A horse’s whinny, imperious and insistent, was heard, and Johanna laughed. “Ishan! Open the door before North Wind opens it for you!”
The door opened and Johanna shot through the opening as if she had been loosed from a bow. Still, North Wind was there before her.
Ishan, the stable master, was the only man in Sheik Mohammed’s entire stables who could even marginally handle North Wind without injury. He was certainly the only one courageous enough to saddle and lead the stallion from his stall, and smart enough to flatten himself hastily against the stable wall as the great white stallion moved past him at a gait unsuitable for the relatively cramped quarters of the stable yard. She laughed again, caught a handful of mane and swung herself up on North Wind’s back. He didn’t stop as she settled into place, continuing on toward the double doors of the stable yard, his intent obvious. Either someone would open the doors or North Wind would go right through them.
Johanna was disinclined to slow him down. Indeed, she urged him on. She heard Ishan shouting and two brave or well-bribed souls ran for the gates and dragged them open just in time for North Wind to thunder through. She caught a confused glimpse of a man or men on horseback outside the gates and flattened herself on North Wind’s neck. “Run, North Wind, run!” she cried, and felt his stride lengthen. The wind flattened her clothes against her flesh and tore her hair loose from its braid. The looming shadow of the palace walls fell away and they were at last gloriously out on the ribbon of sand groomed soft for the sheik’s racing horses.
The trail ran next to a wide canal shadowed by date palms and almond trees, beyond which a horizon of undulating hills beckoned more alluringly than any line of hills on any horizon she had ever seen. Freedom. The hills seemed to whisper the word in her ears. Freedom.
In the sheer pleasure of the moment the rigid guard she held on herself at all times slipped, just a little. Jaufre. Shasha. How far beyond those hills were they? Had Shasha kept her promise?
Was Jaufre even still alive?
The great white horse, always sensitive to her moods, broke stride. She tightened her knees, banished thought, and bent over North Wind’s neck again. Reassured, his stride lengthened and he ate up the track, a league and more of immaculately groomed sand filled with gentle rises and falls of ground and easy curves, meant to test and build speed and endurance. His gait never faltered, his spirit never flagged, and on his back Johanna felt that no distance was too great to travel so long as North Wind carried her on his back and her friends were at the end of the journey. For one precious moment, the moment she lived for every day, the moment that allowed her to possess her soul in patience for the other interminable hours she had to endure to arrive at it, she could imagine this was the day she would begin that journey.
And it seemed only a moment before the last of the palms flashed past. She sat up. North Wind’s stride began to slow. After a few moments another horse drew level with them, flanks white with foam. It wasn’t easy, trying to keep up with North Wind.
She knew without looking who rode the second horse.
North Wind slowed to a canter and at last to a walk. He was barely sweating. Johanna swung her leg over and slid to the ground, there to run her hands down his legs and pick up his feet to examine his hooves. He raised each foot obediently at a slight pressure of her hand.
“Still he obeys you as he does no one else,” a rueful voice remarked.
She stiffened, and tried to hide it.
After a slight pause, which she did nothing to fill, the voice said, “He ran well today.”
“He runs well every day,” she said, and stood up to see Farhad’s eyes gleam with satisfaction. It wasn’t often that he was able to goad her into speech.
This was the time she craved most, to be alone with North Wind, or alone if she discounted the omnipresent guards. Farhad did not ride with them often, but he was always an intrusion when he did, and she made sure he knew it. Very well, if he wouldn’t let her ignore him, she would attack. “Has your father reconsidered giving me rooms in the stables?”
“This again?” He sighed. “As I have told you, repeatedly, an unmarried woman is safest in the harem.” He smiled at her.
She didn’t smile back. He didn’t dismount, not even to wipe down his mount. That was a task for lesser beings. “As you saw this morning, North Wind dislikes it when I am kept from him.”
He smiled again. “He can still run. As you both just proved. It is all my father requires of him.”
She had already thought of ways of making North Wind physically ill and claiming it as proof of the great horse’s sickness of spirit, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do it. Not yet. Although it might come to that in the end. She leaned against the stallion and he responded with a reassuring whicker, a comforting bulwark against Farhad and his most unwelcome attention.
The sheik’s son gave a nod and his guards nudged their mounts into a trot and fanned out in a dozen different directions. A dozen, Johanna thought, interested against her will. When the sheik’s son rode with her his guard was usually two men, no more, the same as her own escort. S
he looked more closely at the retreating figures and saw that they were not guards but scouts, equipped with water skins and full saddle bags. They were dressed in layers of sturdy clothing, cheches wrapped securely around their faces and heads so that only their eyes were showing, and they wore braces of daggers and swords. “Where are they going?” she said.
The sheik’s son gave a negligent shrug. “To see what there is to see, merely.”
She didn’t believe him. There was a tension about his shoulders that she had not seen before. “Are we expecting trouble?”
He smiled, although the expression seemed forced. “How nice to hear you say ‘we.’”
“Your father,” she said thoughtfully, ignoring the provocation. “He is well again?”
Sheik Mohammed’s son sobered. “He is not,” he said. “The doctors fear the worst.”
He looked at her, slowly, deliberately, all of her, from the crown of now-tumbled bronze hair to the hostile gray of her eyes and down, over slim shoulders, full breasts, narrow waist, and long legs. She was attired in the raw silk tunic and trousers she had worn from Cambaluc, which they had let her keep for riding. Kadar had forbidden her to wear them in the harem except when she was going to and from the stables.
The clothes, sturdy, unglamorous, workmanlike, did nothing to deter Farhad’s attention. He wanted her. Johanna, no blushing virgin, saw his desire and recognized it for what it was. She did what she always did: she ignored it, vaulting again to North Wind’s back. Again, the stallion was quick to sense her mood, and she felt the great muscles contract beneath her.
He would kill Farhad for her, if she willed it so.
Oblivious, Farhad nudged his mount to come up beside them, and dropped his voice to what he apparently had decided was an irresistible growl. “When you are my wife, Nazirah, when you are in my bed, I will keep you too busy to brood.”
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