13
Gaza, October, 1324
IN BAGHDAD, AN ASTUTE Firas arranged for them to leave with a caravan en route for the port of Gaza. He explained, not unreasonably, that he didn’t want the Baghdadian euphoria over North Wind’s month-long winning streak to erode into ennui and jealousy, which could lead to attempts at retaliation by those citizens who had bet against the stallion and lost. Everyone agreed that this made sense and started to pack.
The man who had been following them presented himself to the caravan master shortly after Firas’ conversation with that same gentleman and asked for employment. He appeared trim and fit and wore weapons that looked well used and well tended. It was two hundred leagues to Gaza. Since the Seljuks paid more attention to law and order within their cities than without, the way grew more fraught each year, and the caravan master was pleased to have another blade to safeguard their journey. When asked, he named several well-known caravan masters as previous employers and said they would give a good account of him. This caravan master didn’t bother to check. Few ever did.
Back on the Road, city and farmland gave way again to desert and the trip devolved to a forced march. The merchants in this caravan were headed single-mindedly for the coast and transport west, as it was growing late in the year and everyone wanted to get home before being caught at sea by the first winter storm. It was mid-October when they passed through the ruins of Jaffa and headed south down the coast on the last leg of their journey. The sky was clear and blue and the temperature unseasonably warm and the general mood improved with every league.
“Fresh droppings,” Firas said, pointing. “We are not the first on this road this morning.”
Indeed, they arrived less than an hour behind the travelers ahead of them, who were dismounting in the yard of the caravansary. Johanna was looking eagerly around them for any sign of Jaufre, of Shasha, of Hari, Félicien, anyone familiar to her.
“Johanna!”
Her head whipped around, a beaming smile spread across her face as she searched for the man who called her name so urgently. She found him. Her smile faded to a look of blank astonishment.
“Johanna!” A different voice, from a different direction. “Johanna!” She blinked, dazed, to see Jaufre thrusting through the crowd, his face bright with joy. “Johanna!”
“Johanna!” the first man called again.
Her hands went slack on the reins and North Wind moved restively beneath her. She slid bonelessly to the ground, grasping his saddle to remain upright.
Jaufre reached her first, his blue eyes blazing. “Johanna!” He half-raised his arms and realized her gaze was fixed on something over his shoulder. He turned to look, and went still.
The stocky young man, clothed in nubby dark blue raw silk and a round cloth cap, smiled all over his brown face. “Johanna,” he said again.
“Edyk,” she said, in a high, silly voice.
“I don’t understand,” Johanna said.
She had looked happy but bewildered at first sighting Edyk. Jaufre could understand the bewildered part, but the happy? Not his chief emotion, certainly. Now he saw that her happiness had faded a little, and was meanly pleased.
Shasha had arrived at the caravansary and taken in the situation at a glance. She scooped them up in a body and moved them bag and baggage to their lodgings, a small house in a side street with kitchen and necessary in the yard out back. They sorted themselves out in groups, Jaufre and Shasha, Firas nearby, Félicien and Hari, Alaric a little apart, Alma and Hayat close together but not so close that they would get in each other’s way if they had to draw their weapons.
Johanna and Edyk stood in the center of the room, staring at each other. Edyk raised his arms as if to embrace her, and then looked round the room at the eight pairs of interested eyes trained on them. His arms dropped. “Johanna,” he said, a break in his voice.
“What are you doing in Gaza, Edyk?” Johanna said.
Hari had been right, of course, and Félicien, too—damn him—this Johanna was not the girl Jaufre had last seen a year before on the trail down from Terak Pass. He couldn’t quite lay his finger on the difference. She seemed not just older but taller. It wasn’t her appearance so much as it was her attitude. This woman was confident, disciplined, in command of herself. He saw the short sword hanging at her side. Where by all the Mongol gods had she gotten that? And could she use it? You carry a sword, Firas had told him, a year ago and more now. Sooner or later, someone will force you to use it.
He glanced at the Assassin, who looked just the same. Or perhaps slightly more taciturn, if that was possible, and just as communicative, which was to say not communicative at all. He appeared to be waiting for an answer to Johanna’s question. Shasha stood next to him, and she, too, waited for Edyk’s answer. She looked troubled, which was not what Jaufre would have expected given the long-awaited reuniting of their party.
Hari and Félicien were eying Alma and Hayat. The two women wore sturdy men’s clothing and also carried weapons, one a slim dagger, the other a short sword. Both women showed signs of recent outdoor life, but there was an indefinable air of refinement about them in spite of their travel-worn state.
Alaric stood near the door, pretending not to be there at all in hopes that no one would notice and throw him out before they got to the juicy bits. His eyes lingered on Jaufre for a moment, registering the younger man’s unhappiness, traveled from him to Johanna, paused to consider, and then moved to the young man in the round hat. From his expression, he was not impressed.
Edyk the Portuguese, merchant and trader, veteran of many journeys along the Road, husband of two and father of three and Johanna’s lover in a three-day goodbye before they had left Cambaluc, colored and shuffled his feet. “Perhaps we could speak privately.”
Jaufre opened his mouth and felt rather than saw the look Shasha threw him. He shut it again.
“Just tell me what you’re doing here, Edyk,” Johanna said with a trace of impatience. Jaufre noticed nothing loverlike in her voice.
Edyk noticed that, too, and it was obvious that he was much less pleased about it. Undoubtedly he had also noticed the other changes in Johanna, which measured from Cambaluc to Gaza had to be even more remarkable than the changes incurred from Terak Pass to Gaza. “Well,” he said falteringly. “Well. She sent me, of course.”
Jaufre ceased to breathe. Shasha went very still. The others exchanged uneasy glances.
“She?” Johanna said, very quietly into the silence that had fallen on the room.
“Your honorable stepmother,” Edyk said. “The widow Wu Li.” He paused, and added hesitatingly, “Dai Fang?”
There was a long silence, as Edyk looked increasingly confused at the lack of response. Jaufre heard a distant drumming sound, which he took to be the thud of blood in his ears.
“Dai Fang sent you to Gaza?” Johanna said at last.
“She wanted me to find you and bring you home,” he said. “She said she needs your help to continue your father’s business. She understands that all young things are restless and seek adventure, but that it is time for you to come home now and take your place at her side.” He looked around the room again, and took a step forward and dropped his voice. “You know it is the dearest wish of my heart that you will obey her in this, Johanna. We could marry. I promise I could make you very happy.”
Edyk didn’t know that Dai Fang and Gokudo had murdered Wu Li, Jaufre thought. Because they hadn’t told him, before they left.
Perhaps they should have.
“Dai Fang sent you to Gaza,” Johanna said.
“Yes,” Edyk said.
“To find me,” Johanna said.
“Yes,” Edyk said. “Johanna, what is it?”
“To bring me home,” Johanna said. She looked at Shasha and laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound.
“Who came with you?” Jaufre said.
Edyk turned, a flash of anger in his eyes. “No one. Chiang only. Not that it’s any business of yours.�
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“She would have had him followed,” Johanna said to Jaufre. It was the first thing she’d said to him.
Jaufre found the hilt of his sword in his hand. “She would,” he said. The drum of blood in his ears sounded louder.
“How would she have known about Gaza?” Shasha said. “That we would come here?”
Johanna, considering gaze fixed on Edyk’s increasingly irritated expression, said, “It’s the main port for Venice in this area. She would surely have heard enough stories of my grandfather from Wu Li. She couldn’t know for sure, of course, but…” Her voice trailed off.
Shasha held up her hand, and such was the authority in the gesture that all conversation stopped. “Listen,” she said.
At first Jaufre could hear nothing, and then he realized that what he had taken for blood thumping in his ears was actually the sound many feet approaching their front door at a run. Firas was first to draw, Johanna and Jaufre not far behind him and Hayat, Alma and Alaric following suit at almost exactly the moment the door was kicked in.
It bounced off the wall with a loud thud. Six men burst inside, weapons drawn. Three were obvious professionals with hard, unemotional faces, the other three paid bravos, who wore broad grins at the prospect of murder and plunder.
They paused when they saw that at least some of their so-called victims were ready to meet them with blades of their own, but only momentarily. The three professionals charged directly for Johanna. Alaric engaged the first bravo while Hayat tripped one of the others. He staggered and regained his feet and parried her blow hard enough that she staggered into the wall and dropped her knife. Another knife appeared immediately from her sleeve and a third from her belt. It was enough to give her attacker pause and in that brief second Alma tucked herself into a ball and somersaulted into the back of his legs. This time he fell. Hayat was on him before he could recover. Both of her blades flashed, silver first, then red.
“Wait!” Edyk said. “What?” He stood where he was, incredulous, staring as the battle raged around him.
Upon the unceremonious entrance of their six attackers, Félicien had stepped expeditiously to the rear of the room, holding his precious lute up and out of danger. Hari joined him, hands clasped before him and a stern, declamatory prayer issuing forth condemning all acts of violence against one’s fellow beings and prophesying the certain return of all so engaged as cockroaches in their next lives. Shasha stepped neatly through the door into the back yard, where she remained, watching Johanna with an expression of increasing wonder.
For all three professionals had converged on her foster sister, whose sword was up and deflecting the blows aimed at her in positive blur of defensive parries. Shasha cast a quick glance at Firas, and was reassured when she saw him, scimitar drawn. He was watching Johanna, too, with what she would later realize was a critical gaze, like a teacher watching a promising student during her final examination.
But Jaufre leapt forward, to deflect a slashing cut that would have struck Johanna’s arm off at the elbow. She parried her second opponent’s thrust, at which he looked fleetingly surprised before he barreled in again. She was only a woman, after all.
“What?” Edyk said from behind her. “What!” He had not so much as drawn his dagger.
Alaric’s bravo had had some training and he gave the ex-Templar some brief cause for alarm, especially in the crowded confines of a room where the walls had a tendency to get confoundedly in the way. Ah. He parried the incautious thrust and slid the point of his sword forward to slide between two ribs and straight on into the heart. The bravo’s eyes widened in surprise and he fell, dead before he hit the ground.
Alaric stood back, wiped his sleeve across his forehead and looked around in time to see Jaufre take a cut on his left forearm. The ex-Templar watched approvingly as Jaufre ducked to avoid the return sweep of the blade, dropped to lean his weight on his free hand and kick the other man in the knee. The man shouted and staggered back against the wall next to Félicien, who nudged Hari. Both of them moved farther down.
The man managed to stay upright and to hold on to his sword and shoved himself away from the wall to slash at Johanna, catching her a glancing blow on her right thigh. The cloth of her trousers parted beneath it and so did her skin. Blood welled up and at the sight of it Jaufre went a little mad, hacking at the man with brute force and no finesse.
Unseen behind him, Firas clicked his tongue.
“What?” Edyk said. “What?”
The man fell back beneath the fury of his assault and Jaufre finished him off with a blow to his head. He didn’t bother to watch him fall. A glance found Johanna still on her feet, and some of his rage abated, although it whipped up again when one of the others lunged at her.
Hayat pulled out her knife, wiped it on the tunic of the man she had felled and rose to her feet, holding out her hand to Alma. Alma gave the body a contemptuous kick in the face on her way up. He rolled over with a groan and lost consciousness. He was crippled if he lived. If he died, no matter.
“Well done,” Firas said, who had yet to raise his weapon in earnest. “But please to remember that demonstrations of emotion are best left until the battle is won.” The third bravo, smarter than the rest, was still hesitating in the doorway, his smile quite gone. Firas stepped over the body at Hayat’s feet and said conversationally, “I think you should put down that sword, don’t you?”
The bravos had been hired as a distraction, sacrificial lambs meant to draw attention while the professionals went after the real target. The third bravo realized this a beat after Firas had, and about two beats after the second of his friends had gone down. In the next moment he surrendered his sword and begged for mercy. Firas accepted the weapon, shook his head over its imperfect balance, and shepherded his captive out of the way.
There left the two professionals, the one currently hammering at Johanna and the one at his back, holding the others off while the first one finished off Johanna. That was the plan, at any rate. Later Jaufre would marvel at how little apprehension he felt. He watched the other man with slightly unfocussed eyes, the man’s movements overlaid by the same ones made against him so many times by Firas and Ram and Alaric. He could see them coming, almost predict them as the other man moved. His opponent was older, had trained longer, had vastly more experience, but he had not had Jaufre’s teachers. The end came suddenly and without any warning to anyone except Jaufre, who had been aiming for that particular target from the moment they had engaged. His opponent dropped his sword, looked down at the slashing cut that had opened him up from waist to shoulder, and could only watch as Jaufre’s blade came on a backswing and sliced opened his throat. He fell with a look of vast astonishment on his face.
Behind him, Johanna’s opponent hacked at her with increasingly desperate blows, as if he knew his only recourse now was to overpower her by sheer brute force. It wasn’t a bad plan, but she foiled it by parrying the latest blow while pulling her dagger, stepping unexpectedly inside his guard and sending the dagger’s blade into his belly. She twisted hard and yanked up.
“Uh,” he said. He dropped his sword and looked down in disbelief, staring at the blood and bit of slippery intestine that pushed out of the jagged wound. His hands went to his wound in a vain effort to push the blood and guts back inside. The strength went out of his legs and he went to his knees and then down to the floor, Johanna’s dagger pulling itself free with the movement.
From start to finish the fight had taken no more than ten minutes. And, Jaufre realized, it had all been very quiet. None of the yelling, screaming, cursing that had accompanied every fight he’d ever been in until today. There had been clangs of metal and thuds of feet, and of bodies, but nothing loud enough to alarm the neighbors.
Of course, he thought. Dai Fang’s instructions would have been to kill Johanna and to bring back the bao and the book. Loud noises would have brought the authorities down on them, and subsequent explanations would have been most inconvenient to the conspirators.
City fathers were not as a class generally complaisant to mayhem and murder committed on their streets. Explanations, and possibly detention while those explanations were made would have been time-consuming.
Dai Fang, unable to trade without the bao, had to be running very low on time, and assets, by now. Jaufre smiled to himself. How very unfortunate.
Johanna went down on one knee to speak to the man she had dropped. “How long have you been following me?”
“Johanna,” Jaufre said. “We need to bind your leg.”
She ignored him, her attention on the man laying at her feet. “How long?”
His breathing was labored and stertorous. “Not you.” He coughed, and gave a faint nod in Jaufre’s direction. “Him. I picked him up in Kerman.” He coughed again, and gasped. A full loop of intestine pushed out between his fingers. “But there were three of us, and we had a detailed description of all three of you. And the horse was easy enough to find, once you raced him in Baghdad. Sharif picked you up there. Bilal followed him, in case he found you first.” Another faint nod, this time in Edyk’s direction.
“Hussein,” Alaric said. At Jaufre’s look the knight said, “He was a muleteer in our caravan. I recognize him now. And,” he added, in growing indignation, “he came with us to Jerusalem, in Gradenigo’s employ.”
“Yes,” the man said. He mustered enough energy to smile up at Johanna, blood bubbling now from between his lips. “Who expects a woman to be armed? To fight? To win? I will be a laughingstock to the end of my days.”
“Who hired you?”
“I never knew the name. The money was good, though.” Another cough, followed by several rattling breaths, and a long, slow expiration. The man’s chest ceased to rise. At least he had not had to suffer his humiliation for long.
Jaufre looked around. All three professionals were dead, and one of the bravos. A second bravo was badly wounded and the third was sitting with his legs crossed and his hands folded on top of his head. He looked terrified but unhurt. Shasha was binding a scratch on Alaric’s forearm, and Alma had a spectacular black eye coming up. Other than that, plus the cut he had taken on his arm and the wound on Johanna’s thigh, they seemed to have come off without injury.
Silk and Song Page 39
