Tomb of the Khan

by Matthew J. Kirby

  Only she wasn’t alone when she arrived. From outside the door, she could sense that Kang was waiting for her, and she needed no Eagle Vision for that. Her father’s old mentor smelled perpetually of fish.

  “Come in,” he said through the door. “We must talk.”

  Zhi marched in and found him on her father’s favorite chair, the low one with the tall back and the round feet. The sight of this old man sitting cross-legged upon it infuriated her.

  “I do not feel like talking,” she said, standing near the doorway.

  “If only your feeling could save our people,” he replied, half his craggy face shadowed by the lantern beside him.

  “He is gone because of you,” she said. “You ordered him to—”

  Kang actually laughed at her. “Is that what you believe? Because I think the Horde of the Khan would gladly take credit for his death.”

  Zhi wanted to blame him, and remain angry with him, but she knew he spoke the truth, and Owen found he identified with her. When his father died, he had wanted to blame his grandparents somehow. He was angry because they had never accepted his father, never allowed him to be anything other than the punk their daughter had dated in high school. But Owen had eventually admitted his death wasn’t their fault.

  “Come in all the way, Zhi,” the old man said. “You cannot linger at the threshold forever.”

  She regarded him, and the only thing that moved her inward was the love her father had felt for his mentor. It was a love Zhi had never understood, but to honor her father, she would at least listen to what Kang had to say.

  “There,” he said as she took the barbarian seat opposite him. “First, I must correct you. I did not order your father to the wall.”

  Zhi stared at him. “You didn’t?”

  “No. I have always advised your father to leave the army to itself. Our Brotherhood works in different ways. But your father was never content to let good, brave men die, much to the credit of his honor.”

  She believed him, and with that revelation, much of her anger at the old man burned out, though its smoldering ashes remained.

  “But his honor did not save him, did it?” Kang added.

  With that, Zhi’s anger flared up again.

  “The mantle passes to you now,” Kang said. “You must take your father’s place. But how will you choose to honor him? Will you die a glorious death in a battle, as he did? Or will you find your own path?”

  “I don’t know what I will do.”

  “I did not ask the question expecting an answer tonight. I will leave you to think on it.” He rose from the chair, took up his walking stick, and hobbled toward the door. “But I am now your Mentor, and I would see you not only honor your father’s name, but the Brotherhood as well. You could save our people.”

  “How?” Zhi asked.

  “Do what I cannot.” From the doorway, the old man turned and said, “Be an Assassin.”

  Zhi sat in her chair long after he had gone, staring into the light of the lantern, remembering her father, maintaining a fragile belief that somehow he was not dead. Somehow, he would yet come home. The body she had seen was a mistake.

  Owen remembered something like that, too. After the cop had left, and for the next two days, he begged his mom to take them to the prison for a visit. The police had made a mistake, and his dad would be there, alive. He finally stopped asking because it only made his mother cry, and eventually he had realized why. Denial never made anything better, and usually it made things worse when it finally imploded on itself.

  Zhi came to that realization close to dawn, after the lantern had burned out, and she wept again as she lay down on her bed, holding her father’s gauntlet, and when she finally made the decision Kang had asked of her, she fell asleep with tears in her eyes.

  Owen fell into the simulation’s gray nowhere. He’d been here before, with Varius.

  Are you doing okay? Rebecca asked.

  “Fine,” Owen said, but it sounded as heavy as he felt.

  Everything looks good from here. I’m going to turn things over to Griffin. I probably won’t be here when you come out, so I’ll say good-bye now. And good luck.

  “Thanks,” Owen said.

  A moment passed, and then he heard Griffin’s gruff voice in his mind. You should be coming out of sleep soon.

  “Got it,” Owen said.

  Are you really doing okay? Javier is worried this simulation might be a bit rough for you.

  “Tell him thanks, but I’m holding up.”

  Will do. A pause. Looks like things are coming online.

  The charcoal smoke of the void cleared, and Zhi opened her eyes. It was late morning, another hot day, which she was glad for. Within the town, they had water and numerous pools, and shade, and the occasional breeze over the top of the mountain. Down below, the Mongols would have no relief from it.

  She rose, washed her face, and drank some tea. Then she lifted a loose floorboard in her father’s room and lowered his gauntlet into the darkness. After replacing the board, she went in search of the old man.

  The city had been awake for some time, and by the soberness in the air she could tell that news of the previous night’s battle had spread. Though Wang Jian had prevailed, the city would not be itself again until the Mongol Horde had withdrawn completely.

  She left the main body of the town and followed the road, past the Big Heaven Pool, now swollen with the sky’s blue, and past the engineers’ workshop with its nine boilers, until she came to the Hu Guo Temple. Beyond it lay the Fishing Terrace, where legend said a giant had once pulled countless fish from the river below. Zhi crossed that stone plateau, and on its far side she found Kang sitting outside his hut, mending a net.

  “I’m glad to see you,” he said. “You reminded me of your father just now, as I watched your approach.”

  She didn’t want to hear him speak of her father. For now, she had to hide her grief, even from herself, until after she had succeeded. “I have an answer for you.”

  “Oh?” he said without looking up from his knots. “And what answer is that?”

  “I am going to kill Möngke Khan,” she said.

  His fingers ceased moving, and he draped the net over his knee. Then he looked up at her. “Say it again.”

  “I am going to kill Möngke Khan.”

  He smiled. “I believe you. And now your real training can begin.”

  Sean had just enjoyed a delicious meal, and his ancestor now stood by the fireplace, leaning against the mantel, staring into the flames. Recently remarried in his old age, he had come to his library for some quiet and solitude, while his young wife and his daughters had gone to their sitting room following supper. Brandon Bolster was an Englishman living on his estate in Ireland. He had a fine life, and Sean decided he could easily stay in this simulation for a long time, Piece of Eden or not.

  The door to the library opened, and his son, Richard, walked in. “There’s something you should see,” he said. He hadn’t eaten supper with the family, but then, his duties around the management of the estate often kept him away, sometimes for days.

  “What is it?” Brandon asked.

  His son held out a tattered piece of paper. “This was found nailed to one of the stable doors.”

  Brandon frowned and took the notice. It was written in a crude hand, with poor spelling, but made its meaning perfectly clear, even to Sean. “Not exactly the Ninety-five Theses, is it,” Brandon said, chuckling.

  Richard took the notice back and brandished it in front of Brandon’s face. “This is serious, father. You can’t ignore it. They’ve already killed cattle and torn down walls on some of the neighboring estates.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then what are we going to do?”

  “What can we do? Are you suggesting we give in to their demands?”

  “No.” Richard looked down at the paper. “Not … all of them.”

  “Not all of them?” Brandon stepped away from the mantel. “But some
of them?”

  Richard shook his head. “I don’t know anymore. When we converted that acreage to pasture, I knew it would upset some of the tenants and farmers, but I didn’t think it would come to this.”

  “That is our land,” Brandon said, snatching the notice from his son’s hand. “We have a right to do with it what we will. And if we can make it more profitable by grazing cattle than raising crops, that’s what we’ll do, and damn these Whiteboy troublemakers to hell.” He threw the notice into the fire, where it immediately burned to a black and fragile memory in ash.

  “But we’ve taken their livelihood,” his son said. “Some of them can no longer feed their families. We’ve given no thought to them.”

  Brandon inhaled deeply, calming himself. “And did we owe them a thought?”

  “By law, or by honor?”

  “Is there a difference?” Brandon asked.

  “At times, I think there might be.”

  “I don’t see it that way. What of the honor of this family? As stewards of this land, we have a duty to see it thrive, so that you and your children and your children’s children will inherit a thriving estate. That is how our nation maintains peace and order.”

  His son looked down at his boots, and Brandon noticed they were caked in mud, like a common laborer. Richard hadn’t bothered to remove them before coming into the house, but this was clearly not the time to note the oversight.

  Within the current of Brandon’s mind, Sean had let the memory carry him along, growing slowly aware of the situation his ancestor faced. In the wake of a changing economy in Ireland, many of the laborers, farmers, and tenants had found themselves without land to till, and secret societies had formed among the angry peasants. The Whiteboys, the Hearts of Oak, and others had been terrorizing the countryside, most recently in Brandon’s county of Cork. They’d made demands for the use of the land, and threats of violence and destruction if their demands weren’t met. Such was the notice Richard had found on the stable door.

  “What would you have us do?” Brandon asked his son.

  “Meet with them,” Richard said. “Listen to them, and try to come to an understanding.”

  “Meet with them?” Brandon asked, feeling somewhat incredulous. “This is open rebellion! You would have us negotiate with these brigands?”

  “They’re farmers, Father, not brigands.”

  “They were farmers.” Brandon turned away from the hearth, his back to his son. “This is what happens when good men find themselves angry and idle with drink in the pubs. This is not a people’s movement. This is a mob.”

  Richard sighed. “The notice gave us until tomorrow night. I pray you will reconsider your attitude before then.” With that, his son left the library.

  “Empty threats,” Brandon said to himself, feeling the heat of the fire against his back.

  The next morning, after a sleepless night in which Sean found himself in and out of the gray void of unconsciousness, Brandon rose just before sunrise, dressed, and went for a walk about his land.

  He took the north lane across the hill where his house stood, and followed it along the open pastures and fields, lined with their stone fences and hedgerows. Those walls were fairly new, built to keep his cattle enclosed. When he reached the edge of the hilltop, the road took a gentle dip down into a wooded glen. A blue morning mist filled it, swirling about the tops of the oak and yew. Brandon stopped here and sat upon the hedgerow, facing west, and he waited and watched.

  Sean wasn’t sure he had ever felt such contentment in his life, not even before the accident. It angered him to think there were some who sought to destroy this. His ancestor had inherited an estate that had been in his family for generations, and he had worked hard to improve upon it. What right did these drunk Whiteboys have to make their demands?

  The light slowly changed as the sun rose at Brandon’s back, lighting up the world, bringing the fields and hedgerows to life with vibrant color. Brandon would take the blue of this sky over any sapphire, and the green of these pastures over any emerald, and Sean felt the same way.

  To his right, the mist down in the glen retreated into the shadows of the wood. As a younger man, Brandon had hunted there with his father, and he had then taken Richard hunting there in his turn. That was the order of things.

  The sun was now high enough to warm Brandon’s back. He closed his eyes for a moment, but then opened them at the sound of someone approaching.

  Two herdsmen came down the road toward him carrying their staffs, a dog trotting at their heels, on their way to tend Brandon’s flocks. They doffed their caps as they strode by, and bade him good morning, but Brandon noted something insolent in their eyes. Could they be members of this secret society? Working for him even as they plotted with the Whiteboys against him? That was the trouble with these things. Rebellion eroded trust and relations, sowing chaos, turning society against itself as surely as any pestilence or disease.

  Brandon watched the herdsmen step through a gate and set off across the pasture, heading west. Where would they stand come evening, if the demands on that infernal notice hadn’t been met?

  Brandon rose from the hedgerow. He would not give in to such fears. He would not let these brigands turn him against his own. He refused to compromise the inheritance he had received and built upon, so he would stand against these rebels and give them no ground.

  Within that memory, Sean stood with his ancestor. There wasn’t even a risk of desynchronization, because he would have made the same choice. It was a drunk man with a car who had paralyzed him. Someone out of control. A man someone else should have stopped, but no one did. The way Sean saw it, Brandon was being that person, stepping forward to do what was right.

  When Brandon reached the house, he called for his son, and a servant went to fetch him. Brandon waited in his library, and when Richard entered, he gave him the key to the cabinet where they stored the guns.

  “Arm yourself and those you most trust,” he said.

  “Father?”

  “We need to be ready, should the Whiteboys mean to make good on their threat tonight.”

  Richard held out the key. “This isn’t war. You know these men.”

  “I thought I knew them,” he said. “They severed ties with me when they nailed a threat to my stable door.”

  “They would argue that you severed ties with them when you evicted them.”

  “I won’t have this argument with you, Richard.” Brandon snatched the key back. “It seems as though you would simply step aside and let them burn this house to the ground as they have threatened to do.”

  “I would talk to them before it comes to that. I pray you will change your mind before nightfall.”

  His son marched from the library, and after he’d left, Brandon dropped into an armchair, already feeling tired. Sean stayed with him for the rest of that day as he made preparations. Brandon gave muskets to two groundskeepers, and a manservant who claimed to be a decent marksman. He tried to send his daughters and wife to stay with his sister in Kinsale, but they wouldn’t hear of leaving him, and he had to admit that his wife was as good a shot as he was. He ordered the thatched roofs of the stables and barns wet down to prevent their burning too easily, and had pails of water arranged in every room.

  Through all the preparations, Brandon’s son remained absent. But as the family sat down to eat dinner, Richard finally walked in, and with a silent nod toward his father, he took his place at the table. Appetites proved light and the mood heavy. Each noise outside brought a general tension into the room until it was determined to be innocent.

  After eating, Brandon’s wife and daughters went to their drawing room, and he was about to go with them when his son laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “Might we have a word in the library?”

  Brandon nodded. “Certainly.” He smiled at his wife, and followed his son, and when they were alone he asked, “Do you mean to fight, should it come to that?”

  Richard stepped away fr
om him, appearing affronted. “Of course I do. You’re my father, and this is my home. Could you doubt my loyalty?”

  “I hoped my faith would not be disappointed.” Brandon stepped toward his son. “And it wasn’t.”

  “We have our disagreements, but my place is at your side.”

  Now Brandon placed his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Let’s just hope the Whiteboy threat was idle.”

  “That is how I spent my day. Talking to those still friendly to us, trying to reassure them.”

  Brandon pulled his hand away. “What?”

  “I didn’t speak out of turn. I gave no promises or concessions. I simply tried to remind them of our goodwill.”

  Brandon could only admire his son’s earnestness and optimism, and perhaps wish for some of it himself. “I’m sure your efforts were appreciated.”

  “Perhaps. Whether I did any good, however …”

  Brandon smiled. “I judge a man by his intentions. Come, let’s join your sisters.”

  They moved from the library to the drawing room, where Brandon experienced the same sensation of contentment he had that morning on the hill. Jane, his eldest daughter, was playing softly on the pianoforte, and the others were reading or conversing by warm lamplight. Brandon and Richard took seats for themselves, and they passed the next few hours pleasantly. When the time came for bed, his wife and daughters could not be persuaded to go up. They remained in the drawing room, while he and Richard barricaded the doors, and then patrolled the downstairs rooms, regularly checking the view from the windows.

  Sean felt his ancestor’s fear, and he shared in it. Everything was at stake. The constant tension gnawed at the older man’s joints and muscles, causing unfamiliar pain for Sean as the night wore on. His previous simulation in the memories of Tommy Grayling had been a very different experience. Tommy was much younger and stronger than Brandon. But both men were brave and stubborn.

  I think it’s time to pull you out, Victoria suddenly said.

  “What?” Sean asked. “Why?”