Everything Under the Heavens (Silk and Song)

by Stabenow, Dana

  “He followed you down from the summerhouse,” Jaufre said later.

  She nodded. “I tried to leave him in his stall at Edyk’s, but he kicked it down and came after me. I think, somehow, he knew, and he would not be left behind.”

  She was grooming North Wind, who had been fed and watered and who was now picketed and drowsing with his weight on three legs. He was almost purring beneath the rhythmic stroke of the bristles.

  “And I didn’t want to miss the ceremony for Father,” Johanna said, “and by then it was too late.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “If you could have seen your expressions when I rode up! I couldn’t resist, Jaufre.”

  Her grin was impish, her eyes twinkling, her voice on the edge of laughter. He knew no other woman who would be so unconcerned that he had thought her guilty of such an enormous theft. His hand went out but she had turned back to North Wind and didn’t see it.

  She smoothed out a nonexistent tangle and stepped back, North Wind gleaming in the evening light. They were staying another night in Kuche on the strength of Wu Cheng’s winnings. Uncle Cheng even now was hosting an uproarious party for the city’s dignitaries behind city walls, catered by every food vendor and wine merchant within a day’s ride. It would very likely continue until they were ready to depart the following evening.

  “Sheik Mohammed is serious about buying him,” Jaufre said.

  “North Wind is just as serious about not being bought,” Johanna said, and took her leave of her equine familiar with a last, loving stroke. “There are new baths in the city,” she said. “Shasha went ahead. Shall we?”

  Twelve

  Kuche

  The water was hot and the attendants scrubbed hard. As they emerged again into the street an hour later, not far away they could hear the sounds of people still enjoying their wine at Uncle Cheng’s expense. “Should we join them?” Jaufre said.

  Johanna yawned hugely. “I’m for bed.” She smiled at him, her face still flushed from her bath.

  Without knowing he did it, Jaufre raised a hand and brushed back a wayward bronze curl that had escaped from her damp braid to tangle in her eyelashes.

  Johanna’s smile faded and they stood staring at each other.

  Shasha cleared her throat. “Bed, yes, indeed,” she said. “It’s been a long day.”

  They both jumped. Jaufre shook his head as if trying to clear it and without a word turned on his heel.

  Johanna stood where she was, her mouth half open, watching Jaufre’s receding back.

  She had not thought of love beyond Edyk. If things had been different she might have married him and lived with him and borne his children and traveled and traded with him. Leaving him had been the most difficult thing she had ever done.

  The Road had taught her that no one, man or woman, was ever quite done with love, but she had never applied that knowledge to her own life. Perhaps it was simply because she hadn’t had time, she thought now. After all, they were not even five hundred leagues from Cambaluc. It was only a little over a month since the idyll in the lake house. She could still feel Edyk’s lips against hers, her body rising to his, the joy they had taken in each other’s response. It wasn’t as if she didn’t ache for him, as if the hunger she had felt then had stopped the instant she passed beneath the Great West Gate of Cambaluc. She had dreamed of his hands on her, only to wake, heart pounding, restless, wanting, reaching for him.

  She had no doubt that she could find physical relief with any one of the men she saw looking at her in that way. But if the Road had taught her much truth about the relations between men and women, her parents had showed her that such relations could be very good and very lasting. She was well aware that most marriages were transactional, trading a child for a stake in a business, or a foothold in an influential family, or simply a dowry big enough to provide for both children and their children for life.

  Or as a convenient way to dispose of an unwanted stepdaughter.

  Jaufre had always been there beside her, her fellow trader, her brother in arms, her co-conspirator in whatever devilry their fertile minds could devise. She had felt Jaufre’s hands on her a thousand, a thousand thousand times over the years, throwing her up into the saddle, steadying her hands on a new bow, nudging her elbow to the proper position in Fair Lady Works at Shuttles before Deshi the Scout saw that she was wildly out of form. There was no one with whom she felt more comfortable than Jaufre.

  This, though. The way his eyes seemed to darken as he watched his hand slide the lock of hair back behind her ear. The touch of his fingers on the skin of her cheek, a touch that seemed to sear straight down through her body, igniting feelings that she had only ever felt for Edyk. She looked down, bewildered, to see her nipples hard against the silk of her tunic, and the dark hollow between her legs felt as if it were about to open, hot, slippery, welcoming.

  “Coming?” Shasha said blandly, and like Jaufre, bereft of words, Johanna followed her.

  The caravansary in Kuche was undergoing restoration (“The Kuche caravansary has been under construction since before I was born,” Johanna had said upon hearing the news) and Uncle Cheng had set up camp outside the walls, arranging their goods and sleeping tents at the heart of a circle of livestock in turn inside a circle of constantly patrolling guards. Their yurt was next to Uncle Cheng’s, and the pickets for their mounts on the other side of the guards’ tents. It was the safest possible place in the caravan. Even the most accomplished thief would not have dreamed of trying his luck there.

  Which was why, perhaps among other reasons, they were taken completely by surprise. Johanna saw Jaufre duck under the flap and heard him stumble and swear.

  “What’s wrong, Jaufre?” Shasha said, following him inside. Johanna caught the flap before it closed. It dropped behind her and the light from the torches that lit the camp only dimly in the first place was cut off.

  The yurt seemed to explode. Something hit her in the chest and she staggered back into the wall of the canvas, which sagged precariously beneath her weight. “What—” Some disturbance of the air warned her at the last minute and she let herself slip to the ground as something large passed over her head. There was a loud metallic clang and an oath from Jaufre, followed by the sound of flesh striking flesh. They were under attack, she thought, incredulous.

  The fight was all the more eerie because it was so quiet. Johanna heard Jaufre grunt with effort, she heard Shasha panting, although she could barely hear either over the heart trying to jump out of her chest. She decided to change that and scrambled to her feet, shouting at the top of her voice. “Help! Help! Thieves! Help! Help! Thieves in the camp, help, help, help!”

  Outside the tent she heard a distant whinny. Inside the tent there was a guttural curse in a voice that sounded familiar but to which she could not put a name, and then a thud. Another smack of flesh on flesh, and Shasha cried out.

  “Shasha!” Johanna said. “Help, thieves, help, thieves!” She fumbled in the dark for the tent flap but it was too dark and she was all turned around.

  There was a sound of swiftly approaching thunder, which confused her. It was a cloudless night with a sky full of stars. There could be no approaching storm, and then there was one, in the shape of eleven hundredweight of furious horse, who charged into the yurt at full speed and laid about him indiscriminately with hoof and teeth.

  “North Wind!”

  “Ouch!”

  “Johanna, get outside and calm that beast down!”

  Two slashing hooves brought the yurt down around them, tent poles cracking, ropes loosening into an inextricable tangle, and Johanna caught a sliver of light and dove through the opening seconds before she would have been caught in the mess. Above her, North Wind, magnificent in his rage, bugled a war cry through his nose and prepared to renew his assault. She darted in to grasp his halter and before he could rear again let all of her weight dangle from it.

  He threw up his head and whinnied, still lunging and rea
ring and dropping his hooves with a fine lack of discrimination for private property, in his fury bringing down the yurt next to theirs. Fatima and Malala and Ahmed were going to be very annoyed. Fortunately no cries of distress were heard from inside. Like everyone else they must still be in the city and in the very short space of time granted her for coherent thought she was deeply grateful.

  She released the halter to throw her arms around his neck and wiggled her way onto his back, laying flat, arms and legs tight around him. “It’s all right, boy, it’s all right, now, calm down, calm down, it’s me, I’m all right.” She kept talking, nonsense words mostly, hoping the sound of her voice would calm him. Even then he nearly had her off twice, and when he finally recognized that it was indeed Johanna on his back he reached back with his head, snatched a mouthful of tunic and hauled her down to the ground, where he proceeded to examine her stem to stern with his nose.

  “Stop it! North Wind! Stop it! Let me up! I’m fine! By all the Mongol gods, I’m fine!”

  From the corner of her eye she saw a figure struggle free of the collapsed yurt and race off, but it was too dark to see who it was. A second figure followed the first and this time North Wind helped him on his way with a judicious kick from his right hind leg. It caught the fleeing man squarely in the seat of the pants and raised him a good two ells in the air. Confounding all expectation he landed on his feet, staggered a few steps and was unfortunately at speed by the time Jaufre had fought himself free of the wreck, vanishing into the thicket of yurts surrounding them.

  Jaufre rooted around in the debris to extricate Shasha. North Wind grudgingly allowed Johanna back on her feet. By this time many people had responded to Johanna’s shouts and North Wind’s battle cry, including Félicien, who stared wide-eyed at the wreckage of the yurt and at the scrapes and bruises sustained by his friends, none of whom by great good fortune were worse hurt. Many of the others had only just returned home from drinking a great deal at Uncle Cheng’s expense and were much more jolly than the occasion warranted. They weren’t much help getting the yurt back up, either.

  “I knew racing North Wind was a bad idea,” Shasha said.

  She was sporting a spectacular pair of black eyes. Jaufre had a cut on his cheek extending from his right temple almost to the corner of his mouth. It was very thin, as if made by an extraordinarily sharp blade. All three of them were bruised and stiff.

  Johanna held up her mother’s Robe of a Thousand Larks. It had been slashed nearly in two, the collar alone holding the garment together. The embroidered birds on the cut edge were already beginning to unravel. “Why didn’t they just steal it?” she said, fighting tears.

  Shasha, tight-lipped, looked up. “They didn’t even bother to unbuckle my pack, they just cut it open.”

  Jaufre held up his own pack, now in two pieces, in reply.

  The smells of cumin and cinnamon and coriander permeated the yurt and Jaufre tied back the flap to air it out. He felt the comforting weight of his father’s sword resting along his spine and was grateful that his most prized possession was never out of his sight. He found himself leaning over to finger the reassuring lumps in the hem of his coat, and looked up to see Shasha doing the same.

  “They took nothing,” he said, frowning at the pile he had made of his belongings.

  “Or they didn’t find what they were looking for,” Shasha said.

  Johanna said nothing.

  Uncle Cheng, red of eye and short of temper, summoned his havildar. This was Firas, a wiry man of middle height with a sparse beard and a scimitar with a grip bound in leather so frequently in use it looked as if it had been molded to fit his and only his hand. He was new to them and indeed to Uncle Cheng, having held the post of head of guard for less than two years. He followed them back to the yurt once it was light enough to see, and surveyed the scene with dark, remote eyes. “Did you see anyone?”

  He spoke to Jaufre in Farsi and Johanna answered in kind. “We were at the baths. When we came back, they were inside the yurt, and attacked us as we entered.”

  “Nothing at all?” he said, again to Jaufre. “No strangers loitering around?”

  “You heard her,” Shasha said. “Do you think we would have left the tent unguarded, that we wouldn’t have sounded the alarm if we had suspected something like this might happen?”

  He looked at her for a long moment, and then bent his head in a gesture somewhere between a nod and a bow. “As you say. Do you have any idea yet what is missing?”

  “That’s just it,” Jaufre said. “Nothing seems to be missing. Cut open, ripped apart, but not missing.”

  Firas meditated for a moment, his eyes dwelling for a moment on Jaufre’s sword. “A fortunate circumstance. Or happy forethought.”

  “Perhaps both,” Shasha said. “Old No—the honorable Wu Cheng’s hospitality was offered to all in the camp and in the city. The camp was nearly deserted when we came back from the baths. What self-respecting thief would pass up such an opportunity?”

  “There were guards,” Firas said mildly.

  “Not that anyone would notice,” Shasha said with acid precision.

  His eyes returned to her and she thought he almost smiled. “As you say,” he said again. “Still, one must consider all the possibilities. Have you recently turned off any servants who might be nursing a grudge? Dealt with a merchant who might think you had cheated him? Offended an ex-lover?”

  “None of those things,” Johanna said, and then looked at Jaufre.

  “What?” he said.

  “That fat redheaded dancer in Dunhuang,” she said.

  He reddened. “That short Portuguese trader in Cambaluc,” he said.

  In the subsequent smoldering silence, Shasha cleared her throat delicately. “No,” she said, “nothing like that, havildar. At least not recently.”

  Their eyes met in understanding. “I will inquire,” he said, and this time it was a genuine bow, denoting respect and admiration for one newly met.

  Shasha waited until he was gone. “All right, Johanna.”

  Johanna looked at her, surprised at the sharp edge to the other woman’s voice. “What?” she said.

  “What’s in your purse?” Shasha said.

  “What?” Jaufre said.

  Johanna blushed a fiery red to the roots of her hair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh yes, you do,” Shasha said. “You’ve been riding with your chin on your shoulder since we left Cambaluc. He—” she jerked her head at Jaufre “—thinks it’s because you’re pining for Edyk. I think it’s because you think we might be pursued.” She gestured at the mess in the yurt. “And now I think that we have been, and that they’ve caught up to us.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Johanna said, but her hand went to the leather purse at her waist.

  “What?” Jaufre said again.

  “Whatever you took, it put us in danger.” Shasha snatched the Robe of a Thousand Larks from Johanna’s hands. “You could have been wearing this when it was sliced into pieces.”

  Johanna flinched and Shasha tossed the robe aside. “I love you, Johanna, I’d lay down my life for yours and so would Jaufre, but we have a right to know why.”

  Jaufre didn’t say “What?” a third time because it might sound like it was the only word he knew.

  They waited.

  “Oh, all right,” Johanna said, sighing. She fumbled at her waist and opened the purse, holding it out to display what was inside.

  Jaufre blinked and opened his mouth, but was able to produce only a splutter.

  Shasha put her hand over her eyes and shook her head. “Johanna. Johanna. What were you thinking, girl?”

  “Pursued?” Jaufre said, finding his vocabulary and gaining in volume. “There is at minimum a band of hired mercenaries on our trail, if not an entire imperial cohort!”

  Nestled inside the leather purse was the jade box containing the Wu bao.

  Tucked in cozily next to it was Wu Li’s
worn, leather-bound journal.

  Baos were hereditary, increasing in value as they aged from generation to generation. New ones were awarded only rarely and usually only after a lifetime spent proving one’s worth as a trader, or after an especially hefty bribe. Penalties for forgeries were harsh, which only began with stripping the offender of the right to trade in Everything Under the Heavens, and usually ending in prison. In short, the widow Wu would be unable to conduct the business of the Wu Li trading consortium without the Wu Li bao, and certainly, Jaufre thought bitterly, a mercenary troop’s fee would be less expensive than the extortionate bribery necessary to moving a petition for a new bao through the bureaucracy at court.

  As for the journal…In a faint voice Shasha said, “The journal? You took Wu Li’s journal, too?”

  “They were my father’s,” Johanna said. “And now they are mine.”

  “You do realize that the Honorable Wu Li’s second wife may disagree?” Jaufre said with awful sarcasm.

  “Of course she does,” Shasha said. The strength in her legs gave out, as much from Johanna’s revelation as from the lumps she had taken in the recent fracas, and she sat down with a thump on the nearest tangle of belongings. “She knows perfectly well that Wu Li’s widow is sure to be nothing short of enraged. That’s why she stole them.” She raised her head. “Isn’t it, Johanna?”

  “Well, she certainly didn’t see fit to give them to me as part of my dowry,” Johanna said. “As she most certainly should have done.”

  Shasha cast her eyes heavenward for guidance.

  “Johanna,” Jaufre said in a controlled voice, “you understand, don’t you, that without the bao, Dai Fang will be unable to trade commercially? At least until she’s able to get a new one?”

  “And that that could take years?” Shasha said.

  “And that even if she does manage to acquire her own bao that her tithe will increase? Which will cut significantly into her profits?”

  “And that even if she can get a new one quicker than that, that you hold the keys to the entire Li network in Wu Li’s journal?” Shasha said. “That she won’t know the names of debtors or agents in Kashgar or Antioch or Alexandria, or the names of Wu trading partners anywhere along the Road?”