Until the Sun Falls

by Cecelia Holland

  “Uh-huh. You went to Novgorod?”

  “All the way.”

  The bright sunlight dissolved the lingering chill. They went on toward their horses. Psin’s dun was slick with sweat and pawing the ground.

  “That horse and Chan may change the Altun’s opinion of you,” Tshant said.

  “Oh,” Psin said, and laughed. “The Altun hold a very high opinion of me.”

  He mounted and the dun bucked. Psin talked him quiet again and rode beside Tshant; together, they trotted out into the city.

  “Don’t fight with Mongke,” Psin said.

  Tshant barked a laugh. “Tell me not to breathe.”

  “Don’t breathe.”

  Tshant was lying in the sun. He had slept until noon, eaten half an ox for breakfast, and was drinking red wine as if it guaranteed his youth. He had answered Psin’s questions until Psin suspected he was making up the answers. Tshant had never been so careful about detail. Tshant arched his back, folded his arms behind his head, and admired the sky. Psin grunted.

  “If you have to fight, don’t do it with knives, bows or horses. Don’t kill him. I need him.”

  “What for?”

  Djela ran into the garden, chattering contentedly to someone not yet in sight. He waved to Psin, and Psin waved back. Dmitri came out of another door with a tray of cups and wine. Psin caught his eye and nodded, and Dmitri poured wine into one of the cups and handed it to him.

  “I asked what good Mongke is to you.”

  “He scouted the Russian cities.”

  “Along with one thousand other men, all probably better than he.”

  Chan came into the garden behind Djela. Psin frowned; Chan hated Djela and never went anywhere near him except for a good reason.

  “Tshant, for once, listen to your old father.”

  Tshant snorted.

  “Your poor old father who has grown bent and grey in the service of the Kha-Khan—”

  “Give me room to weep. You might drown for the tears.”

  “Damn you. I said, don’t fight with Mongke.”

  “And I say I will.”

  Chan came over to Psin and said, “Spread your cloak for me that I may sit.”

  Psin got up and took his cloak off the stone bench he’d been sitting on and put it on the ground for her. Djela was gone. Chan had probably bribed him to lead her innocently in here.

  “Have you ever heard of a place called Rome?” Psin said.

  “Never.” Tshant squirmed around to look at Chan. She turned her face away with an expression of intense disgust.

  “The people from Novgorod think it’s the chief city of the land west of the Dnepr. Europe.” Psin frowned. The captives’ description of Rome and of the Khans and noyons who ruled from it confused him. “There is a great khan there, and a priest, like the Nestorians, only very great.” He looked at Chan’s head, beside his knee, and laid his hand on her hair. Against the smoothness of her hair he could feel how rough and calloused his hand was.

  “Don’t,” she said. “You hurt me.”

  Tshant snorted.

  Chan opened her eyes. The tiny room was pitch dark. There were no windows in it, and no light shone under the door. The little nightlight beside the couch had gone out long since.

  She could feel Psin beside her; she could feel how asleep he was, even though they didn’t touch at all. She thought there was at least a handspan of space between them, shoulder and shoulder, hip and hip, knee and knee, space their bodies warmed, where the warmth of their bodies mixed like the subtle oils of perfumes in a bowl.

  He was so warm. He was so big. The other men she couldn’t remember at all. Their faces swam sadly like melted wax and their bodies had moldered away from her memory as they had from the earth. She had been raised for a concubine, to be a receptacle for men to come in, and before she had been fully grown there had been plenty of them.

  He didn’t care about that. She had never understood why. He never let other men even look at her for longer than a glance, but that she had had three masters before he got her didn’t seem to matter. It made her angry, sometimes, almost enough to see what would happen if she ever looked back at the men who looked at her.

  She moved her hand, pretending she was asleep and dreaming, and touched his side. Immediately he stirred. “What’s the matter?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “You woke me up.”

  “No,” she said. “You woke me up.”

  He rolled over and put his arms around her. “We can argue about it later.”

  She wedged her elbows inside his and pushed him away from her. “I’m tired. Go to sleep.” But with her ankle she stroked his calf. He liked that.

  “I’m tired too.” He grabbed her again. “Let’s wear each other to ruins.”

  She tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled his head back. “Would you have taken me with you from Kinsai if I had had lotus feet?”

  She could feel the surprise run through him. “What?”

  “Would you have—”

  “Why are you speaking Chinese?”

  “Because I am.” Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked them back.

  He twisted his head sharply, so that she lost her grip in his hair, but he didn’t put his head down. He hitched himself up on his elbows, and his fingers brushed her cheek. She struck his hand aside.

  “I’m not crying.”

  “No. I wouldn’t have. What good are lotus feet to a Mongol?”

  Despondency overwhelmed her. She didn’t understand why sometimes she could do nothing but cry. She let her hands slide lifelessly down his back, like dead leaves. His great bulk above her seemed more distant than stars.

  In Mongol, he said, “If you cry, I’ll beat you.”

  She jerked herself back together, as if her limbs had been on strings in far corners of the room. She hit him in the back as hard as she could and lunged up to bite him. His weight pressed her down; his flat stomach lay against hers, and when he breathed it drove the breath from her lungs. His mustaches tickled her throat. He penetrated her, and she gave an undignified yelp and wrapped her legs around him. She remembered Kinsai burning and the sound of the horse in the garden where she had hid, she remembered the time they broke the bed in Karakorum and the way he had told the Emperor Temujin that he could not have her. The triumph coursed through her body like a dream of wings, and she shut her eyes and stopped thinking at all.

  “How much help can we expect from inside the cities?” Psin asked.

  Sabotai studied the board before him. Batu, who was playing against him, rested both forearms on the table and smiled, delighted. “Very little,” Sabotai said. “I had to use Turks, of course. When I sent out the agents. Besides, the Russians certainly will keep a watch on anybody at all related to us.”

  Batu moved a pawn and settled back again; his eyes darted from Sabotai’s face to the board to Sabotai’s face.

  “At any rate,” Psin said, “large groups of the peasants are fleeing from the fields to the cities. We’ll have no trouble taking the individual holdings of the noyons once we hold the towns.”

  “No.” Sabotai moved his elephant. “I’ve brought in forty thousand head of horses from the south. That should solve the remount problem.”

  “Temporarily.”

  Batu leaned back and stared at the board, one hand to his chin. With the other hand he shifted two pieces. “Check.”

  “As long as they can forage,” Sabotai said, “we should have no difficulty. In the summer we can rest and let them graze all they wish.” He picked up a piece between the first two fingers of his hand and carried it across the board. “We have certain other problems. Kadan and Buri have been stupid drunk since you came back from Novgorod. We’ll have to pack them out on litters. You did a good job with them, Psin. But it should have lasted a little longer.”

  “They’ll dry out when we ride,” Batu said cheerfully. “Check.”

  Sabotai glanced at the board and without hesitation moved, and B
atu pounced on him. “Checkmate.”

  Sabotai had been wheeling to talk to Psin. He jerked his gaze back to the board. Psin rose and went over to look; he saw that Batu had built a perfect fence of pawns around Sabotai’s overlord. Sabotai glared at the board and with a growl swept the pieces aside.

  “Another.”

  “No,” Batu said. “You don’t pay attention. You’re a decent player when you concentrate but when you don’t there’s no excitement in it. The game wants blood, Sabotai. It wants sweat.” Batu gritted his teeth as if he were heaving at a great boulder.

  “How can I concentrate on a game when we’re—”

  Kaidu burst into the room. “Psin—Sabotai. Mongke and Tshant are fighting in Quyuk’s room.”

  Psin swore. “Let them fight—beat each other’s brains out.”

  Kaidu’s voice cracked. “But they have knives.”

  Psin and Sabotai bolted for the door. Kaidu ran ahead of them down the corridor. A crowd was gathered at the far end, in front of the door into Quyuk’s room. Psin heard somebody yelling and Quyuk’s voice rose up over it: “Give way—give them room!”

  “Let me through,” Psin shouted. He forced his way into the pack of slaves and guards and elbowed Baidar savagely to one side. He heard Djela’s voice, thin with fright, inside the room. Abruptly someone was thrusting the boy into Psin’s arms. Psin threw him to Baidar and squeezed into the room.

  Quyuk stood pressed into a corner, a table overturned at his feet. Mongke and Tshant were prowling around each other, crouched. The carpet beneath their feet was rucked up so that they had to be careful of their footing. Kadan sprawled on the couch under the window. Mongke held a knife, but Tshant had none, and Psin noticed it lying on the carpet near the fallen table. Tshant was trying to edge over to it, and Mongke was keeping him off.

  “Come on, big man,” Mongke said softly. His fingers clutched the knife hilt so hard his knuckles were yellow. “Come on. Show me how strong you are.”

  Next to Psin, Sabotai murmured, “Let them fight—we can keep them from killing each other.”

  Mongke glanced over at the sound of his voice, and Tshant lunged behind him, fingers splayed, reaching for the knife on the floor. Quyuk bounded over the table into a safer corner. Mongke’s knife flashed. He kicked Tshant hard and knocked him rolling. Tshant had missed the knife. Mongke bent and picked it up in his left hand. Tshant rose, his eyes on the two blades. One side of his tunic hung down, slashed through just below the armpit.

  Psin started. Immediately Sabotai on his left and Baidar on his right wound their arms through his and held him still. Tshant was circling against Mongke’s left hand. Mongke hissed something Psin could not understand.

  “Let me go,” he said.

  “No,” Sabotai said. “Baidar, hold him.”

  Tshant feinted to the left, swung back, and plunged left again. His right hand caught Mongke’s left wrist and twisted. Mongke grimaced. He drew the other dagger across Tshant’s body, just lightly. Psin sucked in his breath. Tshant backed away. His tunic hung in rags, and he tore it off, and the mob in the doorway murmured at the two long stripes on his body. Blood trickled down over his ribs.

  “You can do better than that, Tshant,” Mongke said. “Come kill me, Tshant.”

  Tshant shook his hair out of his eyes. He circled again, this time to Mongke’s right. Mongke turned, following him, and led with his left shoulder. Tshant bulled in. He got Mongke by the belt, but Mongke gashed him twice across the chest and Tshant dodged, letting go. He put one hand to his chest.

  “You’re playing dangerous, skinny,” Tshant said. “I’ll kill you before you can cut me to pieces.”

  “Try,” Mongke said. He moved, sliding his feet over the bunched carpet, toward the couch where Kadan lay. Kadan was stone blind with drink. Mongke maneuvered Tshant toward the door, glanced over Tshant’s shoulder, and met Psin’s eyes. Psin wrenched at the arms pinning his, but Sabotai and Baidar only tightened their grip until he couldn’t move at all.

  Tshant had finished attacking the knives. With each step he drew his hands over the furniture behind him, hunting another weapon. Mongke glanced toward Psin again. Psin’s lungs burned, and he realized he was holding his breath.

  Mongke lunged in toward Tshant, who tried to grapple with him. The knives flickered. Blood spilled over Tshant’s back and sides. He flung Mongke against the wall and sank down on one knee, panting.

  Baidar said, “He’s slicing him up, Sabotai.”

  Quyuk was right next to the door. “We can stop it when we have to.”

  Mongke snapped at him. “Try.” He bounded in, both knives low and out. Tshant straightened—on the carpet where he had knelt a pool of blood glittered. He stepped back off the carpet and brought it up after him in both hands. Mongke lost his footing and fell hard into a cabinet. Tshant took two long strides toward him and caught the top of the cabinet and rocked it forward with a crash on top of Mongke. The doors sprang open and heaps of clothing spilled out. Only Mongke’s leg showed, motionless.

  “Clever,” Baidar said.

  Tshant stood still a moment, swaying. His leggings were soaked through with blood. Finally, he turned his head, looking for the knives, and saw one where Mongke, falling, had dropped it. He started toward it.

  Abruptly Sabotai turned Psin loose. He cocked one finger at Quyuk and pointed to Tshant. Quyuk picked up a chair, smashed it against the wall, and with one of its legs stretched Tshant out cold on the floor. Psin knelt beside him and rolled him over.

  “Heave,” Baidar said. He and Sabotai shoved the cabinet up onto its base again. Psin glanced at Mongke. His fingers, pressing gently against the back of Tshant’s head where Quyuk had hit him, found no breaks, and he sighed.

  “How is he?” Baidar said.

  “He has to be bandaged,” Quyuk said. “We can take him in the carpet.”

  He and Psin rolled Tshant up in the carpet and lifted him. Kaidu forced his way in through the door and came over to help. Quyuk with Tshant’s feet went first. When Psin passed Sabotai, he said, “If he dies, Sabotai—”

  Sabotai looked up from Mongke. “He didn’t, and he won’t.” He put his hand on Psin’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. But I think it was necessary.”

  “The next time you play chess, don’t use my blood.”

  They carried Tshant just down the corridor. Two women with warm water and ointment followed them there from the crowd around Quyuk’s door. Psin stood by the bed, watching them wash and staunch Tshant’s wounds. Each of the slashes was over two hands long, but none was deeper than the skin.

  “He’s strong,” the younger of the two women said. “He’ll be roaring to get up tomorrow morning.”

  “Keep him here until he’s healed.”

  The woman smiled. She was Russian; her skin was white as cream and her round eyes were bright blue. She said, “I’ll care for him.”

  The way she handled him led Psin to think that she had cared for Tshant before. He turned away, snorting.

  Kaidu said, “You’d better find Djela, Khan.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Baidar gave him to me but he got away and ran.”

  Psin started down the corridor. “He’s probably gone back to our house.” He went past the dispersing crowd, around a corner, and through the high main door into the courtyard.

  The sentry there saluted. Psin looked around, saw no sign of Djela, and said, “Did my grandson come through here?”

  “He went toward the stables, Khan.”

  Psin trotted down the steps and strode across the yard, headed for the low barn. Sabotai was probably right to let them fight everything out. His arms hurt where they had held him. He swung open the stable door and called, “Djela?”

  There was no answer, and the stable was almost empty. His dun horse stood munching hay at one of the ricks; he’d broken the rope that tied him to the pole. Psin went over to him and led him back to the saddle racks, feeding him hay with each step to keep him quiet. He ti
ed him fast with new rope and started saddling him.

  “Grandfather?”

  “Oh. There you are.”

  Djela crawled out from under the hayrick. Straw covered his coat and his face was filthy with tears and dust. “I was talking to Dekko.”

  “To—oh.” Dekko was a little boy who showed up in Djela’s conversations sometimes. “What did he have to say?”

  “He said—” Djela burst into tears. “Is my father dead?”

  Psin scooped him up. “No. Your father’s fine. He tipped a cabinet over on Mongke. I don’t think he hurt him, but a man can hope. Stop crying.”

  “I thought he was dead. Mongke cut him. I saw him cut him.”

  Psin hugged him. “It’s all right. Everything’s fine. I wouldn’t have let Mongke hurt him badly.”

  “Baidar and Sabotai were holding you. I saw them. They wanted him to get killed.”

  Psin laid his cheek against the boy’s hair. Djela’s arms around his neck almost choked him. “No, they don’t. They just wanted to teach him not to fight with Mongke.”

  “They wanted him to die.”

  “You remember when I told you not to pat Malekai’s dog, don’t you? And you did.”

  Djela sobbed. His chin jabbed Psin in the shoulder.

  “The dog bit you, didn’t he?”

  The chin jabbed him again.

  “And you didn’t pat him anymore, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Why? Because I told you not to, or because he bit you?”

  “I want to go home.”

  “We will. Right now.”

  “I mean back to the Lake. I want to go back to the Lake.”

  “We can’t, Djela. Not for a long time.”

  “I want to go home. I want my mother.”

  The child began crying again, more softly but more terribly as well. Psin rocked him. The dun horse looked toward them, his ears pricked up. Psin sat down with Djela in his lap and listened to him cry. He thought, This is all the fault of Temujin. Like everything else in the world.

  Artai said, “Be careful.”

  “I will”

  “Watch out for Djela, when he reaches you.”