The Bird and the Blade

by Megan Bannen

  Each of those statements is a death sentence. If Zhang is the one sorting this out, they may as well run their lances through Khalaf where he stands.

  “Don’t do this, my lord,” I plead with him.

  “Sir?” the guard asks.

  “I’m coming,” Khalaf says, but he hasn’t turned away from me. There’s fear in his eyes, and his fear is my fear. “Will you do me the honor of taking care of my father if—”

  I put up my hands to stop him from finishing that sentence, as if my preventing him from saying the words will erase the possibility of his death. Inside, I rage against the idea that his life could end here, now. I resist it as hard as I’ve fought against my own death. Harder even. “I will,” I tell him. “I promise.”

  He holds out his hand, the one that offered me apples, that gave me a dagger, and I put my hand in his. His thumb strokes my skin just once, the same gesture that led in a roundabout way to his dumping me and Timur in the Chagatai Khanate. I don’t care that the feeling it inspires is why everything has gone wrong from Sarai to Khanbalik. I want his thumb to stroke the back of my hand for the rest of my life.

  “Forgive me,” he pleads.

  “There’s nothing to forgive,” I assure him, doing my level best not to start bawling. I know full well that he’s not apologizing for the fact that he just entered a contest that could very well end in his death. He’s referring to what happened back in the Chagatai Khanate the night he abandoned us. He has only one thing to be sorry for. I have a million.

  “Sir.” The guard is out of patience with the lengthy goodbyes.

  Khalaf presses my hand one last time before releasing me. He throws his arms around Timur, hugs him fiercely, and kisses him on each cheek. Then he lets go of his father and walks away with the guard. Timur and I stand there, gaping in powerless misery at the back of his head, when, suddenly, he stops and turns back to look at us.

  At me.

  “Sir,” the guard spits, grabbing him by the upper arm. Khalaf pulls himself free. His face tightens as if he were in physical pain, and my whole chest tightens right along with it.

  “‘And wilderness is paradise now,’” he says. He holds my gaze, begging me with red-rimmed eyes to understand his meaning before the guard jerks him away. This time, he doesn’t turn back. I feel as if someone has reached down my throat, ripped out my backbone, and left me a hollow shell.

  “‘And wilderness is paradise now’? What is that? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Timur asks me, grasping at hope that these words contain some hidden message, something that’s going to save Khalaf from death.

  “I don’t know, my lord,” I answer, and it’s true. Those may have been Khalaf’s last words to me, ever, and I don’t understand what he was trying to tell me. I look to Timur for guidance, but he has devolved into his mountainous state, the unmoving posture he assumes when everything has gone to hell. The people who witnessed Khalaf’s entry into Turandokht’s trial are staring at us, and I remember the promise I made to him only moments ago to take care of his father. I tug on Timur’s sleeve and say, “We should get out of here.”

  “What’s the point?” Timur replies in a dead voice.

  For Khalaf’s sake, I am grimly determined to hold it together. “Your son is still alive, and we are still alive. It’s not over yet.” I pull him away from the onlookers, closer to the dais, so that we’ll have a decent view as Khalaf faces his trial.

  “I can’t see much,” Timur admits, looking out over the crowd.

  “I know, my lord,” I tell him, anxiety hanging from my bones like wet sheets. “I’ll be your eyes as best I can.”

  From our new vantage point, I see a small procession making its way to join Chancellor Zhang. It consists of only three old, pompous men.

  “There are three men climbing up the bell tower,” I narrate for Timur. “They look like scholars.”

  “The judges?”

  “I think so.”

  Another guard unit escorts Khalaf to the foot of the dais as if he were a dangerous criminal. Do they think he’ll flee? And what would they do to him if he did?

  “There he is,” I tell Timur.

  “How does he look?” The man sounds desperate. I know the feeling.

  “Calm” is my answer, but it doesn’t come close to describing him. Even from this distance and even though Khalaf is dressed in remarkably humble clothing compared to the imperial court, he is radiant. I imagine the other princes who came before him, dripping with jewels, touting their carved bows and brilliant scimitars, each trying to outglorify the next in riches and luxuries. I’m certain Khalaf puts them all to shame. He doesn’t need to act the part. He is the part.

  I’m giddily tempted to race into the center of this spectacle, grab him by the arm, and yank him all the way to Lin’an. If we wouldn’t be killed on the spot, I just might try.

  The rest of the players are already present. Turandokht and the Great Khan sit on their ornately carved chairs. The dignitaries kneel once more on their cushions. Chancellor Zhang smiles smugly beside the judges from his lofty place in the bell tower. He clears his throat and begins the trial.

  “On behalf of the Yuan Dynasty and the entire Mongol Empire, I welcome you to your death, sir,” he says. The snake. “You have signaled your intent to wed Turandokht Khatun at a most auspicious moment, as we are already gathered together to witness the failure of another man much like yourself.”

  “Are you the prince who would marry my daughter?” asks the Great Khan. His voice is weak and brittle, his mouth a crooked line, livid against his clammy skin.

  “I am, Son of the Eternal Blue Sky,” Khalaf answers. His voice lilts with his Kipchak accent, so intimate and familiar to me in a city full of strangeness and strangers that I wish I could snatch the sound out of the air and tuck it into my pocket.

  “You are young,” says the Great Khan. “Not as young as the last one, but young all the same. How old are you?”

  “I am nineteen, my lord.”

  “As a Mongol, I have the decency to abhor death, and I don’t wish to see another this night. Go home.”

  I hear Timur’s intake of breath, which matches my own. For one blissful second, hope surges in both of us, until Khalaf replies, “Son of the Eternal Blue Sky, I have come to Khanbalik to face Turandokht’s riddles, if it please you.”

  His self-condemnation flattens me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  “It does not please me.” The Great Khan leans forward. “Do you know war? You appear strong enough. Can you fight?”

  Khalaf’s stance widens. He nods, and there’s something in the simplicity of the gesture, some physical grace that conveys the fact that he is deadly when armed. “Yes, my lord. I have known war, and I am able to fight.”

  “Then let me advise you to give your life honorably on the field of battle in the cause of expanding our glorious empire to all the nations of the world.”

  “He’s got that right,” Timur mutters.

  “As I understand it, my lord,” Khalaf answers, “Turandokht Khatun merits the sacrifice that I am willing to risk.”

  It hurts—physically hurts—to hear these words waltz so easily from his mouth. She merits him.

  I don’t.

  From her high place on the dais, Turandokht shakes her head. “Have you come to Khanbalik to kill yourself?” she asks Khalaf. “If not, you must understand that should you persist in battling my intelligence, you will die.”

  “My khatun, you freely admit to your intelligence. Do you not see that a wise king must treasure such a gift in his wife and the value a great intellect would bring to any kingdom?” The softness of Khalaf’s voice stands in stark contrast to Turandokht’s grandeur, and yet it’s strong enough to bounce across the market square and crush me.

  The Great Khan inclines his head. “Well said. Forgive me, I did not catch your name . . . ?”

  I feel Timur stiffen as Khalaf replies, “Does my name matter?”

  “W
e do not, as a general rule, allow beggars on the throne, though you are no beggar, I think. Enough. Where is your kingdom? What man is your father?”

  “If I solve the riddles, and it is discovered that I am no prince, you may break my body and rip my flesh from my bones.”

  Khalaf has just made the most solemn of Mongol oaths. His words comprise a sacred, unbreakable vow. I can’t believe this is happening, that he cares more for his principles than his own life.

  Zhang laughs. “Look at him. He’s like a pig that’s willingly crawled onto the block to be butchered.”

  I want to wrap my hands around that man’s neck and strangle the life out of him, but my abhorrence of Zhang wraps itself up with my own self-loathing. I may want to rip the smile from his face, but at the end of the day, he’s no worse than I am, is he?

  “If you truly wish to die, let it be so,” the Great Khan tells Khalaf. He reaches out a palsied hand and sets it on Turandokht’s wrist. “He’s beyond reason, Daughter. Offer the trial.”

  Zhang tsk-tsks at Khalaf. “The men who were the prince of Hormuz’s executioners tonight will be your executioners tomorrow, sir, and it will be your body sewn into a bag and trampled.”

  The memory of the other boy’s execution floods my mind, morphing into images of my brother’s bloodied ghost. Zhăngxiōng, please, I beg Weiji’s spirit. Don’t let Khalaf die like this.

  Turandokht’s fine features look as if they have been carved out of ice, and even that is lovely. She gives Khalaf a long, hard look. He returns her gaze with his own beatific Khalaf-ness.

  “The first riddle, then,” she says.

  Timur sucks in a breath but doesn’t release it. Terror makes my heart beat so hard in my chest that I’m finding it hard to breathe, too. I hate this powerlessness, this inability to act. Nothing I do helps Khalaf or Timur or Weiji or anyone I’ve ever cared about. It’s like I’m going through my whole life with my hands tied behind my back.

  Zhang unfurls a silk scroll and reads the same edict we heard just an hour ago. When he’s finished, he rolls the scroll up and neatens it on the palm of his hand before addressing Khalaf. “You will have seven minutes to answer each riddle,” he explains. “Should you fail to answer correctly each riddle by the end of seven minutes, you shall forfeit your life. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” Khalaf answers, his soft voice incongruous in the expansive market square, the beating heart of a city that is the beating heart of the empire.

  Turandokht says, “The first riddle is this:

  “She is the dragon with an iridescent wing

  Stretched taut across the bleak and yawning void

  To whom the hollow human heart must sing

  When, with it, like a cat with prey has toyed.

  “She only lives in shadow’s heavy hue

  When, invoked by man, is night her reign.

  So every dusk gives birth to her anew,

  And every dawn destroys her once again.”

  “Seven minutes,” Zhang announces.

  As Khalaf bows his head in concentration, my mind spirals, thinking of all the things I could have done to stop this from happening, of all the little missteps along the way that led to this. But it was a long road that brought us here, and, to be honest, I’m not sure where the road began or at what point I put my foot on the path and took my first step toward disaster.

  Toward this.

  Part Two

  Hope

  The City of Sarai, Kipchak Khanate

  Autumn 1280

  3

  THE ROYAL FAMILY DINES TONIGHT IN the khan’s enormous ger. It’s late autumn in Sarai, Timur Khan’s tent city on the Volga River, north of the Caspian Sea. The fire in the brazier keeps the room warm within the ger’s luxurious brocade-lined walls. It’s no palace, but the gold-plated support beams encrusted with gems and pearls lend a certain opulence to the scene. Beyond the door, however, the bland steppes make me long for the green hills beyond the West Lake back home.

  There are four place settings at the table, one more than usual, and I can only assume that the seat across from the khan is meant for Prince Khalaf, the boy I met last night in the cart. The very idea of facing him again spins me into a panic.

  Timur Khan hunkers on a low divan wearing his permascowl, one enormous hand fisted on his hip, the other holding out a porcelain dish containing a bit of washed, pale sheep’s lung for his goshawk. The bird sits on a wooden perch, grasping the rod with fierce talons. The khan doesn’t look up as I set a platter of stewed lamb before him. I dissolve into the background, taking my station against a beam alongside twelve other slaves. I’m so nervous that my knees feel like they could give out at any second.

  The khan’s oldest son, Prince Miran, enters the ger. The goshawk flaps her great wings as he passes, and the slave next to me stifles a laugh as the prince trips in surprise. The prince glares at the bird before eyeing the extra place setting on the table. “Are we expecting company?” he asks his father as he sits.

  “No,” the khan answers, setting the bird’s dish down on the embroidered muslin that covers the table. Prince Miran frowns. The two men sit in silence until Prince Khalaf enters the ger.

  Last night in the cart, the apples, his kindness . . . it all seemed unreal. But seeing him here in the khan’s home brings reality into sharp focus. I hold my breath and press my back against the beam. He walks by me without a glance and sits across from his father. I let out my breath and will myself to become invisible.

  “Good evening, my lord,” he says to the khan, and to his brother, “Miran.”

  He still wears a plain deel and trousers, but this is a cleaner set of clothes than what he wore last night. He also has a distinctly foreign turban wrapped around his head. His dress is so modest that he makes his brother, who is not particularly showy, look like a canary in quilted brocade. Prince Miran seems surprised to see him, and not in a pleasant way.

  “Khalaf, I didn’t realize you were here. When did you get in?”

  “Late last night. This is a magnificent bird, Father. Is she new?”

  “Your friend Nasan captured her from the nest for me,” Timur Khan answers.

  “May I?” Prince Khalaf gestures to the khan’s leather glove resting on the table, and his father nods. He slides his arm into the glove and offers it to the bird, making soft clucking noises with his tongue. The goshawk obliges, stepping onto the boy’s forearm.

  “Look at the pattern of her wings,” he marvels. “It’s as if God wrote a page of the Qur’an on her. She’ll bring you good fortune for that, Father.”

  I tend to think of Timur Khan as more mountain than man, but while to all outward appearances he remains as hard and massive as ever, I detect something resembling approval hiding beneath his beard.

  Prince Miran’s lips thin, and he taps his cup. A slave steps forward to fill it. The older prince dips his hand into the qumiz and flicks a drop into the air, an offering to Tengri, the Eternal Blue Sky, before he guzzles the rest.

  The khan’s second son, Jahangir, arrives as Prince Khalaf places the bird back on her perch and removes the glove. If the youngest son’s somber attire makes Prince Miran look a bit showy, it makes Prince Jahangir look like a peacock. The man struts to his chair with his embroidered green-and-blue silk deel glinting in the lamplight. Unlike the khan’s eldest son, he makes no attempt to hide his lack of enthusiasm at seeing his younger brother seated at the table.

  “What’s he doing here?” he asks his father with a jerk of the head in Prince Khalaf’s direction. I can’t help but think of my own brother poking his head around the curtain of the women’s quarters to tease me, but there was at least a sheen of affection in his taunts.

  Weiji.

  Last night’s dream of my brother’s ghost, the grinding pain in his voice, comes crashing in on me. The thought of him haunting the earth makes me heartsick. I try to shake off the memory and focus on the family drama unfolding before my eyes.

  Prince Kh
alaf seems more amused than put out by his brothers’ greetings. He’s much younger than they, and here by the brighter light of the brazier and lamps he looks even younger than I thought him last night. It makes my chest ache harder.

  “You’re late,” Timur Khan tells Prince Jahangir.

  “Oh, are we standing on ceremony for the runt? Nice turban, by the way.” The khan’s second son lounges like a cat on his divan, drawing a dish of yogurt toward himself.

  “Father sent for me,” Prince Khalaf explains.

  “For what?” Another slave steps forward to fill Prince Jahangir’s cup. Like Prince Miran, he flicks an offering to the Eternal Blue Sky into the air before taking a drink.

  “Is there tea?” Prince Khalaf asks.

  A pit of dread opens wide in my stomach. The Kipchaks have developed a taste for whipped tea in the Song fashion, and that means the Song girl is the one assigned to the task.

  Me.

  I bow my head and shuffle over to the tea service to retrieve the pot and the pressed cake and the whisk, and I will my hands to stop shaking. Please, please, please, don’t see me, my mind begs Prince Khalaf.

  And he doesn’t. He never glances in my direction. I should be relieved, but for some unfathomable reason, I’m a little disappointed as well. I suppose it’s depressing how insignificant I am, that his kindness to me was nothing special.

  You are an idiot, Jinghua, I tell myself brutally.

  As I break off a chunk from the tea cake, I can make out the familiar dragon seal still visible on the compressed leaves, trace it with the tip of my finger. Homesickness surges within me. My father could whip tea into the most beautiful green-white froth with nary a watermark on the utensils. Me? It always comes out a sad, yellowed mess. I can’t help but wonder what my father would think if he could see me now.