Everything Under the Heavens (Silk and Song) (3 page)

Wu Hai returned to his home and turned everyone in the house into the street with what they had on their backs, wife and servants all, with the sole exception of his son.

His wife sobbed and groveled at his feet. “Where will I go, husband? What will I do?”

Before them all he deliberately put the sole of his foot against her shoulder and shoved her through the gate. She rolled and rose to her feet, the lacquer on her face running in great rowels down her cheeks. “You had a wife!” Her voice rose to a scream. “What need had you of another!”

“She had a husband,” Wu Hai said. He surveyed the throng of people gathered around her. Not one of them could meet his eyes. He remembered the delicate features and the gentle disposition of his friend’s wife, brutalized and despoiled and then destroyed, from nothing more than petty jealousy.

“I have no wife,” he said, raising his own voice so that it would be heard over the sobs and wails of the people who had once formed his household. So they would understand fully the price of betrayal, he himself closed the heavy wooden doors in their faces. The bar dropped inexorably into its brackets with a loud and final thud.

He turned to face his son.

Wu Li was a sturdy and handsome fellow, standing with his legs braced and his thumbs in his belt in imitation of his father. He met Wu Hai’s eyes squarely, although his face was a little pale.

“Do you understand what happened here, my son?” Wu Hai said.

The boy hesitated, and then nodded once, firmly. “I do, father.”

“What, then?”

Unflinching, the boy said steadily, “There is no excuse for betraying a guest in one’s home.”

Wu Hai’s wife had been an unaffectionate and inattentive mother. He nodded. “It is well,” he said.

He sold the house for an extortionate price to one of Temur’s new-minted nobles and built a new home on property he owned outside of the city. It sat on the banks of the Yalu, and he built a dock and warehouses there as well, which, once Temur’s policies allowed the realm to recover from the economic instability caused by the ruinous wars of his grandfather, proved to be a profitable move.

The first ceremony conducted beneath the roof of the new house was the marriage of his son, Wu Li, 9, to Shu Ming, 5. The marriage was in name only until both children had come of age, but in the interim it gave Shu Ming rank and citizenship, entitled to all the rights and at least the outward respect of the citizens of Everything Under the Heavens.

Temur was an enlightened ruler who appointed people to positions of responsibility regardless of their ethnicity or religion. At court Mongols worked beside Han Chinese, Muslims, Confucians and even a few Latins, usually priests who were missionaries for their faiths, but some merchants as well. In this he was truly the grandson of Kublai Khan. But Wu Hai, who until the end of his life held himself responsible for the betrayal and death of Shu Lin, wasn’t taking any chances with the life of her daughter. He ignored the whispers in the Chinese community, the covert looks his family received when abroad, even the mutterings of his own parents.

He was every bit as honorable a man as Marco had believed him to be when he committed his wife and daughter into Wu Hai’s care.

JOHANNA HAD GRADUATED
to her own camel.

Her father, Wu Li, had told her that if she managed to keep her seat from the beginning of Kuche to the city of Kashgar that he would let her off the leading string for the journey home. Shu Ming’s protest had died on her lips when she met Wu Li’s indulgent glance.

Johanna’s camel was young and small, but what she lacked in size and maturity she made up for in energy and a fierce determination to be out in front. At Johanna’s nudge she lengthened her stride to something approaching a canter.

“Johanna,” Wu Li said in a warning voice.

“I’m sorry, father,” Johanna said, with an impish glance over her shoulder. “She wants to run.”

“Wu Li,” Shu Ming said, and he looked at her with an expression warring between guilt and pride.

He shrugged, a twinkle in his eye. “She wants to run.”

Shu Ming looked at the receding figure of their daughter. “They both want to run,” she said.

By now three lengths ahead of Deshi the Scout, Johanna was concentrating so hard on keeping her balance while at the same time keeping her back straight that she didn’t see the body until her camel stumbled over it. Her only consolation was that Deshi had not seen it, either, although to be fair the rest of the remnants of the other caravan were well buried in the shifting desert sand. Johanna was almost thrown, almost but luckily not quite.

Nevertheless, Wu Li had seen. He kicked his camel into a trot and arrived at her side at the same time as Deshi the Scout. “All right, daughter?”

All three of them stared at the desiccated limb that her mount’s hoof had exposed.

Johanna swallowed. “All right, father.”

“Good. Stay in your saddle.”

Her back straightened and her chin rose. “Of course, father.”

Shu Ming had seen, too, and came up fast, and when she yanked on the reins her camel stopped so abruptly that its hindquarters slid out from beneath it and rider and camel both skated past on the sand. On any other day the sight would have provoked laughter and teasing. Today Johanna managed only a shaken smile.

Deshi the Scout already had his bow out and an arrow nocked, his face stern as he scanned the horizon. Wu Li pulled his mount around and raised a hand. The line of camels halted, some expressing their displeasure by groaning and spitting. One kicked out with his right hind leg, narrowly missing Mangu the Cook, who let loose with a string of cheerful curses that died on his lips when he looked ahead to see what the problem was.

Wu Li kicked his camel into a kneeling position and slid down, loosening his knife as he went, but the bodies were days dead and the only sound on this lonely expanse of undulating dunes was the rasp of wind on sand. He looked at Deshi the Scout, who withdrew to the nearest rise, there to keep a watch in every direction at once.

By the time they had uncovered the bodies of three camels, a horse, and thirteen people, it was almost sunset. Wu Li sent a rider ahead to Kashgar to alert the authorities and to let Shu Shao know they would be late in arriving. Mangu located a small oasis with an even smaller spring and two frail date palms half a league from the road and supervised the setting up of a camp while Wu Li gathered what evidence he could to reconstruct what had happened.

Deshi the Scout found a scrap of sheer red fabric. The edge was hemmed with gilt spangles. “Gujarat weave,” he said.

“There are no women or children among the bodies,” Wu Li said. “Muslim bandits, then. Every year they move further east. Remember the Buddhist shrine we found last year?”

“What was left of it I do.” Deshi the Scout hawked and spat. “This kind of thing didn’t happen when the old Khan was alive.”

Wu Li agreed, but silently, as even here, a thousand leagues from the capitol, one could never be sure who was listening. Kublai Khan’s heirs had been competent but they were not visionaries, and they had allowed the politics of court and the luxuries of the throne to distract their attention from the disintegrating infrastructure of their empire. Over the years the Road had become slowly but steadily more perilous.

They ate without appetite and mostly in silence that evening, and turned in early. Wu Li took the first watch, knife at his side, bow at his knee.

They had not pitched the yurts in case they had to to move suddenly and quickly. For a long time into that very long night Johanna watched the figure of her father, back to the coals of the fire, the fronds of the two palms hanging limp and listless over his head, a black sky glittering with stars above.

Johanna woke to meet the alert eyes of Deshi the Scout. The rising sun set fire to the endless eastern horizon and illuminated his grave smile. She crept from beneath the blankets she shared with Wu Li and Shu Ming and retired behind a convenient dune to attend to the call of nature.

She squatted, holding her trousers out of the way. The stream of urine steamed in the cold morning air, the acrid smell striking her nostrils. She was almost finished when the sand directly beneath her feet heaved up. She screamed and tumbled backwards, head over heels. She scrambled to her feet, hauling at her trousers.

Her scream had a particularly piercing and far-reaching quality, and behind her she heard startled voices and loud oaths. “Johanna! Where is Johanna?” her mother cried.

Before her astonished gaze the sand rose up and assumed a human shape. For a wild moment she thought a demon was materializing before her eyes, an apparition out of one of Deshi’s tales that would pull her back beneath the sand with him, there to devour her whole. She screamed again, backing away, tripping over her own feet and falling once more.

The sand cascaded in sheets from the apparition. As Wu Li and Shu Ming hurtled around the dune on one side and Deshi the Scout came around it from the other, weapons drawn and ready for action, the figured was revealed to be a boy hardly older than Johanna herself.

He was thin to the point of emaciation, his blue eyes red-rimmed, his hair stiff with sand, his skin peeling from sunburn. He wore only a filthy kilt that might once have been white in color, and leather sandals.

His only possession was a sword as tall as he was. A luminous steel blade rising from a heavy hilt encrusted with stones. As Wu Li and Deshi approached he raised the blade high, or tried to, the muscles of his scrawny arms bunched with effort. He actually got it up over his head, staggering a little, before the weight of all that metal got the better of him and his arms trembled and gave way. The sword dropped behind him, point down in the sand, his hands still grasping the hilt.

Tears made runnels in the dirt caked on his cheeks, but he didn’t seem afraid. On the contrary, he was swearing like Mangu the Cook when the millet burned to the bottom of the pot. “I’ll kill you!” he said. He was trying to shout but his voice came out in a hoarse croak. “Don’t you touch me, or I’ll kill you all!”

Wu Li and Deshi the Scout, who had halted, exchanged a glance. The boy had spoken in Aramaic.

Wu Li turned back to the boy and spoke in the same language. “Gently,” he said. “We mean you no harm.”

The boy wiped his face on his shoulder, leaving both smeared with dirt and tears and snot, a fearful sight. “I’ll kill you all,” he said, but the fierceness had drained out of him. His head drooped as if it was suddenly too heavy for his neck.

Johanna, yanking the drawstring of her pants tight, was red-faced and furious, embarrassed at being frightened by a boy no older or bigger than she was. She opened her mouth to call him every name she could think of, and after a life spent on the road with her father, her supply was endless. She encountered her father’s eye, and shut her mouth again.

“My name is Wu Li,” said her father. “I am a merchant of Cambaluc, traveling to Kashgar.” He gestured. “We have food. Grant us the honor of sharing it with you.”

Perhaps it was the formality of his speech, or perhaps it was the manner in which he made it, man to man. The boy’s shoulders straightened, and when Wu Li turned and walked back to their camp he followed, the tip of the sword leaving a thin line in the sand behind him.