Everything Under the Heavens (Silk and Song) (19 page)

“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?”

Johanna grinned. “No, she won’t, will she?” The other two were rendered momentarily speechless, and Johanna seized her advantage. “You’re not worried that she’ll follow us, are you? The Dishonorable Dai Fang wouldn’t dream of subjecting herself to the barbarian practices of any race so unfortunate as to find itself living outside the borders of Everything Under the Heavens.”

“Oh, agreed,” Jaufre said.

“Of course she wouldn’t,” Shasha said.

“But Gokudo would,” Jaufre said.

A thoughtful silence fell.

“If she ordered him to, Johanna,” Jaufre said, “he would carve all three of us into bite-size pieces with that pig-sticker of his.” And he would enjoy it, he thought. He raised his hand to the wound on his cheek. Gokudo had displayed the sharpness of the blade on his naginata many times. If indeed one of last night’s visitors was Gokudo, then they were all very lucky that the samurai had not chosen to attack them in the open.

All three of them looked at the Robe of a Thousand Larks, mutilated with a single, sharp slash, and all of three imagined what would have happened if Johanna had been wearing it when the blade struck.

Johanna was the first to recover. “Nonsense,” she said robustly, as if volume and confidence alone could rout what were now, surely, only the ghosts of their past. “If the Dishonorable Dai Fang sent Gokudo after us, she would have sent him at once, the instant she noticed what was missing.”

“So?”

“So why did he wait until Kuche to try to get them back?” Johanna said.

“Kuche is the first place we have spent outside caravansary walls,” Shasha said.

“Nonsense,” Johanna said again, albeit with less certainty. “We made camp in the desert dozens of times.”

“Johanna,” Jaufre said, with awful patience, “it would be much easier and much safer for Gokudo to hide his presence among the many strangers housed each night in a city, especially a city along the Silk Road. It would be much more difficult to approach an armed, isolated camp the size of ours.”

“He’s been following us,” Shasha said.

“Since Cambaluc,” Jaufre said, “waiting his chance.”

“And,” Johanna said slowly, “Uncle Cheng travels only as far as Kashgar on this trip.” She looked at Jaufre, and at Shasha. “After that, we’re on our own.”

There followed an awkward silence. “I’m not sorry I did it,” Johanna said at last. “They were Father’s. By right they are now mine.” She tucked the bao and book back into her purse and tied it shut. She looked defiant, and righteous, and unrepentant, and a hundred other things that would get them all killed well before Kashgar. “Besides,” she said, “we won. They didn’t get what they came for, and we ran them off.”

Jaufre exchanged a long, expressionless look with Shasha. “As you say,” he said at last, echoing the havildar. It was a useful phrase.

“Let’s get this mess cleaned up,” Shasha said.

Firas, listening on the other side of the canvas wall of the yurt, now slipped silently away.

Later, with Johanna safely out of earshot, Shasha said, “The bao. And the book.”

“One or the other I might be able to defend,” Jaufre said, trying to work back up to the righteous wrath he had experienced that morning and not quite managing it. “The book, certainly. But both?”

“Not to mention the horse,” Shasha said.

He stopped and looked at her. “I completely forgot about the horse.” His voice shook. “Do you think Edyk went to the house looking for North Wind?”

Shasha’s lips trembled. “Can you imagine what the widow’s reaction would have been when she found the bao and the book missing? And then Edyk arriving, demanding the return of North Wind?”

Jaufre started to grin. “I wonder if the Honorable Wu Li’s house is still standing.”

“Perhaps,” she said unsteadily. “Pieces of it.” She strove for control. “Still, this is serious, Jaufre.”

“Of course you’re right,” he said. “At the very least we should begin standing watches.”

They looked at each other and broke down completely, laughing so immoderately that they had to cling to each other for support. Outside, passersby wondered what was going on in the big yurt that was so funny.

Uncle Cheng delayed their departure for another day while Firas investigated. Meantime, Shasha was summoned to the caravan master’s presence and requested to provide something to ease his wine-induced aches and pains. She snorted and brewed him a strong dish of steeped betony, which he gagged over but didn’t dare dump out, not under that stern eye. And it did help, he had to admit, later and most reluctantly. At least he stopped feeling as if he were bleeding from his ears.

There were almost two thousand people in their caravan, over five thousand in Kuche and hundreds more in caravans large and small in constant arrival and departure. Everyone within and without the city walls was intent upon the engrossing subjects of their own commerce and trade and profit. There was little interest to be spared for suspicious strangers bent on burglary and mayhem, unless it was burglary and mayhem directed at themselves. Firas’ inquiries thus bore little fruit, as he duly reported to Uncle Cheng, to which meeting Uncle Cheng had summoned Jaufre.

“As was to be expected, Uncle Cheng,” Jaufre said. “We will keep a stricter guard in future.”

He and Firas left together, and Jaufre was about to go his own way when Firas said, “A moment of your time, young sir.”

“Havildar?”

“I wonder if I might see your weapon?”

Jaufre hesitated, and then with some reluctance drew his father’s sword from its sheath.

Firas examined it with the eye of an expert, holding it up to judge the straightness of the blade, testing the edge, flipping it into the air and catching it again to assess its balance. All of the things, in fact, that Gokudo had done, although Gokudo had done it without permission. The havildar was a weapons master determining the effectiveness of a tool, expert, impartial, interested in an academic way but with no acquisitiveness. Jaufre, watching him, felt himself relax.

“A noble blade, young sir,” Firas said, returning it hilt first. “I would see it in practice.”

Jaufre felt the blood run up into his face. “It was my father’s sword, havildar. He died before he could instruct me.”

“Ah.” Firas nodded, his eyes resting on something over Jaufre’s shoulder. “I myself practice with such of my men who are so inclined at dawn each day before we march. Your blade and ours are of different models, but I would guess that much of the basic moves would be the same.”

Jaufre weighed his father’s sword. It had always felt somehow right and proper in his hand, a deadly extension of his own muscle and bone. At any time these past five years Jaufre could have asked one of the imperial guards for instruction. He wasn’t sure why he had not.

Today, he thought of the items in Johanna’s purse, of the fight in the yurt, of Shasha’s black eyes and the cut on his cheek. He was good with knife and bow and almost as good as Johanna with the staff. Sword skill he had none. He thought again of the long slash up the back of Shu Ming’s Robe of a Thousand Larks, and thought of how Johanna’s face looked lit from within whenever she donned it to sing around an evening campfire.

“I am grateful for the invitation, havildar,” Jaufre said, sliding sword back into its sheath. “And pleased to accept.”

Firas noted how easily the movement was completed. Jaufre’s sword was not light in weight. There might be more to this slim young man than met the eye. “Just before dawn then, young sir, beyond the cook tents.”

Jaufre was there well before dawn, Johanna at his side, as they worked through the thirty-two movements of soft boxing. They went through them three times, seamless, synchronized, one movement flowing naturally into the next. As the horizon brightened they sank down into horse stance, palms loosely cupped and parallel in front of them, held position for a slow count of ten, and rose smoothly again to a standing position.

“I see, young sir,” said a voice behind them, “that while you may not have had lessons in the wielding of your father’s sword, you are not entirely deficient in lessons of self defense.”

“We were taught the art from a very young age,” Johanna said, “by my father’s man, Deshi the Scout.”

He bowed slightly. “Honor is due such a fine teacher. Is it that I am to instruct the young lady in swordsmanship as well?”

Johanna inclined her head, matching dignity with dignity. “No, havildar, I have no such weapon. Though I would like to observe, if you please.” Her voice was mild. Her eyes were not.

Almost, Firas smiled, or so it seemed to Jaufre.

He remembered that first practice for the rest of his life, although there was little of the thrust and parry he would learn later. Light increased in the east, flowing over the horizon onto the broad plain beneath. The hundreds of donkey carts tethered to scrub brush growing from the sandy sides of the river, the churned sand of the river bed the only evidence of yesterday’s races. The call of the muezzin. The low curses of men waking, the crackle of cook fires, the smell of bread baking.