The Journeyer

to the magnitude of the Subject’s crime and the severity of punishment it merits. Chance, or the gods, can guide my hand at any time to one of those four papers I earlier mentioned.”

He raised his thin eyebrows at me. I nodded and said:

“I think I have guessed. There must be four vital parts of the body where a wound would cause quick death instead of slow dying.”

He exclaimed, “The indigo dye is bluer than the indigo plant! Which is to say: the pupil exceeds the master.” He smiled thinly at me. “An apt student, Lord Marco. You yourself would make a good—” I expected him to say Fondler, of course. I would not wish to be a Fondler, good or not. I was perversely gratified when he said, “—a good Subject, because all your apprehensions and perceptions would be heightened by your intimate knowledge of the Fondling. Yes, there are four spots—the heart, naturally, and also one place in the spinal column and two places in the brain—where an inserted blade or point causes death quite instantaneously and, as far as one can tell, quite painlessly. That is why they are written on only one paper apiece, for if and when one of those papers comes to my hand, the Fondling is finished. I always instruct the Subject to pray that it comes soon. He or she always does pray, and eventually out loud, and sometimes very loudly indeed. The Subject’s fond entertainment of that hope—really a rather meager hope: four chances out of the thousand—seems to add a certain extra refinement to his or her agonies.”

“Excuse me, Master Ping,” Chingkim put in. “But you still have not said how long the Fondling lasts.”

“Again, it depends, my Prince. Aside from the incalculable factors of gods and chance, the duration depends on me. If I am not overpressed by other Subjects waiting their turn, if I can proceed at leisure, I may take an hour between picking up one paper and the next. If I put in a respectable working day of, say, ten hours, and if chance dictates that we must go through almost every one of the thousand folded papers, then the Death of a Thousand can last for very near a hundred days.”

“Dio me varda!” I cried. “But they tell me that Donduk is already dead. And you only got him this morning.”

“That Mongol, yes. He went deplorably quickly. His constitution had been rather impaired by the preliminary questioning. But no need to commiserate with me, though I thank you, Lord Marco. I am not unduly chagrined. I have the other Mongol already secured for Fondling.” He sniffed once more. “Indeed, if you seek reason for commiseration, do so because you interrupted my Meditations.”

I turned to Chingkim and, speaking Farsi for privacy, demanded of him, “Does your father really decree these—these hideous tortures? To be performed by this—this simpering enjoyer of other people’s torments?”

Nostril, at my side, began to make meaningful and urgent plucks at my sleeve. The Fondler was at my other side, so I did not see, as Nostril did, the man’s glower of loathing, boring into me like one of his ghastly probes.

Chingkim manfully tried to subdue his own anger at me. Through clenched teeth he said, “Elder Brother,” in the formal style of address, though he was the elder of us two. “Elder Brother Marco, the Death of a Thousand is prescribed only for a few of the most serious crimes. And of all capital crimes, treason leads the list.”

I was hastily revising my estimate of his father. If Kubilai could decree such an unspeakable end for two of his fellow Mongols—two good warriors whose only crime had been loyalty to the Khakhan’s own underchief Kaidu— then obviously I was wrong when I took his behavior in the Cheng to have been mere posturing to impress us visitors. Evidently Kubilai did not mean for the sentences he handed down to be cautionary or exemplary to others. He did not care one whit whether anyone else ever took note of them or not. (I might never have known the gruesome fate of Ussu and Donduk, so this was certainly not being done to impress our party.) The Khakhan simply exercised his absolute power absolutely. To criticize or question or deride his motives was suicidal—happily, I had done so only in the privacy of my head—and even to commend his actions would be needless and futile and ignored. Kubilai would do what he would do. Well, for me at least, this episode had been an exemplary one. From now on, as long as I was in the realms of the Khan of All Khans, I would walk lightly and speak softly.

But just this once, before I subsided into docility, I would make one attempt to change one thing.

“I told you, Chingkim,” I said to him, “Donduk was no friend of mine, and he is gone in any case. But Ussu—I liked him, and it was my incautious words that put him down here, and he still lives. Can nothing be done to moderate his punishment?”

“A traitor must die the Death of a Thousand,” Chingkim said stonily. But then he relented enough to say, “There is only one possible amelioration.”

“Ah, you know of it, of course, my Prince,” said the Fondler, with a smirk. To my surprise and horror, he spoke in perfect Farsi. “And you know the manner of arranging the amelioration. Well, my chief clerk handles that sort of transaction. If you will excuse me, Prince Chingkim, Lord Marco …”

He minced away across the room again, motioning for his chief clerk to attend upon us, and went out through the iron-studded door.

“What will be done?” I asked Chingkim.

He growled, “A bribe that is paid now and then, in these cases. Though never before by me,” he added disgustedly. “Usually it is done by the Subject’s family. They may bankrupt themselves and mortgage their whole future lives to scrape together the bribe. Master Ping must be one of the richest officials in Khanbalik. I hope my father never hears of this folly of mine; he would laugh me to scorn. And you, Marco, I suggest that you do not ask this sort of favor ever again.”

The chief clerk sauntered over to us and raised his eyebrows in inquiry. Chingkim dug into a purse at his waist, and said in the roundabout Han way:

“For the Subject Ussu, I would pay the balance weight for the scales, to make the four papers ascend.” He took out some gold coins and slipped them into the clerk’s discreetly cupped hand.

I asked, “What does that mean, Chingkim?”

“It means that the four papers naming vital parts will be moved to the top of the basket, where the Fondler’s hand is likely to pick them up soonest. Now come away.”

“But how—?”

“It is all that can be done!” he gritted at me. “Now come, Marco!”

Nostril was tugging at me, too, but I persisted. “How can we be sure it will be done? Can we trust the Fondler to do all that work—all those folded papers to be unfolded and read first—and all alike—”

“No, my lord,” said the chief clerk, unbending for the first time, almost kindly, and speaking in Mongol for my benefit. “All the others of the thousand papers are colored red, which is the Han color signifying good fortune. Only those four papers are purple, which is the Han color of mourning. The Fondler always knows where those four papers lurk.”

4

DURING the next several days, I was left on my own. I got unpacked and settled into my private quarters— with the help of Nostril, for I let the slave move in and lay his pallet in one of my more commodious closets—and I began to get acquainted with the twins Biliktu and Buyantu, and I began to learn my way around that central palace building and the rest of the edifices and gardens and courtyards that constituted the palace city-within-a-city. But I will speak later of how I spent my private time, because my working time also soon began.

One day a palace steward came to bid me attend upon the Khan Kubilai and the Wang Chingkim. The Khakhan’s suite was not far from my own, and I went there with celerity, but not with much alacrity, for I assumed that he had learned of our visit to the dungeons and was going to castigate me and Chingkim for our having meddled in the Fondler’s business. However, when I got there, and was bowed through a succession of luxurious chambers by a succession of attendants and secretaries and armed guards and beautiful women, and arrived at last in the Khakhan’s innermost sitting room, and started my ko-tou, and was bidden to take a seat, and was offered my choice of beverages from a maid’s tray laden with decanters, and took a goblet of rice wine, the Khakhan began the interview amiably enough, inquiring:

“How go your language lessons, young Polo?”

I tried not to blush, and murmured, “I have acquired numerous new words, Sire, but not of the kind I could speak in your august presence.”

Chingkim said drily, “I did not think there were any words, Marco, that you would hesitate to speak in any place.”