The Journeyer

Is it possible that Biliktu lives, too? Somebody died in that calamity in my chambers. And what do you here, whispering in the Echo Pavilion?”

“Please, Marco,” said Ali, in an even more trembly voice. “First things first. Where is Mar-Janah?”

Buyantu snapped, “I will not talk to a lowly slave!”

“He is no longer a slave,” I said. “He is a freeman who has been bereft of his wife. She is a freewoman besides, so her abductor faces execution as a felon.”

“I do not choose to believe a word you say. And I will not talk to a slave.”

“Talk to me, then. You had best unburden yourself, Buyantu. I can promise no pardon for a felony but, if you tell us all—and if Mar-Janah is safely restored to us—the penalty may be something more lenient than execution.”

“I spit on your pardon and leniency!” she said wildly. “The dead cannot be executed. I did die in that calamity!”

Ali’s eyes and nostril widened again, and he took a step backward from her. I almost did, too, her words sounded so dreadfully sincere. But I stood my ground, and grasped her again and shook her and said menacingly, “Talk!”

Still stubborn, she said only, “I will not talk before a slave.”

I could have wrung her until she did, but it might have taken all night. I turned to Ali and suggested:

“This may go more quickly if you absent yourself, and quickness may be vital.” Either he saw the sense of that or he was not unwilling to leave the vicinity of one apparently come alive from the dead. Anyway, he nodded, so I told him, “Wait for me in my chambers. You can make sure for me that I do have those chambers again, and that they are habitable. I will come for you as soon as I know anything useful. Trust me.”

When he had gone down the hill, out of hearing, I said again to Buyantu, “Talk. Is the woman Mar-Janah safe? Is she alive?”

“I do not know and I do not care. We dead care nothing. For the living or the dead.”

“I have no time to hear your philosophies. Just tell me what happened.”

She shrugged and said sullenly, “That day …” I did not have to inquire what day she meant. “On that day I first began to hate you, and I continued to hate you, and I hate you still. But on that day I also died. Dead bodies cool, and I suppose burning hatreds do, too. Anyway, I do not mind now, letting you know of my hatred and how I manifested it. That can make no difference now.”

She paused, and I prodded, “I know you were spying on me for the Wali Achmad. Start with that.”

“That day … you sent me to request audience for you with the Khakhan. When I returned, I found you and my—you and Biliktu in bed together. I was enraged, and I let you see some of how enraged I was. You left me and Biliktu to tend the brazier fire under a certain pot. You did not tell us it was dangerous, and I did not suspect. Being still in a rage and wishing you harm, I left Biliktu to watch the brazier, and I went to the Minister Achmad, who had long been paying me to inform him of your doings.”

Even though I had known about that, I must have made a noise of displeasure, for she shrieked at me:

“Do not sniff! Do not pretend it is a practice beneath your high principles. You used a spy, too. That slave yonder.” She waved in the direction Ali had gone. “And you paid him, too, by pimping for him! You paid him with the female slave Mar-Janah.”

“Never mind that. Go on.”

She paused to recollect her thoughts. “I went to the Minister Achmad, for I had much to tell him. I had, that very morning, overheard you and the slave talking of the Minister Pao, a Yi passing as a Han. It was that morning, too, that you promised the slave he would wed that woman Mar-Janah. I told those things to the Minister Achmad. I told him that you were at that moment impeaching the Minister Pao to the Khan Kubilai. The Minister Achmad immediately wrote a message and sent it by a servant to that Minister Pao.”

“Aha,” I muttered. “And Pao made a timely escape.”

“Then the Minister Achmad sent another steward to fetch you to him when you left the Khakhan. He bade me wait, meanwhile, and I did. When you came, I was hiding in his private quarters.”

“And not alone,” I interrupted. “There was someone else in there that day. Who was she?”

“She?” echoed Buyantu, as if puzzled. Then she gave me a calculating look from her slit eyes.

“The large woman. I know she was there, for she almost came out into the room where the Arab and I were talking.”

“Oh … yes … the large woman. That exceptionally large woman. We did not speak. I assumed that person to be merely some new fancy of the Minister Achmad. Perhaps you are aware that he has some eccentric fancies. If that person had a woman’s name, I did not ask it, and do not know it. We merely sat in each other’s company, looking sidelong at each other, until you departed again. Are you much interested in learning the identity of that large woman?”

“Perhaps not. Surely not everyone in Khanbalik was involved in these devious plots. Go on, Buyantu.”

“As soon as you left his chambers, the Minister Achmad came for me again and took me to the window. He showed me—you were wandering up the Kara Hill—up here, to this Echo Pavilion. He told me to run after you, but unseen, and whisper the words you heard. I was pleased to make secret threats against you, even though I did not know what was threatened, for I hated you. Hated you!”

She choked on her rabid words, and stopped. I could not help feeling some compassion, so I said, “And a few minutes later, you had even more reason for hating me.”

She nodded wretchedly, and swallowed, and got her voice working again. “I was returning to your chambers when they flew all apart, before my eyes, with that terrible noise and flame and smoke. Biliktu died then—and so did I, in everything but body. She had long been my sister, my twin, and we had long loved each other. I might have felt wrath enough if I had lost only my twin sister. But it was you who made us more than sisters. You made us lovers. And then you destroyed my loved one. You!”

That last word burst out in a spray of spittle. I prudently said nothing, and again it took her a moment before she could go on.

“I would happily have killed you then. But too many things were happening, too many people about. And then you went suddenly away. I was left alone. I was as alone as a person can be. The only one I loved in the world was dead, and everyone else thought I was, too. I had no employment to occupy me, no one to answer to, no place I was expected to be. I felt quite thoroughly dead, myself. I still do.”

She fell morosely silent again, so I prodded. “But the Arab found employment for you.”

“He knew I had not been in the room with Biliktu. He was the only one who knew. No one else suspected my existence. He told me he might have use for such an invisible woman, but for a long time he did not. He paid me wages, and I lived alone in a room down in the city, and I sat and looked at the walls of it.” She sighed deeply. “How long has it been?”

“Long,” I said sympathetically. “It has been a long time.”

“Then one day he sent for me. He said you were on your way back, and we must prepare a suitable surprise with which to welcome you home. He wrote out two papers, and had me heavily veil myself—even more of an invisible woman—and I delivered them. One I gave to your slave to give to you. If you have seen it, you know it was not signed. The other paper he did sign, but not with his own yin, and that one I delivered some while later to the Captain of the Palace Guard. It was an order to arrest the woman Mar-Janah and take her to the Fondler.”

“Amoredei!” I exclaimed in horror. “But … but … the guardsmen do not arrest and the Fondler does not punish just on someone’s whim! What was Mar-Janah charged with? What did the paper say? And how did the vile Wali sign it, if not with his own name?”

While Buyantu had been telling of occurrences, her voice had had some spirit in it, if only the spirit of a venomous snake taking satisfaction in malevolent accomplishment. But when I began demanding details, the spirit went out of her, and her voice got leaden and lifeless.

She said, “When the Khan is away from the court, the Minister Achmad is Vice-Regent. He has access to all the yins of office. I suppose he can use whichever he pleases, and sign it to any paper. He used the yin of the Armorer of the Palace Guard, who was the Lady Chao Ku-an, who was the former owner of the slave Mar-Janah. The order charged that the slave was a runaway, passing as a freewoman of property. The guardsmen would not