ample assistance. To begin with, I was received at the squalid seaside city of Akyab by the sardar Bayan had set in command of the Mongol occupation forces there, one Shaibani. He received me cordially, almost eagerly, at the house he had appropriated for his residency. It was the best house in Akyab, which is not to say much for it.
“Sain bina,” he said. “It is good to greet you, Elder Brother Marco Polo. I see that you carry the Khakhan’s pai-tzu.”
“Sain bina, Sardar Shaibani. Yes, I come on a mission for our mutual Lord Kubilai.”
Yissun led our horses around to the stable that occupied the rear half of the house. Shaibani and I went into the front half, and his aides set out a meal for us. While we ate, I told him that I was on the trail of Ava’s late King Narasinha-pati, and why I was, and that I sought to examine the fugitive’s remaining effects and to speak with any still-living members of his entourage.
“It shall be as you desire,” said the Sardar. “Also, I am overjoyed to see you carrying the pai-tzu, for it gives you the authority to settle a vexatious dispute here in Akyab. It is a question that has caused much uproar, and divided the citizenry into opposing factions. They have been so embroiled in this local fuss that they scarcely paid any attention to our marching in. And until it is settled, I am balked of imposing any orderly administration. My men spend all their time breaking up street fights. So I am very glad you have arrived.”
“Well,” I said, a little mystified. “Whatever I can do, I will. But my business concerning the late king must come first.”
“This does concern the late king,” he said, and added in a growl, “May the worms gag on his cursed remains! The dispute is over those very effects and survivors you wish to get hold of—or what is left of them, anyway. May I explain?”
“I wish you would.”
“This Akyab is a wretched and dismal city. You look to be a sensible man, so I assume you will leave here as soon as you can. I am assigned here, so I must stay, and I shall try to make it a useful addition to the Khanate. Now, wretchedness aside, this is a seaport, and in that it is like all seaport cities. Which is to say, it has two industries to justify its existence and support its citizens. One is the provision of port facilities—docks and chandlers and warehouses and such. The other industry, as in every port city, is the pandering to the appetites of ships’ crews while they lay over here. That means whorehouses, wineshops and games of chance. But most of Akyab’s trade is done with India across the Bay of Bangala yonder, so most of the visiting mariners are miserable Hindus. They have no stomach for strong drink and they have not much vigor between the legs, so they spend all their shore time at the games of chance. For that reason, the whorehouses and wineshops here are few and small and poor—and vakh! the whores and the drinks are vile. But Akyab has several halls of games, and they are the most thriving establishments of this city, and their proprietors are the leading citizens.”
“This is all very interesting, Sardar, but I fail to—”
“Only allow me, Elder Brother. You will understand. That King Who Ran Away—his cowardly action did not make him much loved by his former subjects. Or by anyone. I am informed that he left Pagan with a substantial train of elephants and pack animals and wives and children and courtiers and servants and slaves—and all the treasure they all could carry. But every night, on the road, that train dwindled. Under cover of darkness, his courtiers stole away with much of the looted treasure. Servants departed, with whatever they could pilfer. Slaves ran away to freedom. Even the king’s wives—including even his Queen First Wife—took their princeling children and vanished. Probably to change their names and hope to start a new life unblemished.”
“I almost feel sorry for the poor coward king.”
“Meanwhile, just to buy an occasional meal and bed on the road, the fugitive king had to pay heavily to village headmen, innkeepers, everybody, all of them surly and inimical and eager to take advantage of him. I am told that he arrived here in Akyab nearly impoverished and nearly alone, with only one of his lesser and younger wives, a few loyal old servants and a not very heavy purse. This city did not receive him very hospitably, either. He managed to find lodging for himself and his remaining goods and retinue at a waterfront inn. But, if he was to survive, he had to go on farther, over the bay to India, which meant buying passage for himself and his little company. Naturally, any ship’s captain demands a stiff price to transport any fugitive, but especially such a desperate one as he—a fleeing king, with the conquering Mongols close behind him. I do not know what price was asked, but it was more than he had.”
I nodded. “So he tried to multiply what little he had. He resorted to the halls of games of chance.”
“Yes. And, as is well known, misfortune likes to dog the already unfortunate. The king played at dice and, over a matter of some few days only, he lost every last thing he owned. Gold, jewels, wardrobe, belongings. Among them, I imagine, that sacred tooth you are chasing, Elder Brother. His losses were profligate and promiscuous. His crown, his old servants, the relic you speak of, his royal robes—there is no knowing which were won by residents of Akyab here, and which by mariners who have since sailed away.”
“Vakh,” I said glumly.
“At last the King of Ava was reduced to his own person, and the clothes in which he stood in that hall of games, and one wife waiting forlorn in their waterfront lodgings. And on that last desperate day of play, the king offered to wager
“But of course the king lost.”
“Of course. All in the hall were already despising him, though he had enriched them no little, and now they despised him even more—they must have curled their lips—when the desolate man said, ‘Hold. I have one last property besides myself. I have a beautiful Bangali wife. Without me, she will be destitute. She might as well chance having a master to care for her. I will stake my wife, the Lady Tofaa Devata, on one last throw of the dice.’ The wager was taken, the dice were rolled, and he lost.”
“Well, that was that,” I said. “All gone. A misfortune for me, too. But where was there any cause for dispute?”
“Bear with me, Elder Brother. The king asked one last favor. He begged that, before he surrender himself into slavery, he be let to go and tell the sad news himself to his lady. Even wagering men are men of some compassion. They let him go, by himself, to the waterfront inn. And he was honorable enough to tell the Lady Tofaa bluntly what he had done, and he commanded her to present herself to her new master at the hall of games. She obediently set forth, and the king sat down to table, to have one last meal as a freeman. He gorged and guzzled, to the amazement of the innkeeper, and kept calling for more food, more drink. And finally he turned purple and toppled over in an apoplexy and died.”
“So I had heard. But what, then? That was no ground for dispute. The man who won him still owned him, whatever his condition.”
“Bear with me still. The Lady Tofaa, as ordered by her husband, presented herself at the hall. They say the winner’s eyes lighted up when he saw what a choice slave he had won. She is a young woman, a fairly recent acquisition of the king’s, neither a titled queen nor yet mother of any heirs, so she is hardly a valuable property just for her innate royalty. And this city’s standards of beauty are not my own, but some men call her beautiful, and all call her cunning, and with that I must agree. For when Tofaa’s new master reached to take her hand, she withheld it, long enough to speak to all in the hall. She spoke just one sentence, asked just one question: ‘Before my husband wagered me, had he first wagered and lost his own self?’”
Shaibani finally fell silent. I waited a moment and then prodded, “Well?”
“Well, there you are. That was the start of the dispute. Since then, the question has echoed and reechoed all over this misbegotten city, and no two citizens can agree on the answer to it, and one magistrate argues with the next, and even brother has turned against brother, and they fight in the streets. I and my troops marched in not long after the events I have described, and all the litigants keep clamoring at me to settle the contention. I cannot, and frankly I am sick of it, and I am ready to put the whole foul city to the torch, if you cannot resolve it.”
“What is to resolve, Sardar?” I said patiently. “You already said the king had wagered and lost his own person before he put his wife up at stake. So they both were fairly lost. And dead or alive, willing or unwilling, they belong to their winners.”
“Do they? Or rather—since he already went to his funeral pyre—does
