The Mongoliad: Book One

eastern courtyard to overflowing. Fire pits blazed with such reckless ferocity that she steered well clear, frightened by the way the flames capered and gestured, seductive fingers summoning the drunk and the addled into a fiery embrace. The air was odoriferous with spices, both familiar and exotic, all so mouth-wateringly fragrant that she no longer had the strength to resist when a woman thrust a reed basket filled with warm flatbread at her. Lian dropped a few coins into her hands and accepted a still warm disk in return. She bit into the soft flatbread with relish, savoring the sweet heat of baked onions on her tongue.

She wolfed down the bread, sating a hunger she had refused to acknowledge, and once the bread was gone, she returned her attention to her immediate goal. The celebration was a marvelous spectacle, attracting visitors from across the empire and beyond. It was an endless party that would span many days, and at some point during this chaotic carousal, she might be able to escape.

Slipping out of the palace had been, as always, simple. All she had to do was walk behind any group of concubines or servant girls, or use one of the many unguarded side passages, a trick she had done on occasion when she wished to enjoy some solitude—a threadbare illusion of freedom. Actually escaping the city, however, was much harder.

She had tried to escape once before, very early in her captivity. Naively she had thought it would have been fairly easy to secure passage on a caravan, and once the wagons had left the city, she would vanish. But on the second day of their journey, an arban of the Khagan’s Torguud had surrounded the caravan, demanding her return. Back to the gilded cage of Karakorum.

After that, Master Chucai was much more vigilant. She was a valuable prize, after all, one he had spent considerable time and expense shaping into a useful tool. He could not watch her himself—his duties to the Khagan kept him otherwise occupied, of course—but he could keep himself appraised of her activities. She had to report to him every morning and evening, detailing the list of her lessons and engagements since their last meeting; she knew some of the serving staff were his spies within the palace (she took care to figure out which staff were the most likely suspects), and the concubines were altogether too gossipy. On the rare occasion when she was waylaid by an assignation, she found he already knew when she hurried to tell him.

She—like everyone else within the confines of the walls of Karakorum—was supposed to live in constant awareness that Chucai knew everything that went on at court. What hope could she have for escape if there was no way that she could move about the palace and its grounds without Chucai knowing? Even if she did manage to slip out of the city, how much of a head start would she get before Chucai sent the Khagan’s best trackers after her?

The open steppe wasn’t open enough to hide her. She needed to utterly vanish. She couldn’t rely on some caravan or trader to spirit her away. She had to disappear on her own, at such a time and in such a way that there would be enough confusion about her disappearance that she might get far enough away.

The festival was her chance. If she could use the chaos and confusion of the celebration to muddy her trail, it might be impossible for Master Chucai and his trackers to work out her escape route once they finally realized she was gone.

Part of her wanted to just walk out the front gates of the palace. To take nothing with her. To simply leave. But she knew it wouldn’t be that easy. She had to have a plan. She had to get a sense of the routines of the guards, of the ebb and flow of the crowds.

Wrapping her thin cloak more tightly around herself, Lian made her way through the crowded courtyard toward the gate. More than once, she wished she were taller. She could barely see the gilded dragons that festooned the top of the faux-Chinese barrier that was her destination. But being taller would also attract attention…

A constant flood of people streamed in, jostling and crowding in their rush to join the revelry in the palace. Lian was pressed against the flow of the crowd, bounced around like a leaf on a river swollen with mountain runoff. Elbows and shoulders poked and slammed her body, and she tried to protect herself as best she could. Some men took advantage of the mob to grope at her, and one of them, big and pale and hairy beneath black furs—Ruthenian, judging by the coarse sound of his words—waggled his bushy eyebrows at her as he accidentally pressed his body against her. She turned her head, trying to avoid the stinking cloud of his breath and, in return, sharply elevated her knee as she pushed past him. The Ruthenian doubled over, his breath huffing out, and then the crowd swallowed him as if he had never existed.

An eddy formed in the mob, and enough space opened that she could see the gates clearly. Her heart sank. A trio of guards stood at stiff attention on each side, and the six men scanned the faces of the crowd coming and going with hawk-like intensity. If she put the hood of her cloak up, she would only draw attention to herself and thusly be remembered.

Chucai’s eyes were everywhere. He would know.

One of the guards looked in her direction and she quickly turned away, her hands tugging at the neck of her cloak—fighting the urge to pull up the hood. Her pulse roared in her ears.

It had been a faint hope that the main gate wouldn’t be well guarded, and she hadn’t been surprised to see the vigilant guards. She had needed to silence that part of her that dreamed of an easy escape. It will be difficult, she thought to herself. I have to be steadfast. Otherwise I might as well confess everything to Chucai. I might as well give up.

There had to be other routes—the palace walls, for one. They were not that high. Gansukh—and the thief— had climbed them that night weeks ago; perhaps she could too. She let the next surge in the crowd carry her back toward the palace, slipping away at the first chance into an alley behind a white-painted stone house.

The celebration faded, the crowd’s cacophony dulling to persistent grumbling, the wild light of the fire pits dimming to pale flickering tongues of light dancing along the edges of the roof tiles. She leaned against the wall of the house, letting her eyes adjust to the shadow-filled alley. It was three times as wide as she, the stones dusty with accumulated sand, and the wall of the house was plain stone, featureless save for small window slits. There was nothing to help her scale the outer wall here, but as she started to explore the alley, she noticed a small handcart resting against the rear wall of the next house over. If she stood on it, she might be able to grip the top of the palace wall.

As she passed the corner of the first house, a man’s boisterous, drunken laughter startled her. She ducked back into the alley and pressed herself against the wall. Once her heart stopped pounding, she sidled up to the corner and peeked around.

There, in a small space between the two houses, squatted a trio of soldiers, rolling knucklebones in the dust and swigging from earthenware bottles. Their faces were weather-beaten and scarred.

One of them glanced in her direction, and she tried to duck back out of sight without being spotted, but she knew, even before she heard him call out to his companions, that she hadn’t been successful. “Don’t be shy,” one of the men shouted in wine-fueled good fellowship. “Come on over here.” His words were followed by peals of laughter from the others.

Instinct told her to run, but cold, pessimistic reason told her that running would dare them to pursue her. She understood in that instant what men most loved in hunting—the chase. They wanted their prey to flee, to show spirit—to challenge their skill. Their drunken skill…

Her lips curled and she drew in her breath.

Instead of running, she smoothed her robe, pushed her hair back from her face, and stepped boldly out from her hiding place. She walked toward the men, smiling demurely, but making sure to make firm eye contact—glazed and wandering as all their eyes were—with each of them.

“Well, a pretty Chinese doll,” smirked the one who had spotted her. He grinned, yellowed teeth dull in the flickering light.

“What are you doing back here, girl?” asked another. “Something we could assist you with?”

“I was merely taking a shortcut to bypass the crowd,” she said.

“A shortcut? Where to?” The first soldier staggered closer, and she feared he might try to grab her robe.

“It is none of your concern.” She held her chin high, trying to appear haughty and noble.

“Maybe you don’t have any place in mind,” suggested the third soldier, a man who looked and smelled as if he never bathed in his life. “Maybe you should stay with us. Tarry a while. Try your luck with the bones. And my