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Authors: Gary Jennings

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“Speaking of women—” said Nostril. All this time he had been standing, almost huddling for invisibility, behind me. But his ever lewd inquisitiveness must have overcome his timorousness. He spoke in Farsi to the Prince, “Women and men do differ, Prince Chingkim. You know … in their bodily parts … here and there. How do the Master Fondler’s labels and implements reconcile those differences?”
The Fondler took a step backward and said,
“Who …
is …
this?”
with dainty revulsion, as he might have done if he had stepped on a street turd and it had had the effrontery to protest aloud.
“Forgive the slave’s impertinence, Master Ping,” Chingkim said smoothly. “But the question had occurred to me, too.” He repeated it in Mongol.
The executioner sniffed clerkishly again. “The differences between male and female, as regards the Fondling, are merely superficial. If the folded paper reads ‘red jewel,’ that means the frontmost genital organ, of which there is a large one in the male, a tiny one in the female. If the paper reads ‘jade gland,’ left or right, it means the man’s testicle or the woman’s internal gonad. If it reads ‘deep valley,’ that literally means the woman’s womb, but in the case of a man can be taken to mean his internal almond gland, the so-called third testicle.”
Involuntarily, Nostril made an “ooh!” noise of pain. The Fondler glared at him.
“Now,
may
I proceed? After my Meditations, the proceeding goes thus. I select a paper from the basket, at random, and unfold it, and it tells me the part of the Subject destined for the first Fondling. Suppose it says left little finger. Do I simply step up to the Subject, as a butcher would do, and saw off his left little finger? No. Or what would I do if the identical paper came up again later? So the first time I may merely drive a needle deep under that finger’s nail. The second time perhaps slice the finger to the bone all along its length. Only if it came up a third time would I lop the finger off entirely. Usually, of course, the second paper I select will direct me to a different part of the Subject—another extremity, or the nose, or the jade gland perhaps. However, given the triplication of the papers and the randomness of choice, it can occasionally happen that the same part will be called for twice in succession, but that does not occur too boringly often. And in all my career there has been just one single occasion when three papers in a row all named the exact same part of the Subject’s body. Most unusual, that. Memorable. I later asked the Mathematician Lin-ngan to calculate for me the rarity of that having happened. As I remember, he said something like one chance in three million. Years ago, that was. Her left nipple, it was …”
There he seemed to drift off into a blissful contemplation of that time past. Then, after a moment, he came abruptly back to us.
“Perhaps you have begun to perceive the expertness required in the Fondling. One does not simply run back and forth, snatching up papers and then slicing bits off the Subject. No, I proceed only leisurely—very leisurely—back and forth, for the Subject must have ample time to appreciate each individual pain. And they must vary in nature—this time an incision, next a piercing, then a rasping, a burning, a mashing, and so on. Also, the wounds must vary in keenness, so that the Subject experiences not just an overall agony, but a multitude of separate pains that he can differentiate and
locate.
Here, an upper molar slowly wrenched out and a nail driven where it had been, up into the frontal sinus. There, his elbow joint cracking and crumbling in an ingenious slow vise of my own invention. Yonder, a red-hot metal probe inserted down his red jewel’s inner canal—or delicately and repeatedly applied to the tender little bulb at the opening of
her
red jewel. And in between, perhaps, the skin flayed from the chest and peeled loose and hanging down like an apron.”
I swallowed and asked, “How long does this go on, Master Ping?”
He gave a fastidious small shrug. “Until the Subject perishes. It is, after all, called the
Death
of a Thousand. But no one has ever died of dying, if you take my meaning. Therein lies my greatest art—the prolongation of that dying, and the ever increasing excruciation of it. To put it another way, no one has ever died of sheer pain. Even I am sometimes astonished at how much pain can be borne, and for how long. Also, I was a physician before I became the Fondler, so I never inadvertently inflict a mortal injury, and I know how to prevent a Subject’s untimely death from blood loss or shock to his constitution. My assistant Blotters are adept at stanching blood flow and, if I am required to puncture a troublesome organ like the bladder, early on in the Fondling, my Retrievers are competent at replacing any plugs I have to take out.”
“To put it another way, then,” I said, mimicking his own words, “how long until the Subject perishes of those attentions?”
“It depends mainly on chance. On which of the folded papers, and in which order, chance puts into my hand. Do you believe in some god or gods, Lord Marco? Then presumably the gods regulate the papers’ chance according 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.”
 
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.”
Kubilai laughed. “I had intended to converse politely for a while in the Han manner, rambling only indirectly to the subject at hand. But my rude Mongol son comes straight to the point.”
“I have already made a vow to myself, Sire,” I said, “that I will henceforth be careful of my too ready tongue and too abrupt opinions.”
He considered that. “Well, yes, you might be more respectfully circumspect in your choice of words before you blurt them out. But I shall want your opinions. It is for those that I would have you become fluent and precise in our language. Marco, look yonder. Do you know what that thing is?”
He indicated an object in the center of the room. It was a giant bronze urn, standing some eight feet high and about half that in diameter. It was richly engraved, and on the outside of it clung eight lithe and elegant bronze dragons, their tails curled at the top rim of the urn, their heads downward near its base. Each one held in its toothed jaws an immense and perfect pearl. There were eight bronze toads squatting around the urn’s pedestal, one under each dragon, its mouth gaping as if eager to snatch the pearl above.
“It is an impressive work of art, Sire,” I said, “but I have no idea of its function.”
“That is an earthquake engine.”
“Sire?”
“This land of Kithai is now and again shaken by earth tremors. Whenever one occurs, that engine informs me of it. The thing was designed and cast by my clever Court Goldsmith, and only he fully understands the workings of it. But somehow an earthquake, even if it is so far away from Khanbalik that none of us here can feel it, makes the jaws of one of the dragons to open, and he drops his pearl into the maw of the toad beneath. Tremors of other sorts have no effect. I have stamped and jumped and danced all about that urn—and I am no butterfly—but it ignores me.”
I saw in my mind the majestic Great Khan of All Khans bouncing about the chamber like an inquisitive boy, his rich robes billowing and his beard wagging and his helmet-crown askew, and probably all his ministers goggling. But I remembered my vow, and I did not smile.
He said, “According to which pearl drops, I know the direction where the earth shook. I cannot know how distant it was, or how devastating, but I can dispatch a troop at the gallop in that direction, and eventually they will bring me word of the damage and casualties incurred.”
“A miraculous contrivance, Sire.”
“I could wish that my human informants were as succinct and reliable in reporting the occurrences in my domains. You heard those Han spies of mine, that night at the banquet, rattling off numbers and items and tabulations, and telling me nothing.”
“The Han are infatuated with numbers,” said Chingkim. “The five constant virtues. The five great relationships. The thirty positions of the sex act, and the six ways of penetration and the nine modes of movement. They even regulate their politeness. I understand they have three hundred rules of ceremony and three
thousand
rules of behavior.”
“Meanwhile, Marco,” said Kubilai, “my other informants—my Muslim and even Mongol officials—they tend to leave out of their reports any fact they think I might find inconvenient or distressing. I have a large realm to administer, but I cannot personally be everywhere at once. As a wise Han counselor once said: you can conquer on horseback, but to rule you must get down from the horse. So I depend heavily on reports from afar, and they too often contain everything but the necessary.”
“Like those spies,” Chingkim put in. “Send them to the kitchen to see about tonight’s dinner soup, and they would report its quantity and density and ingredients and coloration and aroma and the volume of steam it throws off. They would report everything except whether it tastes good or not.”
Kubilai nodded. “What struck me at the banquet, Marco—and my son agrees—is that you appear to have a talent for discerning the taste of things. After those spies had talked interminably, you said only a few words. True, they were not very tactful words, but they told me the taste of the soup brewing in Sin-kiang. I should like to verify that seeming talent of yours, in order to make further use of it.”
I said, “You wish me to be a spy, Sire?”
“No. A spy must blend into the locality, and a Ferenghi could hardly do that anywhere in my domains. Besides, I would never ask a decent man to take up the trade of sneak and tattler. No, I have other missions in mind. But to undertake them you must first learn many things besides fluency of language. They will not be easy things. They will demand much time and effort.”
He was looking keenly at me, as if to see whether I flinched from the prospect of hard work, so I made bold to say:
“The Khakhan does me great honor if he asks only drudgery of me. So much greater the honor, Sire, if the drudgery is a preparation for some task of significance.”
“Be not too eager to accede. Your uncles, I hear, are planning some trading enterprises. That should be easier work, and profitable, and probably more safe and secure than what I may require of you. So I give you permission to stay in association with your uncles, if you prefer.”
“Thank you, Sire. But if I valued only safety and security I would not have left home.”
“Ah, yes. It is truly said: He who would climb high must leave much behind.”
Chingkim added, “It is also said: For a man of fortitude there are nowhere any walls, only avenues.”
I decided I would ask my father if it was here in Kithai that he had got crammed so full of proverbs that he continually overflowed.
“Let me say this, then, young Polo,” Kubilai went on. “I would not ask you to puzzle out for me how that earthquake engine performs its function—and that would be a difficult task enough—but I will ask of you something even harder. I wish you to learn as much as you can about the workings of my court and my government, which are infinitely more intricate than the insides of that mysterious urn.”
“I am at your command, Sire.”
“Come here to this window.” He led the way to it. Like those in my quarters, it was not of transparent glass, but of the shimmery, only translucent Muscovy glass, set in a much curlicued frame. He unlatched it, swung it open and said, “Look there.”
We were looking down onto a considerable extent of the palace grounds which I had not yet visited, for this part was still under construction, only an expanse of yellow earth littered with piles of wall stones and paving stones and barrows and tools and gangs of sweating slaves and—
“Amoredèi!” I exclaimed. “What are those gigantic beasts? Why do their horns grow so oddly?”
“Foolish Ferenghi, those are not horns, those are the tusks from which come ivory. That animal, in the southern tropics where it comes from, is called a gajah. There is no Mongol word for it.”
Chingkim supplied the Farsi word, “Fil,” and I knew that one.
“Elephants!” I breathed, marveling. “Of course! I have seen a drawing of one, but the drawing cannot have been very good.”
“Never mind the gajah,” said Kubilai. “Do you see what they are piling up?”
“It looks like a great mountain of kara blocks, Sire.”
“It is. The Court Architect is building for me an extensive park out there, and I instructed him to put a hill in it. I have also instructed him to plant much grass on it. Have you seen the grass in my other courtyards?”
“Yes, Sire.”
“You remarked nothing distinctive about it?”
“I fear not, Sire. It looked just like the same grass we have traveled through, for countless thousands of li.”
“That is its distinction—that it is not an ornamental garden growth. It is the simple, ordinary, sweet grass of the great plains where I was born and grew up.”
“I am sorry, Sire, but if I am supposed to draw some lesson from this …”
“My cousin the Ilkhan Kaidu told you that I had degenerated to something less than a Mongol. In a sense, he was right.”
“Sire!”
“In a sense. I did get down from my horse to do the ruling of these domains. In doing so, I have found admirable many things of the cultured Han, and I have embraced them. I try to be more mannerly than uncouth, more diplomatic than demanding, more of an ordained emperor than an occupying warlord. In all those ways, I have changed from being a Mongol of Kaidu’s kind. But I do not forget or repudiate my origins, my warrior days, my Mongol blood. That hill says it all.”
“I regret, Sire,” I said, “that the example still eludes my understanding.”
He said to his son, “Explain it, Chingkim.”
“You see, Marco, the hill will be a pleasure park, with terraces and walks and willowed waterfalls and comely pavilions cunningly set here and there. The whole thing will be an ornament to the palace grounds. In that, it is very Han, and reflects our admiration of Han art. But it will be more. The Architect could have mounded it of the local yellow earth, but my Royal Father commanded kara. The burnable rock will probably never be needed, but just in case this palace should ever come under siege, we will have there an unlimited supply of fuel. That is a warrior’s thinking. And the whole hill, roundabout the buildings and streams and flower beds, will be greened over by plains grass. A living reminder to us of our Mongol heritage.”
“Ah!” I said. “Now it all is clear.”
“The Han have a concise proverb,” said Kubilai. “Bai wen buru yi jian. To hear tell a hundred times is not as good as once seeing. You have seen. So now let me speak of another aspect of rulership.”
We returned to our seats. In response to some inaudible summons, the maidservant glided in and refilled our goblets.
The Khakhan resumed, “There are times when I, too-like you, Marco Polo—can taste the attitudes of other people. You have expressed your willingness to join my retinue, but I wonder if I taste in you a lingering trace of your disapprobation.”
“Sire?” I said, quite jolted by his bluntness. “Who am I, Sire, to disapprove of the Khan of All Khans? Why, even for me to approve would be presumptuous.”
He said, “I was informed of your visit to the Fondler’s cavern.” I must have cast an involuntary glance, for he went on, “I am aware that Chingkim was with you, but it was not he who told. I gather that you were dismayed by my treatment of Kaidu’s two men.”
“I might have hoped, Sire, that their treatment had been a little less extreme.”
“You do not tame a wolf by pulling one of his teeth.”
“They had been my companions, Sire, and they did nothing lupine during that time.”
“On arrival here, they were hospitably quartered with my own palace guards. A Mongol trooper is not ordinarily garrulous, but those two asked a great many and very searching questions of their barrackmates. My men answered only evasively, so those two would not have taken much intelligence home with them, anyway. You knew that I had sent spies into Kaidu’s lands. Did you think him incapable of doing the same?”
“I did not know—” I gasped. “I did not think—”
“As ruler of a far-spread empire, I must rule over a considerable diversity of peoples, and try to bear in mind their peculiarities. The Han are patient and devious, the Persians are couched lions and all other Muslims are rabid sheep, the Armeniyans are blustering grovelers, and so on. I may not always deal with all of them as I ought. But the Mongols I understand very well. There I must rule with an iron hand, for in them I rule an iron people.”
“Yes, Sire,” I said weakly.
“Have you reservations about my treatment of any others?”

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