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Authors: Gary Jennings

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Buyantu shrugged and said, “One of us must have the first night, and the other wait for the second. If you would prefer not to make the choice yourself, master, we could draw straws.”
I said airily, “Far be it from me to leave delight to chance. Or to discriminate between two such compelling attractions. You will both be first.”
Buyantu said chidingly, “We are virgins, but we are not ignorant.”
“We helped raise our two younger brothers,” said Biliktu.
“So, while bathing you, we saw that you are normally equipped in your dan-tian,” said Buyantu. “Bigger than boys in that respect, of course, but not
multiplied.”
“Therefore,” said Biliktu, “you can be in only one place at a time. How can you pretend that we both could be first?”
“The bed is beautifully commodious,” I said. “We will all three lie together and—”
“That would be indecent!”
They both looked so shocked that I smiled. “Come, come. It is well-known that men sometimes disport themselves with more than one woman at a time.”
“But—but those are concubines of long experience, long past modesty, and of no embarrassing relation. Master Marco, we are
sisters,
and this is our first jiao-gou, and we will … that is to say, we cannot … in each other’s presence …
“I promise,” I said, “you will find it no less sisterly than bathing in each other’s presence. Also, that you will soon cease to fret about proprieties. Also, that you will both so enjoy the jiao-gou that you will not notice which of you was first. Or ever care.”
They hesitated. Buyantu frowned prettily in contemplation. Biliktu meditatively bit her lower lip. Then they looked shyly sideways at each other from the corners of their eyes. When their glances met, they blushed—so extensively that their sheer gowns turned pink all down the breast. Then they laughed, a little shakily, but they made no further objection. Buyantu got from a drawer a phial of fern seed, and she and Biliktu turned their backs on me while each of them took a pinch of that fine, almost powdery seed and, with a finger, inserted it deep inside themselves. Then they let me take them each by a hand and let me lead them to the inviting bed, and let me go on leading from there.
Harking back to my youthful experience in Venice, I put to use the modes of music making I had learned from the Lady Ilaria and then had refined by practicing on the little maiden Doris. Thus I was able to make the initiation of these virgins, too, an occasion for them to remember, not just without wincing, but with genuine joy. At first, as I turned or moved from Buyantu to Biliktu and back again, they kept their eyes not on me but sideways on each other, and were obviously trying not to make any visible or audible responses to my ministrations, lest the other consider her immodest. But as I worked delicately with fingers and lips and tongue and even my eyelashes, they eventually closed their own eyes and ignored each other and gave themselves up to their own feelings.
I might remark that that night’s jiao-gou, my first such activity in Kithai, was endowed with a special piquancy, just because of the fanciful Han terms which were employed there for all parts of the human body. As I had already learned, the name “red jewel” can mean either the male or female parts in general. But it is usually reserved for the male’s organ, while the female’s is the “lotus” and its lips are its “petals” and what I had formerly called the lumaghèta or zambur is the “butterfly between the petals of the lotus.” The female posterior is her “calm moon” and its dainty valley is the “rift in the moon.” Her breasts are her “flawless jade viands” and her nipples are her “small stars.”
So, by variously and adroitly touching, caressing, teasing, tasting, fondling, tickling, nibbling jade viands and flowers and petals and moons and stars and butterflies, I succeeded marvelously in making both the twins achieve their first peak of jiao-gou simultaneously. Then, before they could realize how much unabashed singing and thrashing they had done on the way there, and perhaps get mutually embarrassed, I did other things to urge them up again to the peaks. They were quick learners and eager to partake again of those heights, so I kept my mind off my own urgent yearnings and devoted myself entirely to their enjoyments. At times, one girl would be up among the peaks by herself, and her sister would regard her—and my ministrations to her—with a wondering and marveling smile. Then it would be her turn, while the other watched and approved. Not until both the girls were dazed and delighted with their new-discovered sensations, and well moistened by their own secretions, did I play them both at once to a veritable frenzy. While both were oblivious to everything but their ecstasy, I penetrated first one, then the other—easily and pleasurably for me and them, too—and continued giving myself into one and the other, so that even I do not remember in which order, or in which twin I first made spruzzo.
After that first and musically perfect triad, I let the girls rest and pant and perspire happily for a while, and smile at me and each other, until, when they had regained their breath, Biliktu and Buyantu were joking aloud and laughing at their earlier silliness about modesty and decorum. So then, free of restraints, we did many other things, and more leisurely, so that when one girl was not actively participating she could get a vicarious enjoyment by watching and assisting the other two of us. But I did not neglect either of them for very long. I had, after all, learned from the Persian Princesses Moth and Shams how two females could be thoroughly pleasured at once, and myself with them. The doing of that was of course far nicer with these Mongol twins, since neither of them had to remain invisible during the proceedings. Indeed, before the night was over, they had shed all vestiges of prudery, and were quite ready for their innermost dan-tian to be seen by me or each other, and for their and my pink places to do or be done to, in every variation I and they could think of.
So our first night together was an unqualified success, and the precursor of many other such nights, during which we became ever more inventive and acrobatic. It surprised even me: how many more combinations can be made of three than of two. But we did not always frolic in a threesome. The twins, otherwise so identical, were dissimilar in one physiological respect: they got their jing-gi, their monthly affliction, in a tidy alternation. Hence, for a few days every two weeks or so, I enjoyed an ordinary coupling with just a single female, while the other slept apart and jealously sulked.
However, young and lusty as I was, I did have some physical limits, and I also had other occupations that required my strength and stamina and alertness. After a couple of months, I began to find rather debilitating what the twins called their xing-yu or “sweet desires”—and what I called their insatiable appetites. So I suggested to them that my participation was not
always
necessary, and I told them about the “hymn of the convent,” as the Lady Ilaria had named it. At the notion of a woman’s manipulating her own petals and stars and so on, Buyantu and Biliktu looked as shocked as they had on our first night of acquaintance. When I went on to tell them what the Princess Moth had once confided to me—how she relieved and gratified the neglected women of the Shah Zaman’s anderun, the twins looked even more shocked, and Buyantu exclaimed:
“That would be indecent!”
I said mildly, “You complained about indecency once before, and I think I proved you mistaken.”
“But—a woman doing to another woman! An act of gua-li! That
would
be indecent!”
“I daresay it would, if one or both of you were old or ugly. But you are both beautiful and desirable women. I see no reason why you could not find as much pleasure in each other as I find in you.”
Again the girls looked askance at each other, and again that caused them to blush, and that made them giggle—a trifle naughtily, a trifle guiltily. Still, it took some persuasion on my part before they would lie down naked together, without me between them, and let me remain fully clothed while I instructed and guided their movements. They were tense and reticent to do to each other what they let me do with no reticence whatever. But as I took them through the nuns’ hymn, note by note, so to speak—gently moving Buyantu’s fingertip to caress Biliktu here, gently moving Biliktu’s head so that her lips pressed Buyantu there—I could see them get aroused in spite of themselves. And after some time of play under my guidance, they began to forget about me. When their small stars twinkled erect, the girls did not need me to show them how they could employ those darling protrusions to good effect on each other. When first Biliktu’s lotus began to unfold its petals, Buyantu needed no one to show her how to gather its dew. And when both their butterflies were aroused and fluttering, the girls twined together as naturally and passionately as if they had been born to be lovers instead of sisters.
I must confess that, by this time, I had myself become aroused, and had forgotten whatever debility I had earlier felt, and so doffed my own garments and joined in the play.
That happened quite often, from then on. If I came to my chambers weary from a day’s work, and the twins were itching with xing-yu, I would give them leave to begin on their own, and they would do so with alacrity. I might go on down the hall to Nostril’s closet and sit with him for a time, listening to his day’s gleanings of gossip from the servants’ quarters. Then I would return to my bedroom, and perhaps pour a goblet of arkhi, and sit down and take my ease while I watched the girls frolicking together. After a while, my fatigue would abate and my normal urges would come alive and I would ask the girls’ permission to join them. Sometimes they would mischievously make me wait until they had fully enjoyed and exhausted their sisterly ardors. Only then would they let me onto the bed with them, and sometimes they would mischievously pretend that I was unneeded, unwanted, an intruder—and would mischievously pretend reluctance to open their pink places to me.
After some more time, it began to happen that I would come home to my chambers to find the twins already abed, and doing vigorous jiao-gou in their fashion. They laughingly referred to their style of coupling as chuai-sho-ur, a Han term which translates as “tucking the hands into opposite sleeves.” (We Westerners would speak of “folding our arms,” but that gesture is done by Eastern folk
inside
their capacious sleeves.) I thought the twins were clever to adopt that term to describe the way two women make love.
When I joined them, it would often happen that Biliktu would profess herself already quite emptied of joys and juices—she was less robust than her sister, she said; perhaps from being a few minutes the younger—and she would ask to be allowed just to sit by and admire while Buyantu and I cavorted. And on those occasions, Buyantu would sometimes pretend that she found me and my equipment and my performance deficient in comparison to what she had just been enjoying, and she would laugh derisively and call me gan-ga, which means awkward. But I always played along with the pretense, and pretended to be insulted by her pretended disdain, so she would laugh more loudly and give herself to me with passionate abandon, to show that she had only been jesting. And if I asked Biliktu, after she had rested for a while, to come and join me and her sister, she might sigh, but she would usually accede, and she would give good account of herself.
So, for a long time, the twins and I enjoyed a cozy and convivial menage à trois. That they were almost certainly spies for the Khakhan, and probably reporting to him everything including our bedtime diversions, did not worry me, because I had nothing to hide from him. I was ever loyal to Kubilai, and faithful in his service, and doing naught that could be reported as contrary to his best interests. My own small spying —Nostril’s nosing about among the palace servants—I was doing in the Khakhan’s behalf, so I took no great pains to conceal even that from the girls.
No, there was at that time only one thing that troubled me about Buyantu and Biliktu. Even when we were all three in the rapturous throes of jiao-gou, I could never cease remembering that these girls, according to the prevailing system of grading females, were of
only
twenty-two-karat quality. Some conventicle of old wives and concubines and senior servants had discovered in them some trace of base alloy. To me, the twins seemed excellent specimens of womanhood, and indubitably they were nonpareil servants, in bed or out, and they did not snore or have bad breath. What, then, did they lack that they fell short of the twenty-four-karat perfection? And why was that lack imperceptible to me? Any other man would doubtless have rejoiced to be in my situation, and would cheerfully have brushed aside any such finical reservations. But then as always my curiosity never would rest until it was satisfied.
 
AFTER that uninformative interview in which the Minister of Lesser Races had been so reserved and uneasy, my next, with the Minister of War, was refreshingly open and candid. I would have expected a holder of such an important office to be quite the opposite, but then there were a lot of anomalies about the Minister of War. As I have said, he was unaccountably a Han and not a Mongol. Also, the Minister Chao Meng-fu looked to me exceedingly young to have been given such high office.
“That is because the Mongols do not
need
a Minister of War,” he said cheerfully, bouncing a round ball of ivory in one hand. “They make war as naturally as you or I would make jiao-gou with a woman, and they are probably better at doing war than jiao-gou.”
“Probably,” I said. “Minister Chao, I would be grateful if you would tell me—”
“Please, Elder Brother,” he said, raising the hand which held the ivory ball. “Ask me nothing about war. I can tell you absolutely nothing about war. If, however, you require advice on the making of jiao-gou …”
I looked at him. It was the third time he had spoken that slightly indelicate term. He looked placidly back at me, squeezing and revolving the carved ivory ball in his right hand. I said, “Forgive my persistence, Minister Chao, but the Khakhan has enjoined me to make inquiry of every—”
“Oh, I do not
mind
telling you anything. I mean only that I am totally ignorant of war. I am much better informed about jiao-gou.”
That made the fourth mention. “Could I be mistaken?” I asked. “Are you not the Minister of War?”
Still cheerfully, he said, “It is what we Han call passing off a fish eye for a pearl. My title is an empty one, an honor conferred for other functions I perform. As I said, the Mongols
need
no Minister of War. Have you yet called on the Armorer of the Palace Guard?”
“No.”
“Do so. You would enjoy the encounter. The Armorer is a handsome woman. My wife, in fact: the Lady Chao Ku-an. That is because the Mongols no more require an adviser on armaments than they require advice on making war.”
“Minister Chao, you have me quite confounded. You were drawing at that table when I came in, drawing on a scroll. I assumed you were making a map of battle plans, or something of the sort.”
He laughed and said, “Something of the sort. If you consider jiao-gou as a sort of battle. Do you not see me palpating this ivory ball, Elder Brother Marco? That is to keep my right hand and fingers supple. Do you not know why?”
I suggested feebly, “To be deft in the caresses of jiao-gou?”
That sent him into a real convulsion of laughter. I sat and felt like a fool. When he recovered, he wiped his eyes and said, “I am an artist. If you ever meet another, you will find him also playing with one of these hand balls. I am an artist, Elder Brother, a master of the boneless colors, a holder of the Golden Belt, the highest accolade bestowed upon artists. More to be desired than an empty Mongol title.”
“I still do not understand. There is already a Court Master of the Boneless Colors.”
He smiled. “Yes, old Master Chien. He paints
pretty
pictures. Little flowers. And my dear wife is famous as the Mistress of the Zhu-gan Cane. She can paint just the shadows of that graceful cane, and make you see it entire. But I—” He stood tall, and thumped his chest with his ivory ball, and said proudly, “I am the Master of the Feng-shui, and feng-shui means ‘the wind, the water’—which is to say, I paint that which cannot be grasped.
That
is what won me the Golden Belt from my artist peers and elders.”
I said politely, “I should like to see some of your work.”
“Unfortunately, I now have to paint the feng-shui on my own time, if ever. The Khan Kubilai gave me my bellicose title just so I could be installed here in the palace to paint another sort of thing. My own fault. I was incautious enough to reveal to him that other talent of mine.”
I tried to return to the subject that had brought me. “You have nothing to do with war, Master Chao? Not in the least?”
“Well, the least possible, yes. That cursed Arab Achmad would probably withhold my wages if I did not make some pretense at fulfilling my titular office. Therefore, with my unsupple left hand, so to speak, I keep records of the Mongols’ battles and casualties and conquests. The orloks and sardars tell me what to write, and I write it down. Nobody ever looks at the records. I might as well be writing poetry. Also, I set little flags and simulated yak tails on a great map to keep visible account of what the Mongols have conquered, and what yet remains to be conquered.”
Chao said all of that in a very bored voice, unlike the happy fervor with which he had spoken of his feng-shui painting. But then he cocked his head and said, “You also spoke of maps. You are interested in maps?”
“I am, yes, Minister. I have assisted in the making of some.”
“None like this, I wager.” He led me to another room, where a vast table, nearly as big as the room, was covered by a cloth, lumped and peaked by what it protected. He said, “Behold!” and whisked off the cloth.
“Cazza beta!” I breathed. It was not just a map, it was a work of art. “Did you make this, Minister Chao?”
“I wish I could say yes, but I cannot. The artist is unknown and long dead. This sculptured model of the Celestial Land is said to date back to the reign of the First Emperor Chin, whenever that was. It was he who commanded the building of the wall called the Mouth, which you can see there in miniature.”
Indeed I could. I could see everything of Kithai, and the lands around it as well. The map was, as Chao said, a model, not a drawing on a sheet of paper. It appeared to have been molded of gesso or terracotta, flat where the earth was in fact flat, raised and convoluted and serrated where the earth actually rose in hills and mountains—and then the whole of it had been overlaid with precious metals and stones and colored enamels. To one side lay a turquoise Sea of Kithai, its curving shores and bays and inlets all carefully delineated, and into that sea ran the land’s rivers, done in silver. All the mountains were gilded, the highest of them tipped with diamonds to represent snow, and the lakes were little pools of blue sapphires. The forests were done, almost to the individual
tree
, in green jade, and farmlands were a brighter green enamel, and the major cities were done, almost to the individual
house
, in white alabaster. Hither and yon ran the wavery line of the Great Wall—or Walls, as it is in places—done in rubies. The deserts were sparkling flats of powdered pearl. Across the whole great table-sized landscape were lines inlaid in gold, appearing squiggly where they undulated over mountains and highlands, but when I looked directly down on them, I could see that the lines were straight—up and down the model, back and forth, making an overlay of squares. The east—west lines were clearly the climatic parallels, and the north—south lines the longitudes, but from what meridian they measured their distances I could not discern.
“From the capital city,” said Chao, having noticed my scrutiny. “In those times it was Xian.” He pointed to the tiny alabaster city, far to the southwest of Khanbalik. “That is where this map was found, some years ago.”
I noticed also the additions Chao had made to the map—little paper flags to represent the battle standards of orloks, and feathers to represent the yak tails of sardars—outlining what the Khan Kubilai and his Ilkhans and Wangs held of the lands represented.
“Not all of the map, then, is within the empire,” I observed.
“Oh, it will be,” said Chao, in the same bored voice with which he talked of his office. He began to point. “All of this, here, to the south of the River Yang-tze, is still the Empire of Sung, with its capital over here in the beautiful coast city of Hang-zho. But you can see how closely the Sung Empire is pressed about by our Mongol armies on its borders. Everything north of the Yang-tze is what used to be the Empire of Chin and is now Kithai. Over yonder, the entire west is held by the Ilkhan Kaidu. And the high country of To-Bhot, south of there, is ruled by the Wang Ukuruji, one of Kubilai’s numerous sons. The only battles being waged at the moment are down here—in the southwest—where the Orlok Bayan is campaigning in the province of Yun-nan.”
“I have heard of that place.”
“A rich and fertile country, but inhabited by the obstreperous Yi people,” Chao said indifferently. “When the Yi finally have the good sense to succumb to Bayan, and we have Yun-nan, then, you see, we will have the remaining Sung provinces so tightly encircled that they are bound to surrender, too. The Khakhan has already picked out a new name for those lands. They will be called Manzi. The Khan Kubilai will then reign over everything you see on this map, and more. From Sibir in the frozen north to the borders of the hot jungle lands of Champa in the south. From the Sea of Kithai on the east to far, far beyond the western extent of this map.”
I said, “You seem to think that will not be enough to satisfy him.”
“I know it will not. Only a year ago, he ordered the Mongols’ first venture ever
eastward.
Yes, their first foray upon the sea. He sent a fleet of chuan out across the Sea of Kithai, to the islands called Jihpen-kwe, the Empire of the Dwarfs. That tentative probe was repulsed by the dwarfs, but Kubilai is certain to try again, and more energetically.” The Minister stood for a moment, looking over the immense and beautiful map model, then said, “What matter what more he takes? When Sung falls, he has all the Celestial Land that once was Han.”
He sounded so uncaring about it that I remarked, “You can say it more emotionally, if you like, Minister. I would understand. You are, after all, a Han.”
“Emotion? Why?” He shrugged. “A centipede, even when it dies, does not fall. Being likewise many-legged, the Han have always endured and always will.” He began replacing the cloth cover on the table. “Or, if you prefer a more vivid image, Elder Brother: like a woman in jiao-gou, we simply envelop and absorb the impaling lance.”
I said—and not critically, for I had become fond of the young artist in just this short time—“Minister Chao, the matter of jiao-gou seems rather to tincture all your thoughts.”
“Why not? I am a whore.” He sounded cheerful again, and led me back into his main room. “On the other hand, it is said that, of all women, a whore most resents being raped. Here, look at what I was painting when you arrived.” He unrolled the silk scroll on the drawing board, and again I breathed an exclamation:
“Porco Dio!”
I had never seen a picture like it. And I mean that in more than one sense. Not in Venice, where there are many works of art to be seen, nor in any of the countries I had come through, in some of which also were many works of art, had I ever seen a picture so exquisitely drawn and tinted that it was veritable
life
captured in the round; so lighted and shaded that it seemed my fingers could stroke its rotundities and delve into its recesses; so sinuous in its forms that they seemed to move before my eyes; yet at the same time a picture—well, there it lay, easily to be seen—done, like any other,
on a flat surface.
“Observe the likenesses,” said Master Chao, droning in the manner of a San Marco docent showing the Basilica’s mosaic saints. “Only an artist capable of painting the impalpable feng-shui could so perfectly render, as well, substantial flesh and meat.”
Indeed, the six persons depicted in Master Chao’s painting were instantly and unmistakably recognizable. I had seen every one of them in this very palace, alive and breathing and moving about. Yet here they were on silk—from the hairs of their head and the hues of their skin to the intricate brocaded designs on their robes and the tiny glints of light that gave animation to their eyes—all six alive still, but frozen in their movement, and each person magically reduced to the size of my hand.
“Observe the composition,” said Master Chao, still good-humoredly sounding humorless. “All the curves, the directions of movement, they beguile the eye to the main subject and what he is doing.”
And therein the picture was egregiously different from any other I had ever seen. The main subject referred to by Master Chao was his and my liege lord, the Khan of All Khans—Kubilai, no doubt about it—though the picture’s only intimation of his regnancy was the gold morion helmet he wore, that being
all
he was wearing. And what he was doing in the picture he was doing to a young lady who was lying back on a couch with her brocade robes shamelessly caught up above her waist. I recognized the lady (from her face, which was all I had ever before seen of her) as one of Kubilai’s current concubines. Two additional concubines, also considerably dishevelled in their garments and exposed in their persons, were pictured as assisting in the coupling, while the Khatun Jamui and one other of Kubilai’s wives stood by, fully and modestly clothed, but looking not at all disapproving.
Master Chao, still playing the dullard docent, said, “This one is entitled ‘The Mighty Stag Mounts the Third of His Yearning Does.’ You will observe that he has already had two—you can see the pearly droplets of his jing-ye dribbling down their inner thighs—and there are two more yet to be enjoyed. Correctly, in the Han, this one’s title would be ‘Huang-se Gong-chu—’”

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