Swords From the East (76 page)

"Kublai is gone away, to hunt." Her eyes held his, and the color deepened in her cheeks.

"Far?" asked Marco, surprised.

"To Shang-tu-to the desert. Who knows where?"

"The devil!" Marco exclaimed, under his breath. He would have to await Kublai's return before giving up the ruby-he dared not trust it to anyone else until the Khan had seen it.

A thought cut like a knife into his brooding. The ruby was no longer on the table by his hand!

Something else was there, another stone-and the priceless red stone had vanished. So he thought, and turned to draw back the cloth. He fumbled with the cloth because a strange drowsiness filled him.

Then he stared. A ruby lay upon the table, but its outline had blurred. The unearthly fire had gone from it; and it was, he knew, only a smooth Balas ruby, flawed-worth no more than its weight in silver. Yet it lay in the place of the great ruby of Ceylon.

The girl, watching his face, set down her tray gently on the rushes at his feet, and drew back toward the curtain. Marco Polo saw her slipping away, and leaped through the curtain after her. Now his mind was clear, and he caught her roughly.

"Where," he whispered hoarsely, "is the red precious stone?"

She struggled against his hands, her eyes startled. "Where you left it," she cried, "there on the table."

"Nay, pretty harlot." His hands passed over her slim body, and pulled open the gray over-robe, although she strained away from him. "I wondered who had sent you-for what!"

Then he saw the dragon embroidered on the breast of her floss-silk tunic. The mark of a candidate concubine, who might not leave the inner palace of the great Khan. And he saw the fear in her eyes.

"Now let me go, Lord Po-lo," she pleaded. "Ai-I wanted to tell you the great Khan is far away, and now you have no friends in Cambalu. I brought the tray so that no one would take heed-"

The blood came and went in her throat, and her gray eyes were heavy with dread. Surely, he thought, she felt a fear for him. And, after all, she had not been within reach of the table. Certainly no one had come through the window behind him, lighted by the sunset glare, to take the ruby of Ceylon. It must be where he had placed it. He had been drowsy-a strange fancy had come to him, a fancy bred of the many moons he had watched over the priceless stone. He sighed, and relaxed his grasp. Instantly the girl slipped away from him, drawing the gray robe about her. Marco wondered what her name might be, and why she had dared to enter his quarters.

He went back through the curtain, intending to wrap the great ruby in its cloth again. And then he started. On the cloth as he had left it lay the Balas ruby, the travesty of the most precious thing in the world.

"The Devil," Marco Polo muttered, "has been at work."

Striding to the balcony beyond the window, he looked out into the sunset glow. No one was on the balcony or in the courtyard beneath him. Without moving, he waited to see if the girl would cross the courtyard, and he waited in vain. The sun dropped behind the trees of the Green Mount, and twilight leaped up at him.

It seemed, Messer Marco reflected, that he had been well tricked by a sweet wanton. Soon it would be known that he had bought the ruby of Ceylon at a terrifying price, and he had nothing to show for it but this flawed monstrosity. Worse, he could not explain how the ruby had been stolen.

It had been there, on the table under his hand, and it had changed into the false stone. And the only witness of his folly was a maiden from the Treasury of Kublai Khan, whose presence might not be mentioned.

Below him, he heard a silvery chime. That would be the silver ball dropping in the water clock, at the beginning of the first hour of the night. As he had done so often in these years of labor, Messer Marco looked past the gilded roof of the palace, to the black summit of the tower of the astrologers.

"Send Kao Hoshang to me," he ordered his servants, who had been rendered curious by his silence.

Alai had not crossed the courtyard. She was hurrying toward the nearest door when a man with a shaven skull looked at her twice and stopped her. A gold tablet glinted upon a chain at his throat.

"Kai, little flower," he said, "do you run after the sun?"

Impassive as a doll she stood, but she could not hide the flush that darkened her face.

"No slave art thou," he snarled. "Wait!"

His fingers twisted in her long sleeve, as careless steps came toward them. Two staff-bearers passed by, and then Alai dropped to her knees, trying to press her forehead against the floor. But the officer's hand restrained her.

A tall figure gleamed in heavy cloth of gold. A heavy head turned toward her curiously.

"May it please the Shadow of the Throne," whispered the man who held her, "here is a little night bird escaped from the Treasury."

The man in gold considered her. His fingers twisted through his black beard.

"Forgive," Alai breathed, "so that I may live. Alas, I wanted only to hear the voice of the barbarian lord whose eyes are kind."

"A pity." The Shadow of the Throne meditated. "If this is known, the Tatars will throw you from a tower, or perhaps ride their horses over you, little flower. You knew the punishment for setting foot beyond the Treasury."

"I am going back-"

"To the hands of the guards?" The man in gold bent over her. "Nay, that you may not do. For we have been seen talking here, and now must I know thy name."

"It is Alai," whispered the shaven skull, "surnamed Precious Pearl, a candidate concubine." He parted the folds of her gray robe. "Will the Shadow of the Throne look?"

Both men glanced curiously at the dragon embroidered on white floss silk-at the emblem of Kublai Khan. They could not remember a woman who had dared, before now, to venture from the inner palace. And it was the duty of the shaven skull to know such things.

"Yet," he of the gold robe whispered, "will I have pity on you, Alai. At the third hour of the night, at full starlight, come to my door beyond the lake. Come with your face hidden, and ask for Ahmed the Compassionate." He smiled. "I can protect one who pleases me."

"Aye, lord."

"And after the third hour of the night," the one called Ahmed added, "I will announce that the girl Alai was seen at the door of the Lord Po-lo."

When the men had gone on, Alai wandered out to the fountain veiled in twilight. She heard the silver ball fall in the water clock, sounding the first hour of the night. Since no one heeded a girl without covering for her hair, she could sit quietly on the marble walk by the water, and think.

Ahmed the Persian, she knew, could do what he said. The Minister of the Throne was also master of the Treasury; he had brought uncounted riches to the feet of the Tatar emperor. When he urged a matter upon Kublai, the great Khan always replied, "Do as you think right."

Wealth flowed into the coffers of the Minister as well as the Khan-for those who made a present to Kublai remembered to make a gift also to the Shadow of the Throne. Ivory of the elephant people of Mien, jade from the sandy rivers of Khoten, beaten gold from Hind. But the gift that pleased Ahmed most was a woman of new beauty.

Never, however, Alai reflected, had even Ahmed dared to think of possessing a woman who had entered the Khan's Treasury. At the step behind her, she looked up.

"Hai-Hoshang!" she called softly.

The stout astrologer who was padding by stopped. His gnome's head, reeking of wine, peered down.

"0 magician," she begged, feeling at that moment helpless to do anything for herself, "you have skill to change the shapes of things. Can you make me invisible so that I may pass through gates unseen?"

"I can make a mountain invisible," he croaked.

"How?"

"By looking the other way," he snarled, and would have gone on, but she held to the skirt of his robe.

"Let me go with you, Master of Wisdom."

"Try your tricks on a greater fool," Hoshang reeled. "Nay, I go to the barbarian Po-lo, who counts his money with both hands." He spat.

Still she held fast to his robe.

"Why are you frightened?" Hoshang asked hoarsely. "This night unwonted things will happen. So the stars proclaim, at the appearance of the first moon of the new year. Kai-look! "

He pointed at the faint curve of silvery light above the last of the sunset glow. When she peered up at the new moon, he moved away noiselessly. But Alai followed.

She had seen Marco Polo within arm's reach. Hard he might be, as unbending bronze, sitting in his counting room, yet she thought he would be more kind than the mighty Ahmed, or the catlike astrologer.

As she left the fountain, the dripping water clock chimed twice.

Hearing the slap-slap of Hoshang's sandals, Marco Polo looked up.

"Long life," Hoshang kowtowed with a stagger. "May the great farwandering lord live to see the sons of his sons-"

"Be still! Why were you so long in coming?"

"I stayed to speak," Hoshang admitted blandly, "to this girl."

Messer Marco moved impatiently, his dark eyes appraising the astrologer as if he were doubtful merchandise. He judged that Hoshang was a very skilled magician-at the Khan's feasts, he had watched Hoshang make a goblet filled with wine move along the table to the Khan's hand, without spilling the wine. A charlatan who could do that trick might also make a ruby disappear, and a false one take its place. "I've seen," he said, "a vanishing that could not be."

And he told Hoshang how the ruby had gone from beneath his fingers.

"That could be," the astrologer muttered. "Aye, that could be. You looked at something shining, something that moved?"

Messer Marco considered carefully. "Yes-at the wine in the bowl that girl held." He glanced thoughtfully at Alai, who had remained standing by the curtain. "And then at the ruby-the false ruby."

"And thou, ignoble one," Hoshang snarled at the girl, "what didst thou see?"

"Only Lord Po-lo," Alai answered. "And the fire of the setting sun."

"Aye, so. It was simply done, Lord Po-lo. Do not blame the girl. You frightened her, and ran after her. And, when you did that you left the great ruby of Ceylon uncovered on this table in this empty room."

"Nay," Marco shook his head, "I left the false ruby here. This one."

Hoshang nodded solemnly at the flawed Balas stone. "Aye, so you thought, Lord Po-lo-"

"I saw it."

"Aye, you saw it, when the glow of the sun was upon it, and its shape was a little blurred because drowsiness filled your mind. Nay, it was the thought of the thief, working into your mind. The thief who crouched on the balcony by the window, who came in and snatched the ruby of Ceylon, leaving this in its place-"

"Lies! How could another's thought come into my mind?"

"Oh, easily. Our children-" Hoshang's eyes gleamed suddenly-"play at that."

Drawing a deep breath, Marco rose. In the courtyard below sounded three silvery chimes. Alai started, shrinking back from the light.

"Tonight," Hoshang muttered, "is not as other nights. The Sant'ai stars of the great Bear are threefold bright, and a burning star fell. So is a prophecy made clear." He took a roll of silk paper from his sleeve. "When He Who Sleeps shall awake," he read, "the Mightiest of Men shall die."

"And who," Marco asked, "is the mightiest of men?"

"Alas," sighed the astrologer, "we may not know, until it is revealed."

Marco Polo decided that the old astrologer must know of a plotting in the palace which would come to a head that night. Evidently Hoshang was disturbed, because he had been drinking.

"0 soothsayer," Marco demanded, "if you are so wise, tell me who stole the ruby of Ceylon."

"It would be easier to find a fish escaped into the sea."

"Yet I can tell you what he is like." Messer Marco thought for a moment, while Hoshang listened skeptically. "He would be a man of power in Cambalu, to dare such a thing. He would be an officer of the palace, since he knew that I had been sent to Ceylon for the ruby. Aye-and he would have a collection of rare precious stones-because he'd crave the ruby for its own sake. He could not sell the Khan's ruby in Cathay."

"Kai!" Hoshang's eyes opened in surprise. The matter-of-fact logic of the West had no place in his tortuous mind.

"What officer of the Throne," Marco went on, "would answer to that description?"

Hoshang chuckled. "You, Lord Po-lo!"

For an instant the Venetian was taken aback. "There's more," he pointed out grimly. "Who would have a sorcerer to serve him-such as thou? And who could command a girl of the Treasury to beguile me-a girl such as this one? To amuse me while his thief stole in."

"Fool," said Alai, lifting her head. "Barbarian, blind as a buffalo tied to a well sweep! I came to warn you."

"Why?"

"I thought," she said quietly, "that I loved you. When first I came to Cambalu, I was lonely, and grieving. I watched from the lattice of my window-and you were unlike the men of Cathay. You feared no one, and you laughed merrily."

Messer Marco shook his head.

"I think Ahmed sent you," he remarked, "and I think Ahmed has the ruby of Ceylon."

He stretched his long arms, rising from the table. Thrusting aside the worthless Balas stone, he went to the wall where an old coat hung, a padded khalat that he put on at times when the room was cold. It was worn and ugly and covered with dust.

"The night air is cold," he said carelessly even while his fingers ran over tears in the lining of the coat that had been carefully sewn.

Hidden beneath those tears in the thick wool padding were pearls and sapphires enough to fill his two cupped hands. Marco had selected them with care, hiding them one by one until he had an emperor's ransom in this old coat that nobody heeded.

He had done so against the time when he might need to ride from Cathay. And now, he decided, that time had come. He had lost the ruby of Ceylon, and how could he explain that loss to Kublai, when the Khan returned?

When he slipped his arms into the sleeves, Alai came to his side.

"What will you do, Lord Po-lo?" she asked anxiously.

"I must see to some-merchandise."