“The moment I do this,” I said, “I am putting not just Achmad’s fate, but mine also, irrevocably in your hands, Master Chao.”
“And I mine, Polo, in yours. Go.”
I went, after running into my rooms again to gather up the other things I had for the Khakhan. And I did catch him, just as he and the lesser justices and the Tongue were taking their seats on the dais of the Cheng. He motioned amiably for me to approach the dais, and, when I gave him the items I had brought, he said, “There was no hurry about returning these things, Marco.”
“I had already kept them longer than I should have done, Sire. Here is the ivory pai-tzu plaque, and your yellow-paper letter of authority, and a paper the late Minister Pao was carrying at the time of his capture, and this note of mine, which lists those engineers who so capably positioned the huo-yao balls. Since I set down their names in Roman letters, Sire, perhaps you would listen as I read them. I hope I can pronounce them correctly, and that you can comprehend them, for you may wish to reward those men with some mark of—”
“Read, read,” he said indulgently.
I did so, while he idly laid aside the plaque and the letter he had given me to carry, and idly opened and glanced at the paper the Master Chao had forged. When he saw that it was written in Han, he idly handed it to the many-tongued Tongue, and went on listening to me. I was struggling to comprehend my own not clearly legible list of scrawls, reading aloud, “A man named Gegen, of the Kurai tribe … a man named Jassak, of the Merkit tribe … a man named Berdibeg, also of the Merkit—” when the Tongue suddenly leapt to his feet and, for all his grasp of many languages, gave a cry that was entirely inarticulate.
“Vakh!” exclaimed the Khakhan. “What ails you, man?”
“Sire!” the Tongue gasped excitedly. “This paper—a matter of the utmost importance! It must take precedence over all else! This paper—brought by that man yonder.”
“Marco?” Kubilai turned back to me. “You said it was taken from the late Minister Pao?” I said it was. He turned again to the Tongue. “Well?”
“You might prefer, Sire—” said the Tongue, looking pointedly at me, at the other justices and the guards. “You might prefer to clear the hall before I divulge the contents.”
“Divulge them,” growled the Khan, “and then I will decide if the hall is to be cleared.”
“As you command, Sire. Well, I can give you a word by word translation at your leisure. But suffice it now to say that this is a letter signed with the yin Pao Nei-ho. It hints—it implies—no, it bluntly reveals—a treacherous conspiracy between your cousin the Ilkhan Kaidu and—and one of your most trusted ministers.”
“Indeed?” said Kubilai frostily. “Then I think it best that no one leave this hall. Go on, Tongue.”
“In brief, Sire, it appears that the Minister Pao, whom we all now know to have been a Yi impostor here, hoped to avert the total devastation of his native Yun-nan. It appears that Pao had persuaded the Ilkhan Kaidu—or perhaps bribed him; money is mentioned—to march south and fling his forces upon the rear of ours then invading Yun-nan. It would have been an act of rebellion and civil war. In that event, it was expected that you yourself, Sire, would take the field. In your absence and the ensuing confusion, the—the Vice-Regent Achmad was to proclaim himself Khakhan—”
The assembled Cheng justices all cried “Vakh!” and “Shame!” and “Aiya!” and other expressions of horror.
“—upon which,” the Tongue resumed, “Yun-nan would declare its surrender and fealty to the new Khakhan Achmad, in return for an easy peace. Next, it seems also to have been agreed, the Yi would join with Kaidu in falling upon the Sung, and help to conquer that empire. And after all was done, Achmad and Kaidu would divide and rule the Khanate between them.”
There were more exclamations of “Vakh!” and “Aiya!” Kubilai had yet made no comment, but his face was like the black buran sandstorm rising over the desert. While the Tongue waited for some command, the ministers began passing the letter around among them.
“Is it truly Pao’s hand?” asked one.
“Yes,” said another. “He always wrote in the grass stroke, not the formal upright character.”
“And there, see?” said another. “To write money, he used the character for kauri-shell, which is currency among the Yi.”
Another asked, “What of the signature?”
“It looks to be genuinely his.”
“Send for the Yinmaster!”
“No one is to leave this room.”
But Kubilai heard and nodded, and a guard went running out. In the meantime, the ministers kept up a muted hubbub of argument and expostulation, and I heard one say solemnly, “It is too outrageous to be believed.”
“There is precedent,” said another. “Remember, some years ago, our Khanate acquired the land of Cappadocia by a similar ruse. A likewise trusted Chief Minister of the Seljuk Turki enlisted the covert aid of our Ilkhan Abagha of Persia to help him overthrow the rightful King Kilij. And, once the treachery was accomplished, the upstart allied Cappadocia to our Khanate.”
“Yes,” remarked another. “But happily there was a difference in those circumstances. Abagha conspired not for his own aggrandizement, but for the benefit of his Khakhan Kubilai and the whole Khanate.”
“Here comes the Yinmaster.”
Hurried along by the guardsman, old Master Yiu came shuffling into the Cheng. He was shown the paper, and had to squint at it only briefly before he pronounced:
“I cannot mistake my own work, my lords. That is indeed the yin I cut for the Minister of Lesser Races, Pao Nei-ho.”
“There!” said several of them, and “It is all true!” and “It is beyond question now!” and they all looked to Kubilai. He inhaled a great breath of air, and slowly sighed it out, and then said in a doomful voice, “Guards!” Those men snapped to rigid attention, and thumped their lances on the floor in unison. “Go and demand the presence here of the Chief Minister Achmad-az-Fenaket.” They thumped their lances again, and wheeled to march out, but Kubilai halted them for a moment and turned to me.
“Marco Polo, it seems that you have once again been of service to our Khanate—albeit inadvertently this time.” The words were commendatory enough, but, from the expression on his face, one would have thought I had tracked into the hall on my boots some dog dirt from the outdoors. “You may see it through to the close, Marco. Go with the guards and yourself utter to the Chief Minister the formal command: ‘Arise and come, dead man, for Kubilai the Khan of All Khans would hear your last words.’”
So I went, as instructed. But the Khakhan had not ordered me to return to the Cheng in company with the Arab, and, as it happened, I did not. I and my troop of guards arrived at Achmad’s chambers to find its outer doors unguarded and wide open. We went inside, and found his own sentries and all his servants gathered in attitudes of anxious listening and hand-wringing indecision outside his closed bedroom door. When they saw our arrival, the servants raised a clamor of greeting, and thanked Tengri and praised Allah that we had come, and it was some time before we could quiet them down and get a coherent account of what was going on.
The Wali Achmad, they said, had been in his bedchamber all day. That was not an uncommon occurrence, they said, because he often took work with him at night and continued, after awakening and breaking his fast, to deal with it while lying comfortably abed. But this day, there had begun to proceed from inside the bedroom some extraordinary noises and, after some understandable hesitation, a maidservant had pecked at the door to inquire if all was well. She had been answered by a voice recognizably the Wali’s, but in an unnaturally high and nervous tone, commanding, “Leave me be!” The unaccountable sounds had then resumed and continued: giggles rising to wild laughter, squeaks and sobs increasing to moans and groans, laughter again, and so on. The listeners —by then comprising Achmad’s whole staff clustered against the door—had been unable to decide whether the noises expressed pleasure or distress. In the course of what had now been some hours, they had frequently called out to their master and knocked on the door and tried to open it and peer in. But the door was fastened tight shut, and they were debating the propriety of breaking through it when fortunately we arrived and saved them having to decide.