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“Let me do it,” she said again, and pointed at the dagger. “That’s his dagger. I want to kill him with it.”

Luo laughed, and Lian tried to not flinch at the sound, though it made her skin crawl. He nodded to his man, who pulled the blade free of his belt and tossed it to the ground. “Go,” Luo said to the remaining pair. “I…we,” he amended with a curt nod at Lian, “will meet you at the second camp.”

The soldiers needed no other prompting, and they too fled.

“Pick it up,” Luo said, indicating the knife as he walked toward the captive Mongol.

Gansukh hadn’t understood any of their conversation, but the look on Luo’s face was plain enough, as was the bloody sword. As the Chinese commander approached him, Gansukh strained at his bonds while moving slowly backward, giving himself some room to maneuver. He wouldn’t be able to dodge Luo’s attack, but his expression said he wasn’t going to make it easy for the Chinese man.

Lian crouched, and with a shaking hand, reached for her dagger. Was she going to go through with this? Could she actually kill a man? In his own way, Gansukh had tried to warn her at the feast. He had said she would be punished if she were caught with the weapon, which was true, but there was another message behind his admonition. Why carry it, he had implied, if you aren’t willing to use it? She slipped the blade from its sheath, and wrapped her fingers tightly about the handle.

She had no choice.

Luo feinted with his sword, and when Gansukh dodged away, the Chinese man leaped forward with a savage side kick that connected with Gansukh’s stomach. Gansukh doubled over, gasping and retching, and Luo brought a knee up sharply to Gansukh’s lowered face. Gansukh’s head snapped back and he toppled over. His hands, bound behind his back, prevented him from lying prone, and he flopped onto his side. He curled forward, retching and shaking. Trying to protect the parts of his body that had been traumatized.

Luo looked over at Lian, and nodded at the sight of the dagger in her hands. “Do it quickly,” he sneered, “and I won’t leave your corpse with his.”

“Pull the dog’s head back,” she instructed with more confidence than she felt. She couldn’t dwell on what was going to happen after the next few moments. She couldn’t let herself wonder if she was doing the right thing. She had to focus on what had to be done, on what was required in order for her to survive.

Luo put his sword down, and crouched next to Gansukh’s supine body. He hauled the semi-conscious man upright, and positioning himself behind Gansukh, he grabbed the Mongol’s hair. “Do it,” he hissed at Lian, exposing Gansukh’s throat.

Gansukh shuddered, his one eye rolling in its socket. Luo’s strike had bloodied his nose, and his lower face was smeared with blood and dirt. His mouth hung open. He was unrecognizable to Lian, just another Mongolian warrior-indistinguishable from the men who had taken her from her family years ago. They were all alike. It was as Luo had said: the Mongols destroyed everything; they burned countless villages; they had raped generations of Chinese women; they had plundered the great cities. So much had been lost to Mongolian rapaciousness, wiped from existence.

Gansukh was one of them. Had he not demonstrated that fact when he chose his brutal Khan over her? Had he not denied her the ability to defend herself by stealing the very dagger she now held in her hand? Had he not wanted to keep her as a slave? It didn’t matter how much she taught him about how to speak, how to dress, how to be civilized; he was still a barbarian, a dog with blood on his face and hands.

She gripped the dagger tight, the way Gansukh had taught her.

She looked at Luo’s sweat-slicked face, and her stomach twisted as she realized his expression was just as alien. His eager anticipation of Gansukh’s death sickened her.

But he was one of her own countrymen-her rescuer. He was going to help her get back to China. Back to her family. She was going to be free. All she had to do was kill one man. One Mongol.

“Kill him,” Luo barked. He jerked Gansukh back, leaning forward as he did so. His face was so close to Gansukh’s, his mouth nearly touching the Mongol’s ear. “Watch her,” he laughed in Gansukh’s ear. “I want you to see your death.”

Gansukh surged against Luo, but he had little strength and less leverage. The Chinese man held Gansukh tight, his knee in the middle of Gansukh’s back. Gansukh snorted, blowing blood and snot out of his impacted nose; his open eye staring wildly at Lian.

She licked her dry lips and stepped forward, swinging the dagger from left to right. Her swing was slow and weak, and Luo grimaced as he watched her halfhearted attack. She was too far away, and the blade missed Gansukh’s neck.

Luo was starting to say something, his lips curled in an ugly snarl, when he realized she wasn’t finished. Having come as close as she dared to the Chinese commander, she stabbed savagely upward, the way Gansukh had taught her, driving the dagger deep into Luo’s neck.

CHAPTER SIX

A Colorful Tongue

You are young to have gone through so much loss,” Lena said when Ocyrhoe finished telling her story. “I hope you know how strong you are.”

Ocyrhoe shook her head. “I am not strong. I am small and weak, and that is why they didn’t come for me. I don’t know anything. I was not worth hunting.”

“You were the only one left, dear child, and you managed not only to survive but to bring a message out,” Lena stared intently at Ocyrhoe. “You taught yourself to hear within the silence. While you lack an understanding of certain rituals and the signs we use to identify ourselves to one another, you have innate and remarkable skills.” She laughed gently. “They should be frightened of you. Not the other way around.”

Ocyrhoe should have been pleased by such compliments, but the only thing she felt was deep exhaustion. It seemed ironic now, how eager she’d been to tell her story to a kin-sister, but it was so tiring. She had wanted to find out what was going on in Rome, but she actually had more information than anyone else. The more she learned, it seemed, the less she understood.

Lena wasn’t finished with her questions. “What happened when it was only you?”

Ocyrhoe exhaled, letting the words run out of her in a tumbling rush to be done. She knew she was babbling, but she didn’t care. “I don’t even remember what happened next. I don’t know what I ate, or where I slept, or if it was too hot or cold. The days were a blur. The Bear-” she stopped, flustered at her use of the nickname. How would this woman know who she meant? “The Senator,” she corrected. “Senator Matteo Orsini. His men had a list, I knew it as plainly as I knew I was the last one, and I couldn’t go anywhere I had been before. All I could do was practice my lessons. Learn the faces. Listen to the city. Stay out of sight. Stay alive.

“I would visit the statue of Minerva, because I remembered that Varinia had said that she watched over us. I didn’t know what else to do; maybe if I prayed…” She shrugged, summarizing her frustration and helplessness in that simple motion. “But why did I do that?” she continued. “I don’t really know. One day there was a pigeon with a message that said, Where are my eyes in Rome? Had one of my other sisters made it to Palermo? I didn’t know. And so I kept watch. I kept waiting until-”

Until the priest and Ferenc had arrived, and in the few days since-how many days? One? Two? — everything had changed.

“Enough,” Lena said. “I have asked too much of you already, I can tell. Let me send in some food, and then I shall inquire about someone who speaks your friend’s language. I have questions for him.”

When Lena left, Ocyrhoe sat with Ferenc on the cool and dry ground. They leaned against one another, their fingers tapping on the other’s skin. She told him as much as she could: the woman was a friend, another like her, and they had been talking about what had happened to others like them; she had gone to fetch them food and someone who spoke his tongue; afterward, they would return to Rome, probably with armed soldiers, to rescue Father Rodrigo from the Septizodium. Ferenc was remarkably patient throughout the lengthy process of Ocyrhoe telling him all this. If he were a tracker or a hunter, she assumed he should have been more intent on knowing what the goal was, but he appeared quite placid. He only showed some urgency when the food arrived; he ate quickly, as if he feared the hovering page boys might try to snatch the plates away before he was finished. He kept a protective eye on her too; otherwise he may as well have been one of the camp stools, so quiet and still he was.