Then, as if I had not enough to concern me, I was suddenly given a new thing. A voice whispered in my ear, in the Mongol tongue, “Do not turn. Do not move. Do not look.”
I froze where I was, expecting next to feel a stabbing point or a slashing blade. But there came only the voice again:
“Tremble, Ferenghi. Dread the coming of what you have deserved. But not now, for the waiting and the dread and the not knowing are part of it.”
By then, I had realized that the voice was not really at my ear. I turned and looked all about me, and I saw no one, and I said sharply, “What have I deserved? What do you want of me?”
“Only expect me,” whispered the voice.
“Who? And when?”
The voice whispered just seven more words—seven short and simple words, but words freighted with a menace more chilling than the most fearsome threat—and it never spoke again afterward. It said only and flatly and finally:
“Expect me when you least expect me.”
13
I waited for more, and, when I heard no more, I asked another question or two, and got no answer. So I ran around the terrace to my right, and got to the Moon Gate in the wall without having seen anyone, so I continued to run all the way around the Echo Pavilion, back to the Moon Gate again, and still had seen no one. There was only that one entranceway in the wall, so I stood in it and looked down the Kara Hill. There were several lords and ladies also taking the air that day, strolling about in ones and twos on lower levels of the hill. Any one of them could have been the person who had invisibly accosted me—could have run that far, then slowed to a walk. Or the whisperer could have run another way. The flagstone pathway from the Moon Gate descended only a short distance before forking in two, and one of the paths circled around behind the pavilion to descend the back slope of the hill. Or the whisperer could still be right inside the wall with me, and could easily keep the pavilion between us, no matter how speedily I ran or how stealthily I prowled around the promenade. It was useless to search, so I simply stood there in the entranceway and pondered.
The voice could have been that of either a man or a woman, and of any of several people who had lately had cause to wish me hurt. Just since this hour yesterday, I had been told by three people that I would “regret” some action of mine: the icy Achmad, the irate Buyantu and the outraged Lady Chao. I could also assume that the fugitive Minister Pao was not now any friend of mine, and might still be within the palace confines. And, if I were to count all the palace people whom I had alienated since coming here, I would have to include Master Ping, the Fondler. All of those persons spoke Mongol, as had the whisperer.
There were even other possibilities. The immense lady lurking in Achmad’s chambers might think that I had recognized her, and resent me for it. Or the Lady Chao could have told her lord husband some lie about my visit to her, and he might now be as angry at me as she was. I had repeated nasty gossip about the eunuch Court Astrologer, and eunuchs were notoriously vindictive. For that matter, I had once remarked to Kubilai that I thought most of his ministers were misemployed, and that word could have got back to them, and every single one of them might be mortally peeved at me.
I was casting my gaze back and forth over the curly-eaved roofs of the many palace edifices, as if trying to see through their yellow tiles to identify my accoster, when I saw a vast cloud of smoke erupt abruptly from the main building. The smoke was too much to have come from a brazier or a kitchen hearth, and was too sudden to have come from a room caught fire or anything of that sort. The black cloud seemed to boil as it billowed, and it appeared to have fragments of the building and the roof mixed into it. A fraction of an instant later, the sound of it reached me—a thunderclap so loud and slapping that it actually stirred my hair and the loose folds of my robes. I saw the other few persons on the hill also wince at the sound, and turn to look, and then we were all running down the slope toward the scene.
I did not have to get very close before I recognized that the eruption had come from my own chambers. In fact, the main room of my suite had burst its walls and roof, and was now laid open to the sky and the view of the gathering crowd, and what few of its contents had not disintegrated outright were now burning. The black cloud of the initial blast, still quite intact and still writhing in its slow boil, was now drifting out over the city, but the lesser smoke from the room’s burning was yet dense enough to keep most of the onlookers at a respectful distance. Only a number of palace servants were scuttling in and out of the smoke, carrying buckets of water and dashing them into the burning remains. One of them dropped his bucket when he saw me, and came running—tottering, rather—to meet me. He was so blackened by smoke and singed of garments that it was a moment before I recognized Nostril.
“Oh, master, come no closer! It is a frightful destruction!”
“What happened?” I asked, though I had already guessed.
“I do not know, master. I was asleep in my closet when all of a sudden—bismillah!—I found myself awake and floundering here on the grass of this garden court, my clothes all a-smolder, and shards of broken furniture falling all about me.”
“The girls!” I said urgently. “What of the girls?”
“Mashallah, master, they are dead, and in a most horrible manner. If this was not the doing of a vengeful jinni, it was the attack of a fire-breathing dragon.”
“I think not,” I said miserably.
“Then it must have been a rukh, insanely tearing with its beak and talons, for the girls are not just dead—they no longer exist, not as separate girls. They are nothing but a spatter on the remaining walls. Bits of flesh and blobs of gore. Twins they were in life, and twinned they have gone into death. They will be inseparable forever, since no funeral practitioner could possibly sort out the fragments and say which were of whom.”
“Bruto barabào,” I breathed, appalled. “But it was not any rukh or jinni or dragon. Alas, it was I who did this.”
“And to think, master, you once told me that you could never kill a woman.”
“Unfeeling slave!” I cried. “I did not do it deliberately!”
“Ah, well, you are young yet. Meanwhile, let us be thankful that those two did not keep any pet dog or cat or ape, to be intermingled also with them in the afterlife.”
I swallowed sickly. Whether this was my fault or God’s doing, it was a terrible loss of two lovely young women. But I had to reflect that, in a very real sense, to me they had been lost already. One or both of them had been betraying me to the inimical Achmad, and I had entertained suspicion of Buyantu as the secret whisperer at the Echo Pavilion. Whoever that was, though, it evidently had not been she. But just then I jumped, as another voice spoke in my ear:
“Lamentable mamzar, what have you done?”
I turned. It was the Court Firemaster, who no doubt had come at a run because he had known the distinctive noise of his own product.
“I was trying an experiment in al-kimia, Master Shi,” I said, contrite. “The girls were instructed to keep the fire very low, but they must have—”
“I told you,” he said through his teeth. “The flaming powder is not a thing to play with.”
“No one can tell Marco Polo anything,” said Prince Chingkim, who, as Wang of Khanbalik, had come apparently to see what havoc had been visited upon his city. He added drily, “Marco Polo must be shown.”