“They would say—would they not?—that despite our boldest efforts the course of events laid down by the All-Knowing, who is infinitely patient, will sooner or later resume. Who save he can know the purpose of the world? For example ...”
Their attention was riveted on him now; they were following every word as though listening to a great mullah. Infuriatingly, he took a slow deliberate pull on the hookah before completing his remark.
“For example: you will recall my mentioning on the way here that four kings and an emperor once dined in Krakdw, at a house which is now a coal-merchant’s shop. What might have been the outcome had their plans not been aborted by the Black Death, Allah alone knows. Conceivably the time was not ripe. Conceivably it’s ripe now, after centuries. What say you all?” Djinghiz was expecting Feisal to speak up, in an effort to cover his gaffe of a moment ago. Instead, Slava— who had indulged more freely in the wine than the rest—gave a snort as though trying to laugh but failing.
“What I say is that we live once and have to make i:he best of our single chance! According to the tales of my people, not even the old gods could escape their doom. If they failed in wisdom, failed in virtue, failed in the pursuit of righteousness, their time too would end, and there would have to be a new creation. Perhaps it happened; who can say? But in my part of the world there have been few signs of divinity of late.” “Was it in search of them that you left home?” Ismail prompted.
Slava sighed. “In a way, I suppose,” he muttered. “In my youth I wandered from the Baltic to the Bosporus, looking for something to believe in, something i:hat might lend me hope. I never found it. In the end I came to trust nothing but the swiftness of my blade and the blind laws of chance.”
“Which you have never been averse from—shall we say?—helping a little.”
Slava’s face contorted with sudden rage. His hand fell to his side. Not finding his knife, he controlled himself. In a thick voice he said, “Were I not a guest under your roof, and disarmed, I’d make you pay for that, innkeeper! Yours was a touching story, I must grant, but you have no conception what it’s like for a landless man trying to survive in this harsh world!”
“You were, I take it, once the lord of an estate?” “Yes, that I was!” Slava slapped the table so hard he made the goblets ring. “Or should have been, but that my false brother and my accursed wife conspired to rob and disinherit me! All they left me was one ship, that might as well have borne me to the sunset on a pyre!” “Your passport,” Ismail murmured, “calls you a Balt and an amber merchant. But you’re a Norseman, nobly born.
His eyes were suddenly wide open, and so piercing they seemed to cast beams of brilliant light. Before that stare all hope of lying melted. Sullen, not understanding how he could have been exposed, Slava let his shoulders slump.
“Ah, for me it’s always Fimbulwinter. There is no more warmth or sunshine in my life . . . Yes! You see before you him who once was Erik, Jarl of Odinshavn, whose ships plied the northern reaches of the Ocean Sea, to the fishing grounds of Dogger and Vinland itself! I took revenge for what was stolen from me, but it wasn’t sweet.”
“In other words,” Ismail said, somewhat less softly than before, “the blood-oath has been sworn against you, and the wergild has never been paid.”
“Oh, I’ve tried. Don’t think I haven’t tried!” Slava-Erik drained his wine savagely, and Ismail refilled the goblet with impassive face. “That was what I wanted most and what I failed in worst. To think I’ve been reduced to gambling—not always honestly; you’re right; I was driven to it after my sole remaining ship was wrecked—and worse still hiring out my young companions in stews! I who was a landed jarl! I disgust myself! And most recently of all, when I thought I had the chance to recoup my fortunes and my honor at a single blow, I was cheated yet again!”
“This time, by whom?”
“I do not know. But this I swear: should ever I find out, I’ll make it my last act on earth to slay him instead!”
Instead ? Instead of whom ?
But before Djinghiz could voice the question, Ismail had said with abrupt sternness, “Even if he were under this roof now?”
“Nothing would stop me! Not the knowledge that I’d die a heartbeat later!”
“Wrong—I would stop you,” rumbled Paluka. His right hand had closed on Slava’s shoulder with the speed of a striking snake, and was pressing so hard it forced a grunt of pain from the smaller man. “Good manners do not permit one to behave so on premises where he is a guest. Besides, you said you have found vengeance far from sweet.”
He released Slava warily. Rubbing his shoulder, the latter subsided unwillingly and took refuge in more wine.
“That was courteous of you, effendi,” Ismail murmured. “Especially since you yourself, I imagine, have reason to hold a grudge or two.”
Paluka looked him straight in the eyes. They were back to their normal half-closed state between their suety lids. After a moment he said, “I don’t know what on earth you mean.”
“Why”—and another intolerable pause while Ismail drew again on the hookah—“it cannot be easy for you to live as a man without a history.”
For an instant Djinghiz feared the huge Hawaiian was going to scramble to his feet and fling the table bodily at Ismail. But his training as a wrestler must have stood him in good stead; a wrestler who loses his temper risks losing the bout.
Calming himself with such effort that the veins on his neck stood out like cords, he said, “You will explain. Do not do it in such a way as to tempt me to infringe the code of hospitality.”
“If I have done so,” Ismail said, bowing his chin to his ample chest, “forgive me, but I have only complied with the police regulations—though the matter will go no further."
“My passport?”
“Yes, your passport.”
“I see. Weil, it passed muster in Russia, but here . . . I suppose you have extra reason to be careful about strangers. ’ ’
The others were patently bewildered. Hideki started to ask a question, but thought better of it.
Eventually Paluka heaved a mountainous sigh. “Ah, you have the sharpest eyes I ever ran across. Sharp as our navigators’ in the days before we had the compass . ’ ’
Insight flashed lightning bright in Djinghiz’s mind.
Of course! He’s not Hawaiian at all! He's—!
“But I thought you were all tattooed!” he exclaimed.
Paluka turned a burning gaze on him. “So usually we are. Do you know what purpose the tattooing serves?’’
Djinghiz shook his head dumbly.
“Your fat friend does.” Turning his head: “Will you enlighten him?”
Ismail’s face showed pity. He said, “If what I have been told is accurate, it’s not mere decoration. It’s a statement of identity, which includes a record of one’s lineage. Your case is a strange one, possibly unique. You were not deprived of it. You were denied it. There must be a reason. ’ ’
“It is not one I’m ashamed of!”
“On the contrary. I suspect it is the sign of a very brave man.”
Breathing heavily, Paluka relaxed. After a pause he took up his goblet and raised it in the gesture of a toast.
Ismail copied him. Eyes locked, they drank together.
And then, just as everyone else was eagerly awaiting an explanation of this mysterious exchange, the host turned to Feisal.
“Your turn, I think, effendi. Have you nothing to tell us of the wonders of Edo? Few foreigners in history have gained access to the Imperial Palace, let alone the private apartments of the Mikado. Did you not see great marvels? ’ ’
“Why, yes!’ Feisal exclaimed proudly, and launched into a lengthy description, salted with frequent references to his own remarkable scholarship. Hideki, eyes wide, hung on every word, hungry for news of his dis-liant homeland.
But the others kept casting puzzled glances at Paluka, thinking so clearly it could be read on their faces:
A Maori withou
t tattoos? Incredible!
Finally Feisai attained his peroration, and the loudness of his voice drew their attention back. He was declaring, “You might say I succeeded beyond the dreams of those who came in search of Prester John!” Blank looks. But, as ever, Ismail got the point. “Those Europeans, you mean, who believed in a priest- king in Ethiopia where rivers flowed with rubies and where the sand was gold dust? Ah, yes. Unlike you, they were disappointed. ‘Prester John’ turned out to be entirely mythical, and the letter—was it not sent to the Pope of Rome?—extolling his fabulous realm proved a forgery. ’ ’
“Entirely mythical?” Feisal bridled. “Exaggerated, I grant, but there was indeed a great Christian kingdom in my country, and in time—”
He broke off, as though dismayed to hear his own words.
“In time it will be restored?” Ismail prompted.
I can't believe it! He’s unmasking another pretender! Djinghiz clenched his fists in excitement.
“In time, I meant to say,” Feisal forced out, “now the power of the Tlirks is waning, we can look forward to a new epoch of independence and prosperity. ’ ’
“I see.” Feisal glanced down at the hookah mouthpiece as though seeking inspiration. “Well, I’m sure we were all fascinated by your experiences in Edo. Now, Djinghiz!”
The young man tensed.
“What about telling us how you killed the Czar?”
Seven: The Wreath
The silence now was absolute. While Feisal was talking the music had ceased, for the last diners were departing; afterwards there had been clanging sounds from the kitchen as resonant metal pans were washed and put away, but that too had ended and the air of the room was utterly still save for the echo of that amazing question.
It was like listening to the fall of snow.
Blinking, the others had all looked at Ismail as though suspecting a joke. When they realized he had spoken literally, they turned to Djinghiz. Their eyes seemed as dark and round as the gun muzzles of a firing squad.
So this was to be the audience for his moment of glory—this chance-met group of deceivers and impostors. Yes, all of them, for was not an actor a professional impostor, especially a boy trained to imitate women?
He had known all along that his achievement could never be shouted from the rooftops, or not in his lifetime at any rate. Even his own people must be kept from such a deadly secret, or someone might be tempted to vaunt the news abroad, thereby bringing swift and dreadful retribution. Everybody knew how brutally the great empires could treat a rebellious subject nation. In both Russia and the Ottoman lands there had once been proud peoples whose names were now no more than footnotes to history. In the New World too, according to what he had heard. Another folk had occupied the site of Mexico City, grandest metropolis on Earth, and had been—erased . . .
Yet he did at least have an audience, an audience of more than one. He didn’t have to confide in Ismail alone. Suddenly he felt a vast wave of gratitude to the elderly eunuch. Pausing only to utter silently what, had he been religious, would have been a prayer concerning the security of the rose, he donned a sleepy smile.
“Rope of the same kind used to lash the bamboo trestles, with a loop partway across the bridge. A hook to snag the loop mounted under the observation car, so that the harder the engine pulled the faster it tore the bridge apart. The fire destroyed the evidence apart from the hook, but it was an ordinary coupling hook, wom and rusty although still sound, and during the construction of the bridge a load of spare parts had been spilled into the gorge ' ’
“And how did you make good your escape?”— gratingly, from Slava.
“By not being there when it happened. Of course I’d have liked to witness the outcome, but it was safer not to. By then I was aboard a train on a branch line, cars from which were later included in the one we all arrived
on today. I didn’t ask how it was arranged. I can only say that we Tartars have been great wanderers throughout our history, and there are even, so I’m told, oceanic routes where nowadays we aren’t unknown . . .
“Of course ’—Djinghiz hesitated, swallowing, for this was the point he had least looked forward to admitting, but honesty compelled it—“they interrogated the maintenance gang. Tortured some of them, I guess. But they had no responsibility for the trestles, only the ballast and the permanent way. So in the end they were let go.”
“Now most people suspect the Chinese?” Feisal offered .
“Apparently . . . Well, there you have it.” Djinghiz sat back, waiting for Slava to attack him.
And indeed murder shone for an instant in the Norseman’s face.
But it isn't mine.
Djinghiz knew it—how, he could not tell—even before Paluka’s hand rose to hover wamingly again over his neighbor’s shoulder ... in an absentminded sort of fashion, as though his concentration was on something else. It was as though a spell had been cast, transforming not just them but the whole world between one moment and the next. Sick with disappointment, the young man realized:
Ismail didn t merely ‘ ‘oil the hinges' ’ of the Gate of Worlds. With me as his tool, he moved it. Now he's doing it again, right here in this room! How? How?
And, almost before the question had framed itself:
Now wouldn 't that be something ? Wouldn't it be a real achievement to possess powers like his?
Insofar as anything in this mirror-maze of a world can be called “real ” . . .
Ismail was nodding at him. As if he could read his very thoughts, he wore the betraying look of smugness Djinghiz had this afternoon complained of.
The spider in the middle of the web . . . But this is no mere cobweb that he's spun. It’s stronger than the rope I used to kill the Czar, stronger than the hawsers that can moor an ocean liner, stronger than anything.
How much of it is in our world, how much—elsewhere ?
But that was far too frightening to contemplate.
“Thank you, Jarl Erik,” Ismail was saying. “I knew the people at my table would be liars, but I also knew they’d not be fools.”
“Am I not a fool?” Slava returned bitterly. “So simple—so effective!”
“But, for you, unreachable.” Ismail tossed aside the hookah mouthpiece and leaned back, hands folded on his paunch. “You’d have had to be, as Djinghiz is, a Tartar, able to go among the remnants of his people in the eastern lands to which the Tirks first, then the Russians, drove them, where now they follow humble occupations, farming and laboring, who once rode on the path of conquest even to the gates of Europe. You’d have had to pass for a dull-witted railroad worker resigned to the blows of his overseer’s knout. I think your pride would have forced you to kill anyone who treated you that way—Yes, Djinghiz?”
The young man ventured, “Do I understand aright? Slava, or Erik, or whatever your name is: did you too plan to kill the Czar?”
Everyone except Ismail tensed noticeably. The Norseman hesitated, but at length gave an almost imperceptible nod.
“You heard me say I had the chance to redeem my fortunes—earn enough, perhaps, to go home and pay the wergild for my wife and my brother. But I was forestalled. Now I know it was by you.”
“Why then have you not kept your word to kill me?” “Because now I understand why you did it. I’d become a hired assassin—lower, maybe, than a professional gambler, lower even than a child-prostitute s pimp. I thought I had the necessary motivation. But I dawdled. I missed two chances, maybe three. You, though! ’ ’
He threw back his head, and for the first time Djinghiz saw in his face some hint of the nobility he laid claim to.
“You did it! Simply and effectively! Not for your own sake, not for the sake of someone who would pay you well, but for your people. Am I right?”
Djinghiz’s heart swelled so with pride that he could not utter a word in reply. Ismail spoke up on his behalf.
“You are. There sits the last pure-blood descendant of the last of the Tartar Khans. By right of inherita
nce, he should be h s people’s prince; by right of deeds, for he prevented Czar Vladimir from overrunning Krak6w as he planned, he is this city’s savior; but he may never enjoy more fame than here, than now.”
I am of the pure blood? The bastard never said!
While Djinghiz was still recovering from that new shock, he feit a touch on his right arm. He glanced round to find Paluka regarding him with a wry expression.
“You performed a service for me also,” he grunted.
“I? How? Why in the world should a Maori want to kill the Czar? ’ ’
"Not him, but—Oh, ask the fount of wisdom opposite! He knows more about us than we do ourselves!” To vent his repressed annoyance Paluka seized his wine goblet; finding it empty, he crushed it with his bare hand.
Truly this was not a man to cross. Djinghiz appealed, mutely and anxiously, to Ismail.
“If not the Czar,” the eunuch murmured, “who?”
“The—the Maori ambassador?”
“Yes!” Paluka rasped.
“Because—uh, excuse me, but—because he forbade you to wear the honorable tattoos that . . . ?” Djinghiz’s voice failed him as he realized , not for the first time, how little he knew of the world beyond his own city and his own Tartar people. Paluka was gently shaking his great head.
“No, that was the decision of my own family, and I respect their reasons. They foresaw, having some such gifts as Ismail ”—he omitted any honorific, implying that he had recognized his host as one of his own kind— “that a powerful man would arise intent on conquest, and he would admire the kind of warfare practiced by Asians and Europeans: not a cleanly battle hand to hand, but using weapons to kill from far away, even to batter cities down with all their citizens. Our—not mine, but my country’s—late ambassador was traveling with the Czar to spy out his empire’s weaknesses. He was plotting to split Japan from Russia—China too, if he could. We Maoris were then to inherit the leavings.”
His voice rose to a pitch of intensity. “But are we sharks, that swallow anything the currents drift their way? Are we carrion-eating birds that peck at floating carcasses? Or are we honest warriors and sailors? We don’t need to burn down cities to prove our bravery, any more than we need compasses to prove our skill in navigation! We have our history . . . that is, most of us do”—with a rueful glance at his arm. “It should suffice.”