“There is no message,” Toregene snarled.
But ?gedei heard him—and not only heard him but wanted to hear more. To Gansukh’s surprise, the Khagan motioned his wife to silence. Grunting, he pushed himself upright on the couch. “Tell me,” he sighed.
Thinking quickly—this was his only chance—Gansukh tried to piece together a plan. He had to get the Khagan out of his chambers, had to get him to where there were more people. When the Khagan fell into his drink’s dark grasp tonight—and Gansukh was now certain that he would—he would need someone to slow his descent, or at the very least pull him back.
“M-m-master Chucai requests your p-presence,” Gansukh lied, his tongue stumbling at this audacity. “Your warriors were inspired by your speech today. They want to show you their devotion. You should be seen, my Khan.”
Toregene gave him such a hateful stare that Gansukh’s skin itched as if she had drawn a bow on him.
I just have to get him away from her. Away from all of them...
*
The dancer twisted and swayed like a tree in the wind. Firelight made the gold threads in his belt twinkle, and the fabric of his red robe seemed to crawl and writhe on his body. He jigged a merry circle, his arms undulating to the rhythm of the horse-head fiddle. A crowd surrounded the pair, enraptured by both song and dance, mesmerized by how the two twined together.
All the tribes were demonstrating their traditional dances this evening. Chucai had said it had been his decree—this demonstration of tribal heritages so that all Mongols would learn each other’s history and character—but he could not recall making such a noble resolution.
?gedei slumped in his gilded chair and stroked his beard. In fact, he could not even recall leaving his chambers. Yet he had, and now he was out here, in the open courtyard of his palace, trying not to be sick. All this motion and noise. I wish they’d all go away and let me be. Let me drink...
The fiddler’s tempo increased, his bow skillfully gliding along the strings, and the dancer kept perfect pace. The fire behind him cast a long shadow over the ground, a tall partner matching and exaggerating each gesture. A breeze, stirred up by the energy of the revelers and the bright fire, lifted the plaintive melody aloft, making it run free, like the wild horse in the heart of every man.
?gedei could not move his limbs, and his head felt as if it were packed with earth. Trapped—prisons within prisons. The words kept repeating themselves in his head, and he tried to understand them. He tried to figure out where they had come from, what they meant, and why they frightened him so. He couldn’t walk, but he could raise his arm. Raising his arm was easy. It came up like so—and with it, a cup of wine. The big vessel rested against his lip naturally, and without any more effort, he could tip it back and let the wine flow into his mouth. Some of it escaped, dripping down his chin, and when he lowered the cup, he saw drops had stained his robe, a dark blotch just above the embroidered dragon’s claw. He tried to flick it away, and when it didn’t vanish, he rubbed it harder, which only served to make the stain bigger. Trapped, he thought, scraping his fingernail across the silk. I just have to get it out.
The crowd was not paying any attention to him. They stared at the dancer, rapt, swaying unconsciously to the music. These two caste-men were all they cared about, while he, the Khagan, was invisible. He jerked the cup to his lip, drinking deeply; the wine stung his mouth, but when it flowed inside him, it warmed him, an insulating blanket that kept him safe from all the noise and light of the world.
He focused, blearily, on the dancer.
...dare he...do... ?gedei thought, or had he said those words aloud? Inside was blending with outside. His spirit was being crushed beneath the enormous weight of his robes, of what they represented, of who he was supposed to be. Prisons within prisons. Only a faint persistent nausea reassured him that he even still had a body. “I’m...rullr of...” No one paid him any attention. Maybe he had just thought the words this time. Rullr... What had he said or thought he had said? Everything was running together, the way blood and mud ran together in the rain.
He stood, or he thought he stood; it was getting so very hard to tell. He felt like a child’s toy, or worse, like he was watching someone play with a child’s toy.
The crowd had lost interest in the dancer, finally turning their attention toward him. Look at me. He stretched, growing taller than his skin allowed, and lurching unsteadily, he stumbled toward the red-robed dancer.
The man’s face was long where it should be narrow, pitched where it should be open. His arms spread like bird wings. ?gedei snorted, blowing snot out of his nose, and then giggled. How could this man even pretend to be a dancer? Could they not see how ugly he was? The man stumbled toward the edge of the crowd, flapping his bird wings in alarm. ?gedei laughed, and flapped his arms too. Watch me fly. Watch me dance. The ground tilted beneath him, and watching from a vast distance, he grew worried about that child’s toy. It was about to fall over—
He caught himself at the last second and spun around. The faces of the crowd swirled past, a crazy panorama of heads, lips, eyes—laughing, shouting, smiling, crying. They loved him. He could see the glow of adoration on all their faces, and the energy of their affection made him spin faster.