Chucai peered at Gansukh. “Then what is distracting you from your education?”
Neither answered, and Gansukh dared not glance at her this time. His heart beat quickly, and he wiped his hands on his pants. Is she thinking the same thing?
“I see,” said Chucai, leaning back and tugging at the few long hairs on his cheek. “Perhaps you need to refocus your efforts. Both of you.”
Gansukh controlled his breathing. As stung as he was by Master Chucai’s words—as well as by the implication therein—he couldn’t so easily forget what he had witnessed in the throne room.
“Master Chucai—” Lian began, but Gansukh cut her off.
“What goals are those?” he demanded. “Yours? The empire’s? ?gedei’s? Chagatai Khan sent me to help the Khagan, and I thought my mission was simply to stop his drinking, but now I am confused. Now I wonder if the assistance the Khagan needs is far greater than taking away his drink…” His words stumbled to a stop. He found himself unwilling to say more, fearing he had already said too much. Arrow for a tongue…
A tiny muscle twitched in Master Chucai’s cheek, making the corner of his mouth lift, as if he might smile. Or he might have been trying to suppress a roar of outrage. Gansukh wasn’t sure which, but like a standoff with a wounded predator, he knew it was best to show no fear. To give no ground until his adversary made the next move.
Master Chucai almost seemed to deflate a little in his saddle. “Plain speech,” he sighed, allowing his gaze to rove out across the land of grass. “In the court, the more refined refer to this as the ‘country eye,’ and they whisper of it as if they fear its coming. The horrible day when the horsemen would follow this longing gaze back to the plains of grass, back to chasing the endlessly migrating herds. Back to…oblivion.” A thin smile creased his lips. “The court, however, would be vastly improved if there were more men like you, young Gansukh, and fewer of the two-faced creatures that surround ?gedei now.”
This caught Gansukh off guard. Lian was surprised by Chucai’s candor as well.
“I need to speak plainly with you, Gansukh—that is why I followed you out here.” Master Chucai sounded tired. “It is possible that even if you succeed in reducing the Khagan’s drinking, we will still have accomplished nothing.”
“I do not…” Gansukh met Chucai’s gaze, and in the older man’s small, dark eyes Gansukh saw conflicting emotions: hope and resignation, elation and exhaustion. He said “we.” Chucai did understand his confusion. Gansukh had witnessed ?gedei’s frustrated outburst, the Khagan’s desperate cry for someone to share his view of the world, to understand his country eye, and while he hadn’t confided that information to Chucai, it was apparent such information would not be news to Chucai.
Gansukh was startled. If we accomplish nothing, then what has been saved? Was Chucai suggesting the very thought he had been turning over in his head before they arrived? The idea felt like a betrayal, not just of the Khagan, but of the whole of the Mongolian Empire, and he immediately wished he could undo it, that he could wipe his mind clean and go back to the innocent na?veté he had been full of on the first day he had rode into Karakorum.
Was ?gedei Khan worthy of leading the empire?
“The Khagan is great,” he muttered, trying to muster some enthusiasm for what those words meant, but he felt off balance, his mind and spirit fractured by the revelation he had seen—reflected—in Chucai’s expression.
Chucai was still looking at him. “The empire must be great, Gansukh. Not just the Khagan. You have seen what lies beneath the mask, haven’t you? Not just the Khagan, but everything—and everyone—around him. It is our duty to help him. It is our duty to help the empire. Your duty.”
“Why me?” Gansukh asked.
Chucai laughed. “Why not?”
“But it is…too great…”
“Of course it is,” Chucai snorted. “No one person can change the course of the empire, and yet one man created this very empire.” He swept an arm out to indicate the open steppe. “Before Temujin brought the clans together, this was just grasslands. Before ?gedei inherited the empire, Karakorum was nothing more than a few tents clustered around the river. Look at it now. All change happens because one man wants something different. ?gedei has forgotten this; most of the men who cluster around him and dog his steps don’t want the world to change—as much as they claim otherwise.
“You are not special, Gansukh,” Chucai continued. “When you came to Karakorum, you were nothing more than a bumbling warrior from the steppe, regardless of all the glory heaped on your shoulders from your exploits on the edge of the empire. You were nothing to the court; you still may account for nothing. But…” Chucai stopped with a shrug.