The palace grounds flooded with music, dozens of melodies collapsing into one ear-ringing, chest-pounding sound. There was the constant clash of cymbals and piercing chime of bells, overlaid with the mad piping and bellowing of horns and flutes and the screeching of sinew-stringed fiddles. Singers too, giving voice to so many different songs that one could only catch fragments of verses at a time—heroic epics, songs of praise for the heavens and the mountains and the Khagan, short ribald tunes sung in a drunken roister, and low, droning throat singing. And beneath all that the steady beat of great drums, like a heartbeat, like the whole palace had become one giant body and all the revelers were the blood in its veins.
Cups of wine were shoved in Lian’s face as she tried to thread her way through the revelers that packed the eastern courtyard to overflowing. Fire pits blazed with such reckless ferocity that she steered well clear, frightened by the way the flames capered and gestured, seductive fingers summoning the drunk and the addled into a fiery embrace. The air was odoriferous with spices, both familiar and exotic, all so mouth-wateringly fragrant that she no longer had the strength to resist when a woman thrust a reed basket filled with warm flatbread at her. Lian dropped a few coins into her hands and accepted a still warm disk in return. She bit into the soft flatbread with relish, savoring the sweet heat of baked onions on her tongue.
She wolfed down the bread, sating a hunger she had refused to acknowledge, and once the bread was gone, she returned her attention to her immediate goal. The celebration was a marvelous spectacle, attracting visitors from across the empire and beyond. It was an endless party that would span many days, and at some point during this chaotic carousal, she might be able to escape.
Slipping out of the palace had been, as always, simple. All she had to do was walk behind any group of concubines or servant girls, or use one of the many unguarded side passages, a trick she had done on occasion when she wished to enjoy some solitude—a threadbare illusion of freedom. Actually escaping the city, however, was much harder.
She had tried to escape once before, very early in her captivity. Naively she had thought it would have been fairly easy to secure passage on a caravan, and once the wagons had left the city, she would vanish. But on the second day of their journey, an arban of the Khagan’s Torguud had surrounded the caravan, demanding her return. Back to the gilded cage of Karakorum.
After that, Master Chucai was much more vigilant. She was a valuable prize, after all, one he had spent considerable time and expense shaping into a useful tool. He could not watch her himself—his duties to the Khagan kept him otherwise occupied, of course—but he could keep himself appraised of her activities. She had to report to him every morning and evening, detailing the list of her lessons and engagements since their last meeting; she knew some of the serving staff were his spies within the palace (she took care to figure out which staff were the most likely suspects), and the concubines were altogether too gossipy. On the rare occasion when she was waylaid by an assignation, she found he already knew when she hurried to tell him.
She—like everyone else within the confines of the walls of Karakorum—was supposed to live in constant awareness that Chucai knew everything that went on at court. What hope could she have for escape if there was no way that she could move about the palace and its grounds without Chucai knowing? Even if she did manage to slip out of the city, how much of a head start would she get before Chucai sent the Khagan’s best trackers after her?
The open steppe wasn’t open enough to hide her. She needed to utterly vanish. She couldn’t rely on some caravan or trader to spirit her away. She had to disappear on her own, at such a time and in such a way that there would be enough confusion about her disappearance that she might get far enough away.
The festival was her chance. If she could use the chaos and confusion of the celebration to muddy her trail, it might be impossible for Master Chucai and his trackers to work out her escape route once they finally realized she was gone.
Part of her wanted to just walk out the front gates of the palace. To take nothing with her. To simply leave. But she knew it wouldn’t be that easy. She had to have a plan. She had to get a sense of the routines of the guards, of the ebb and flow of the crowds.
Wrapping her thin cloak more tightly around herself, Lian made her way through the crowded courtyard toward the gate. More than once, she wished she were taller. She could barely see the gilded dragons that festooned the top of the faux-Chinese barrier that was her destination. But being taller would also attract attention…