Marveling at the assassin’s agility and daring—such a leap was clearly the sign of a desperate man—Gansukh reversed his course and raced for the garden. With a grunt, he hauled himself up and over the wall. He landed easily and pushed his way through the hedges toward the vibrating ash tree.
Stones rattled on the path beyond the cluster of trees, and Gansukh tried to remember the route the path took through the manicured maze of trees and bushes. As he remembered it, the track wound haphazardly through the long rectangular space of the garden—clearly not a tactical route. More often than not, he had been distracted when he had been in the garden during the day. Gansukh dashed beneath a willow, its long branches whipping his face and shoulders, and found himself at one end of the long central clearing.
Not far, in fact, from where the deer he had shot earlier that day had been standing.
Ahead—to the north, he thought as he oriented himself—he spotted movement. A figure in dark clothes, nearly invisible in the shadows of the garden, but betrayed by spears of moonlight. Gansukh sprinted after him, trying to close the gap.
There was a gate in the northern wall of the garden and a guardhouse as well. Perhaps the assassin was running blindly and didn’t know what lay ahead of him, but Gansukh couldn’t rely on that chance. The man had gotten all the way into the palace. Surely he knew enough of the buildings and the Khevtuul’s routines to plan both his assault and his escape. And if he didn’t…
At Kozelsk, their plan had gone awry almost immediately, and he had to improvise a solution. He could still remember that feeling, that panic that gave way to a singular focus. Choices became easier. Survival became all-important. Nothing else mattered.
The assassin veered right, disappearing from the path, and Gansukh waited until he was past a large clump of cedar trees before dodging right as well. The eastern wall. While taller than the wall between the garden and the main compound, the outer wall of the palace wasn’t intended to repel intruders so much as it was meant to separate the Khagan and his court from the sprawl of Karakorum. It wasn’t wide enough to post guards on, but it was higher than a man could jump—even from horseback.
Behind him, Gansukh heard voices shouting, and when he spared a glance over his shoulder, he saw some of the trees outlined with orange light. Torches. The Khevtuul had figured out the assassin’s ploy too, and were now charging into the garden. He thought he could make out the word “two,” and then an arrow rushed by, nearly clipping his head.
In the confusion, they had mistaken him for another intruder.
Lian had finished brushing her long hair when she heard the faint cry of alarm. Within moments the corridor outside her room was filled with the sound of running feet. She threw a long jacket over her light silk robe and went to investigate the commotion. As she left the narrow confines of her room, she was immediately swept up in the flood of similarly half-clad bodies. She tried to piece together a coherent story from the snatches of conversation she heard in the tumultuous rush toward the building’s exit. A fire in the storehouses, an attack by the Khagan’s enemies, an assassin sent by the Chinese to kill the Khagan as he sat for his evening meal, a dozen assassins, each trained in a different manner of swift and silent execution—there was no coherence in the stories, she realized; they were all equally true and false. Panic was the only constant.
Outside was no less chaotic, and the concubines and courtly ladies huddled together like clusters of clucking chickens while the Khevtuul swarmed like an outraged hive of bees. Their attention was directed toward the palace, and Lian drifted like a ghost through the confusion until she reached the edge of the wide avenue around the central building. Ahead, on the western side of the palace, a flurry of Khevtuul boiled around a pair of lumps on the ground, and as Lian wandered closer, she realized the bodies were wearing the same garb as the guards around them.
She let out the breath she had been holding as she realized she had been worried that one of the bodies might have been Gansukh. Chiding herself for her reaction—as well as acting like a simple country girl where the young warrior was concerned—she turned to return to her quarters, but she paused when she heard Master Chucai’s voice.
He was striding toward her, a black cloud that eclipsed the play of torchlight behind him. “What are you doing?” he demanded.
She clutched her jacket closed and dropped her gaze toward the ground. “There was a great deal of excitement amongst the ladies of the court,” she said. “Like them, I was concerned for my safety.”
Chucai growled in his chest, a noise not unlike distant thunder. “Go back to your room,” he snapped. “Gather up the—” He flapped a long sleeve at the cluster of women. “Take them with you. It isn’t safe. You should be inside.”