Where She Goes, Act One: Lies in the Afterglow, Mercy in the Sand

The year is 632. In China, the sixth year of Zhenguan.

That year, in Chang’an in the east, the Tang emperor sits on a throne that has only just settled under him, and his edicts go out along the post roads and the rivers in every direction. Far away in the west the Sasanian capital is still standing, and the crown of the royal house has already cracked.

The world you were born into is going out of order and into disorder. Byzantium to the west, the Arabs to the south, the Turkic khaganate to the north-east: all of them are watching you.

There was a time when Sasanian scribes wrote the history down, when Sasanian priests lit the sacred fire, when Sasanian nobles kept the old family names. People believed then that kingship came from blood, that blood was tied to the will of god, and that the will of god held this plateau, these valleys, these snow mountains and salt flats together in one net. That order once held up a boundless territory: from the good soil of Mesopotamia to the brown ridges of the highlands, almost everybody walked inside that net.

Now the net is full of holes, like a candle in the wind.

In twenty-odd years more than a dozen rulers have gone past the throne like figures on a turning lamp. The last two were queens, Boran and Azarmidokht. On the eve of the empire’s collapse they tried to hold it together, played against the great ministers, even tried to make peace with Byzantium — and in the end neither of them escaped assassination. Through civil war and invasion the royal line has been all but slaughtered out, the crown is paralysed, the provincial warlords and the nobles each go their own way, and the country is one step from chaos.

Put your ear to the chest of the empire and the first thing you hear is not a strong heartbeat. It is a dry crack, like timber breaking.

And still the empire has not fallen.

The worse the season, the harder the front must be held. The gifts sent to the great country in the east cannot look shabby; the dignity of the royal house must not come apart on the post road. And so rare birds, strange beasts, spices, cloth, gold vessels and medicines, together with documents written in the correct titles and the correct courtesies, are loaded into wooden crates and baggage carts and start east along the Silk Road.

It is an ancient road. It is also a long one.

When you actually step into the wind and the sand, what hits your face first is not the grand phrasing of the histories. Just as the breaking of the Sasanian empire does not come down out of the sky with a crash, it hides in papers that have stopped working, in the missing flatbread at a post station that has run out, in the rank smell of camels you cannot get away from, in the smell of blood, and in the calm of a caravan master who draws his knife without even lifting his eyelids.

And you are about to see all of it for yourself.

1.1 The whip under the yellow sand

A whip comes down through the long air.

Crack — a sharp sound, like a thin board snapped next to your ear.

You frown, lift a finger’s width of the curtain, and look out.

A guard has the animal handler pressed into the sand, his knee hard against her back, a short curved knife across the side of her neck, a crust of wind-dried blood on the blade’s spine.

Her wrists are thin. The joints stick out of the sand like two twigs about to break.

It is not the first time you have seen somebody killed. It is the first time you have seen a person with blood at the corner of her mouth, a person about to die, turn her face towards a wooden crate and make a very small trilling noise with her tongue.

The sound is strange. Short, light, broken off and started again, like a mother animal quieting its young. A moment ago the thing in the crate was clawing wildly at the bars; after those few notes the scratching suddenly stops. The animal does not understand human speech, and it whimpers towards the woman now the way it would towards its mother.

Nobody in the ring of watchers dares make a sound.

The sky at the horizon is going the colour of dark blood, and the last of the sunset is nearly buried in blown sand. On a road east through the desert, a camp is only a patch of open ground fenced off for the night. The day’s heat is still in the sand; the evening wind already has a chill in it, and it goes down inside your collar and along your back.

The caravan master does not look at the woman.

He bends down and checks the lock on the crate first.

His thick fingers pull at the iron catch, then press the wooden door. Inside, the small animal is breathing hard, but shows no sign of failing. Only then does he look at the woman, as though he had only just noticed she was there.

“If it dies,” he says, “can you pay for it?”

The woman coughs up a mouthful of blood with sand in it, and does not answer.

Her face is pressed into the ground and the cheek is scraped raw, sweat and dust dried into a crust. But the hand nearer the crate still has its fingers curled, tapping the ground lightly, once and once again, for the cub inside. The beat is gentle, as if she were handing over half her own life with it.

Another guard swears and raises the whip higher.

Nobody speaks up for her. What is a woman who trains animals worth, after all? In ordinary times, people with those skills can draw a full circle of applause; in a broken age the same skills only get her tethered beside a more valuable cage, weighed on the scales along with the rare birds and the strange beasts.

The cheapest thing on this road is a life.

The master reaches down and draws his short curved knife half an inch clear of the sheath. The blade catches the last dull red of the dusk.

“Last night you said it was only frightened.” He is looking at the woman. “This morning it foamed at the mouth. This afternoon it threw itself at the bars again. You took my salt cakes and my water, and this is what you give me back?”

At last the woman lifts her eyes. One of them is red-raw from the grit, the white of it threaded with fine blood.

She still does not look at the knife. She keeps her eyes on the gap in the crate.

“It was taken from the litter too early.” She is speaking Sogdian, with a few Turkic words in it, and her voice is badly hoarse. “The driver frightened it in the night. Two more days and the heat sickness gets into its lungs. We have to stop. Change the water. The wet felt has to come off for a moment, or else—”

“Enough of your nonsense!”

The master cuts her off in Persian.

And at that moment the eyes of the outer ring of people all slide away and the air goes still for a beat.

They have caught sight of you.

The wind lifts the thin cloth over the carriage frame and shows a corner of embroidery, dense and finely worked. Such work is rare on this road. The men escorting the train recognise the several wax-sealed leather pouches beside the carriage soon enough, and with them they recognise where your party has come from.

You lift the curtain and put your toe down on the wooden step first.

Fine sand pours in at once over the edge of your shoe.

The evening wind lifts a corner of the veil in front of your face. You see the state of the cleared circle, you see the wet felt over the crate, and you see the woman pinned to the ground. The first thing you notice is the small bell at her waist. She is the lowest kind of slave.

What is strange is that she has blood at her mouth and her life hanging by a thread, and she can still spare the attention to quiet a cub in a box.

The master draws the knife fully, turns, and makes you a not particularly correct bow.

“My lady,” he says. “Forgive the disturbance to your carriage.”

You do not look at him. Your eyes are on the wooden crate.

Iron banding at the corners, wet felt over the top. Crates like that are made for carrying rare birds and strange beasts long distances: light, proof against sun, easy to load onto a camel’s back. But if what is inside is shut up too long under a hard sun, the heat cannot get out, and the cub will certainly die.

The woman is right about that, and your eyes go back to her.

Her fingers are still tapping the ground.

Once. Once. Very lightly.

The scratching in the crate stops again for a moment.

Somebody beside you says quietly, “It’s only an animal handler.”

The master hears it and something like a smile comes onto his face. Now he can pick the thread up. “She has damaged tribute belonging to her masters. I am dealing with it for you. Rules of the road, my lady: cut the knot fast, before it drags out into worse trouble.”

When he says tribute he leans on the word.

The wind comes through the spears and lifts fine sand off the ground and throws it against the side of your face, and against the scraped skin of that woman’s neck.

The guard presses the edge down a little. A thread of blood comes up at once on her neck, very fine, rolling down the skin into the sand. The onlookers hold their breath. Night is settling down by degrees, and only the last of the fire is left along the dark red edge of the sky.

“Stop.”

You have spoken, and now every one of them turns to look at you.

1.2 Under the gold seal

“Stand back. Further back.”

The crowd opens to either side. The low talk cannot be kept down; it comes in one thread after another, like wind under a felt flap.

“It’s her.” “Come from Ctesiphon.” “The Grand Scribe’s daughter.” “The envoy carrying the gold seal east.” “They say her family followed Queen Azarmidokht—”

At that, the voice suddenly drops. Everybody knows that name. Everybody also knows that the woman who bore it is dead.

You are used to these words.

The Grand Scribe’s daughter. The envoy with the gold seal. The young lady of an old noble house.

In the capital these titles no longer work the way they used to. You know it perfectly well. A year ago Queen Azarmidokht, whom your family followed, was killed by assassins, and the old allegiances and oaths went up like smoke in a moment.

What you have been able to bring out with you on this road is a few servants and one layer of old authority that has not quite been stripped off yet.

And yet here, on a wild road a long way from the capital, there are still people who fear that layer.

Because they cannot see the cracks in the court. They can only see you; they can see that your people make you not a servant’s bow and not a soldier’s salute, but the bow given to an envoy, to someone who can hold a seal and give an order. People on the road may not follow which faction at court is pressing down on which, but they understand one thing: the person who receives that bow can decide whether they live or die.

The trouble is that you are twenty.

Not only you know it. Others will see it too.

Lips worn by blown sand, the tiredness that days of hard travel press into a face, the fine dust you have not managed to shake out of your cuffs and your hem — all of it gives you away. Men are very good at watching for those signals. They weigh your age first, then your nerve, and as soon as you give half a step they will feel free to lean in and push you back from royal envoy to a young woman.

You remember your mother straightening your outer robe before you set out, one hand patting your shoulder. Your father stood to one side and said only one thing. Don’t lower your head. If you show no fear, nobody will dare take you lightly.

So you lift your chin, and instead of looking at the blood on the ground you look at the wooden crate.

“Who used the whip?”

Your voice is not loud, and everything around you goes quiet at once.

The master takes half a step forward. “My lady, it is only a slave who looks after the animal—”

“I asked,” you cut in, “who used the whip.”

He stops, and glances to the side. The guard with the whip is frozen where he stands, his hand still round the leather grip, the knuckles white, a leather strap wound round his palm, the bloodied tip of the whip hanging into the sand.

You keep your eyes on him. “The tribute animal in that crate was already frightened, and you dared to crack a whip by its ear. Who gave you leave?”

The guard’s throat moves. “It kept throwing itself at the bars, I — I was only holding it down for the master—”

“Holding it down?” You take a step forward; the sole of your shoe comes onto the edge of thick felt. “Third column of the appendix to the tribute list: live animals sent east are not to be frightened or damaged. You cannot read. Can the master not read either? Or do you all imagine that if you beat the person who looks after it, a valuable tribute animal will settle down by itself?”

The master’s face changes. “My lady, the rules of the road—”

“Can the rules of the road do arithmetic? Then let me do it for you.” You look at him. “If this animal dies, whose fault is it? His, or yours? At the inspection, do they write died of sickness, or mistreated? And when they trace the responsibility, who do you think loses a head first — this guard, or you, the man leading the train, or — me, the envoy?”

The master says nothing.

Everything is quieter. Even the few porters watching have put their heads down. The guard who was kneeling on the woman quietly gets up and puts his knife back in its sheath.

You lift a hand and point at the man with the whip. “Take him.”

The guard’s legs give and he drops to his knees. “Mercy.”

“Mercy?” You look at him. “When you were cracking a whip at a frightened tribute animal, you were not thinking about leaving the rest of us our lives.”

Two of your household men come forward and take him, one on each side, and press him down onto his knees in the sand. You do not lose your temper and you do not raise your voice; you only glance at the master. “He has injured tribute on the list and broken the rules of this caravan. Then do it by the rules. Twenty lashes. Now.”

Sweat stands out at the master’s temple, and he still has to bow his head. “Yes.”

You say, without emphasis, “Take him further off.”

By the time the guard’s screaming reaches you it is already thin with distance, and the cub in the crate still shudders at it. But the woman lying on the ground suddenly lifts her head and fixes her eyes on you. There is still blood at her mouth. There is no gratitude in her eyes, only wariness, like a wild animal driven into a corner that has just realised something more dangerous has arrived.

You meet the look, and say slowly:

“Take the bell off her belt.”

The master is startled. “My lady, she is a slave. She has to wear the bell.”

“She is the one who will get that animal there alive,” you say. “From this moment she is no longer a slave, and is not to be counted among the losses. Put her down as mine. Anyone who touches her from now on touches me.”

The bell comes off the woman’s belt. She follows you into the tent and goes down on her knees at once in the corner. Her posture is obedient enough, and she lifts her head to look at you anyway, breathing heavily, with something in her face you cannot read.

You look back at her.

“Your name.”

You ask in Persian. She keeps her head down and says nothing.

“Your name.”

You ask again in Sogdian, and this time she does lift her head.

“Fire Feather.”

She spits out blood with the words, and what she gives you is a stage name from the road, in Turkic.

It makes no difference. You have it written into the book.

“Fire Feather. Fire, and a feather.”

She freezes, and the look on her face is disbelief, as though she cannot credit that you understood. This time you finally see her eyes properly: a very pale amber, like coloured glass, exactly the same as the cub she keeps.

“I know you are not a trained animal handler by trade. You are one of the players. I have seen your fire dance, in the palace at Ctesiphon.”

You tell her that in Turkic.

1.3 The handler bought with a life

Only when the tent is quiet do you hear your own breathing, a little quick with nerves.

The hangings are down; wind comes in through the gaps. Outside it is full night, too thick to see through.

Fire Feather kneels on the heavy felt with her head bowed. The bruises where her wrists were gripped have gone purple, and the blood has dried onto the skin.

You look into those very pale amber eyes, and for a moment it is as if you were back in the old days.

When you were born, the foundations of the Sasanian house were still there. It had not rotted this fast yet.

The cracks were always there, of course. The wars with the Byzantines had emptied the treasury; on the grasslands to the east the Turks were watching; and to the south the Arab tribes had already stopped being unimportant barbarians out in the desert.

But all of that was a long way from the capital. Far enough to be no different from a story.

For a child like you, Ctesiphon, the Sasanian capital, was the whole world. It was boundlessly large: arches rising, brick walls catching the light, the smell of spice and unguent drifting, gold-threaded cloth blazing in the slanting brightness of the afternoon.

The nobles were still holding their feasts.

The fire altars were still burning. The musicians were still playing. And in those days, the players were still there.

They lived by tricks and illusions, and they came from Transoxiana, from Sogdiana, Tokharistan, the edges of India and the grasslands further north, bringing monkeys that could act, dogs that could tumble, leopard cubs that could take a ring in their teeth, dancing snakes, and a good mouth that could swallow knives and breathe fire and sing. They walked into the banqueting halls of the capital, into the city squares, into the open ground of the festivals.

In peaceful years they were there to amuse people; when things got tense they were brought out to dress the front, so that envoys and nobles could see that the empire was still rich, still able to summon the wonders of other countries in front of their eyes.

As a child you loved them.

Watching the flame turn a feather coat red; watching a handler whistle once and a cub lie down at the edge of the wooden stage with its chin on its paws. Some of the tricks worked with lenses and smoke powder and a practised hand: the people close in could see how it was done, the people further off only marvelled. You were small, and you often took all of it for a genuine miracle.

When you were a little older, your mother pulled you out from behind the pillars and into the study.

They taught you the sacred correctness of Persian, and the haggling of Sogdian, and the threats of Turkic, and the reading of documents in Chinese. You believed then, truly, that you would be like the rest of your house one day: a pen of the empire, writing order for the King of Kings.

You even saw the two legendary queens once.

It was at a festival audience. You were small and stood at the back of the crowd and saw the hems come past before the people did. Queen Boran’s bearing was steady; Queen Azarmidokht’s eyes were colder. The gold thread, the jewels, the royal patterns on them are not what made you remember it.

What you remember is that everyone in that hall plainly had their own calculations, and they still did what ceremony required, still bowed their heads at the titles. As if, so long as those two women were standing there, the last day of the empire could not come.

Then you grew, and the city changed by degrees.

First, the old troupes of players were not often seen. Then, your father saw more people at night and said less by day. Then, more waste paper was burned at home, and there was less laughter.

You went on reciting your translations, went on practising the scripts of all those languages, and something empty began to open inside you.

What was any of it for? Edicts stopped working the moment they left the door; officials were changed faster than the gate guards; the banquets still went on and the musicians still played, and under all that court dress lay a whole layer of rotting timber waiting to fall.

You were eight on the day you learned that this empire would come to nothing.

The schoolroom was close and airless; outside it was loud. You slipped out through a side gallery while the attendant was not looking, meaning to go and see the excitement in the front court. You do not remember which you heard first — shouting, hooves, or the huge noise of somebody kicking a bronze basin over on a stone floor.

You only remember that the sun was very white that day, bright enough to make the dust on the city wall shine; and that the next moment, smoke and voices all went to pieces at once.

Men came into the city.

It was not really a sack of the city; the official histories would not write it that way. It was more like a mutiny, a looting, a purge, or a fight between two factions of the same side. But to an eight-year-old it was the end of the world.

Somebody dragged a bloodied leg past under the arch; somebody fell on the steps; jewellery, shoes, wooden boxes and broken instruments lay everywhere. You hid behind a fallen coloured awning, breathing the stink of burning cloth mixed with blood, your throat full of ash.

You thought you would die there too.

And at that moment a ring of fire went up ahead of you.

Not the loose flames of a burning building — a ring of fire somebody had lit. Fire basins were kicked over one by one, lamp oil went across the ground, and a line of bright tongues sprang up. A player came out of the smoke wearing feathers, with thin gold plates sewn along the edge of her clothes that rang faintly as she moved.

She was leading a small horse. Its mane was braided with coloured cord and there were bells at its ears, and it was not afraid of the fire; it stepped round outside the ring. The woman herself circled the fire too, walking lightly and gracefully. She dropped her waist low, soft as a snake, dipping, turning, the feathers sweeping past the flames; she really was like a bird that had caught fire and refused to burn away.

Everyone around had stopped.

Even the commander on horseback was caught by it — perhaps he found it novel, perhaps he had simply had enough killing and wanted something to amuse him. So the player went on dancing, with her small horse, over the ring of fire and the broken sound of bells, and finished the dance in the middle of all that weeping and wreckage.

She went boldly forward, right up to the commander. The horse carried a wine cup in its teeth and offered wine. Before anyone could see how she did it the cup was in her hand. Facing the commander’s blade, she held out the wine with great elegance.

The firelight was on the side of her face, and you saw that her eyes were a very pale colour, like amber lit from behind.

The commander lifted the hand that held the sword, and slowly pushed up the visor. The player bent and took the cup with her free hand and drank it off at one go. The woman who had been killing like a god of death laughed, and the crowd lived.

You do not remember how you crawled out from behind the awning, or how much blood and how many bodies were left in that street. You only remember that the player saw you. She crouched down and did not ask who you were; she only held out an ash-covered hand in front of you, with an old burn scar on the palm. You put your hand into it, and she took you off that street.

You do not remember what came after. Only your mother’s crying when she held you, and the moment your father’s face went white before he could stop it.

After that there were fewer players in the city than ever.

Some left. Some were absorbed into caravans, into army camps, into the households of great families, and never appeared on their own again. The fire dance disappeared from banquets too, and after a while nobody danced it any more.

When you come back to yourself, the lamp in the tent shakes gently.

Fire Feather is still kneeling there with her head down, sand in her hair that she has not brushed out. You look at her eyes, and ask, suddenly, “How old are you?”

She starts, as though she had not expected that question.

“Twenty-four.” She is not quick to answer, and her Persian is stiff.

Four years older than you.

The last unnecessary probe comes to nothing. In your memory, the player who carried you away from the bodies was older than that.

You are silent a moment, then say, “When I was a child, in Ctesiphon, I saw a fire dance. A woman with a horse, dancing in a ring of fire. She had eyes like yours.”

Fire Feather is quiet for a while, but only a while, and she keeps her head respectfully down.

“That dance was done in a lot of places once.” Her Persian still has the accent that gets mixed together on the trade roads, the ends of the words a little hard. “People in the cities liked to watch. Nobles liked to watch. Then there was less of it.”

“Why?”

She smiles a little, and the split at the corner of her mouth makes her wince. “Because when people are hungry nobody has the heart for a show. After the troubles started, the ones who could dance were either dead or sold. Or else they end up like me, looking after animals and crates for a caravan, trading a life for salt cakes.”

Only now do you realise that her Persian is actually good enough.

“Since you can speak it,” you say, looking at her, “why did you not explain to the master just now?”

Fire Feather looks down and rubs her numb wrist; there are small cuts all over the knuckles. She is quiet a moment before she lifts her eyes to you, with a very faint smile.

“I was busy speaking for myself,” she says. “They’d have taken it out on the little one instead.”

“Blamed it for not behaving. Blamed it for the trouble,” she says. “An animal that small will go down sick just from being frightened for nothing. Let them come at me. People can take more than little things can.”

She says it with an ordinary face. For a moment you cannot find an answer. You only look at those pale eyes, quiet to the point of brightness in the shifting lamplight.

1.4 The queen’s lie in the baggage

You go on east, through Khorasan and on towards Transoxiana. As the empire weakens, this road towards the Tang lands in the east gets more dangerous by the month.

And more of the danger comes from the fact that this train was never simply a tribute mission.

In name, it is going east to the Tang. But the people actually on the road are not only envoys and tribute. There are merchants, hired swords, servants, and those half-hired, half-pledged slaves whose names can be wiped out at any time. Everybody looks like they are going the same way, and everybody has their own reckoning and their own second plan. This train is not much different from the people inside the palace gates at Ctesiphon.

Very few people here are yours.

A handful of household servants, front and back. In the old days a train like this would have been almost shabby. Now it is the last of the people your family could spare you.

A year ago Queen Azarmidokht was assassinated, and the wind inside the palace turned overnight. After that, your family’s standing went with it. The people who used to call on you gradually stopped coming; the people you used to be able to command began looking for other prospects.

By the day you set out, not many were still willing to leave Ctesiphon with you.

The camel train moves slowly. The wind breaks people’s talk into pieces, and the pieces still get into your ears.

“That lady — her line used to write the edicts and keep the ceremonial books for the royal house, didn’t it?” “Of course it’s them. Khosrow II’s line. That family’s got the stiffest heads of anybody.” “What good does a stiff head do? Azarmidokht died anyway, didn’t she.” “Boran won’t last either. I hear she’s badly ill.” “If she goes, who sits down next?” “Whoever has the most soldiers. Never mind blood.”

They keep their voices low, and what they are saying is common knowledge.

What your family served for years was Khosrow II’s line. In the last years the factions were dealt out again and the old houses tore at one another, and families like your father’s — the ones who kept the documents, the seals, the tribute lists and the tribute roads for the centre — naturally preferred to stand with Azarmidokht and Boran. Their blood was the most legitimate, and they could still hold up a name for an empire that was coming apart: the royal house is still here, the line is not broken.

Now that sentence is a joke.

Queen Azarmidokht is dead. Queen Boran is ill. The street talk and the post-road rumours are all guessing whose head the crown falls on next.

Some say a warlord. Some say a puppet somebody props up. Some laugh coldly and say that nobody cares about royal blood any more; staying alive on that seat for a few months would be a remarkable achievement in itself.

You sit between the saddle frames on a camel’s back and say nothing.

You know they are not wrong.

Queen Boran’s illness is the reason you are on this road.

Your father told you himself: Ctesiphon cannot be held much longer, the opposing side watches the palace gates and watches the old officials who are still willing to run errands for the queen. You are to go east, to that ancient country in the east, and seek a medicine that can keep the queen alive. The Tang have physicians, they have pharmacopoeias, and they may be willing to receive an envoy from far away. As long as the person is alive, the line can stay alive. As long as the line is there, ministers like your father have not lost everything.

He also left you a sealed letter.

It is folded narrow and pressed into the innermost layer of the bag you carry against your body, together with the gold seal, your amulet and several folded documents. There is only a name on the outside — Pei Xinggong, Vice Minister of the Court of State Ceremonial.

Your father said that if you really reach Chang’an, do not disturb too many people; put the letter into this man’s hands first. As to why him, your father did not explain. He said only that the man understands ceremony, and knows which seals ought to be recognised.

You slide your hand inside your coat and find the gold seal again.

The edges are cold, hard, heavy. You are always turning it over, because while it is still there you feel you still have hold of one length of order that has not quite been cut. You dare not let go. You hardly dare look at Fire Feather. Everybody on this road has their own designs, and you do not know whether taking her on so abruptly gained you an ally or one more pair of eyes watching you.

“Water.”

Fire Feather’s voice comes from ahead and breaks into your thoughts.

She is leading the pack animal in front, and she turns back and holds up a leather waterskin. She looks after your camel frame, keeps the beasts from crowding you, watches the wind and the line of the sand for you; she is more careful about it than your own servants.

You take the waterskin and do not say much, and your eyes go back to the bag with the seal in it. With all this jolting, the waterskin, the amulet, the sealed letter, the seal and its cord — not one of them can be lost.

And at that moment there is a commotion up ahead.

Fire Feather stops and looks into the distance. You follow her eyes and see that the horizon, which was white a moment ago, is slowly rolling up a deeper black, as if the whole waste had been lifted off the ground.

“Sandstorm,” she says.

This time everybody in the train hears it. The master immediately has people tighten the cargo ropes, the hired swords swear and drive the animals in, the merchants get hold of their own packs and boxes. And in all that noise, somebody at the very front starts shouting:

“A town! There’s a Sogdian oasis town ahead!”

Every pair of eyes goes towards that one blurred yellow-brown shape. As if the last road out, and the last of the hope, were both being staked on it at once.

1.5 The silence of the matron

The sandstorm comes down at dusk.

The sky darkens all at once, the camel bells outside the street go wild, and the wind runs along the foot of the wall and slams the wooden doors.

By the time you step into this great house in Samarkand your boots and your hem are caked with sand. The courtyard is packed with sheltering caravans and camels; the smell of wet felt and dung mixes together and steams up a heavy heat. Lamps shake inside and light up a floor criss-crossed with sand tracks, fallen packs and scattered bundles: it is like a barn torn open by a gale.

The place is part house, part trading station.

The open middle is stuffed with people from every road: Persian merchants with sand on them, grassland guards in thick boots, a few clerks in Sogdian dress, and pedlars and porters who have pushed in from some stretch of road or other. Everybody is filthy and everybody is watchful. The wind outside is getting worse, and nobody wants to be thrown out now.

You have only just sat down when the caravan master comes through the hanging, shakes the sand off himself and mutters, “What a stench in here. Like a feeding trough.”

He is not talking about just anyone. He means that group under the west pillar.

Those few have deep-set eyes and sand in their beards, wrapped in sheepskin, their knives hung very low. Their hands rest on the hilts, and their words come fast and hard: not proper Persian, and not the Sogdian you are used to hearing either.

A guard who has been holding his temper the whole road gets shoved, and answers back at once. Shoulders lock, a wooden stool goes over with a crash. A scabbard strikes a wooden pillar with a ringing clang, and the air in the hall pulls tight as a string.

Your people are already on their feet.

“Don’t—”

You have only just spoken when two of your servants go forward. But the other side is faster: their knives are out at once. The firelight jumps, several cold edges rise and fall together, and the air in the hall feels cut open and sharp.

“Stop it,” you say, raising your voice. “This is a place of shelter. It is not a place for you to draw knives.”

The men look over, with the eyes of wolves.

You say one thing more, this time in the safer official phrasing, bringing in who you are, where you have come from, and the rules of lodging. The hall is quiet for a beat. The leader opposite pulls his mouth sideways and answers you in a string of words.

You do not understand a single one.

It is not that you learned badly. It is that this language was never written into any book: Persian with Sogdian words in it, Turkic in the endings, and a few Chinese obscenities. You stand there and realise all at once that all your documentary phrases and your court courtesies cannot put one whole sentence together here.

He can see it too.

He laughs once, and the men beside him make a noise with him. There is not much enjoyment in the laugh. There is mostly contempt.

Your fingertips go cold. You can neither advance nor retreat. And at that moment Fire Feather comes out from behind your shoulder.

She tries one line in Sogdian first; the man frowns. She changes at once to something more mixed. This time their faces do move. The leader narrows his eyes, looks at her, looks at you, and answers.

Fire Feather tips her head and says quietly, “They ask what you are, and by what right you give them orders here.”

“Tell them,” you say, “that we carry the documents and the gold seal of the royal house.”

Fire Feather says it.

This time he comes a step closer instead. He looks at you the way you would look at a worthless piece of secondhand goods. Fire Feather listens to a few more words and her brows draw in; she drops her voice lower. “They don’t accept it. They say they see people like you all the time on the road. Carry a few sheets of paper, hang a few seals on them, and say you work for the royal house.”

Before she has finished, the leader has already put his hand out.

He grabs the cloth off the case beside you and pulls out a leather pouch. The wax seal is still on it, an old seal pressed into the cord. He holds the thing up and shakes it, his face all mockery. The men beside him egg him on, slapping the scabbard against a palm, once, once again, like a drumbeat calling a man to his death.

Fire Feather takes half a step forward to stop him, and his other hand shoves her hard. Her shoulder hits the pillar and she takes a breath against the pain.

“Give it back,” you say, holding the anger down.

Of course he does not understand. You reach out to take it; this farce has gone on long enough.

The knife comes straight up against you.

When the cold edge touches the side of your neck, what you smell first is the rank animal smell on him and the iron, and then comes a line of stinging on the skin.

The hall goes silent. Even the loudest of the men a moment ago have shut their mouths and are only watching the two of you. He spits out a few more incomprehensible words, gives his hand a shake, and looks as though he really will cut the cord off that pouch.

And at that moment—

An arrow comes through the air and tears the frozen room open.

The next instant the leader screams; his whole hand is pinned through by the shaft, the pouch drops out of it, and blood runs down the arrow and drips onto the brick.

Everyone in the hall is stunned.

Almost at the same moment, several women step out along both sides of the gallery.

They wear short cloaks, their hair bound up, short bows in their hands, and they have closed every way through to the inner court. These Sogdian women have no expression on their faces, like people who have seen this kind of thing many times.

Somebody barks an order in Sogdian. The hall, which was uproar a moment ago, goes frighteningly quiet.

Then you hear a low woman’s voice.

“Which of you thought this place smelled like a feeding trough?”

The voice is not loud, and the hall is quieter still.

The caravan master’s colour changes a little. Cold goes down your back: so that one line, spoken as you came in, was heard after all.

The crowd parts like a river, making way for the woman.

She is not tall, and there is nothing especially rich about her clothes — only a dark robe cut very cleanly, with a narrow band of dark pattern at the cuffs and the collar. She walks slowly, taking in the whole room, as though all these people, goods, knives and blood were a petty quarrel in her yard, not worth mentioning.

Only when she comes under the lamp, and the fire lights her face, do you see the fine lines at the corners of her eyes.

Nobody dares meet her look for long.

Fire Feather moves a little closer to you and speaks so low the breath barely brushes your ear. “That’s the Sogdian matron, Mivani. Everybody here does what she says.”

The name lands, and something in your head knocks gently against something else.

You have heard of them. The Sogdians walk the Silk Road across the desert; they trade, and they broker, carrying news for all sides, making connections, standing surety. The great families of the oases live on couriers and on traffic, and these women see more people in a day than you do in a month, and know things faster than people sitting in a palace do. You have come out of the west carrying an old seal, holding your head up to keep your dignity together; you do not know how much of it is left in her eyes.

The matron does not look at you. She looks at the men who caused the trouble first.

She lifts a hand. Somebody steps forward at once and takes hold of the foreign merchant with the pinned hand. He is still swearing, coarse and unclear. She listens to the end and does not even smile; she only returns a faster string of Sogdian. It hits him like a blow across the face, and he chokes on it.

Fire Feather translates for you, low. “She says a Sogdian mother doesn’t put people out in weather like this to feed the sand. But children who don’t listen get punished by their mother too.”

As she finishes, the matron gives an order to the side. Those men are dragged off without a sound, towards the filthy stables at the back.

Only when they have gone does the hall seem to have room to breathe again.

Now the matron Mivani turns to you.

She looks first at the shallow line of blood on your neck, and then at the pouch on the floor. A servant bends and picks it up and carries it to her in both hands. She takes it, presses the wax seal with the pad of her thumb, rubs the gold work on the cord — unhurried, like somebody feeling an old piece of jade to see whether it is real.

In a moment her expression shifts. The seal is genuine; you can tell that with a touch.

Now at last she speaks, in Persian you can understand, with a little of another country’s accent and very clear.

“You have come from the west,” she says. “Not too late, and not too early.”

You steady your breathing and try to take the fear out of your voice. “We ask only for shelter, water and passage.”

She only asks, “Who else on this road still recognises that seal?”

You pause. “There are still some who do.”

The matron looks at you for a while. There is something in her eyes you cannot name. After a moment she hands the pouch back to the servant and says, without emphasis, “Give them water. Feed the animals. Until the storm stops, nobody draws a knife again.”

At that, the people behind you finally let out their breath.

As she turns to leave, she stops for a moment and says over her shoulder, “The road east is bad just now. When you leave the town, take the way I give you. Don’t be clever and cut corners.”

And with that, not caring whether you have taken it in or not, she walks away with her people.

Only when her back has gone from sight does the hall dare make a noise again. Somebody rights the fallen stools, somebody straightens the packs, somebody quietly goes to wipe the blood off the floor. The caravan master’s face is ugly; he wants to explain something, and in the end says nothing.

After that night you stay in the house for several days.

Water, repairs, axles, letting the horses and camels get their strength back; when the wind drops, new news of the road will come too. Gradually you notice that Fire Feather is more at ease here than she is beside you. She jokes with the men in the stables, sits with the old servant who watches the horses and talks about keeping horses, and goes down to the gallery in the evening to watch those women archers take a bow apart and re-glue it. Players, animal handlers, people who walk the trade roads: their lives are close together, and they have far more to say to each other.

You see that she is not as careful, as silent, as she is with you.

For a moment you genuinely think it would be all right to leave her here.

And while you are still hesitating, she has already come to fetch you. Time to go, she says. It is barely light; the wind still has the coolness that comes after sand, and Fire Feather has already been over the camels, the carriage frame and the waterskins once for you. She works fast and easily and without hesitation, as though she had decided for you a long time ago.

Before you get into the carriage, you look back.

The matron Mivani has not come out. Only her young attendant comes quickly along under the gallery, stops Fire Feather and says a few words close to her ear. Fire Feather listens and takes something, and laughs, pleased. The attendant withdraws at once, as though nothing had happened.

Once you are on the road you cannot help asking: “What did she give you?”

Fire Feather hands the reins to somebody else and bends down to knock the loose dust off the camel’s neck. “Something to keep me safe,” she says lightly.

“Keep you safe how?”

Fire Feather leads on by the reins without turning her head, and only smiles. “It’s useful on the road.”

The wind comes in through the town gate, carrying sand that is not quite up yet.