The Mercy of the Khan

No one expected Khalid to be spared after this debacle. His wife Fedwa was in a state of mourning already, and Esmerine was inconsolable. All the work of the yard stopped. Bahram fretted in the strange silence of the empty workshops, waiting to be given the word that they could collect Khalid's body. He realized he didn't know enough to run the compound properly.

Eventually the call came; they were ordered to attend the execution. Iwang joined Bahram for the trip to Bokhara and the palace there. Iwang was both sad and irritated. 'He should have asked me, if he was so short of cash. I could have helped him.'

Bahram was a little surprised at this, as Iwang's shop was a mere hole in the wall of the bazaar, and did not seem so very prosperous. But he said nothing. When all was said and done he had loved his father in law, and the black grief he felt left little room for thinking about Iwang's finances. The impending violent death of someone that close to him, his wife's father – she would be distraught for months, perhaps for years – a man so full of energy; the prospect emptied him of other thought, and left him sick with apprehension.

The next day they reached Bokhara, shimmering in the summer heat, its array of brown and sandy tones capped by its deep blue and turquoise mosque domes. Iwang pointed at one minaret. 'The Tower of Death,' he noted. 'They'll probably throw him off that.'

The sickness grew in Bahram. They entered the cast gate of the city and made their way to the palace. Iwang explained their business. Bahram wondered if they too would be taken and killed as accomplices. This had not occurred to him before, and he was shaking as they were led into a room that opened onto the palace grounds.

Nadir Devanbegi arrived shortly thereafter. He looked at them with his usual steady gaze: a short elegant man, black goatee, pale blue eyes, a sayyed himself, and very wealthy.

' You are said to be as great an alchemist as Khalid,' Nadir said abruptly to Iwang. 'Do you believe in the philosopher's stone, in projection, in all the so called red work? Can base metals be transmuted to gold?'

Iwang cleared his throat. 'Hard to say, effendi. I cannot do it, and the adepts who claimed they could, never said precisely how in their writing. Not in ways that I can use.'

'Use,' Nadir repeated. 'That's a word I want to emphasize. People like you and Khalid have knowledge that the Khan might use. Practical things, like gunpowder that is more predictable in power. Or stronger metallurgy, or more effective medicine. These could be real advantages in the world. To waste such abilities on fraud… Naturally the Khan is very angry.'

Iwang nodded, looking down.

'I have spoken with him at length about this matter, reminding him of Khalid's distinction as an armourer and alchemist. His past contributions as master of arms. His many other services to the Khan. And the Khan in his wisdom has decided to show a mercy that Mohammed himself must have approved.'

Iwang looked up.

'He will be allowed to live, if he promises to work for the khanate on things that are real.'

' I am sure he will agree to that,' Iwang said. 'That is merciful indeed.'

'Yes. He will of course have his right hand chopped off for thievery, as the law requires. But considering the effrontery of his crime, this is a very light punishment indeed. As he himself has admitted.'

The punishment was administered later that day, a Friday, after the market and before prayers, in the great plaza of Bokhara, by the side of the central pool. A big crowd gathered to witness it. They were in high spirits as Khalid was led out by guards from the palace, dressed in white robes as if celebrating Ramadan. Many of the Bokharis shouted abuse at Khalid, as a Samarqandi as well as a thief.

He knelt before Sayyed Abdul Aziz, who proclaimed the mercy of Allah, and of he himself, and of Nadir Devanbegi for arguing to spare the miscreant's life for his heinous fraud. Khalid's arm, looking from a distance like a bird's scrawny leg and claw, was lashed to the executioner's block. Then a soldier hefted a big axe overhead and dropped it on Khalid's wrist. Khalid's hand fell from the block and blood spurted onto the sand. The crowd roared. Khalid toppled onto his side, and the soldiers held him while one applied hot pitch from a pot on a brazier, using a short stick to plaster the black stuff to the end of the stump.

Bahram and Iwang took him back to Samarqand, laid out in the back of Iwang's bullock cart, which Iwang had had built in order to move weights of metal and glass that camels couldn't carry. It bumped horribly over the road, which was a broad dusty track worn in the earth by centuries of camel traffic between the two cities. The big wooden wheels jounced in every dip and over every hump, and Khalid groaned in the back, semi conscious and breathing stertorously, his left hand holding his pallid, burned right wrist. Iwang had forced an opium laced potion down him, and if it hadn't been for his groans it would have seemed he was asleep.

Bahram regarded the new stump with a sickened fascination. Seeing the left hand clutching the wrist, he said to Iwang, 'He'll have to eat with his left hand. Do everything with his left hand. He'll be unclean for ever.'

'That kind of cleanliness doesn't matter.'

They had to sleep by the road, as darkness caught them out. Bahram sat by Khalid, and tried to get him to eat some of Iwang's soup. 'Come on, Father. Come on, old man. Eat something and you'll feel better. When you feel better it'll be all right.' But Khalid only groaned and rolled from side to side. In the darkness, under the great net of stars, it seemed to Bahram that everything in their lives had been ruined.

Effect of the Punishment

But as Khalid recovered, it seemed that he didn't see it that way. He boasted to Bahram and Iwang about his behaviour during his punishment: 'I never said a word to any of them, and I had tested my limits in jail, to see how long I could hold my breath without fainting, so when I saw the time was near I simply held my breath, and I timed it so well that I was fainting anyway when the stroke fell. I never felt a thing. I don't even remember it.'

'We do,' said Iwang, frowning.

'Well, it was happening to me,' Khalid said sharply.

'Fine. You can use the method again when they chop off your head. You can teach it to us for when they throw us off the Tower of Death.'

Khalid stared at him. 'You're angry with me, I see.' Truculent and hurt in his feelings.

Iwang said, 'You could have got us all killed. Sayyed Abdul would command it without a second thought. If it weren't for Nadir Devanbegi, it might have happened. You should have talked to me. To Bahram here, and to me. We could have helped you.'

' Why were you in such trouble, anyway?' asked Bahram, embold ened by Iwang's reproaches. 'Surely the works here make a lot of money for you.'

Khalid sighed, ran his stump over his balding head. He got up and went to a locked cabinet, unlocked it and drew out a book and a box.

'This came from the Hindu caravanserai two years ago,' he told them, showing them the book's old pages. 'It's the work of Mary the Jewess, a very great alchemist. Very ancient. Her formula for projection was very convincing, I thought. I needed only the right furnaces, and a lot of sulphur and mercury. So I paid a lot for the book, and for the preparations. And once in debt to the Armenians, it only got worse. After that, I needed the gold to pay for the gold.' He shrugged with disgust.

'You should have said so,' Iwang repeated, glancing through the old book.

'You should always let me do the trading at the caravanserai,' Bahram added. 'They know you really want things, while I am ignorant, and so trade from the strength of indifference.'