I said anxiously, “I understand that the woman was sentenced to the Death of a Thousand.”

Contemptuously disregarding the paper money, he scooped the coins into his belt purse, and said, “No.”

“No?” I echoed, hopefully.

“The warrant specified the Death Beyond a Thousand.”

I was briefly stunned, and then afraid to ask for elucidation. I said, “Well, can that be suspended for a time? Until I can fetch a revocation order from the Khakhan?”

“It can,” he said, rather too readily. “If you are certain that that is what you want. Mind you, Lord Marco—that is your name? I thought I remembered you. I am honest in my transactions, Lord Marco. I do not sell goods sight unseen. You had best come and take a look at what you are buying. I will refund your—token of appreciation—if you ask it.”

He turned and tripped across the chamber to the iron-studded door, and held it open for me, and I followed him into the inner chamber, and—dear God—I wish I had not.

However, in my desperate urgency to rescue Mar-Janah, I had neglected to bear in mind certain things. She, simply in being a beautiful female Subject, would have inspired the Fondler to inflict his most infernal tortures, and to drag them out as cruelly long as possible. But more than that. The warrant would have told him that Mar-Janah was the spouse of one Ali Babar, and it would have been an easy matter for Master Ping to discover that Ali was the onetime slave who had visited these very chambers, to the Fondler’s extreme disgust. (He had said in revulsion, “Who … is … this?”) And Ping would have remembered that that slave was my slave, and that I had been an even more obnoxious visitor. (I had, not knowing that he understood Farsi, called him “this simpering enjoyer of other people’s torments.”) So he would have had every excuse for exerting himself to the utmost in his attentions to the condemned Subject, who was wife to the lowly slave of Marco Polo, who had once so brashly insulted him. And now he had the very same Marco Polo before him, abjectly suppliant and pleading and cringing. The Fondler was not just willing, but fiendishly eager and proud, to show me the handiwork he had wrought—and to let me realize that it had resulted, in no small part, from my own foolhardy impertinence.

In the stone-walled, torch-lighted, blood-warmed, gore-spattered, nauseously reeking inner chamber, Master Ping and I stood side by side and looked at the room’s central object, red and shiny and dripping and ever so slightly steaming. Or rather, I looked at it, and he looked sideways at me, gloating and waiting for my comment. I said nothing for a while. I could not have done, for I was repeatedly swallowing, determined not to let him hear me retch or see me vomit. So, probably to goad me, he began pedantically to explain the scene before us:

“You realize, I trust, that the Fondling has been going on for some time now. Observe the basket, and in it the comparatively few papers still unpicked from it and unfolded. Only those eighty-seven papers are left, because I had this day got to the nine hundred and thirteenth of them. You may believe it or not, but just that single paper has occupied my entire afternoon, and kept me working this late into the evening. That was because, when I unfolded it, it was the third directive to the Subject’s ‘red jewel,’ which was somewhat hard to find in all that mess down there between the thigh stumps, and which of course had already received attention twice before. So it required all my skill and concentration to—”

I was able finally to interrupt him. I said harshly, “You told me this was Mar-Janah, and she was still living. This thing is not she, and it cannot conceivably be alive.”

“Yes, it is, and yes, it is. Furthermore, she is capable of staying alive, too, with proper treatment and care—if anyone were unkind enough to want her to. Step closer, Lord Marco, and see for yourself.”

I did. It was alive and it was Mar-Janah. At the top end of it, where must have been the head, there hung down, from what must have been the scalp, a single matted lock of hair not yet torn out by the roots, and it was long—a woman’s hair—and it was still discernibly ruddy-black in color, and curly—Mar-Janah’s hair. Also the thing made a noise. It could not have seen me, but it might dimly have heard my voice, through the remaining aperture where an ear had been, and perhaps even recognized my voice. The noise it made was only a faint bubbling blubber of sound, but it seemed feebly to say, “Marco?”

In a controlled and level voice—I would not have believed that I could manage that—I remarked to the Fondler, almost conversationally:

“Master Ping, you once described to me, in loving detail, the Death of a Thousand, which is what this seems to me to be. But you called this one by another name. What is the difference?”

“A trivial one. You could not be expected to notice. The Death of a Thousand, as you know, consists of the Subject’s being gradually reduced —by the cutting off of bits, and slicings and probings and gougings and so on—a process prolonged by intervals of rest, during which the Subject is given sustaining food and drink. The Death Beyond a Thousand is much the same, differing only in that the Subject is given nothing but the bits of herself to eat. And to drink, only the—what are you doing?”

I had taken out my belt knife and plunged it into the glistening red pulp that I took to be the remains of Mar-Janah’s breast, and I gave the haft the extra squeeze to ensure that all three blades stabbed deep. I could only hope that the thing was more certainly dead than before, but it did seem to slump a little more limply, and it did not make any more utterances. In that moment, I remembered how I had protested to Mar-Janah’s husband, a long time ago, that I could never knowingly kill a woman, and he had said casually, “You are young yet.”

Master Ping was speechlessly grinding his teeth at me, and glaring at me with furious eyes. But I coolly reached out and took from him the silk cloth with which he had wiped his hands. I used it to clean my knife, and rudely tossed it back at him as I closed up the knife and returned it to my belt sheath.

He sneered hatefully and said, “An utter waste of the most refined finishing touches yet to come. And I was going to accord you the privilege of looking on. What a waste!” He replaced the sneer with a mocking smile. “Still, an understandable impulse, I daresay, for a layman and a barbarian. And you had, after all, paid for her.”

“I have not done paying for her, Master Ping,” I said, and shoved past him and went out.

2

I was anxious to get back to Buyantu, worried that she might have got restless by now, and I would gladly have put off telling Ali Babar the sad news. But I could not leave him wringing his hands in the Purgatory of not knowing, so I went to my old chambers, where he was waiting. In a pretense of cheerfulness, he made a sweeping gesture and said:

“All restored and refurnished and redecorated. But no one thought to assign you new servants, it seems. So I will stay tonight, in case you should need … .” His voice faltered. “Oh, Marco, you look stricken. Is it what I fear it is?”

“Alas, yes, old comrade. She is dead.”

Tears started in his eyes, and he whispered, “Tanha … hamishè … .”

“I know no easier way to tell it. I am sorry. But she is free of captivity and free of pain.” Let him, at least for now, think that she had had an easy death. “I will tell you, another time, the how and the why of it, for it was an assassination, and unnecessary. It was done only to hurt you and me, and you and I will avenge it. But tonight, Ali, do not question me and do not stay. You will wish to go and grieve by yourself, and I have many things to do—to set our vengeance in train.”