And indeed it had been, and it was not over yet. I tottered to my chambers like a hard-hunted and much-torn hare getting to its burrow just one jaw snap ahead of the hounds. The rooms were dark and empty, but I did not mistake them for any safe burrow. The Wali Achmad could very well know that I was alone and unattended—he might even have had the palace stewards arrange it so—and I decided to sit up all night, awake and full-dressed. I was too utterly tired to disrobe, in any case, but so very drowsy that I wondered how I could fend off sleep.

I had no sooner sunk down on a bench than I was jolted wide awake, to hunted-hare awareness, as my door silently swung open and a dim light shone in. My hand was already on my knife when I saw that it was only a maidservant, unarmed, no menace. Servants usually coughed politely or made some premonitory noise before entering a room, but this one had not because she could not. She was Hui-sheng, the silent Echo. The palace stewards might have neglected to provide attendants for me, but the Khan Kubilai never neglected or forgot anything. Even with all his press of other concerns, he had remembered his latest promise to me. Hui-sheng came in carrying a candle in one hand and cradled in the other arm—perhaps she worried that I would not recognize her without it—that white porcelain incense burner.

She set it down on a table and came across the room, smiling, to me. The burner was already charged with that finest quality tsan-xi-jang incense, and she brought with her the fragrance of its smoke, the scent of clover fields that have been warmed in the sun and then washed by a gentle rain. I was immediately, blessedly refreshed and heartened, and I would always thereafter associate Hui-sheng and that aroma inseparably. Long years afterward, the very thought of Hui-sheng reminds me of the incense, or the actual smell of such a fragrant field reminds me of her.

She took from her bodice a folded paper and handed it to me, and held the candle so I could read. I had been so nicely calmed and newly invigorated, by the sweet sight of her and the sweet scent of clover, that I opened the paper without hesitation or apprehension. It bore a thicket of black-inked Han characters, incomprehensible to me, but I recognized the big seal of Kubilai stamped in red over much of the writing. Huisheng raised an ivory small finger and pointed to another word or two, then tapped her own breast. I understood that—her name was on the paper—and I nodded. She pointed to another place on the paper—I recognized the character; it was the same as on my own personal yin—and she shyly tapped my chest. The paper was the deed to ownership of the slave girl Hui-sheng, and the Khan Kubilai had transferred that title to Marco Polo. I nodded vigorously, and Hui-sheng smiled, and I laughed aloud—the first joyful noise I had made in ever so long—and I caught her to me in an embrace that was not passionate or even amorous, but only glad. She let me hug her small self, and she actually hugged back with her free arm, for we were celebrating the event of our first communication.

I sat down again and sat her beside me, and went on holding her close like that—probably to her extreme discomfort and bewilderment, but she never once wriggled in complaint—all through that long night, and it seemed not long at all.

3

I was eager to make my next communication to Hui-sheng—actually to make a gift to her—which meant waiting for daylight when I could see what I was doing. But, by the time the first light of dawn shone upon the translucent windowpanes, she had fallen fast asleep in my arms. So I simply sat still and held her, and took the opportunity to look closely and admiringly and affectionately at her.

I knew that Hui-sheng was rather younger than I, but by how many years I never would know, for she herself had no idea of her exact age. Neither could I divine whether it was owing to her youth or her race—or just her personal perfection—but her face did not loosen and sag in sleep as I had seen other women’s faces do. Her cheeks, lips, jaw line, all remained firm and composed. And her pale-peach complexion, seen close, was the clearest and most finely textured I ever saw, even on statues of polished marble. The skin was so clear that, at her temples and just under either ear, I could trace the faint-blue hint of delicate veins beneath, glowing through the skin the way the Master Potter’s paper-thin porcelain vases showed their inside-painted designs when held to a light.

Another thing I realized while I had this chance to examine her features so closely. I had previously believed that all the men and women of these nations had narrow, slitlike eyes—slant eyes, Kubilai had once called them—barren of eyelashes, expressionless and inscrutable. But now I could see that it was only a matter of their having just a tiny extra inner corner to their upper eyelids that made the eyes look so, and then only from a distance. Up close, I could see that Hui-sheng’s eyes were most gorgeously equipped with perfect fans of perfectly fine, long, gracefully curved black lashes.

And when the increasing daylight in the room finally roused her and she opened her eyes, I could see that they were, if anything, even larger and more brilliant than those of most Western women. They were a rich, dark, qahwah brown, but with tawny glints inside them, and the whites around them were so pure-white that they had almost a blue sheen. Hui-sheng’s eyes, when first opened, were perceptibly brimming with leftover dreams—as anyone’s are at waking—but as they took cognizance of the real and daytime world, her eyes became lively and expressive of mood and thought and emotion. They were different from Western women’s eyes only in that they were not so readily readable; not inscrutable at all, merely requiring of a looker some attention and some caring to see what message they held. What a Western woman’s eyes have to tell, they usually tell to anyone who will look. What was in Hui-sheng’s eyes was ever discernible only to one—like me—who really wanted to know, and took the trouble to gaze deep and see it.

By the time she woke, the morning was full upon us, and it brought a scratching at my outer door. Hui-sheng of course did not hear it, so I went to open the door—with some caution, being still apprehensive of who might be calling. But it was only a matched pair of Mongol maidservants. They made ko-tou and apologized for not having been earlier in attendance, and explained that the palace’s Chief Steward had only belatedly realized that I was without servants. So now they had come to inquire what I would eat to break my fast. I told them, and told them to bring enough for two, and they did. Unlike my earlier servants, the twins, these maids seemed to have no objection to serving a slave in addition to myself. Or maybe they took Hui-sheng to be a visiting concubine, and possibly of noble blood; she was pretty enough, and noble enough in her bearing. Anyway, the maids served us both without demur, and hovered solicitously nearby while we dined.

When we were done, I made gestures to Hui-sheng. (I did this most awkwardly, with broad and unnecessary flourishes, but in time she and I would get so accomplished in sign language, and so well attuned, that we could make each other understand even complex and subtle communications, and with movements so slight that people around us seldom noticed them, and marveled much that we could “talk” in silence.) On this occasion, I wished to tell her to go and bring to my chambers—if she wished to do so—all her wardrobe and personal belongings. I clumsily ran my hands up and down my own costume, and pointed to her, and pointed to my closets, and so on. To a less perceptive person, it might have seemed that I was directing her to go and garb herself, as I was dressed at the time, in Persian-style male attire. But she smiled and nodded her understanding, and I sent the two maids with her to help carry her things.