"Even worse," Michael said. "How could you so presume on our gracious pleasure in appointing you an observer, which we did only to quiet down Babriel, who is besotted with you, for something as trite and unimportant as a seduction, and only an alleged one at that?"

"We are taught that seductions are Bad," Ylith said in a small voice.

"No doubt they are," Michael said. "But you should know by now it is not our policy to step in whenever anyone does something Bad, just as the other side doesn't step in whenever anyone does something Good. Didn't you read about Moral Relativity and the Joining of Opposites in the Angel's Practical Guide to Everyday Earth Matters?"

"I must have missed that one," Ylith said. "Look, don't shout at me, please. I'm just trying to be good and to have everyone else be good."

"Acting ingenuous won't get you out of this one," Michael said. "Angels are supposed to temper Goodness with Intelligence. Otherwise Good would become an insensate, all-devouring force, bad by nature of its totalitarianism if nothing else. And we don't want that, do we?"

"I don't see why not," Ylith said.

"You shall find out. Release the man at once and restore him to his place in this drama. And then report to the Fervor Defusion Center for chastisement and retraining."

"Oh, don't be so hard on the poor girl," Mephistopheles said, seeing a chance to score a point for the magnanimity of Bad. "Let her go on observing. Just no more interfering."

"You hear him?" Michael said.

"I hear and I obey. But to think I'd ever hear an archangel tell me to obey the commands of a demon from Hell!"

"You've got some growing up to do," Michael said. He hitched his towel more closely about him. "And now may I return to my bath?"

"Enjoy," Mephistopheles said. "Sorry to have disturbed you."

He vanished. Ylith quickly collapsed the Mirror Prison. Mack stepped out, blinking. Mephistopheles smiled and disappeared.

"I seem to be back," Mack said. "Did you talk to the princess?"

"Just watch yourself," Ylith said to Mack, and then she disappeared.

CHAPTER 8

After Mack was released from the Mirror Prison, he said good-bye to the bewildered Princess Irene and hurried back to warn Marco of the plot. But getting back to Marco's apartment proved more difficult than leaving it. Mack stumbled into unfamiliar corridors that spiraled up and down steep ramps he couldn't remember passing before. There were many people in the corridors, so many that he thought he had somehow gotten outside the palace, into a covered bazaar that apparently spread for acres around the palace. But then he heard the sound of the royal pipes and drums again and knew he was on the right track. Puffing and out of wind, he finally reached Marco's apartment and burst in without knocking.

"Marco! I have word of the utmost urgency for you!" But he was talking to empty walls, because Marco was no longer there.

Mack realized that some hours must have passed while he was in the mirror maze. It was probably evening now, though you could never tell from inside, since the corridors always had the same even lighting, day and night. He rushed out again, and, with a stroke of luck, found the Banquet Hall without incident. He pushed past the guards and entered.

The celebrations were in full progress. Kublai and the other dignitaries were arranged on the dais as he had seen them that morning. Marco was there, and so was the princess Irene, and so was the court wizard in his star-spangled gown. A small orchestra was tuning up, and on a little stage a Mongol comedian in baggy goatskin pants and painted nose was saying, "Take my yak… please, take my yak."

But no one was listening. All eyes were turned to Mack.

Mack felt more than a little embarrassed by the attentive silence with which his arrival was greeted. He coughed and cleared his throat, and said, "Marco, I'm glad I've reached you in time. There's this plot against you. I overheard it in the courtyard where the soldiers were exercising. There were these two guys from Tyre, see, and they were saying—"

Marco held up a hand, stopping him in midword. "Are you referring to these two over here?"

Mack saw the two bearded soldiers he had overheard in the courtyard. "Those are the guys," he said.

"Very interesting," Marco said. "They came here an hour ago to warn me of a plot that they say was instigated by you."

"That's not the way it was," Mack said.

"They're just trying to get out of it themselves! Marco, I've told you the truth!"

"Your behavior has been suspicious," Marco said. He turned to the Khan. "May I proceed to demonstrate the duplicity of this fellow?"

"Do proceed," Kublai Khan said. "Western techniques of litigation and interrogation have long fascinated me."

"I call upon the princess Irene," Marco said.

Princess Irene arose from the little throne that had been set out for her on the main dais. She had had time to change into a sky blue mantle decorated with embroidered buttercups. She looked the model of innocence as she said, in broken Mongol, "This long-legged jackanapes came to my chambers, which no man is allowed to do. He made indelicate suggestions toward me, speaking to me in my native tongue, but in the familiar dialect that is used only among family members, or by uncultured persons with a homicidal streak. I was in fear of my life, for when strangers talk to you in that dialect, it means, if they're not related, they're planning to kill you. I fainted, and when I awoke he was gone, frightened away, perhaps, by some noise in the corridor—for he seems a cowardly lot—and I changed into my sky blue mantle and ran down here."

"Lies, all lies," Mack said. "You, Marco, sent me to talk to the princess yourself!"

"I sent you to the princess?" Marco said, rolling his eyes and glancing at the Khan with a showman's gift for innuendo. He turned to the assembled nobles. "You know me, gentlemen. I have been here seventeen years. Would I do something that is prohibited by Mongol law, to say nothing of common decency?"

The only sound that could be heard in Kublai's Banquet Hall was the creaking of necks as heads among the audience shook, no, no. And even the severed heads piled up in pyramids seven feet high on the corner stones of the pillars seemed to shake, no, no.

"This is a setup!" Mack declared hotly. "It is clear to me now that Marco Polo, for his own reasons, is out to get me. He probably can brook no rival at the Khan's court. And he probably feels inferior since he's only a Venetian merchant, whereas I am the ambassador from Ophir."

"As to that," Marco said, "let the court wizard speak."

The wizard stood up and rearranged his star-splattered robe. He adjusted the wire-rimmed spectacles on his nose, cleared his throat twice, harrumphed a few times, and said, "I have made enquiries of all the learned men in Peking who are especially skilled in geography. They agree that there is no such place as Ophir. They further assert that if it ever did exist, it perished long ago in a natural cataclysm. And they conclude that if it did exist today, it would never employ a German as its ambassador."

Mack waved his hands in frustration. Indignation raged in his brain, annoyance set his fingers to clicking and his toes to tapping, but he couldn't think of a thing to say.

Kublai Khan said, "I don't like to do this, because my court is renowned for its gentleness and high standards, but this man has been found guilty before a jury of his peers of being an impostor and a fake representative of a nonexistent country, as well as being a seducer of royal women. Therefore it is the judgment of this court that he be taken from here and brought to the common prison, where he is to suffer such tortures as are indicated for impostors, and then be strangled and disemboweled and drawn and quartered and burnt."