The Bird and the Blade by Megan Bannen

Author:Megan Bannen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

18

FOR THE NEXT FIVE DAYS HEADING east out of Samarkand, Khalaf hardly speaks to me aside from things like “Pass the stew.” For five days, I suffer Smoldering Khalaf and His Furious Lip Rubbing (although, to be honest, even that is pretty). I’m not sure if it’s because he’s still angry with me or if he’s too busy looking behind us every ten seconds to do much else. Probably both. In either case, once again, Hulegu Il-Khan doesn’t materialize, nor do Turandokht’s soldiers.

It gets steadily colder as we rise in elevation, an apt reflection of the Jinghua-Khalaf relationship. What does he expect me to do, I wonder? Apologize for saving his life? Nope. Not going to happen. I absolutely out-anger him on this.

By the sixth day into this leg of the journey, the Pamirs form a wall of mountains in front of us as far as the eye can see.

“How the hell are we going to get around that?” Timur asks Mazdak with more than a hint of accusation in his voice.

Mazdak laughs. “We’re not going around it, my friend. We’re going through it.” He stands beside Timur, closes one eye, and aims his hand at a dip between two behemoth white peaks. “Right there.”

Khalaf and Timur stare at that dip thousands of feet above us.

“Oh,” says Khalaf.

Timur better captures the sentiment when he utters, “Cancerous, rotted, weeping lamb’s balls.”

Mazdak laughs again and slaps Timur heartily on the back. “Welcome to the Roof of the World,” he says.

Timur said the il-khan’s men wouldn’t follow us into the Pamirs, and I can see why. There are not enough coats and blankets in the universe to make this place bearable. Cairns of sheep skulls reach out of the snow to mark our way, their huge curled horns acting as skeletal signposts. Local men, bundled head to toe, trudge behind their herds of yaks, whose shaggy coats are frosted with snow. The jagged white peaks surrounding us look like teeth ready and waiting to eat us alive.

“Why do I do this to myself?” Mazdak grumbles under his breath. “This is the last time I’m making this crossing.”

When Mazdak complains, I know we’re in trouble.

Three days into the pass, we sleep in a fort, high above the river valley below us. The view would be stunning if I didn’t already hate the Pamirs from the depths of my soul. Even so, it’s a huge improvement over our sleeping conditions of the previous two nights, although that’s not saying much. Tiny stone hovels don’t do much to keep out the cold.

Swathed in my inadequate blanket, I fall into sleep the way one steps off a cliff, slamming hard and fast into a dream of my brother. Tonight, he is not the ghostly creature he has become but the brother I remember at around age ten, his plait flying out behind him as he spins to kick a shuttlecock and keep it airborne.

It’s summer. The air is thick and wet, sticking to my skin. Every breath itches with pollen.

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