"How can he be so lax?" Garuda was stunned by what he had heard. "His household will soon be in disorder if he takes no pains to keep the servants from—" He swung his hands through the air as if the words were too offensive to utter aloud.
"You have heard what will happen, to Hirsuma and anyone else," Rojire said calmly. "If this has been an honest mistake, Hirsuma will not suffer for it. If he is duplicitous, he will be so again, and he will be turned out of this house forever. That is our master's way, and he will not change it." He did not add that Sanat Ji Mani had been a slave and a servant many times in his long past and had reached a point where he no longer wanted to punish those who worked for him with anything other than dismissal.
Garuda mumbled something about the foolishness of foreigners, but stopped when he saw Rojire stare at him. "If it is his wish, it shall be done," he said, catching himself.
"Very good." Rojire stood in the servants' dining room a little longer, letting the silence sink in, then said, "I will inform our master of what has happened here before I retire tonight. If he has anything to tell you, I will announce it in the morning." With that, he withdrew and went back to his meal; he ate in a preoccupied manner, for he was distracted by worries as to what Hirsuma's business with the stranger might mean. When he was finished, he reluctantly prepared to climb to the top of the house again, this time to inform Sanat Ji Mani that it appeared their misgivings had been well-founded and that they were being spied upon.
* * *
Text of a letter from Atta Olivia Clemens to Sanat Ji Mani, written in the Latin of Imperial Rome and carried by caravan from Aleppo to Delhi by way of Tabriz, Herat, and Ghanzi. Delivered fourteen months after it was dispatched.
* * *
To my most enduring, most esteemed friend, Sanct' Germain Franciscus, in whatever fabled city he now finds himself, the most affectionate and eremitic greetings of Olivia, who is presently on the island of Rhodes, and heartily tired of it.
There has not been an outbreak of Black Plague for more than a decade now, and people are beginning to hope that the worst is over. There has been enough time that travel is returning to acceptable levels and trade is beginning to resume. I have seen an increase in merchants venturing out from Venetia and Genova in large numbers in the last year, and I trust this is an indication that the world is going to restore itself at last, although some are saying that God will bring about the Apocalypse at the dawning of the year 1400, when the Pale Horse shall come again, and none will survive his visit; it is a view some clergy are eager to embrace and encourage. I cannot share this pious dread, having seen more than enough of slaughter and pestilence to know that no matter how devastating it is, it is never so total that nothing and no one survives it. If the Crusades were not sufficient for that task, the Black Plague is not.
I plan return to Rome in a year or so if these favorable signs continue, and that butcher, Timur-i does not make another skirmish into
the lands just over the water to the east of here. I thank all your forgotten gods that Timur-i is a horseman and not a sailor, or half these islands would be empty already. What stories they tell about him! I am often astonished to hear otherwise sensible men say that he cannot be killed because he is the get of a whore and a demon, or that he can summon the desert winds to drive his enemies from the field. I do believe he makes towers of dead bodies as a warning to others, but that he rides his horse to the top of the piles seems like a risk of a good horse to me, and therefore I am skeptical that he would do it. I would ask you, but I would prefer you have no experience of him and his cavalry.
Niklos has built a number of boats and offers them to fishermen for a share of their catch; this has made him well-esteemed here, and the usual doubts that might be held in regard to our isolated lives have been diminished through his good sense and good business. Of course, we can always use the largest of these boats to leave Rhodes if that becomes necessary, as I think one day it must. I do not like to rely on our neighbors to welcome us as passengers aboard their boats, and this spares us that eventuality. When we depart, Niklos will leave his other boats to the monastery near the old Crusaders' fort, and that will satisfy everyone. So you see, I am prepared to go when the time is right.
What of you, my old friend? Are you prepared to leave that distant city— and are you still in Delhi, or will this letter wander all over those distant lands following your elusive trail? I know you have said that Delhi is as safe a place as any in this world just now, and that may be true, but I cannot help but wonder how long that safety will last. Timur-i is not the only man with dreams of conquest and ready followers, and many of them are waiting to strike in those places where the Plague left many vacancies in the ranks of the powerful. The Plague began in the East, and it killed many there as well as in the West. Do you have no concerns, or are you indifferent to your fate again? When you left Europe, you said you were tired of finding death everywhere, and of the suspicions that made travel prudent. Yet those of our blood must do so in times of such travail, or die the True Death. You taught me that, back when Traianus was Caesar, and I have striven to accept
that verity, harsh though it often is; I ask you to remember your own lesson and maintain yourself prudently, as you would advise me to do, were our circumstances reversed.
Living here, in this isolated place, I have had to resort to visiting likely men in their sleeps instead of taking a lover, as I should prefer to do. But I fear that there are too many persons watching all foreigners here, and most of them are willing to see devils everywhere, and to rise against them to be rid of them. It is the result of the Plague, of course, and not limited to Rhodes alone. I find the circumspection this imposes upon me to be as vexing as it is necessary. I long for knowing and a touch that is for me, not the dream I provide. Still, it has been safer here, though I live like a nun, than it would have been in many other places, so, although I may dislike the accommodations I must make, I am nonetheless grateful for the opportunity such accommodations provide. It is one of the many ironies I have come to appreciate since I came to your life, all those centuries ago, when you pulled me from my tomb.
If you receive this, I would be grateful for an answer, no matter how long it may take to reach me; I can be patient when I must. I know the blood-bond between us is unbroken, and will be so until one or the other of us is wholly gone from this world, but a few words on a sheet of vellum are always welcome, for I cannot help but recall those times when your silence was the result of difficulties beyond the usual for our kind, and how nearly I came to losing you at those times. Delhi may not be Saxony, or Spain, or Tunis, or the Land of Snows, but the remoteness of the place troubles me; indeed, you may have already left that city for places still more remote, and where this will not find you for a number of years. I cannot help but be worried that you will go to a place I cannot discover you, as you have done before, and that I will have to wait decades to know what has become of you. Or worse: you may die the True Death far from me, and I will not be able to mourn you except through the breaking of the blood-bond. I am still Roman enough to want to make a monument for you, if I must lose you, as an outward sign of my inward grief. You may chide me for needless anxiety if you like, but I cannot be entirely sanguine with you so far away, and Timur-i on the rampage, and the Turks up in arms against him. If you tell me all is well, I will try not to fret too much.
When next I write to you— assuming I learn in the next few years where to find you— it will probably be from Rome. Greece is all very well as a place of escape, but I grow homesick for my native earth, and, as I have said, it will be soon that Niklos and I will depart, and not solely because I miss my homeland; we have been here long enough to engender questions I would prefer not to answer. Rome may be half a ruin, but it is my ruin, and I long to see the broken walls of the Flavian Circus again, and to walk the roads the Legions trod so long ago. And before I grow maudlin, I will send this on its long journey, telling you it brings my
Everlasting love,
Olivia
on Rhodes on the 17th day of March in the Christian year 1397
5
Although his hair was rust-colored and his eyes grey-green, the pilgrim was from the vast grasslands and desert in the far west of China; his staff and begging-bowl were his only belongings, his one tattered robe his only clothing; his feet were misshapen from his arduous walking. Sunburn had made his skin a ruddy-brown and toughened it to the texture of leather. He held out his bowl to Rustam Iniattir and asked— in a fairly good version of the local dialect— for water and a handful of rice or lentils. "For the Buddha. I ask for the Buddha."
Rustam Iniattir shook his head. "I am not a follower of the Buddha," he said, preparing to leave his house and enter the busy, midmorning bustle of the streets; he tried to shrug past the pilgrim only to have the man sink down at his feet.
"No. You are Parsi. You follow Zarathustra," said the pilgrim in a thread of a voice. "I have met your caravan in my travels." He ducked his head. "I was told you are a worthy man, that you would not turn a pilgrim from your door."
"My slaves will give you lentils, and water, if you knock on the side-gate," said Rustam Iniattir, still attempting to leave.
The pilgrim pulled himself a short way, then moaned as he scraped his left foot on the dusty step; a trail of blood appeared through the thick calluses of his bare sole. He huddled in shame, not looking at Rustam Iniattir. "In the Buddha's name, I thank you for your charity." It was the usual acknowledgment of alms, and ordinarily Rustam Iniattir would have heard it and gone on his way, but the pain in the pilgrim's every lineament held his attention.
"What happened to your foot?" he asked, pausing to look down at the pilgrim.
"In the mountains between Khotan and Lahore, I… was injured. Occasionally it distracts me from my purpose." He stared at Rustam Iniattir. "It has taught me the truth of
Followers of the Buddha should learn to endure all discomforts: heat, cold, hunger, thirst, and pain
." He brought his features back under control. "I am all right. I must atone for my lapse."
"It might be better to have that foot examined and treated," said Rustam Iniattir. "You could easily be made ill by it."
"That is dharma," said the pilgrim, getting onto his knees and pulling himself up his walking staff.
"You are prepared to let it kill you?" Rustam Iniattir asked, incredulity making his voice rise. "I did not know the Buddha expected such immolation from his followers." He did not want this pilgrim to come to harm in front of his house, for that could result in questions being asked by those in authority that would not redound to his advantage; the Sultan's deputies would exact a high price for such a misfortune.
The pilgrim shrugged. "I take what the world sends me, that I may become indifferent to it, as the Buddha was in His Compassion."
"And do you not accept compassion from anyone?" His voice sharpened as the possibilities of the situation became more obvious to him. "You are suffering, little as you want to admit it. You deny others the chance to show their compassion so that you may perfect yourself? Would you reserve Enlightenment for yourself alone? You will take alms but nothing more?" Rustam Iniattir reached out to the pilgrim
and helped him to stand, noticing as he did that the man's skin was very hot; he was glad now that he had listened to his aunt's husband discourse on the precepts of the Buddha. "You are suffering, and there can be an end to it. You need not deny your hurt because it is from the world. The Buddha does not require that you embrace infection to show you are not moved by the needs of the flesh; I know that much of his teaching." He paused, and continued in a resigned tone, not quite knowing why he bothered, but unable to leave the pilgrim to his begging and his fever, "I am acquainted with a man who is most capable with medicaments. Let me take you to him so he can treat you, that you may continue your pilgrimage. He will give you ease for your hurts." He felt puzzled with himself, but he remembered that Zarathustra had taught it was a sign of belief to aid those in need; it would be a worthy act, and it would get this strange pilgrim away from his house. "I will take you to him."
The pilgrim shook his head. "I should master this."
"And so you shall, once it has been treated. You are not an old man, pilgrim, and you should not throw your life away. To die tranquilly in old age is a high achievement, but to surrender your life to stubbornness is not. If you have too much pride to be healed…" He left the rest unspoken, for he knew enough of Buddhist teaching to suppose the pilgrim would be shocked by such an accusation.
The pilgrim nodded, his face unable to conceal the chagrin he felt. "I will go with you." He steadied himself with his staff. "But I seek nothing but the end of desire."
"Certainly," said Rustam Iniattir. "I will walk slowly." He stepped into the stream of people on the street, his attention on the pilgrim; he did not see Josha Dar emerge from behind a stack of cotton bales to go after them.
"Your caravan was bound for Herat. The leader said he is your cousin," said the pilgrim, as if he needed to explain more thoroughly why he came to Rustam Iniattir.
