There he seemed to drift off into a blissful contemplation of that time past. Then, after a moment, he came abruptly back to us.

“Perhaps you have begun to perceive the expertness required in the Fondling. One does not simply run back and forth, snatching up papers and then slicing bits off the Subject. No, I proceed only leisurely—very leisurely—back and forth, for the Subject must have ample time to appreciate each individual pain. And they must vary in nature—this time an incision, next a piercing, then a rasping, a burning, a mashing, and so on. Also, the wounds must vary in keenness, so that the Subject experiences not just an overall agony, but a multitude of separate pains that he can differentiate and locate. Here, an upper molar slowly wrenched out and a nail driven where it had been, up into the frontal sinus. There, his elbow joint cracking and crumbling in an ingenious slow vise of my own invention. Yonder, a red-hot metal probe inserted down his red jewel’s inner canal—or delicately and repeatedly applied to the tender little bulb at the opening of her red jewel. And in between, perhaps, the skin flayed from the chest and peeled loose and hanging down like an apron.”

I swallowed and asked, “How long does this go on, Master Ping?”

He gave a fastidious small shrug. “Until the Subject perishes. It is, after all, called the Death of a Thousand. But no one has ever died of dying, if you take my meaning. Therein lies my greatest art—the prolongation of that dying, and the ever increasing excruciation of it. To put it another way, no one has ever died of sheer pain. Even I am sometimes astonished at how much pain can be borne, and for how long. Also, I was a physician before I became the Fondler, so I never inadvertently inflict a mortal injury, and I know how to prevent a Subject’s untimely death from blood loss or shock to his constitution. My assistant Blotters are adept at stanching blood flow and, if I am required to puncture a troublesome organ like the bladder, early on in the Fondling, my Retrievers are competent at replacing any plugs I have to take out.”

“To put it another way, then,” I said, mimicking his own words, “how long until the Subject perishes of those attentions?”

“It depends mainly on chance. On which of the folded papers, and in which order, chance puts into my hand. Do you believe in some god or gods, Lord Marco? Then presumably the gods regulate the papers’ chance according to the magnitude of the Subject’s crime and the severity of punishment it merits. Chance, or the gods, can guide my hand at any time to one of those four papers I earlier mentioned.”

He raised his thin eyebrows at me. I nodded and said:

“I think I have guessed. There must be four vital parts of the body where a wound would cause quick death instead of slow dying.”

He exclaimed, “The indigo dye is bluer than the indigo plant! Which is to say: the pupil exceeds the master.” He smiled thinly at me. “An apt student, Lord Marco. You yourself would make a good—” I expected him to say Fondler, of course. I would not wish to be a Fondler, good or not. I was perversely gratified when he said, “—a good Subject, because all your apprehensions and perceptions would be heightened by your intimate knowledge of the Fondling. Yes, there are four spots—the heart, naturally, and also one place in the spinal column and two places in the brain—where an inserted blade or point causes death quite instantaneously and, as far as one can tell, quite painlessly. That is why they are written on only one paper apiece, for if and when one of those papers comes to my hand, the Fondling is finished. I always instruct the Subject to pray that it comes soon. He or she always does pray, and eventually out loud, and sometimes very loudly indeed. The Subject’s fond entertainment of that hope—really a rather meager hope: four chances out of the thousand—seems to add a certain extra refinement to his or her agonies.”

“Excuse me, Master Ping,” Chingkim put in. “But you still have not said how long the Fondling lasts.”

“Again, it depends, my Prince. Aside from the incalculable factors of gods and chance, the duration depends on me. If I am not overpressed by other Subjects waiting their turn, if I can proceed at leisure, I may take an hour between picking up one paper and the next. If I put in a respectable working day of, say, ten hours, and if chance dictates that we must go through almost every one of the thousand folded papers, then the Death of a Thousand can last for very near a hundred days.”

“Dio me varda!” I cried. “But they tell me that Donduk is already dead. And you only got him this morning.”

“That Mongol, yes. He went deplorably quickly. His constitution had been rather impaired by the preliminary questioning. But no need to commiserate with me, though I thank you, Lord Marco. I am not unduly chagrined. I have the other Mongol already secured for Fondling.” He sniffed once more. “Indeed, if you seek reason for commiseration, do so because you interrupted my Meditations.”

I turned to Chingkim and, speaking Farsi for privacy, demanded of him, “Does your father really decree these—these hideous tortures? To be performed by this—this simpering enjoyer of other people’s torments?”

Nostril, at my side, began to make meaningful and urgent plucks at my sleeve. The Fondler was at my other side, so I did not see, as Nostril did, the man’s glower of loathing, boring into me like one of his ghastly probes.

Chingkim manfully tried to subdue his own anger at me. Through clenched teeth he said, “Elder Brother,” in the formal style of address, though he was the elder of us two. “Elder Brother Marco, the Death of a Thousand is prescribed only for a few of the most serious crimes. And of all capital crimes, treason leads the list.”

I was hastily revising my estimate of his father. If Kubilai could decree such an unspeakable end for two of his fellow Mongols—two good warriors whose only crime had been loyalty to the Khakhan’s own underchief Kaidu—then obviously I was wrong when I took his behavior in the Cheng to have been mere posturing to impress us visitors. Evidently Kubilai did not mean for the sentences he handed down to be cautionary or exemplary to others. He did not care one whit whether anyone else ever took note of them or not. (I might never have known the gruesome fate of Ussu and Donduk, so this was certainly not being done to impress our party.) The Khakhan simply exercised his absolute power absolutely. To criticize or question or deride his motives was suicidal—happily, I had done so only in the privacy of my head—and even to commend his actions would be needless and futile and ignored. Kubilai would do what he would do. Well, for me at least, this episode had been an exemplary one. From now on, as long as I was in the realms of the Khan of All Khans, I would walk lightly and speak softly.

But just this once, before I subsided into docility, I would make one attempt to change one thing.

“I told you, Chingkim,” I said to him, “Donduk was no friend of mine, and he is gone in any case. But Ussu—I liked him, and it was my incautious words that put him down here, and he still lives. Can nothing be done to moderate his punishment?”

“A traitor must die the Death of a Thousand,” Chingkim said stonily. But then he relented enough to say, “There is only one possible amelioration.”

“Ah, you know of it, of course, my Prince,” said the Fondler, with a smirk. To my surprise and horror, he spoke in perfect Farsi. “And you know the manner of arranging the amelioration. Well, my chief clerk handles that sort of transaction. If you will excuse me, Prince Chingkim, Lord Marco …”

He minced away across the room again, motioning for his chief clerk to attend upon us, and went out through the iron-studded door.

“What will be done?” I asked Chingkim.