He growled, “A bribe that is paid now and then, in these cases. Though never before by me,” he added disgustedly. “Usually it is done by the Subject’s family. They may bankrupt themselves and mortgage their whole future lives to scrape together the bribe. Master Ping must be one of the richest officials in Khanbalik. I hope my father never hears of this folly of mine; he would laugh me to scorn. And you, Marco, I suggest that you do not ask this sort of favor ever again.”

The chief clerk sauntered over to us and raised his eyebrows in inquiry. Chingkim dug into a purse at his waist, and said in the roundabout Han way:

“For the Subject Ussu, I would pay the balance weight for the scales, to make the four papers ascend.” He took out some gold coins and slipped them into the clerk’s discreetly cupped hand.

I asked, “What does that mean, Chingkim?”

“It means that the four papers naming vital parts will be moved to the top of the basket, where the Fondler’s hand is likely to pick them up soonest. Now come away.”

“But how—?”

“It is all that can be done!” he gritted at me. “Now come, Marco!”

Nostril was tugging at me, too, but I persisted. “How can we be sure it will be done? Can we trust the Fondler to do all that work—all those folded papers to be unfolded and read first—and all alike—”

“No, my lord,” said the chief clerk, unbending for the first time, almost kindly, and speaking in Mongol for my benefit. “All the others of the thousand papers are colored red, which is the Han color signifying good fortune. Only those four papers are purple, which is the Han color of mourning. The Fondler always knows where those four papers lurk.”

4

DURING the next several days, I was left on my own. I got unpacked and settled into my private quarters—with the help of Nostril, for I let the slave move in and lay his pallet in one of my more commodious closets—and I began to get acquainted with the twins Biliktu and Buyantu, and I began to learn my way around that central palace building and the rest of the edifices and gardens and courtyards that constituted the palace city-within-a-city. But I will speak later of how I spent my private time, because my working time also soon began.

One day a palace steward came to bid me attend upon the Khan Kubilai and the Wang Chingkim. The Khakhan’s suite was not far from my own, and I went there with celerity, but not with much alacrity, for I assumed that he had learned of our visit to the dungeons and was going to castigate me and Chingkim for our having meddled in the Fondler’s business. However, when I got there, and was bowed through a succession of luxurious chambers by a succession of attendants and secretaries and armed guards and beautiful women, and arrived at last in the Khakhan’s innermost sitting room, and started my ko-tou, and was bidden to take a seat, and was offered my choice of beverages from a maid’s tray laden with decanters, and took a goblet of rice wine, the Khakhan began the interview amiably enough, inquiring:

“How go your language lessons, young Polo?”

I tried not to blush, and murmured, “I have acquired numerous new words, Sire, but not of the kind I could speak in your august presence.”

Chingkim said drily, “I did not think there were any words, Marco, that you would hesitate to speak in any place.”

Kubilai laughed. “I had intended to converse politely for a while in the Han manner, rambling only indirectly to the subject at hand. But my rude Mongol son comes straight to the point.”

“I have already made a vow to myself, Sire,” I said, “that I will henceforth be careful of my too ready tongue and too abrupt opinions.”

He considered that. “Well, yes, you might be more respectfully circumspect in your choice of words before you blurt them out. But I shall want your opinions. It is for those that I would have you become fluent and precise in our language. Marco, look yonder. Do you know what that thing is?”

He indicated an object in the center of the room. It was a giant bronze urn, standing some eight feet high and about half that in diameter. It was richly engraved, and on the outside of it clung eight lithe and elegant bronze dragons, their tails curled at the top rim of the urn, their heads downward near its base. Each one held in its toothed jaws an immense and perfect pearl. There were eight bronze toads squatting around the urn’s pedestal, one under each dragon, its mouth gaping as if eager to snatch the pearl above.

“It is an impressive work of art, Sire,” I said, “but I have no idea of its function.”

“That is an earthquake engine.”

“Sire?”

“This land of Kithai is now and again shaken by earth tremors. Whenever one occurs, that engine informs me of it. The thing was designed and cast by my clever Court Goldsmith, and only he fully understands the workings of it. But somehow an earthquake, even if it is so far away from Khanbalik that none of us here can feel it, makes the jaws of one of the dragons to open, and he drops his pearl into the maw of the toad beneath. Tremors of other sorts have no effect. I have stamped and jumped and danced all about that urn—and I am no butterfly—but it ignores me.”

I saw in my mind the majestic Great Khan of All Khans bouncing about the chamber like an inquisitive boy, his rich robes billowing and his beard wagging and his helmet-crown askew, and probably all his ministers goggling. But I remembered my vow, and I did not smile.

He said, “According to which pearl drops, I know the direction where the earth shook. I cannot know how distant it was, or how devastating, but I can dispatch a troop at the gallop in that direction, and eventually they will bring me word of the damage and casualties incurred.”

“A miraculous contrivance, Sire.”

“I could wish that my human informants were as succinct and reliable in reporting the occurrences in my domains. You heard those Han spies of mine, that night at the banquet, rattling off numbers and items and tabulations, and telling me nothing.”

“The Han are infatuated with numbers,” said Chingkim. “The five constant virtues. The five great relationships. The thirty positions of the sex act, and the six ways of penetration and the nine modes of movement. They even regulate their politeness. I understand they have three hundred rules of ceremony and three thousand rules of behavior.”

“Meanwhile, Marco,” said Kubilai, “my other informants—my Muslim and even Mongol officials—they tend to leave out of their reports any fact they think I might find inconvenient or distressing. I have a large realm to administer, but I cannot personally be everywhere at once. As a wise Han counselor once said: you can conquer on horseback, but to rule you must get down from the horse. So I depend heavily on reports from afar, and they too often contain everything but the necessary.”

“Like those spies,” Chingkim put in. “Send them to the kitchen to see about tonight’s dinner soup, and they would report its quantity and density and ingredients and coloration and aroma and the volume of steam it throws off. They would report everything except whether it tastes good or not.”

Kubilai nodded. “What struck me at the banquet, Marco—and my son agrees—is that you appear to have a talent for discerning the taste of things. After those spies had talked interminably, you said only a few words. True, they were not very tactful words, but they told me the taste of the soup brewing in Sin-kiang. I should like to verify that seeming talent of yours, in order to make further use of it.”

I said, “You wish me to be a spy, Sire?”

“No. A spy must blend into the locality, and a Ferenghi could hardly do that anywhere in my domains. Besides, I would never ask a decent man to take up the trade of sneak and tattler. No, I have other missions in mind. But to undertake them you must first learn many things besides fluency of language. They will not be easy things. They will demand much time and effort.”