Daughter of Xanadu by Dori Jones Yang Page B

pouch with dried milk curds in it and offered him some to eat. He tossed a milk-curd cube into the hole in his beard where his mouth was. A frown creased his forehead and he chewed as if trying to make up his mind about it.
    “Very good,” he said, smiling as if eager to please. He was not good at lying.
    Such curds were meant to provide energy on a journey and were not particularly tasty. I ate in silence, rehearsing my first question.
    “What do you hope to get from the Khan? What are your intentions?” As soon as I spoke, I knew I had been too blunt.
    Marco examined my face before responding soberly. “I will be frank with you, Princess. My father and uncle handed all our precious trading commodities over to the Khan, as is required. If I can gain his favor, perhaps he will give us, in return, goods of great value to take back to our homeland.” So this was the way merchants worked. Not buying and selling with coins, but taking their chances with the Khan’s goodwill.
    “How will you gain his favor?”
    “By serving him, entertaining him in the most appealing possible way. Perhaps you can let me know if you hear any reaction to my storytelling?” It occurred to me that Marco Polowas also using me. His success depended in part on his connection with me.
    His odd eyes seemed bluish green in this setting. I suspected that they could see inside my mind. It made me uncomfortable. I needed to press on.
    “Tell me again,” I said “What is the name of your homeland?”
    “Venezia,” he said.
    “Way-nay-sha,” I said, trying to pronounce it. I could barely get my tongue around the strange sounds. How could I remember it? “How big and powerful is it?”
    Marco laughed. “It is just a city, but with its own army.”
    “It belongs to a larger country?”
    “Well, it is part of Christendom,” he said, using a Mongolian word meaning “Land of the Religion of Light.” “But Christendom has many countries and city-states.”
    He picked up a stick and began to draw a map in the dirt.
    “This is Italia.” The shape he drew looked like a boot with a strange heel. “Here is Venezia.” He made a circle near the top of the boot. “Here is Genova, our rival city. They, too, have many ships and merchants, and we compete with them for the best markets.”
    I noticed that his fingers were long and thin, soft and clean. “They fight?” I asked.
    “More like competing in a contest. This, you see”—he scratched the area on three sides of the boot—“is the Middle-of-the-Earth Sea. Up here is France, where the Franks live, and above that is England. Over here, Aragon.” He continued drawing and poking in the dirt, naming a confusing array of countries, each with its own king.
    I frowned. There were too many foreign names to remember. It was like trying to stuff a month’s worth of dried meat into a leather pouch meant for overnight.
    I stopped him. “Who is the ruler of these lands?”
    He thought for a minute. “We don’t have one ruler, like your Great Khan. Some of these lands belong to the Holy Roman Empire. But many do not. They are not united.”
    I shook my head.
    He appeared to smile, or at least I thought so. I could not see his mouth but noticed wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. “We do have a Pope, in Roma. He is the head of our religion. When my father brought him a letter from the Great Khan, he responded, hoping for friendly relations.”
    “His armies are large and well trained?”
    Marco smiled as if this were a strange question. “He has troops to protect him. But he is not a military ruler. You see, all these lands are …” He kept talking.
    I soon gave up trying to follow what he was saying, with so many foreign words. Behind the big beard was an earnest expression, but his eyes sparkled. His hands moved in mesmerizing gestures when he spoke. What would such a smooth hand feel like?
    He had stopped talking and was regarding me intently. I was forgetting myself. I needed to ask