Everything Under the Heavens (Silk and Song) by Dana Stabenow Page A

the end of the day. It’s wonderful how he manages to offer the primest of prime goods every time, eh?”
    Not so wonderful, if Anwar the Egyptian worked as a receiver of stolen goods for Persian raiders, Wu Li thought.
    Anwar the Egyptian was brusque. “She was only one of a group I bought two days before. Her buyer?” He eyed Wu Li. “Honorable Wu Li, of course I wish to be of help, but—thank you.” A jingle of coin. “Yes, I remember now. A sheik from the west. I don’t remember his name.”
    Wu Li doubted that. “Where in the west?” he said.
    The slaver shrugged. “It is a vast area, the west. Many places, many people.” His smile did not reach his eyes. “Many sheiks.”
    Wu Li suppressed a sigh and reached again into his purse.
    Anwar the Egyptian eyed the coin, gold this time, that Wu Li was fingering. “He said something about one more stop on his way home, to pick up a new sword.”

    “Do you think it was her?” Shu Ming said that evening.
    “She matches Jaufre’s description, but then so does every other woman between here and Antioch.”
    “Lycia is a place in Greece,” Shu Ming said. “I think. Or near it.”
    “Yes,” Wu Li said. “And he says his mother was Greek.”
    “And a new sword for someone rich enough to pay that much for a slave means Damascus,” Shu Ming said. “How far away is Damascus?”
    “Two thousand leagues and more,” Wu Li said. “Too far.”
    They sat in heavy silence for a moment.
    “You’ll have to tell him.”
    “Yes.” But he didn’t stir.
    “What troubles you, my husband?”
    “You remember why I wanted her to have a western name?”
    She was startled by what seemed to be an abrupt change of subject, because Wu Li always spoke to the purpose. “Johanna?”
    He nodded. “Johanna,” he said. He smiled a little. “Wu Johanna.”
    She smiled, too, at the incongruity, at the odd conjoining of east and west in a single name. “Of course I remember,” she said. “She looks western.” As I do, she could have said. “Her grandfather is seen in her face for any who look upon her.” She laid a hand on his arm. “I agreed with you, Li. Her face already sets her apart. It would have been silly, even cruel, to put a Chinese name to that face.”
    He nodded, his hand coming up to clasp hers. “But it is more than that, Ming. You have seen as well as I the change. In spite of the Khan’s efforts, fear and hatred of foreigners grows in Cambaluc, more every year. I have even heard talk of expelling them all, of closing the ports to foreign ships.”
    She knew what he said was true, and said nothing.
    “I fear Johanna will never find a home in Cambaluc,” he said. “I feared it when she was born. I wanted her to have a name she could wear easily if …”
    “If she lived somewhere other than Cambaluc.”
    He let out a long, slow sigh. “Yes.”
    She was silent for a moment. “She wants him to stay with us.”
    “I know,” Wu Li said. “I like what I see of the boy.”
    “As do I.”
    “And I was thinking that it would be good for her to have someone, a companion who looks like her—”
    A brother, Shu Ming thought. The brother I could not give her. The son I could not give you.
    “—a friend who will walk with her through the years. She will have all I own, but I fear it will not be enough. She is too foreign. She could be married for my fortune, and disposed of when we are gone.”
    They sat in silence for a few moments, and then Wu Li rose to his feet. “But you are right, my wife. I must tell him. The decision must be his.”

    Jaufre listened in solemn silence, Johanna sitting close by his side. In the past weeks, the two had grown inseparable. “I am sorry, Jaufre,” Wu Li said. “There is no more to be done.”
    The boy’s face was white and strained. Johanna, looking at him anxiously, understood. Both of his parents had been alive and whole and present a month before. She looked at her mother and her father sitting across from