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“No, he never questioned the Khan’s orders. But he would be horrified if our people attacked your homeland.”

Marco nodded.

“Yes,” I said, trying to think as I spoke. “It would be a testament to him, a lasting legacy, if we could find a way of living together in peace.”

Marco looked skeptical.

“Marco, you always have good ideas. What can you do to convince the Khan to send me to Christendom as his ambassador?”

Marco shook his head in wonder. “I will do anything I can to help. I can tell the story of the battle, and I will, in a way that makes you look strong and heroic—which is the truth. But you are the one who needs to show the Khan that you can do this, that you can be forceful and persuasive as his representative. You must say something dramatic and convincing.”

He was right. But words had never been my strength.

Before I left, he held me close. His lips touched mine in a bacio that I had long anticipated. His gentle touch convinced me that somehow we would find a way. I didn’t want to leave him. I promised to see him at the Khan’s hunting camp after he told his story of the battle.

All the way back to the palace, that night, and the next day and the next night, I thought until my head hurt. This idea seemed even more improbable than my request, a year earlier, to join the army. But it was the only way Marco and I could be together.

I hoped that Chabi was persuading the Khan about my future. But it was up to me to prove my worthiness for this assignment. If I did not, Marco might have to return to his homeland without me, whether he chose to or not. One day I might hear that a Mongol army—one the Great Khan did not directly control—had destroyed Christendom. That image made me shudder.

My breath caught in my throat. On horseback, at the top of a rise, I looked out over a sight I had heard about but never seen: the ocean.

The water stretched along the horizon, as broad and endless as a Mongolian steppe, but blue-gray and glinting in the late sunlight. It was in constant motion—not like grasses in the wind, but like an earthquake, heaving up and falling back, crashing against the beach in white-capped waves. I searched the distance for the far shore and could see none. It was like no lake I had ever seen—roiling and alive, stretching to the end of the earth. I couldn’t believe anyone would ride on a boat of wood and trust such a seething mass of water. Baatar tossed his mane and whinnied, as if threatened.

The Great Khan’s hunting camp sprawled along the seaside at an area called Beidaihe, Northern Dai River, not far from the Chin Emperor’s Island. It was the largest encampment of tents I had ever seen, a sea of white dots stretching from the water’s edge over hill after hill to the horizon. The Khan’s imperial flags fluttered lazily. Guards stood on duty around the perimeter of the camp. Within, the mood was high with the excitement of the hunt and the thrill of being away from home. It was a great escape for the men of the court, most of them military men. The end of this two-month hunting season was the highlight of each year for them.

The smell of fresh meat cooking over fires wafted up the hill and drew me down into the camp. Bare-chested men, their arm muscles bulging, wrestled in the warm sand. A pack of men howled and chased each other across our path. One man, his jaws working and his chin greasy, looked up at me from a fleshy bone he held in both hands.

Here in the Khan’s hunting camp, steaming in their male juices, with no wives or children around, men could boast of the hunt, overeat, and burp, free of the restrictive rules and majesty of the court.

The only women other than me were those who had been brought for the pleasure of the men. They were laughing, loose-haired women. I had heard of such women and seen a few on the road, but I had never seen so many flaunting their bodies openly in one place.

My cousin Temur had escorted me from Khanbalik, two days’ journey to this hunting camp by the seaside. We traveled with a small group of his