The Golden Tablet
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 11
Two hours before light Khutulun was already dressed.
Niccolò woke to the sound of her braiding her hair in the dark, her fingers moving through it with the quick practiced efficiency of someone who had been doing it alone since childhood. She sat on the edge of the bed with her back to him, the Paiza already at her belt, the sword already where it lived, her shoulders carrying the particular set of someone thinking through a problem while her hands did something that didn’t require thinking.
He watched her for a moment before she knew he was awake.
This was new territory — the space between the woman of the night before and the commander of the morning, the brief unguarded interval when she was neither entirely and both simultaneously. He had the feeling he was seeing something very few people had ever seen and that she would not have permitted if she’d known he was watching.
He was glad she didn’t know.
“You’re awake,” she said, without turning.
“How did you know?”
“Your breathing changed.” She secured the braid and turned to look at him over her shoulder. In the pre-dawn dark her face was composed and alert, the commander already fully assembled. But her eyes held something that hadn’t been there two days ago — something that was going to be there from now on regardless of what the rest of her face was doing. “We need to move.”
“I know.” He sat up and reached for his shirt. “Two minutes.”
She moved to the door frame and looked out into the stone courtyard where the Keshig were already assembling in the dark, horses saddled, packs loaded, thirty people converting a monastery back into a column with the wordless speed of long practice.
He dressed and checked his maps and came to stand beside her.
The courtyard was grey and cold and entirely ready.
“Niccolò.”
“Yes.”
She kept her eyes on the column. “When we reach Shangdu. When my father—” She stopped. Started differently. “I don’t know how to do this part. The road I know. The passes I know.” A pause. “I don’t have a map for what comes after.”
He looked at her profile in the grey pre-dawn — the clean line of her jaw, the cheekbone, the braid over her shoulder — and felt something settle in him that had been unsettled for longer than he’d admitted.
“I do,” he said.
She turned and looked at him.
“It’s what I do,” he said. “I find the path through things that don’t have obvious paths.” He held her gaze steadily. “Trust me the way you trusted me with the maps.”
She looked at him for a long moment with those dark eyes reading him for solid ground.
She found it.
“Don’t make me regret that,” she said quietly.
“I won’t.”
One moment longer. Then she turned to the courtyard and her voice changed entirely — the commander, clean and carrying.
“Mount up.”
The column moved.
They rode hard through the pre-dawn dark with the cold coming off the mountains in waves and the path barely visible and Khutulun setting a pace that left no room for anything except staying on it.
An hour out of the monastery the first light began assembling itself on the eastern peaks and Niccolò saw the riders.
Not on the ridge this time. On the valley floor. A quarter mile north, moving parallel to the column, keeping pace with the unhurried confidence of men who knew where the path was going and had already decided where it would end.
He came up beside Khutulun. “Seven riders. North.”
“Eight,” she replied, without looking. “One more behind the tree line at the valley’s eastern end. He’s been there since we left the monastery.”
He looked. Found the eighth eventually, a darker shape against the dark tree line, barely there.
“They’re not closing,” he said.
“Not yet.” Her eyes moved along the valley walls with the systematic attention she gave to terrain that was trying to tell her something. “They’re waiting for their moment. The plateau is two hours at this pace. If we reach it before they move we’re out of Kaidu’s territory by midday.”
“And if they don’t wait two hours.”
“Then we deal with it before midday,” she replied evenly. She glanced at him sideways. “Stay in the column. Whatever happens, you stay in the column.”
“The maps—”
“Are inside my coat,” she said. “Since an hour before the monastery.”
He stared at her. “When did you—”
“While you were sleeping.” She looked straight ahead. “I told you. I plan for everything.”
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