Chapter 13

The eight days did not waste themselves.

They rode through country that opened and changed daily — the plateau giving way on the third day to rolling grassland, the grassland to a river valley so green it looked deliberately placed, the valley to a stretch of open steppe that ran to the horizon without interruption or apology. The weather held. The road was good. Kaidu’s men were behind them and Shangdu was ahead and in between there was only this — the column moving east, the sky enormous overhead, and the two of them finding reasons to ride beside each other that required less invention with every passing day.

She taught him to shoot.

This was not her idea — he had asked, on the fourth morning, watching her put three arrows into a target Foscari had set up at a distance that made Niccolò’s eyes uncertain, whether she would show him. She had looked at him with the expression she wore when he did something outside her established expectations of Venetians.

Then she had handed him the bow.

He was, as advertised, bad at it. The draw weight alone was a revelation — he had understood intellectually that a Mongolian war bow required considerable strength and had not understood it in his shoulders until the first attempt nearly pulled him sideways off his horse. She watched this without comment. When he had recovered his dignity and his seat she came alongside him and corrected his grip with the direct hands-on efficiency she brought to everything physical, adjusting his fingers, repositioning his elbow, standing close enough that her arm ran along his to demonstrate the draw.