Play Report: Khanbaliq 1272 - The House of Lord Jourdain (Part I)

In the imperial capital of Khanbaliq, still half-built upon the ruins of an older city, Tetsukichi found himself drawn into delicate obligations. His affair with Su-Laing, daughter of the late and dishonored Lord Mehwa, had become public enough that her extended family began to speak of marriage. To them, the match was both convenient and risky — an opportunity to secure Su-Laing’s future while quietly aligning their tainted name with a foreigner who had once saved her life.

But they made no secret of one expectation: if he were to be her husband, Tetsukichi must not be poor.

So when talk turned again to the disappearance of Ikhbayar, the guardsman once in love with Su-Laing’s handmaiden Kei-Lo, Tetsukichi saw a chance to satisfy duty, curiosity, and ambition at once. Kei-Lo believed her lover had entered the ruins below the city — into the House of Lord Jourdain, once the mansion of a foreign noble said to have trafficked in dark arts — searching for treasure to buy his freedom. He had never returned.

Tetsukichi resolved to go himself: to learn the truth of Ikhbayar’s fate and, perhaps, to recover what wealth or relics the old house might still conceal.

Beatriss agreed to accompany him. The expedition also included Afu, a priest versed in purification rites; his apprentice Ju-May; four hired guards; and Hatsu, Tetsukichi’s old comrade from Zipang — nine in total.

Before they departed, Afu performed divinations and named an auspicious morning for the venture. But when that morning arrived, Beatriss was too weak to rise. Her skin was cold, her pulse faint. They delayed the expedition. As her strength returned, she resumed her Blackbird exercises, the disciplined movements she'd learned from a tengu in Zipang. During her recovery she met Kwan Wan Lo, a visiting martial artist preparing for the Imperial Tournament, who praised her technique and urged her to compete.

By then, Omesa, her guest from Jangze, had vanished. He left no farewell. 

When Beatriss was restored, the company finally rode beyond the southern walls, across the muddy floodplain where the ruins of the old city lay half-sunken and overgrown. Among the broken foundations stood two surviving structures: the Temple of the Two-Fold Path and, not far from it, the House of Lord Jourdain.

It was there, according to Kei-Lo, that Ikhbayar had gone seeking fortune — and where Tetsukichi and Beatriss would soon follow, searching not only for a lost man, but for something worth the risk of love and ruin alike.