The splendor and intrigue of the 13th century are seen through the eyes of the Venetian Marco Polo, who arrives with her ​​father and uncle on a trip to the Far East.

Freed by renegade Saracens, Marco Polo survives plague in Persia and an avalanche in Tibet to arrive at a Mongol camp in northern China.

Marco's friendship with the Khan's son grows amid ministerial jealousies and plans for war with Japan.

Marco is appointed as an emissary to southern China, and falls in love with an orphaned Westerner.

In “The Fourth Step,” the Polo family reunion in Kublai’s city was less than joyous, with Marco’s uncle sneering at the cultural assimilation that his brother’s son had embraced. While their time together was bitter and brief, no one even bothered to raise the subject of whether Marco would leave Kublai’s court with them, rejoining them in the family merchant business. But subsequent events—beginning with the Polos’ arrest for smuggling—proved that Marco was even more “Oriental” than the uncle had claimed.

Who hired the assassins that nearly murdered Kublai? The clock is ticking for Marco and Byamba to find the traitor before the Mongolian New Year’s celebration of Tsagaan Sar, or White Moon. They have a strong lead—Marco recognized the handwriting on the Hashshashin murder map as belonging to his first friend in the Imperial city of Cambulac, the now-dead tax collector, Sanga. So Marco and Byamba set out to investigate, like two odd-couple beat cops following the crumbs to piece together their case.

Jia Sidao is one twisted bastard. The outgoing Song chancellor “crawled up and into the Imperial Court through the wet spot” in his sister’s bed. He used her seductive charms to assassinate rivals, then banished her to Cambulac once he felt ready to seize total control and take on the Mongols. He crippled his niece by binding her feet—and we learn in “The Scholar’s Pen” how his nickname for her, Sunflower, underscores the warped relationship he has with women.

War has come again, and even though Jia Sidao nearly was a casualty before the fighting even began, all his nefarious plotting paid off: he’s arranged exactly the war that he wanted, exactly when he wanted, and exactly where he wanted it to occur. Riled up to defend his wife’s honor, Kublai Khan has taken the bait and marched his troops to Xiangyang, the Chinese walled-city stronghold that has eluded the Mongols for 80 years. For Kublai, the spirit is willing when it comes to battle but the flesh is weak—or at least flabby. Just months after dispatching his treasonous brother, but still recovering from an assassination attempt, Kublai is not in fighting shape. (He insists to his wife that his battle armor has shrunk.) And an adversary as skilled and cunning as Jia requires someone whose personal battlefield strategy is more daring and ambitious than just surrounding himself with brave soldiers willing to absorb enemy arrows.