"Someone killed a Public Security officer," Akzu gasped. "Lieutenant Sui. The knobs will be crawling all over the county in a few more hours. They will declare martial law." The Kazakh pronounced the words like a death sentence, then turned to Shan and the American as though further explanation were required. "Arrests will made, lots of arrests. Soldiers will sweep everywhere. Everyone must flee. They're going to take our families."
Chapter Eight
In the early morning light the stone sentinels of Karachuk seemed to have crouched, as though coiled for battle, sensing an approaching enemy. Indeed, the news brought by Akzu seemed to have transformed most of the town's inhabitants. The bright clothing Shan had seen the day before had been replaced by shades of brown and grey that blended with the desert. Long knives had appeared on many belts and, to Shan's great discomfort, rifles were slung on the shoulders of some of the Kazakhs.
He found Akzu and Osman at the corral, speaking in hushed, hurried tones.
"Where was Sui killed?" Shan asked. "Usually these things happen in the cities. Surely they wouldn't suspect the herdsmen."
"On the Kashgar highway," Akzu sighed, "twenty miles outside of Yoktian. No one lives there but Kazakh and Uighur herders. You know what the knobs will do. Sweep the camps for political undesirables. Curfews will be imposed. Four years ago when an army sergeant died martial law was declared for six months. Suspects were sent directly to the coal mines, their families to Glory Camp. The fools who did it have no idea of the suffering they will cause."
"What fools?" Shan asked. "You know who did it?"
Akzu was gazing toward the mountains. "Malik is still out there. He brought a boy back to us, then left again. Now my sons have gone too, to gather those of the zheli who can still be found." He turned to Shan as if just hearing his question and shrugged. "The Maos. It's what they do. That's who did it four years ago. The hotheads. The ones who think change can come overnight."
"Think?" a loud voice interjected over Shan's shoulder. "They don't think. They're just arrogant predators, as bad as the knobs sometimes. An easy kill comes along, bang. They just satisfy their appetite and move on." Marco didn't seem frightened like the others. He only seemed angry. "The whelps! How dare they do this to us!"
Surely the murder would mean added pressure from Public Security. But Marco's rage seemed more focused, as if the incident meant interference with a particular plan.
The Eluosi's fury choked off as he looked in the direction of the outcropping. His oxlike breathing dominated the silence. Shan followed his gaze toward the highest point. Jakli was sitting there, arms around her raised knees, watching the western horizon.
"Mother of God," Marco said, his voice suddenly soft and pained.
"She fears for her— for your son?" Shan asked awkwardly.
"Not that," Marco muttered. "Nikki is fine. Nikki is invincible." He kicked the wall of the building. A piece of the old mud stucco fell away.
"Something else," Osman explained. "If the knobs mobilize, they will check all undesirables. She is supposed to be at her factory job in town. A violation of probation, not to be there. Her friends cover for her, because her friends know it is for Auntie Lau. Everyone loved Auntie Lau. Normally the knobs won't bother to check there. But now, with Sui dead, they are bound to look everywhere. No one can cover when the knobs come looking for her. If they arrest her," he said, turning to speak toward the distant mountains, "she won't be at the horse festival. She won't be getting married. They'll take her to one of the coal mines. I was at a coal prison once, delivering food with some Maos. Hammers and chisels is all they get. No gloves. No mining machines. Never enough food. I saw prisoners whose hands were nothing but bone and skin, like skeletons." He looked back at Jakli. "So young," he said in a near whisper, "so full of life. A few months in a coal mine and she'll be old and empty."
The silver camel in the corral made a snickering sound. Shan moved to the corner of the building just as Osman led two horses behind the nearest hut, one saddled, the other bearing a heavy load of crates with canvas lashed around them. Where was he going? To warn his family? To make a suicidal dash across the border? He studied the others, nearly all mounted now. They looked more like a raiding party than a band of refugees.
A gust from the east blew a sound toward him. He turned and saw that Jakli was standing now, waving at someone. It was a mounted man, trotting briskly toward the north of the compound, toward the heart of the endless desert. Shan caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Osman appeared, nodding toward Marco. Shan swung his head back toward the rider. It was Deacon. The American was trotting alone into the desert, leading the pack horse.
Shan quickly walked to the hut the American had been using. Two men were in front of it, shoveling sand against a barrier of sunbleached planks that had been set against the entrance, which itself was now blocked by a heavy beam, arranged to look like it had dropped from the roof. The hut was being transformed back into a ruin.
Shan paced around the building. It had no other opening, except a small chink in the wall at ground level where, he surmised, the conduit for the solar panels had run to the batteries. As he stared at the hole one of the men threw a shovelful of sand to cover it. No, Shan almost protested, there are singers inside. Old Ironlegs had to be fed. But in the same instant he knew somehow that Deacon had taken the crickets with him. In the few minutes Shan had spent with him he had sensed that there were few things more important to Deacon than the date he had with his son, Micah, the rendezvous to sit with their singers under the full moon.
But was the other thing still inside? The appendage, the human leg. What had the American been doing with it? Dissecting it? Gloating over it? Whose leg had it been? Shan realized that perhaps it had not been as old as it first appeared. This was the desert, where things became desiccated almost overnight. Perhaps it had been someone who had died recently. Perhaps Deacon was doing his own detective work. Only then did he remember Bajys' words about his desperate search at Karachuk. About how he had found pieces of people, like in the paintings of demons.
Shan saw that all of the huts in the hollow had been reduced to apparent ruins by the addition of sand and ancient planks to blend in with the rest of Karachuk. As he watched the evacuation sadness flooded through him again. He had been mistaken, of course, to think he had arrived in another world. This was the same world, the world of knobs and bloodstained Buddhas.
He felt a sense of loss, a sense of defeat, as he absorbed the news of Sui's murder. It meant he would be unable to travel anywhere, that everyone, including the murderer, would drop into holes, doing their best to disappear for what could be weeks, even months.
Marco was with the silver camel at Osman's door when Shan rounded the corner of the building. Shan had not really studied the animal before, but as he looked at her he realized she was unlike any of the creatures he had yet seen in Xinjiang. Her eyes were bright with intelligence, her hair lustrous. Her head was bent to one side as she looked back at him, as though cocked in curiosity. To his surprise he saw that her left ear was pierced with a small, elegant silver ring.
Shan stepped forward as Marco hoisted a simple wood-frame saddle between the animal's humps. The camel bent her head still further, then pushed her nose into Shan's hands and licked them.
Marco stared at her uncertainly. "Sophie! You harlot!" he barked and scratched the camel between the ears. "She doesn't do that," he said with a puzzled expression. "Only for family. For me and Nikki. And Jakli," he added.
"She's handsome."
Marco hugged the camel. "She's beautiful. Like a beautiful woman. The Emir of Bukhara," he said, referring to the ruler of one of the ancient walled cities of central Asia, "had a stable of two hundred racing camels until the Bolsheviks laid siege to his city. For three years the Emir fought from the city walls. The Bolsheviks built a damned railroad right up to the walls while he watched helplessly. Had to feed most of his camels to his troops. But when the Bolshevik troop trains began arriving, he made the bastards promise safe conduct for the surviving twenty camels and their grooms before his surrender. He refused to let the invaders in until he saw the camels were free. Sophie came from one of those survivors."
Shan dared to put his hand on the camel's neck. Sophie pushed against him as though asking for him to rub it. He did so. "I thought Karachuk was safe."
Osman carried out two large pannier baskets stuffed with smaller boxes and bundles wrapped in cloth. "The safest of places," Marco agreed. "Next to my home. Which is why we won't risk it. Knobs never venture this far onto the sand. But when this kind of trouble hits they call in helicopters. They see us down here and—" He shrugged and looked at Osman. "Then no more week-long chess games, right, old friend?" He stepped to a smaller camel standing behind Sophie and helped Osman tie the baskets to her pack frame.
Jakli appeared behind Sophie, looking worn and fretful. She was carrying Shan's drawstring bag.
"You need to go home, Chinese," Marco said.
"I have no home."
"All right, Back to Tibet."
"I am not finished."
"Sure you are. The knobs are finishing it." Marco seemed to see the determination in Shan's eyes. "The hornet's nest has opened up. You don't want to push another stick up it."
"I cannot stop unless asked by those who sent me here," Shan said quietly.
Marco shook his head. "They don't know this land. You don't know this land." He looked past Sophie's neck toward the desert. "It's the way it has always been. Like a tide on the great sea, the beast comes. People build a good life around a herd, an oasis, a small valley in the mountains. Every few years it is swept away. They know it. They come to expect it. Long ago, when Karachuk was fertile, sometimes locusts came and ate everything green for a thousand miles. Sometimes, before the desert finally consumed everything forever, it was a giant sandstorm, a karaburan, the kind that can blow for days and destroys anything softer than a stone. Sometimes it's an army. The Mongols invaded. The Chinese invaded. The Persians invaded. They say the Romans invaded once. If you believe all the stories, even an army of tigers invaded, ridden by monkeys." He looked back at his knots, gave them a final tug and unwound Sophie's reins from her neck.
"Monkeys on tigers, knobs on tanks, it's all the same. If you want to live and keep those important to you alive, you fade away. Become invisible. Go underground. Go to the high mountains. Just get out of the path of the beast."
Shan well knew the beast Marco referred to. He had been swallowed into its belly for over three years. "The beast doesn't always have to win," he said stubbornly. Jakli was near him now, looking anxious to be gone.
Marco stared soberly at Shan. "That," he said after a moment, "depends on how you define winning." He turned and nuzzled his face into the thick hair on Sophie's forehead, as if consulting the animal. "Look, Comrade Inspector," he said, lifting his head, "Jakli says you have no papers at all. Let her take you back to shelter. Wait a week or two at least. Go to Red Stone clan. Count the sheep."
Shan did not move, did not take his eyes off Marco. "Red Stone has enough troubles of their own."
The Eluosi frowned and shifted his gaze to Jakli. He stroked his beard and glanced at Osman, as though remembering the innkeeper's warning about the coal mine prisons. "You have to hide, girl. Come with me. Don't get taken now, not so close to the festival."
Jakli smiled and, standing on her toes, kissed Marco on his cheek. "I'm staying with Shan," she declared brightly. "I made a promise to Lau."
But you also made a promise to Nikki, Shan almost said, then he looked into her eyes and realized it wasn't simply defiance he saw there. She had made a vow not just to Lau but to herself. She had to find justice for Lau before she was married.
Marco stepped back, rubbing his hand on his cheek where she had kissed him. The boisterous Eluosi seemed at a loss for words. "Damn it," he muttered, "then take him to Senge Drak," he said to Jakli. "Shan's their problem, not ours."
"Senge Drak?" Shan asked, looking to Jakli.
"In the Kunlun," Marco said, and paused with a meaningful look at Jakli. "Whoever killed Sui could be there," he said to her in a quizzical tone, as if the thought had just occurred to him. He turned back to Shan. "You want to stop the beast? Then take Sui's killer to the knobs."
The whinny of a horse interrupted Marco. They turned to see the remaining men of the compound mounted and moving in single file up the path that Shan and Jakli had taken the day before. The riders at the top of the column had stopped and were waving.
As if understanding the distant gesture, Sophie knelt in the sand for Marco to mount. The instant he was in the saddle she leapt forward at a trot. An energetic laugh escaped the Eluosi. "May the god of all creatures watch over you, Chinese," he called out. "Since I cannot." In a few seconds he was at the head of the column.
