"To study integration of cultures," Shan observed. "Not annihilation of them."

"My training," Kaju said, as if in protest.

"Training for what?" Jakli interrupted. "To kill teachers? To murder boys?" She stopped, as if surprised by the venom in her own voice, and looked down, with pain in her eyes, at Lau.

"Of course not."

They were silent a long time. Jakli's head moved slowly up and down as she gazed at Lau, as if she were having a conversation with the dead woman.

Shan sighed. "It's a starting place. Just believe that. That someone has killed four boys, is still stalking them, and will not stop until he has the gau. Do you accept that the killer must be stopped? Whomever it may be?"

Kaju's eyes met Shan's and he nodded soberly.

"And understand this," Jakli added. "The boys are not safe with the Brigade for now. Or with Public Security. Not until it is over."

"I will-" Kaju said, confusion clouding his eyes, "I will not tell Director Ko about the boys being here. He night not understand, he might inadvertently say something to the knobs. I will not tell Major Bao. You can trust me. I have not told about the Americans."

Shan looked at him with surprise. "You mean the boy Micah?"

"Micah, and his parents. There was a class just after she disappeared. No one knew she was dead. Most of the zheli came. Micah was there. They played some American games, even tried speaking some words of English. One of them spoke about Micah's parents sometimes visiting classes, sometimes helping with instruction."

"Why wouldn't you tell about the Americans?" Shan asked. He considered the timing. Kaju had known about the Americans for nearly three weeks. When had Bao begun his search for the Americans?

Kaju looked at him and shrugged. "I don't know," he said, and Shan saw that he had struggled with the decision. "It's none of my business. The boy Micah is part of the class, and my business is to instruct the class, to help the class. He's-" Kaju shrugged again. "He's like the others, just a boy trying to understand the world." The Tibetan turned to Jakli. "But there are classes scheduled, at Stone Lake. Not all the boys have been accounted for. I am still going there." He stood and turned to leave, then after three steps stopped, looking at the wall, at the handprints in the ice.

"To pay homage," Jakli explained. "The ice wall will seal the cave. And then those who paid homage will be with her."

Kaju hesitated, looking at them with entreaty in his eyes.

"Those who paid her homage while she lived," Shan added. "And those who will pay her homage in her death."

Kaju cast a grateful glance toward Shan and pressed his own hand into the ice.

"It is a vow you are making," Jakli said behind them, in an eerily disembodied voice. "A vow to save the zheli."

"Then I give my vow," Kaju said in a small voice, pressing even harder against the ice. When he finished he stepped back and stared at the hollow he had made in the ice, then looked at Shan. "There was something I gave to Public Security. I mean, they took it. I was assigned to Lau's old room in the single teachers' quarters. Public Security was there when I cleaned out her things. I pulled something from under the pallet and they took it."

Shan sighed. "A poem."

Kaju nodded. "Just a poem about a teacher gathering flowers. I didn't- I wouldn't have given it to them but they were there and just grabbed it. No one should be put in jeopardy because of a poem."

Just a poem, Shan thought. But to Bao, a prime evidence of treason. He exchanged a glance with Kaju. It was why Kaju had not told about the Americans, he suspected, because he felt guilty about breaching Lau's confidence- or maybe, Shan thought, about violating the beauty of the child's poem.

Kaju took a step away as Jakli moved toward the tunnel, then stopped again. "I never thought about it, but maybe-" He began twisting his fingers together. "The schedule. Lau's schedule, and all the details I know about the zheli. I meant no harm. They told me her biggest fault was her secrecy about the children."

Shan considered Kaju's words and the pain on his face. "So you put it all on the computer."

Kaju nodded slowly.

Shan looked at the Tibetan uncertainly. He couldn't say it didn't matter.

Kaju sighed heavily, turned to face Lau, and walked, backward, out of the room.

Shan lingered behind in the cold vault as Jakli led Kaju outside. On his first visit, he had come to Lau the teacher. This time he had come to Lau the ani. He knelt at her side again. Speak to me, he wanted to say. Which of them came to Karachuk? Which of those in Yoktian were simply zealously performing their duties and which was working with Bao, which was a murderer? He sighed and pulled the tiny ceramic jar from his coat pocket, the jar that had been filled with sacred sands and sealed at Lhadrung. He held it cradled in his hands for a moment, then pried open the seal with his thumbnail. Lifting the robe, he poured the holy sands, making a small circle on her shirt, over her heart. Then he replaced the robe and placed the empty jar by her head. He stepped back, looking at the ice surrounding on the wall and back at the handprints. Jakli's hand was there, and Akzu's and Kaju's and his own. They could last a thousand years and more, preserving their shame that they had let a saintly woman die with a bullet in her brain.

When he arrived back at the Red Stone camp he realized that the boys had not told him everything about the visit of Gendun and Lokesh. He found Batu with Sophie, listening to Marco proudly explain her heritage.

"When they left," Shan asked when Marco finished, "where did the Tibetans go?"

"Last night, they left. On donkeys. Somebody had given them donkeys," Batu said with wide eyes. "It's what you do for holy men, Lau told us once, you give them things so their deities will smile on you. We asked them to stay, but they told us they had to go to another place. They were eager to leave."

"What other place?"

Batu shook his head, then called two other boys over. None of them knew. "In the desert," one of the boys said. "The old one who laughed a lot said he knew a place in the sand where souls collected."

Shan looked at Marco in alarm. "The Well of Tears," he gasped. "Where souls are collected by the wind when they become lost."

Jakli's hand shot to her mouth. "They are too old," she cried. "They could lose their way so easily. They could die in the wind."

"They came to the school, looking," Kaju interjected.

"Lokesh?" Jakli asked. "The lama?"

"No. Public Security. Knobs came this morning. They said they were looking for two old Tibetans who had escaped from prison."

Shan stared at Kaju with a clenched jaw, fighting the cold knot of fear that had suddenly gripped his stomach. The paths of the killers had indeed crossed. Bao had been looking for foreign subversives but now was asking about Tibetans. Someone must have seen Gendun and Lokesh, and reported them.

"Mother of God," Marco muttered and began harnessing Sophie.

When Jakli looked at Shan it seemed she was about to cry. "But we have to find the boys."

"Exactly," the big Eluosi said. "Which is why Sophie and I will go for the old Tibetans." He fixed Shan with a grave stare. "If the knobs take them, they won't last twenty-four hours. They don't want those old men for anything. Just want them gone."