"Were you good friends?"

"We only knew each other a little while and only were together two or three times a week. Sometimes he helped me tie the zheli out at night," the boy said, and gestured toward the line of tethered horses. "He spent most of his time with Bajys, looking for sheep on the high slopes or in their spot above the camp."

"What did they do there?"

"Talked, mostly. I think Bajys wanted to tell Khitai all the things he could remember about their old clan, so the memories wouldn't die too."

"Why would they go away like that?"

"Clans have secrets. There are memories that can't be shared in front of strangers."

Shan leaned forward and pushed a stick into the fire. "You and Khitai, what did you do together?"

"We played when we could. Sometimes we would climb into the lamb pens and laugh because they would try to nurse on our fingers. Sometimes we would go on walks and pretend things."

"What kind of things?"

"You know. Shooting soldiers."

The words made Shan look back at the yurt where Jowa and Fat Mao still sat with the computer. "Does Fat Mao come here a lot?"

"Not often. He's a soldier too," Malik said, as if understanding why Shan asked. "A special kind. Lung ma," he whispered with awe in his voice.

"Lung ma?" It was an old term, from the ancient courts. It meant horse dragon, a mythical beast, part horse, part dragon, that protected the common people from injustice.

"Sure. Like your Tibetan soldier."

Like Jowa. The lung ma, Shan realized, was a counterpart to the purbas.

"They all call themselves Mao. Like a joke. You know this Mao, that Mao. Too dangerous for real names, he told me once. They make things happen to the government sometimes," Malik declared with a knowing nod.

"Did Khitai know about them?"

"No. It's a secret. Fat Mao made me promise. Says if I can keep the secret maybe someday I can be one too," the boy said, and it saddened Shan somehow. Did Lau know about the lung ma, he almost asked, then realized he didn't need to. Fat Mao had sent the message to the purbas about her death. If Lau had been part of the lung ma she may have been killed for it. The main job of boot squads was to stamp out resistance, and nowhere in China was there more violent resistance than in Xinjiang.

"Did you know Lau?" he asked.

"Sure. She brought medicine for the animals sometimes."

"Did you hear she was dead?"

"Only yesterday. It was a secret until then."

"Do you think she was killed for what she did for the orphans?"

Malik took a long time to answer. When he did, he looked toward the young horses. "She didn't do anything for them that I don't do for our zheli," he said, and there was an edge of fear in the boy's voice. He spoke several Turkic words to the horses, calming words that had the rhythm of a song, then suddenly turned to Shan with an expression of pain. "If they take us to the city, we won't know who we are. We won't have horses. We won't have tents, maybe not even dogs." He fell silent for a long moment. "And what will happen when I am old? There will be no more clan. No one to carve me a bird when I die."

Shan cradled the boy's hand in his own. "You are strong. A strong spirit will always find the way."

They sat in silence. How long had it been since he had talked with his son like this? Years. No, never like this. Shan's wife, the dutiful party cadre, had raised their son hundreds of miles from Shan and jealously guarded the boy when they were together. He had always told himself that it would be like this one day with his son, but that had been just one more of the lies that had kept him alive during his Beijing incarnation.

A shooting star blazed across the sky in the direction of the moon. Another child perhaps, going to the beautiful white valley.

"Were you with Khitai when he played his line game on the rock?"

"We played those games sometimes. He knew games I had never seen before. But not that last day. A late lamb had been born in a grove of trees two miles from here. It is my job to watch the babies, or they could die. I had to stay with the lamb all day. Then I could be sure it knew the scent of its mother and that it was strong enough for me to bring it back to the other lambs."

"Until that night?"

"When I returned at dusk I was going to go up to Khitai's spot, to look for him. But one of the young rams got caught in a vine and cut its leg. I had to put on salve. It was crying. I spoke to it. Khoshakhan, khoshakhan, you have to say to lambs. It's an old word, like a charm. It's how they know you love them," the boy said, with the voice of an old man. He sighed. "It was dark. I stayed up late, because it was then that I began telling them why we have to leave them soon. The Brigade will take good care of the sheep, I said. What else can I say? All the lambs and young goats would have grown up with me in the mountains. And now none of us will. I have to at least leave them with hope." He looked at Shan with an empty expression and shook his head. "The next morning I asked my aunt where he was, and she said probably up in his place in the rocks."

"What was it like, when you found him?"

Malik looked at the moon. "It was still dawn. He was sitting in the shadows against the rock, near where he is buried. He seemed surprised."

"Surprised?"

"I couldn't look after the first instant. But when I first found him I thought he was looking behind me, in surprise, like someone was creeping up on us. I said, you look funny. And you have three eyes." Malik looked down to the embers. "But his eyes had no seeing. I called for Khitai and ran away."

As Shan repeated the boy's words in his mind the dog's head shot up. Shan looked in the direction of the dog's gaze to see Lokesh standing in the shadows, looking as frail as a stick figure. The Tibetan sat down beside the dog, which immediately laid its head on his leg.

"I don't understand," Shan said to the boy. "Why did you call for Khitai?"

Malik frowned and looked back toward the moon.

"Because this boy," Lokesh answered Shan in a trembling voice, "the boy in the grave, he is not Khitai."

Malik sighed, as though with great relief, and nodded.

Shan looked back and forth from the boy to the old man. For a moment he felt as though he was not in the middle of a murder investigation but in a teaching, as if he sat between two lamas who were asking him to explain impossible contradictions.

"I told Akzu it wasn't Khitai," Malik blurted out. "Those things in the tent, the dombra and the jade bead, they weren't Khitai's. It was the other boy of the zheli who had visited that day, whose name was Suwan. He just had Khitai's red cap on. Akzu wasn't certain. The boy's face was so bruised and swollen. Akzu didn't know Khitai well, he's been away many times these past weeks. He said Khitai was the name of the boy Lau had sent, that whichever boy it was, Bajys had killed him, that if Khitai had gone with the other clan to escape Bajys, then may God protect him. He said I should not tell this to others, because it would just add to the sorrow of my aunts. He said either way an orphan had died, that a good Kazakh boy had been buried, and that was the end of it. I was not to tell the secret."

But now, Shan realized, Lokesh had divined the truth, and spoken it first, so Malik could explain.

The dog's head shot up again, and its tail wagged. Shan looked over his shoulder to see Jakli standing with the tethered horses, listening.