"He didn't kill the boy," Lokesh said confidently. "He didn't kill Auntie Lau."

"You think they are the same? I mean, one killer?" Jakli asked, looking from Lokesh to Shan. "He has to speak to us, tell us what happened."

"He might not know," Shan said. "Maybe it was seeing the dead boy that did this to him. He had built something around his Tibetan self. A Kazakh shell. And the shell was shattered, lost forever, when he saw the dead boy."

"An old shaman told me once of souls getting confused when death was close," Jakli said. "Getting mixed up, being lifted out, then going back to the wrong body."

"And whose soul does he have now? The killer's?"

"I don't know. I just know that he's not Bajys but he has the body of Bajys." Jakli sighed, then looked up into Shan's eyes. "And they will still kill him. You don't know the old clans. They have their own justice. The government won't help, even if someone asked. If the clans are convinced Bajys is the killer, they will punish him. When I was young two horse thieves were caught near our camp. They were hung from two limbs of the same tree. I went out looking for lambs and saw them. All purple and bloated." A visible shudder moved through her body.

"Who among Lau's friends were Tibetan?" Shan asked.

"No one," Jakli said. "Me, I'm the closest to being Tibetan. I've known her all these years and I've never seen her with a Tibetan except the dropka who watched the children, and they usually stayed away, bringing the children and then hiding until Lau was done."

"She was Kazakh," Shan said with a hint of skepticism, "with friends who were Han Chinese and Uighur. But she had no Tibetan friends. Even with the Tibetan herders wandering the hills below the Kunlun."

"Tibetans aren't given papers for Xinjiang. Very few are classified as natives here. They're treated-" She shrugged as if it was painful to finish the sentence and busied herself with the tea.

"Badly," Shan said, finishing the sentence for her.

Jakli nodded. "Speeches are given by the prosecutor, by Public Security officers. Tibetans are always the example of the uncooperative minority, of the reason why assimilation of the country has taken so long. In Yoktian, a friend showed me something on a computer, an image taken from phone lines. It was from somewhere outside China, and it was a film of a Chinese flag being burned. A Tibetan child appeared and lit it on fire. When it was ashes, the film repeated. Again and again."

"You mean Tibetan friends would have been politically dangerous to Lau."

She nodded again.

"Then why did she learn Tibetan?"

"I don't know. She knew lots of languages. Tadjik. The people's Mandarin. The Party's Mandarin. English."

"English? Why English?"

Jakli looked up as if surprised by the question. "This is China," she said with a small, chastizing smile. "People sit in closets and learn things." She looked up the mountainside. "Lau taught people what they needed. She sometimes taught about Buddha. But she also taught about Mohammed. If she had Han children in her zheli she would have taught them about Confucius and Lao Tze. That's what she did."

"No. In the cave, it was different."

"I don't think so. Why would you believe-"

"Because," Shan suggested, "she never took you there." His words brought a small, nearly silent moan from Jakli. He had seen many things in Jakli's eyes when she had entered the cave chamber and sat, stunned, on the student's cushion. Wonder. Confusion. Reverence. Sadness. But also pain. "You were a friend, and a student too. She taught you about Tibet and Buddhism. But she hid this place even from you."

"But you said there was someone else. Another teacher."

Shan nodded. "A friend who was Tibetan, who does not appear Tibetan. Who else came to this place?" The chamber had not been just for talking about Buddhism. It had been for teaching the Tibetan language and other things Tibetan. The things lost, or nearly lost, to the two generations born since the Chinese invasion.

Jakli looked for a long time into the fire. "There were herders sometimes, passing through. A crazy Xibo who watches the water. In his fifties maybe. They say he's a lunatic." The Xibo were a Manchurian people, uprooted from their homelands nearly three centuries before and sent west to fight the Muslims on behalf of the emperor.

"The water?"

"The Agricultural Council gives a small stipend to make sure key streams are kept open and not contaminated. Many of our streams only flow in the spring. Only a few are constant. So they have people, usually retired herders, who watch the water, keep dead animals out, clear fallen trees from it."

"Who else?"

"Her drivers. And people at the school in Yoktian may have visited here sometimes. Others from the Agricultural Council, maybe."

"Drivers?"

"Sometimes. She couldn't drive a car. So when she was on business for the Council, she used the vehicle pools."

"But not since then, not since she left the council?"

"Sometimes one of the drivers still helped. A Kazakh from the motor pool."

"Would he have known where she was the day she died or who she had been traveling with?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"Do you know where he lives?"

"In town, probably. But now at Glory Camp."

"Glory Camp?"

"You heard Fat Mao. Prosecutor Xu stopped at the motor pool in Yoktian."

Shan studied Jakli. "She didn't pick you up. Even though you're a friend of Lau's. Because," he suggested, "the prosecutor knew exactly where you had been when Lau died." He paused and studied Jakli, who seemed to have little concern about being absent from her probation job. "Were you there, at your factory?"

Jakli grimaced and nodded, still staring at the fire. "I left for a day when we brought Lau to the cave. Then I left when I heard you were coming. It's mostly Kazakhs and Uighurs who work there. I have friends there. They cover for me. It's not strict. Not usually, as long as enough hats are being made."

"Prosecutor Xu saw you today. Does she know your face?"

She looked up at him with a frown, but before she could reply Jowa called from the trail. Bajys was emerging into the meadow, supported by Lokesh and Jowa. He seemed barely to have the strength to stand.

"Bajys will have to be protected," Shan said.

"There's a place deep in the Kunlun," Jakli said readily, as though she had been thinking the same thing. "A Tibetan place. Jowa must know about it."

Shan studied her. "You mean, a place where purbas hide?"

"A secret place."

"Are you one of them?" Shan asked abruptly, before the three men were in earshot.

"A purba? Tibet is their cause."

"But not yours?"

"I struggle for my people," Jakli said with a sigh. "For Kazakhs. For Tibet, when I can." She darted forward to help Bajys onto the porch, then took control with a matronly air, sending Shan for water, Jowa for firewood, and Lokesh for dried grass to make a pallet for the ragged, wasted little man.

Bajys sat limply, his eyes unfocused, as she pulled off his shirt, wiping his body with the cold river water. He seemed not to notice any of them.

They drank tea, sharing the two cups from the cabin, and waited until Bajys began to look about, as if finally recognizing where he was.