Wangtu shrugged. "Don't know about children," he said in an earnest tone, as if children didn't inhabit his world. While he studied Shan he worked his tongue against his cheek, as though searching for something in his mouth. "When boys die, that's for their parents."

"These had no parents," Jakli threw back in an impatient voice. "Lau's orphans. One lived with Bajys. You know Bajys."

"I could get you things," Wangtu said to Jakli. "I could come see you. I live in town."

"You live in Glory Camp right now."

"This?" Wangtu said with a dismissive wave of his hand toward the barracks. "Vacation. Sing a few songs, see some old friends." With these last words he sobered and gave Jakli a meaningful stare.

"How did you know Bajys?" Shan asked.

Wangtu sighed. "He and that boy, they help bring wool to town sometimes. For this clan or that clan. You know, they stay with different clans. A few weeks here, a few there. That was Lau's system. I see people, at different places. When the Brigade doesn't use me for the school, I drive trucks for the wool processing plant. They clean it and bale it and I drive it to the carpet factories in Kotian," he explained, referring to the large city over a hundred miles to the west that had once been a Silk Road trading center.

Shan looked back at Jakli. "The school is run by the Brigade?"

"The school, this camp, soon the whole world," Wangtu said in a thin voice.

"But you told him something," Jakli pressed. "You told Bajys that Lau was in trouble."

"Your father," Wangtu asked. "Did he ever come back?"

The question seemed to catch Jakli off guard. She didn't return his gaze but looked to Shan. "Wangtu and I," she explained, "we went to school together."

Wangtu grinned, as if grateful for the acknowledgment.

Jakli glanced at the truck, which was being rapidly unloaded. "Quickly, Wangtu. Why did you warn Bajys?"

The Kazakh studied the compound as if trying to remember. "I didn't, exactly. I just told him Lau was walking with the blue wolf." He cut his eyes toward Jakli as he spoke.

The announcement brought a hard glare to Jakli's face. "A jinni," she explained to Shan, as she kept her eyes on Wangtu. "A blue wolf is a very bad type of jinni. An evil spirit."

"For Kazakhs," Wangtu added. "For old Kazakhs, anyway."

"Tell us," Jakli said impatiently. "Why would you say a blue wolf shadowed her?"

Wangtu seemed not to be listening. He was looking over her shoulder. "I could get you that," he said with a wistful nod toward the wire.

Jakli turned and froze. Pleasure flashed across her face. In a rope pen between the inner and outer fences was a magnificent white horse.

"We used to walk together, Jakli," Wangtu said with an odd melancholy in his voice. "I sang songs at your camp."

The woman seemed not to have heard. She took a step forward, as though drawn by the graceful animal that pranced about the makeshift pen.

"I could get white horses for your clan," Wangtu suggested.

"Why did you say it to Bajys?" Shan pressed. Jakli broke from her trance and stepped behind Shan, as if Wangtu's offer of the white horse somehow scared her.

Wangtu sighed. "I hear things, okay? I heard a new teacher was coming. I heard Lieutenant Sui in the back one day, telling the head of the school that Lau had been reported by another teacher, who said that at one of her classes Lau read off a list of names from the five twenty-ninth, and later from 1997."

"Dissidents," Jakli offered quickly to Shan, and glanced at the truck. "But she wasn't arrested. She was murdered."

Wangtu snorted and opened his mouth as though about to laugh. "Murdered? No. Disappeared, near the river. She could still come back."

"Disappeared with a bullet in her head," Shan said. "We've seen her body."

Wangtu looked at Jakli, who confirmed Shan's words with a nod. He grimaced, then studied Shan with suspicion on his face. "Who sent you?" he asked Shan.

"Priests," Jakli said quickly, as if worried that Shan might speak first. "Priests said he should come."

"Priests? Priests?" It was Wangtu's turn to be confused. "You mean a mullah?"

"It doesn't matter," Jakli said, impatience back in her voice. "There are no bad priests."

"Sure there are. The priests that run this camp." Wangtu's voice was hollow now, and his eyes flared. "What was it the Chairman said? Religion poisons the people. So he got rid of the other religions and sent out his own priests." He looked back at Shan. "All the prosecutor says is that Lau disappeared. She spoke to us, all the ones detained. She said maybe reactionaries did something to Lau, maybe kidnapped her. They do that sometimes, she told us, hoping to trade for one of their own in prison. Maybe one of us would think of something helpful, she said."

"I saw Lau," Jakli said coolly. "She's dead, Wangtu, but the prosecutor mustn't know. It won't help anyone."

A low whistle came from between Wangtu's teeth, and he shook his head slowly. "I liked Lau." The Kazakh's eyes drifted toward the old man who had struggled on the steps. He was leaning against the wall by the door, gasping for breath.

Shan studied the man on the steps. "He's old for a rice camp," he observed. The people's reeducation resources were seldom wasted on those who had little left to contribute to the proletarian effort.

Wangtu frowned at Shan, as if perhaps Shan, or all Hans, were responsible for the man being there. "He's a teacher. Forty years in a village near Kashgar, then they put him out, told him to go to some rest home built for pensioned teachers. Instead he started unofficial classes among the clans, riding from camp to camp, taking payment in food and a pallet. Got reported for teaching ancient history."

"Ancient history?" Shan asked.

"You know, before 1949. The Republic of East Turkistan, the kingdoms of the Silk Road. When this land was independent. I tell him he's got to stop. I tell him he's too old. He's on his third bowl."

"Third bowl?" Shan asked.

Wangtu cast a surprised glance at Jakli as he spoke. "Third lao jiao term. Each time you arrive at the camp they give you a tin bowl, for washing, for eating, drinking, everything." His eyes drifted back to the oldman on the step. "After three bowls, it's hard labor if you're picked up again."

Shan looked back at the old teacher. "He wouldn't last a month in the gulag," Shan said.

Wangtu's feet shifted, and his eyes slowly surveyed the length of the wire along the side of the compound. A small vehicle, looking like an ancient armored car that might have been used in the original Eighth Route Army, drove slowly along the wire. "He won't last a month at Glory Camp, not this time. Life's cheap here since the Brigade started running the camp." He didn't seem to be speaking to them anymore but to someone else toward the office compound. Shan followed his gaze. He was looking at the cemetery.

"A Mongol," Wangtu said, "just a teenager, had a magazine with color pictures of horses. Against the rules, but so what? Just horses. Every day he'd look at the pictures and say he was going to have a herd of horses someday. At a class the instructor for his barracks pulled the Mongol's magazine from the back of his pants, where he hid it during the day. This instructor, she said the barracks needed it because the latrine had no more paper. When the Mongol leapt at him the instructor hit him in the head with a shovel. It made a crunching sound, like stepping on a rotten log. The boy sat on the ground with his head in his hands and the instructor circled around him and gave a speech on the evils of hoarding property. When she finished she yelled at the Mongol to apologize to everyone. He wouldn't reply, so she kicked him. He just rolled over. He was paralyzed. He just lies on his bunk now. The instructor took his magazine to the latrine."