Shan brought his eyes back to the woman. Why was she being so indirect? "I've seen your camp," he said tentatively.

"My chop is on file here. Glory Camp is a resource utilized by many counties in Xinjiang and Tibet."

What game was she playing? Saving him for someone else? Baiting him before moving in for the kill? "I do not doubt you are a zealous guardian of the people, Comrade Prosecutor." He returned her steady gaze.

She extended her mug as though in salute to Shan, then sipped it as she contemplated him. "I have served the people of this county for many years. I am not ashamed of my service. I could have gone back to Beijing when my first tour was finished. I asked to stay. I have received many awards from the Party and the Ministry for the progress we have made here."

He raised his own mug in salute. How, exactly, do you measure progress? he wondered. In the number of citizens sent behind wire? The size of the prison cemetery?

"I believe in the order of law," Xu continued. "I know you have a job. But I must tell you, Comrade, I am not afraid to do my job. I will enforce the law against anyone who breaks it." Xu stared at him malevolently, then abruptly rose and left the room, leaving the door open.

Shan stared after her, dazed. There were spirits in the Buddhist mythology that one might meet while traveling. They would speak in strange words, and they might bare their teeth at you, but if they moved on without eating you, meeting them was considered a blessing.

The workers in the outer office did not look up as he moved through the room. No guards came. No doctors with syringes poised. He paused for a moment, still in shock, until the faces began to turn toward him, then he quickly stepped to the door.

Outside, the limousine was gone. Jakli and her cousins were still asleep. He checked the compartment under the dashboard of the truck and confirmed there was a flashlight, then climbed into the rear of the truck and settled back onto the sacks of rice, gradually falling into a slumber troubled by visions of dead children.

When he awoke it was night. Dim lightbulbs affixed below the speakers of the public address system were the only illumination in the administrative compound. Jakli and the others were squatting by a small fire made of scraps of lumber. They had impaled several small apples on screwdrivers and were roasting them over the flames. Jakli pushed one of the apples onto an oily rag and extended it to Shan.

He accepted the apple and tossed it from hand to hand to cool it. "Did they tell you why the warehouse is closed?" he asked.

"On the orders of Public Security, nothing more. Sometimes they fumigate. Poison gas, maybe."

"I think there are people locked inside."

Jakli shrugged. "This is a prison."

He nodded his head toward the smokestack. "Where did those men go? They were carrying coal." There was no sign of activity at the boilerhouse.

"Gone," Fat Mao said. "We were asleep."

"Why would they need a Public Security guard?"

Jakli's head jerked up. "Knobs? There's knobs here?" She stepped backward, so her face was in shadow. The others looked up, suddenly alert. Her actions needed no translation.

"I saw one." Shan glanced toward the shed, which appeared abandoned. "By the boiler." A wisp of smoke rose from the boiler chimney. The coals had been banked and left to burn slowly. The demand for electricity and heat would be lower at night. Jakli moved to one of the support posts and leaned against it, her eyes sweeping across the compound.

Shan stepped beside her. "And I saw the prosecutor," he added.

"She has much business here," Jakli said, not hiding her bitterness.

"I mean, she spoke to me." He explained the strange encounter with Xu.

Fat Mao pressed close and asked him to repeat Xu's words. "She thinks you're someone else," the Uighur gasped in confusion.

"More precisely," Shan said with a chill, "she thinks I am someone who would be with Kazakhs and Uighurs, a Han working with herdsmen." He looked into Fat Mao's face as he spoke. "A Han whom the prosecutor herself is wary of challenging."

"From Beijing," Jakli added in a low voice.

Fat Mao cursed. "There were six reservations made," he reminded her. "For arrests by knob headquarters. Headquarters uses spies sometimes. Undercover agents."

"What does it mean?" Jakli asked.

"I don't know," Shan said. "Except that the clans of the borderlands are in perhaps even greater danger than we thought. The knobs wouldn't send a spy just to help with the Poverty Scheme. Where else do the clans gather? Where a stranger might find his way among them?"

Jakli thought a moment. "Karachuk. Where Lau died."

Shan nodded. Lau had gone to the desert with her secrets, and someone had infiltrated her place of trust. "Tell me how to go."

"I will take you."

"No. You must return to town. Your probation."

"I made a vow to Lau."

"It is not what Lau would want, to have you back in prison."

"Sure, I'll go make hats," Jakli said in a taut voice. "Bright red hats with beads. Purple hats with sequins. While the children die and Red Stone is ripped apart." She broke away and stepped to the back of the shed, leaning against one of the posts as she gazed into the darkness.

He realized that she was not looking at the compound but at the distant patch of shadow where the white horse was penned. In the distance he could hear its hooves as it nervously pranced about its pen. As he approached her she began a low song in the tongue of her clan. Shan recognized a word, repeated many times. Khoshakhan. The way you tell the animals you love them.

"It's for the horse, isn't it?" Shan asked when she was done.

She started, as though she had not known he was there. "Yes. It says-" She thought a moment. "It says you are made of wind running. I will tie owl feathers in your mane, and we will ride like an arrow into the mountain clouds. My great uncle taught me. He was a synshy- a knower of horses, it means. He could speak with horses."

"You said owl feathers?"

"Owl feathers bring good luck. And wisdom."

Shan realized his hand was on his gau.

"On my naming day, a beautiful black and white colt was born, and my father promised it to me. We grew up together. Zharya was his name. We won races, many races. We went to high meadows and he listened as I played my dombra." There was a whisper behind them, and Shan turned to see that the others were listening too.

"Is he in the Red Stone camp still?" Shan asked.

She made the song again, only humming this time. "No," she said in a taut voice, just when Shan had decided she had not heard. "Once, when I knew an army truck was coming, Zharya and I dragged a heavy log across the road." She took a step away, into the darkness, but spoke again after a moment. "We rode up the mountain and watched from a cliff where the soldiers could never catch us. We were laughing, Zharya and I, standing side by side as the soldiers tried to move the log. Then Zharya groaned and fell down and there was a cracking sound from below. They had shot him with a rifle." She looked back into the darkness. "It took him all afternoon to die. He just lay there with his head in my lap, looking at me like it was all a bad joke."

A gust of wind moved through the silence, a dry, cool wind, smelling of coal dust.