"My Sophie," Marco sighed, "she has a soul deeper than most men. I talk to her. She talks to me. Smells strangers from two mountains away. Damned few people I'd rather be with." He walked around the camel, as if making a final inspection, then looked at Shan with an expectant expression.

"Come with me, Mr. Shan. I've got something to show you."

Shan looked up in surprise. Marco was speaking in English.

"Shan. Sh-aann," Marco tongued the word as he led Shan toward the front door. "Not an English name. In English you should be John. Yes," he said with a look of satisfaction. "John. Johnny, they say sometimes."

Shan smiled. "Like an American movie," he said in the same language.

"Ah! Exactly. John Wayne!" Marco exclaimed, then returned to Mandarin. "You speak it better than I do."

"My father," Shan said, and Marco nodded, as if it were all the explanation he needed.

They stepped into the room at the end of the inside corridor, a large chamber with rough log walls and a huge bed constructed of split logs, piled with felt blankets and furs. Pelts hung from log rafters. A sword hung on the wall. Two old pistols with cylinder magazines hung from pegs near the door. Flung across a table by the bed was a stack of magazines, in English. Oddly, all seemed to be about ocean fishing. Shan picked up the top magazine.

"Do you know the ocean?" the Eluosi asked tentatively. He seemed reluctant to show curiosity in his voice, but his eyes betrayed it. For an instant Shan saw the eagerness of a schoolboy. On the wall behind Marco there was a series of old calendars, all with a single color photograph of an ocean beach or an island. The region Marco lived in, Shan suspected, was further from an ocean than any place on the planet.

"As a boy, I lived in Liaoning Province," Shan replied, "near the sea. My mother's family was from a fishing village."

"Beaches!" Marco exclaimed in English. "Of white sand, like warm snow. Water as far as you can see. And the tuna fish." He looked at one of his calendar pictures, of a rocky coastline containing conifers and a single log cabin with bright yellow shutters. "It can reach over one thousand American pounds," he said soberly. "A fighting fish that's not for the faint of heart or weak of limb." He looked back at his magazines.

Shan had a vision of Marco, lying on his furs as it snowed for days, memorizing passages from his magazines.

One of the calendars had a photo of a man in a brilliant white shirt landing a long silver fish on a brilliant white boat. "Not a man in my family for five generations has ever seen an ocean," Marco declared, with longing in his deep voice. "Salt water. It has fish, delicious fish, as heavy as mutton, as delicate as sugar cake." He fixed Shan with a stern gaze and leaned toward him, as if about to disclose an important secret. "There is a place called Alaska," he declared, lowering his voice. "It has mountains like here. It has ocean too. I have seen pictures. Nikki has books that talk about it. Monster fish. Fry them in butter. And you know what else, Johnny?" Marco asked with a spark in his eye.

Shan shrugged. "I have never been there."

"It has Russians. Emigres from the Czar's days. Russians who speak English. Who are free men."

Shan smiled. He realized that he liked the man not so much for the boldness of his actions, but for the boldness of his dreams.

Marco pulled a thick book from a wooden crate, an album of old photographs, and gestured for Shan to sit beside him on the bed as he quickly leafed through the pages until he found what he was looking for: a brittle, faded photograph of a Bactrian camel draped in what looked like a silk banner. Holding the camel's head was a man with a thick moustache and a bald head. On the other side of the animal was another man, a European, wearing a heavy fur ushanka, the winter cap favored by Russians. On the European's coat was a shining medal in the shape of a star. Flanking the two smiling men were two stern guards in turbans, each holding a long rifle.

"Sophie's great-grandmother," Marco said proudly.

"I see a certain resemblance," Shan said, to be polite.

His words delighted Marco, who shut the book with a huge grin. He pointed to an object that hung from a leather strap around a bedpost and lifted it to show Shan. It was the medal from the photograph. "Given to my great-grandfather by the Czar himself," Marco explained proudly. It was a golden star with red enamel borders and the image of a mounted cavalryman in the center. Marco gazed upon it with silent satisfaction, then looked at the wall, as if consulting an invisible clock. "Time to go up. We always go up," he announced, then stood and left the room with long, deliberate strides.

Shan checked on the boys, who slept in Nikki's room, then found Marco on the tower, staring out over landscape as if searching for someone.

"It's a dangerous thing, your seeing the Jade Bitch," Marco said in a slow, contemplative tone without turning toward him. "You heard that boy. She killed Khitai."

"I don't know that. Malik just saw her the day after. You didn't see Zu's face when Kublai was brought to her door. She was horrified. It was no act."

"The worst thing you could do is to underestimate her."

"The worst thing," Shan countered, "would be for me to misunderstand her."

Marco offered a skeptical grunt in reply.

"Why would she go to that place twice? Why not apply the spray paint the same time she killed Khitai?"

Marco threw his hands up in a gesture of frustration. "Didn't have the paint. Wanted to go back for that camera."

"I don't know. Maybe there wasn't just one killer," Shan said. "Kublai and Suwan were shot. Alta and Khitai were beaten and stabbed."

"Maybe it was four killers," Marco said darkly. "Someone declared an open season on boys."

"But they all had one shoe missing," Shan said in a distant voice. He had no answer. They watched the moon. He found himself listening for crickets. "When you arrived here today," Shan said after several minutes, "you thought someone might be waiting. Because of the silver bridle."

Shan could see Marco's nod through the moonlight. "Osman. With more horses."

"The silver bridle," Shan suggested, "it was a signal, it meant a new plan. A faster plan, for the next caravan."

Marco nodded. "The silver bridle was a gift for Jakli. For the wedding. It just means get ready, at the horse festival, at the nadam."

But Jakli wasn't making bridal preparations. She was in the mountains, evading the knobs, trying to save the lives of orphan boys. Maybe, he hoped, she would meet her Nikki in the mountains, maybe Nikki could persuade her to stay out of danger. "I don't understand something, Marco," Shan said after a long silence. "You are a smuggler, but you live over a hundred miles from the border."

"I would never live closer, too dangerous. Like lingering in the breath of a dragon." The Eluosi looked up at the moon and yawned. "You're too traditional. You think too much like a policeman. There're many kinds of borders. Over the next ridge, it's Aksai Chin. Disputed land. India says it's hers. Traditionally it was part of Ladakh," he added, referring to the border region between Pakistan and India that held the upper waters of the Indus river.

"But the People's Liberation Army controls it," Shan reminded him. "Soldiers everywhere. And villages. Muslim villages. Old Tibetan villages." He had been driven through the disputed zone in one of the armored cars used by the knobs to transport special prisoners. On a break, when they allowed him ten minutes of exercise, he had seen prayer flags for the first time, fastened to a distant cairn of rocks. He remembered thinking through a drugged haze that it must be some kind of festival day.