So he had seen some sign, had had some idea. And there was that closed aspect of Kyu too, the sense that his true thoughts were many rooms away, ever since his castration. Of course that would have had its effects. The original boy was gone, leaving the nafs to negotiate with some new person.

They hurried through the northernmost sub prefecture of Hangzhou, and out of the gate in the last city wall. The road rose higher into the Su Tung po Hills, and they got a view back to the lakefront district, the flames less visible in the dawn, more a matter of clouds of black smoke, no doubt throwing sparks east to spread the blaze. 'This fire will kill a lot of people!' Bold exclaimed.

'They're Chinese,' Kyu said. 'There's more than enough to take their place.'

Walking hard to the north, paralleling the Grand Canal on its west side, they saw again how crowded China was. Up here a whole country of rice paddies and villages fed the great city on the coast. Farmers were out in the morning light,

Sticking rice starts into the submerged fields, Bending over time after time. A man walks Behind a water buffalo. Strange to see Such rain polished black poverty,

Tiny farms, rundown crossroad villages,

After all the colourful glories of Hangzhou.

'I don't see why they all don't move to the city,' Kyu said. 'I would.'

'They never think of it,' Bold said, marvelling that Kyu would suppose other people thought like he did. 'Besides, their families are here.'

They could just see the Grand Canal through the trees lining it, some two or three li to the east. Mounds of earth and timber stood by it, marking repairs or improvements. They kept their distance, hoping to avoid any army detachments or prefecture posses that might be patrolling the canal on this unfortunate day.

'Do you want a drink of water?' Kyu asked. 'Do you think we can drink it here?'

He was very solicitous, Bold saw; but of course now he had to be. Near the Grand Canal the sight of Kyu would probably pass for normal, but Bold had no paperwork, and local prefects or canal officials might very well ask him to produce some. So neither the Grand Canal nor the country away from it would work all the time. They would have to slip on and off it as they went, depending on who was around. They might even have to move by night, which would slow them down and be more dangerous. Then again it seemed unlikely that all the hordes of people moving up and down the canal and its corridor were being checked for papers, or had them either.

So they moved over into the crowd walking the canal road, and Kyu carried his bundle and wore his chains, and fetched water for Bold, and pretended ignorance of any but the simplest commands. He could do a scarily believable imitation of an idiot. Gangs of men hauled barges, or turned the capstans that raised and lowered the lock gates that interrupted the flow of the canal at regular intervals. Pairs of men, master and servant or slave, were common. Bold ordered Kyu about, but was too worried to enjoy it. Who knew what trouble Kyu might cause in the north. Bold didn't know what he felt, it changed minute by minute. He still couldn't believe Kyu had forced this escape on him. He hissed again; he had life or death power over the boy, yet he remained afraid of him.

At a new little paved square, next to locks made of new raw timber, a local yamen and his deputies were stopping every fourth or fifth group. Suddenly they waved at Bold, and when he led Kyu over, suddenly hopeless, they asked to see his papers. The yamen was accompanied by a higher official in robes, a prefect wearing a patch with twinned sparrow hawks embroidered on it. The prefects' symbols of rank were easy to read – the lowest rank showed quail pecking the ground, the highest, cranes sporting over the clouds. So this was a fairly senior figure here, possibly on the hunt for the arsonist of Hangzhou, and Bold was trying to think of lies, his body tensing to run, when Kyu reached into his bag and gave Bold a packet of papers tied with a silk ribbon. Bold undid the ribbon's knot and gave the packet to the yamen, wondering what it said. He knew the Tibetan letters for 'om mani padme hum', as who could not with them carved on every rock in the Himalaya, but other than that he was illiterate, and the Chinese alphabet looked like chicken tracks, each letter different from all the rest.

The yamen and the sparrow hawk official read the top two sheets, then handed them back to Bold, who tied them up and gave them to Kyu without looking at him.

'Take care around Nanjing,' Sparrow Hawk said. 'There are bandits in the hills just south of it.'

'We'll stick to the canal,' Bold said.

When they were out of sight of the patrol, Bold struck Kyu hard for the first time. 'What was that! Why didn't you tell me about the papers! How can you expect me to know what to say to people?'

'I was afraid you would take them and leave me.'

'What do you mean? If they say I have a black slave, then I need a black slave, don't I? What do they say?'

'They say you are a horse merchant from the treasure fleet, travelling to Nanjing to complete business in horses. And that I am your slave.'

'Where did you get them?'

'A rice boatman who does them wrote one for me.'

'So he knows our plans?'

Kyu said nothing, and Bold wondered if the boatman too was dead. The boy seemed capable of anything. Getting a key, getting papers forged, preparing the little fireballs… If the time came where he thought he didn't need Bold, Bold would no doubt wake up one morning with a slit throat. He would most certainly be safer on his own.

As they trudged past the barge ropelines, he brooded on this. He could abandon the boy to whatever fate befell him – more enslavement, or quick death as a runaway, or slow death as an arsonist and murderer – and then work his way north and west to the great wall and the steppes beyond, and thence home.

From the way Kyu avoided his gaze and slunk behind him, it was apparent that he knew more or less what Bold was thinking. So for a day or two Bold ordered him about harshly, and Kyu jumped at every word.

But Bold did not leave him, and Kyu did not slit Bold's throat. Thinking it over, Bold had to admit to himself that his karma was somehow tied up with the boy's. He was part of it somehow. Very possibly he was there to help the boy.

'Listen,' Bold said one day as they walked. 'You can't go to the capital and kill the Emperor. It isn't possible. And why would you want to anyway?'

Hunched, sullen, the boy eventually said in Arabic, 'To bring them down.'

Again the term he used came from camel driving.

'To what?'

'To stop them.'

'But killing the Emperor, even if you could, wouldn't do that. They'd just replace him with another one, and it would all go on the same as before. That's how it works.'

Much trudging, and then: 'They wouldn't fight over who got to be the new emperor?'

'Over the succession? Sometimes that happens. It depends on who's in line to succeed. I don't know about that any more. This Emperor, the Yongle, is a usurper himself. He took it away from his nephew, or uncle. But usually the eldest son has a clear right. Or the Emperor designates a different successor. In any case the dynasty continues. It isn't often there is a problem.'

'But there might be?'

'There might be and there might not. Meanwhile they'd be staying up at night working out better ways to torture you. What they did to you on the ship would be nothing compared to it. The Ming emperors have the best torturers in the world, everyone knows that.'

More trudging. 'They have the best everything in the world,' the boy complained. 'The best canals, the best cities, the best ships, the best armies. They sail around the seas and everywhere they go people kotow to them. They land and see the tooth of the Buddha, they take it with them. They instal a king that will serve them, and move on and do the same everywhere they go. They'll conquer the whole world, cut all the boys, and all the children will be theirs, and the whole world will end up Chinese.'