The next time Kyu made one of his midnight visits to the stables, Bold was almost afraid to speak to him.

Nevertheless he said, 'Did you set that fire?' – whispering in Arabic, even though they were alone, outside the stables, with no chance of being overheard.

Kyu just stared at him. The look said Yes, but he didn't elaborate.

Finally he said calmly, 'An exciting night, wasn't it? I saved one of the Script Pavilion's cabinets, and some concubines as well. The redjackets were very grateful about their documents.'

He went on about the beauty of the fire, and the panic of the concu bines, and the rage, and later the fear, of the Emperor, who took the fire to be a sign of heavenly disapproval, the worst bad portent ever to smite him; but Bold could not follow the boy's talk, his mind filled as it was with images of the various forms of the lingering death. To burn down a merchant in Hangzhou was one thing, but the Emperor of all China! The Dragon Throne! He glimpsed again that thing inside the boy, the black nafs banging its wings around inside, and felt the distance between them grown vast and unbridgeable.

'Be quiet!' he said sharply in Arabic. 'You're a fool. You'll get yourself killed, and me too.'

Kyu smiled grimly. 'On to a better life, right? Isn't that what you told me? Why should I fear dying?'

Bold had no answer.

After that they saw less of each other than ever. Days passed, festivals, seasons. Kyu grew up. When Bold caught sight of him, he saw a tall slender black eunuch, pretty and perfumed, mincing along with a flash of the eye, and, once, that raptor look as he regarded the people around him. Bejewelled, plump, perfumed, dressed in elaborate silk: a favourite of the Empress and the Heir, even though they hated the eunuchs of the Emperor. Kyu was their pet, and perhaps even a spy in the Emperor's harem. Bold feared for him at the same time that he feared him. The boy was wreaking havoc among the concubines of both Emperor and Heir, many said, even people in the stables who had no way of knowing directly. The way he moved through them was too forward, he was bound to be making enemies. Cliques would be plotting to bring him down. He must know that, he must be courting it; he laughed in their faces, so that they would hate him even more. It all seemed to delight him. But imperial revenge had a long reach. If someone fell, everyone he knew came down too.

So when the news spread that two of the Emperor's concubines had hanged themselves, and the furious Emperor demanded an accounting, and the whole nest of corruption began to unravel before everyone, fear rippling through the court like the plague itself, lies spreading the blame wider and wider, until fully three thousand concubines and eunuchs were implicated in the scandal, Bold expected to hear any hour of his young friend's torture and lingering death, perhaps from the mouths of guards come to execute him as well.

But it didn't happen. Kyu existed under a spell of protection like that of a sorcerer, it was so obvious that everyone saw it. The Emperor executed forty of his concubines with his own hand, swinging the sword furiously, cutting them in half or decapitating them with single strokes, or running them through over and over, until the steps of the rebuilt Hall of Great Harmony ran with their blood; but Kyu stood just to the side, unharmed. One concubine even cried out towards Kyu as she stood naked before them all, a wordless shriek, and then she cursed the Emperor to his face, 'It's your fault, you're too old, your yang is gone, the eunuchs do it better than you!' Then snick, her head was falling into the puddles of blood like a sacrificed sheep's. All that beauty wasted. And yet no one touched Kyu; the Emperor dared not look at him; and the black youth watched it all with a gleam in his eye, enjoying the wastage, and the way the bureaucrats hated him for it. The court was literally a shambles, they were feeding on each other now; and yet none of them had the courage to take on the weird black eunuch.

Bold's last meeting with him happened just before Bold was to accompany the Emperor on an expedition to the west, to destroy the Tartars led by Arughtai. It was a hopeless cause; the Tartars were too fast, the Emperor not well. Nothing would come of it. They would be back when winter came on, in just a few months. So Bold was surprised when Kyu came to the stables to say farewell.

It was like talking to a stranger now. But the youth clasped Bold by the arm suddenly, affectionate and serious, like a prince talking to a trusted old retainer.

' Do you never want to go home?' he asked.

'Home,' Bold said.

'Isn't your family out there?'

'I don't know. It's been years. I'm sure they think I died. They could be anywhere.'

'But not just anywhere. You could find them.'

'Maybe.' He looked at Kyu curiously. 'Why do you ask?'

Kyu didn't answer at first. He was still clutching Bold's arm. Finally he said, 'Do you know the story of the eunuch Chao Kao, who caused the downfall of the Chin dynasty?'

'No. Surely you're not still talking about that.'

Kyu smiled. 'No.' He pulled a little carving from his sleeve half of a tiger, carved from black ironwood, its stripes cut into the smooth surface. The amputation across its middle was mortised; it was a tally, like those used by officials to authenticate their communications with the capital when they were in the provinces. 'Take this with you when you go. I'll keep the other half. It will help you. We'll meet again.'

Bold took it, frightened. It seemed to him like Kyu's nafs, but of course that was something that couldn't be given away.

'We'll meet again. In our lives to come at least, as you always used to tell me. Your prayers for the dead give them instructions on how to proceed in the bardo, right?'

'That's right.'

'I must go.' And with a kiss to the cheek Kyu was off into the night.

The expedition to conquer the Tartars was a miserable failure, as expected, and one rainy night the Yongle Emperor died. Bold stayed up all through that night, pumping the bellows for a fire the officers used to melt all the tin cups they had, to make a coffin to carry the imperial body back to Beijing. It rained all the way back, the heavens crying. Only when they reached Beijing did the officers let the news be known.

The imperial body lay in state in a proper coffin for a hundred days. Music, weddings and all religious ceremonies were forbidden during this interval, and all the temples in the land were required to ring their bells thirty thousand times.

For the funeral Bold joined the ten thousand members of the escort, Sixty li's march to the imperial tomb site,

Northwest of Beijing. Three days zigzagging To foil evil spirits, who only travel in straight lines. The funeral complex deep underground,

Filled with the dead Emperor's best clothes and goods, At the end of a tunnel three li long,

Lined with stone servants awaiting his next command. How many lifetimes will they stand waiting?

Sixteen of his concubines are hanged, Their bodies buried around his coffin.

The day the Successor ascended the Dragon Throne, his first edict was read aloud to all in the Great Within and the Great Without. Near the end of the edict, the reader in the palace proclaimed to all assembled there before the Hall of Great Harmony,

'All voyages of the treasure fleet are to be stopped. All the ships moored in Hangzhou are ordered to return to Nanjing, and all goods on the ships are to be turned over to the Department of Internal Affairs, and stored. Officials abroad on business are to return to the capital immediately; and all those called to go on future voyages are ordered back to their homes. The building and repair of all treasure ships is to stop immediately. All official procurement for going abroad must also be stopped, and all those involved in purchasing should return to the capital.'