"There is something you have to do for Kaju," Shan said after a moment. "Only you can do it."
Jakli looked at him with uncertainty and sighed, as if preparing herself.
"It may be," Shan said slowly, studying Kaju as he wandered among the boys, discomfort still obvious on his face, "the most important thing any of us could do. But I won't do it. She was your friend, your teacher."
"No," Jakli said slowly, almost like a moan. There was no uncertainty in her eyes now when she looked up. Only sorrow. "I couldn't."
"He won't accept that she was killed. And everything else he has done is based on that delusion." Shan looked up the slope. "Maybe he will find that he has something to say to her."
"And if he runs to Yoktian and brings them back? With all the boys here? It would be just what Xu wants."
"I'm not sure what Xu wants anymore," Shan replied.
Jakli ignored him. "She would call it clear proof that the Kazakhs are conspiring. She will say we killed Lau and are covering up the evidence. She would take all the boys away, maybe all the zheli. Put them in a special school. Make them all Chinese."
"You can trust or you can distrust. Lau would choose to trust. It is up to you. I will not take him because to do so without your consent would be to dishonor you."
She looked at him with pain in her eyes, then walked slowly away, without reply, and Shan began to inch away from the group. Then, as he reached the shadow of the cabin, he moved quickly to the trail. In twenty minutes he was at the cavern. He lit one of the torches and stepped inside.
The waterkeeper's chamber appeared untouched. He walked around the room. By the tunnel he saw the words he had left for Gendun.
The way that is told is not the constant way.
With a spark of joy he saw that someone had written below it. It was Gendun's hand, unmistakably.
But a constant can be found in the way of the telling,
Gendun had written.
Shan turned and searched the room again. Under the sleeping pallet by the wall he found a large, soiled envelope, stuffed with papers. Government papers, routine paperwork for those paid to maintain streams. He scanned them quickly. They were separated in groups fastened with paper clips, dated at regular intervals. The waterkeeper apparently journeyed to town every other week, where he received his papers. All routine, except the very last paper. It was on special letterhead marked Poverty Eradication Scheme, Yoktian County, and sent by Ko Yonghong. The waterkeepers in the district were being privatized into the Brigade, it said. The Brigade would be presenting gifts in celebration of the event. And to facilitate the project, all keepers would be required to keep strict records of the movements of herders and others through their assigned watersheds. Because the Brigade felt special compassion for them, all orphans were to be especially noted and asked to report to Director Ko so they could be enrolled in a special benefit program. Continue to build socialism in pursuit of your duties, it said in closing.
Lau had been at the cabin the day she died, Jakli had discovered. The zheli had been given their solitary assignments and Lau had gone to see the waterkeeper. He had shown her the memorandum from Ko, and she had known it was the final sign, the beginning of the end. She had ridden to Karachuk that night, ridden at a desperate pace, to tell Marco that the Yakde and his protectors had to escape with Jakli and Nikki.
As Shan was leaving the cavern, two figures appeared at the entrance. Jakli, holding a torch, with Kaju. She looked at Shan with a sad smile. "Okay. I told him a true teacher would want to know the truth," she said.
Shan nodded silently and stepped aside to let her lead the Tibetan through the ice cave to Auntie Lau. Shan followed at a distance. He was at the entrance to the burial chamber when he heard Kaju groan and saw him drop to his knees. Shan stood at the back, by the frozen handprints on the wall, as Jakli showed him the bullet hole.
Kaju held his belly as if he were going to be sick. And then he sobbed.
Jakli knelt beside him, and they studied Lau without speaking.
"She left me files," Kaju said at last, very quietly. "Three days before she disappeared, she updated all the files about each of the children." The words came slowly, as if he were struggling to find them. "This one had pneumonia once, so keep a hat on her. That one likes to watch birds. This one is supposed to see a dentist in three months. It was as if she were going away." He looked down into his hands. "Not locations. She didn't tell
me
where to find them."
"Why would you say that?" Jakli asked, suspicion heavy in her voice.
"Major Bao asked. Twice, himself. And three days ago at the school, Comrade Hu asked. Said records had to be completed."
The words hung like a dark cloud over them.
At last Shan stepped to the Tibetan's side. "You should consider carefully who it is who lied to you," he said.
Kaju looked at him in confusion. "No one," he said in a brittle voice. "This is just a terrible tragedy." He shifted his gaze to Jakli, then back to Shan. "Except you. She was missing, they said. But you had her body hid."
"It was all planned. Arrangements were made to bring you to replace her."
"Plans for her to retire, yes," the Tibetan said. "She was going to Urumqi." He fell back off his knees, sitting, as if he had lost his balance.
"Ko told you that she would definitely be leaving for Urumqi?"
Kaju nodded. "Ko said he was going to erect a plaque to her at the school. She will always be a hero in the Brigade." Kaju kept staring at Lau's face. "I will not let them stop me," he said. It sounded like a vow to the dead woman.
"Who?" Shan asked as he sat beside the Tibetan.
"The ones who did this. The reactionaries."
Jakli groaned.
"It's wasn't reactionaries," Shan said calmly. "It was someone looking for a boy. A very specific boy." He told them, as they sat in the chill burial room, about the Yakde Lama. He was careful not to let Kaju know about the Raven's Nest or the waterkeeper, but he spoke about General Rongqi and how one of the zheli had been the incarnation of the Yakde, and about the Jade Basket.
Jakli sighed heavily, then raised her hand slowly and rested it on Auntie Lau's shoulder. The Tibetan sat in silence, his eyes restlessly studying the corpse in front of him. "If I were to believe you, it would mean they all are lying, that they were all working together. Ko. General Rongqi and Major Bao. They aren't. I know that. That's not the kind of government we have now. Bao and Public Security, sometimes they don't understand. One of our assignments is to help them understand new techniques for—" His voice faded, as if he had lost his train of thought. "But the Brigade is different. I got a letter from vice chairman Rongqi congratulating me on my appointment. The people sent me to university," Kaju added, as if it explained much.
"To study integration of cultures," Shan observed. "Not annihilation of them."
"My training," Kaju said, as if in protest.
"Training for what?" Jakli interrupted. "To kill teachers? To murder boys?" She stopped, as if surprised by the venom in her own voice, and looked down, with pain in her eyes, at Lau.
"Of course not."
They were silent a long time. Jakli's head moved slowly up and down as she gazed at Lau, as if she were having a conversation with the dead woman.
Shan sighed. "It's a starting place. Just believe that. That someone has killed four boys, is still stalking them, and will not stop until he has the gau. Do you accept that the killer must be stopped? Whomever it may be?"
Kaju's eyes met Shan's and he nodded soberly.
"And understand this," Jakli added. "The boys are not safe with the Brigade for now. Or with Public Security. Not until it is over."
"I will—" Kaju said, confusion clouding his eyes, "I will not tell Director Ko about the boys being here. He night not understand, he might inadvertently say something to the knobs. I will not tell Major Bao. You can trust me. I have not told about the Americans."
Shan looked at him with surprise. "You mean the boy Micah?"
"Micah, and his parents. There was a class just after she disappeared. No one knew she was dead. Most of the zheli came. Micah was there. They played some American games, even tried speaking some words of English. One of them spoke about Micah's parents sometimes visiting classes, sometimes helping with instruction."
"Why wouldn't you tell about the Americans?" Shan asked. He considered the timing. Kaju had known about the Americans for nearly three weeks. When had Bao begun his search for the Americans?
Kaju looked at him and shrugged. "I don't know," he said, and Shan saw that he had struggled with the decision. "It's none of my business. The boy Micah is part of the class, and my business is to instruct the class, to help the class. He's—" Kaju shrugged again. "He's like the others, just a boy trying to understand the world." The Tibetan turned to Jakli. "But there are classes scheduled, at Stone Lake. Not all the boys have been accounted for. I am still going there." He stood and turned to leave, then after three steps stopped, looking at the wall, at the handprints in the ice.
"To pay homage," Jakli explained. "The ice wall will seal the cave. And then those who paid homage will be with her."
Kaju hesitated, looking at them with entreaty in his eyes.
"Those who paid her homage while she lived," Shan added. "And those who will pay her homage in her death."
Kaju cast a grateful glance toward Shan and pressed his own hand into the ice.
"It is a vow you are making," Jakli said behind them, in an eerily disembodied voice. "A vow to save the zheli."
"Then I give my vow," Kaju said in a small voice, pressing even harder against the ice. When he finished he stepped back and stared at the hollow he had made in the ice, then looked at Shan. "There was something I gave to Public Security. I mean, they took it. I was assigned to Lau's old room in the single teachers' quarters. Public Security was there when I cleaned out her things. I pulled something from under the pallet and they took it."
Shan sighed. "A poem."
Kaju nodded. "Just a poem about a teacher gathering flowers. I didn't— I wouldn't have given it to them but they were there and just grabbed it. No one should be put in jeopardy because of a poem."
Just a poem, Shan thought. But to Bao, a prime evidence of treason. He exchanged a glance with Kaju. It was why Kaju had not told about the Americans, he suspected, because he felt guilty about breaching Lau's confidence— or maybe, Shan thought, about violating the beauty of the child's poem.
Kaju took a step away as Jakli moved toward the tunnel, then stopped again. "I never thought about it, but maybe—" He began twisting his fingers together. "The schedule. Lau's schedule, and all the details I know about the zheli. I meant no harm. They told me her biggest fault was her secrecy about the children."
Shan considered Kaju's words and the pain on his face. "So you put it all on the computer."
Kaju nodded slowly.
Shan looked at the Tibetan uncertainly. He couldn't say it didn't matter.
Kaju sighed heavily, turned to face Lau, and walked, backward, out of the room.
Shan lingered behind in the cold vault as Jakli led Kaju outside. On his first visit, he had come to Lau the teacher. This time he had come to Lau the ani. He knelt at her side again. Speak to me, he wanted to say. Which of them came to Karachuk? Which of those in Yoktian were simply zealously performing their duties and which was working with Bao, which was a murderer? He sighed and pulled the tiny ceramic jar from his coat pocket, the jar that had been filled with sacred sands and sealed at Lhadrung. He held it cradled in his hands for a moment, then pried open the seal with his thumbnail. Lifting the robe, he poured the holy sands, making a small circle on her shirt, over her heart. Then he replaced the robe and placed the empty jar by her head. He stepped back, looking at the ice surrounding on the wall and back at the handprints. Jakli's hand was there, and Akzu's and Kaju's and his own. They could last a thousand years and more, preserving their shame that they had let a saintly woman die with a bullet in her brain.
When he arrived back at the Red Stone camp he realized that the boys had not told him everything about the visit of Gendun and Lokesh. He found Batu with Sophie, listening to Marco proudly explain her heritage.
"When they left," Shan asked when Marco finished, "where did the Tibetans go?"
"Last night, they left. On donkeys. Somebody had given them donkeys," Batu said with wide eyes. "It's what you do for holy men, Lau told us once, you give them things so their deities will smile on you. We asked them to stay, but they told us they had to go to another place. They were eager to leave."
"What other place?"
Batu shook his head, then called two other boys over. None of them knew. "In the desert," one of the boys said. "The old one who laughed a lot said he knew a place in the sand where souls collected."
