Jakli was pushed forward by Marco, and with a shy smile Wangtu handed her the lead rope of the white horse. "I know when Nikki comes," he said loudly, so the crowd could hear, "he will bring five more like this. But," he said with a shrug, "at least I'm first."
The horse, Shan was certain, was the one they had seen at the rice camp. The fiery creature looked at Jakli and its eyes softened, then it stepped forward and she extended a hand. As it pushed its muzzle into her palm, the Kazakhs cheered. Malik shot away and a moment later returned with the silver bridle.
For the next hour many from the camps watched as Jakli raced up and down the field on her white horse, while others mounted and rode alongside her. At last she consented to a game of khez khuwar, and though many youths galloped forward for a kiss, none could catch her.
Shan found Malik under a tree at the north end of the field, sitting with one of the dogs resting its head on his legs. He sat without speaking, and they watched the riders in silence.
"I keep thinking about that day you found him," Shan said at last. "I keep thinking, what if there was something else? Something Malik decided to keep, something he didn't put back on the grave? That would be a sad thing, because Malik would start feeling he had done wrong, even though it was because he just wanted a remembrance of Khitai, and his memory of his friend might have a cloud over it."
"So many things have happened," Malik said, his eyes on the dog. "It's hard to understand." He sighed, and pain clouded his face. "I only wanted something because we were friends. I have almost never had friends. I mean just another boy. He was so gentle with the lambs." Malik unbuttoned the top of his shirt and removed the object that hung around his neck. A large silver gau, with a top of woven filigree.
"I didn't lie to you," the boy said. "You asked did he have anything on him. This was in the dirt, thrown by the rocks. I never looked inside," he added, then he handed it to Shan, rose with a small smile, as if glad to be free of the object, and walked with the dog toward the lake.
Shan took it to Lokesh, who now sat upright, watching the sleeping form of Gendun. The old Tibetan studied the gau reverently without opening it, but shook his head and handed it back. It was not the Jade Basket.
"Khitai might keep the Basket in a special place sometimes, to protect it," Lokesh said, then he grimaced and looked up at Shan. "That's why he gave it to the American boy, isn't it? To protect it."
Shan nodded. There was no other possibility now. Prosecutor Xu had been the one to confirm it. Two clans had been at the zheli field, two zheli friends, meeting in the lama field, to look for flowers. Khitai, sensing the danger and knowing the importance of the gau, had passed on the Jade Basket for safekeeping. Just for a few days, he probably told Micah, for they would be together soon, on the way to America.
Lokesh's head turned and twisted in several directions as he looked at the gau in Shan's hand, as if he had to get a precise angle on the mystery. "That last boy, the American boy, he has the sacred Basket," he said, as though needing to persuade himself.
And by now the killer knows it, Shan almost added. He remembered the flares in the mountains. Bao's patrols were out, still searching. Akzu had been wrong about one thing. Micah wasn't safe, or at least would not be when he left the mountains to go to Stone Lake.
Lokesh looked up, his eyes clouded. "How do these things happen?" he asked, and he seemed about to cry. Fires were lit as the sun went down, and still representatives of the other clans arrived at the Red Stone camp, bringing skins of kumiss to drink by the fire. They ate mutton stew and hard cheese, singing songs, some of the old women dancing ritual dances that none of the young generation knew. Marco and Deacon freely drank the fermented milk and taught each other new songs. Inside one tent Shan found Ox Mao with the slender woman, Swallow Mao, who held one of the small computers on her lap. She acknowledged Shan with a nod and kept busily tapping the keys as he sat nearby.
"That newborn program," she announced. "I downloaded files from the Brigade onto a disc. It's not just local, but all over southern Xinjiang. Not administered by Ko. It's higher up than Ko. Two hundred babies registered so far, with detailed notes on all birthmarks. Some parents are being asked to take examinations."
"Examinations?" Shan asked.
Ox Mao grunted angrily. "Administered by political officers," he whispered, as though speaking the words more loudly would violate the sanctity of the festival.
The moon was high overhead when sentries came down from the hills and new ones rode out. "Don't shoot anyone who's bringing white horses," Marco called after them, and everyone laughed. Jakli excused herself to go to the sleeping tent but as Shan watched from the fire she slipped around the yurt and sat in the moonlight by her new horse, who nuzzled her and made soft wickering sounds, sounds of contentment. A piece of paper was in her hand, and somehow Shan knew what it was. The letter she always carried, almost in tatters from being so often folded and unfolded. A letter from her Nikki.
Thunder woke them in the dawn, followed by shouts, then jubilation. Every Kazakh in the tent seemed to recognize the rumbling sound and rushed outside, leaving Deacon and Shan and the Tibetans alone, sitting up in their blankets, rubbing their eyes.
It was horses, scores of horses galloping through the camp, more horses than Shan had ever seen. Or maybe not, as he listened to the cries of the clans. He had seen them in Yoktian. The Kazakh herds had been freed. The gates at Yoktian had been opened despite the guards, and the animals had come home.
The excitement was palpable. Children leapt in the air. Dogs yelped. Guns were fired in the air. Everywhere people were embracing each other. The Brigade had not won after all, people were saying. It was Zhylkhyshy Ata, someone shouted, the horse deity had not forgotten the southern Kazakhs.
"This day will be written in the history of our people," an old woman called out, and her eyes flashed with the excitement of a young girl.
The celebration in the camp lasted through the morning. Shan was watching the zheli boys, who shone with delight as they walked through the herd, when Gendun touched his arm and pointed up the hill. Lokesh was waving at them from a large rock on the slope above the camp. When they arrived, he pointed excitedly to a beautiful circular pattern of lichen growing on a rock face above where he sat. It was a mandala, a mandala made by the deity who lived in the mountain.
The two Tibetans sat to contemplate the lichen rock as Shan found a perch on a boulder near the bottom of the ridge. He watched Jakli on her white horse, spontaneously laughing as she rode back and forth on the valley track below him, then took out the piece of paper he had taken from the body at Glory Camp. He stared at the strange abbreviations again, trying to make sense of their odd code.
He was leaning back on the rock in the sun when someone spoke his name.
"There is a feast tonight," Jakli said in an oddly shy tone. He looked up and saw the white horse tethered to a tree at the base of the ridge. "I would like you to sit with my family."
Shan nodded. "You honor me."
"It's not over, is it?" she asked after a moment, kneeling beside him.
"The general is coming," Shan said. "The killer is still free. The last boy is still unprotected. The Americans-" He stopped, seeing the anxious look in her eyes. She had felt guilty that she was leaving her people at such a time. "We can get word to you through Marco," he assured her. "Marco will know what happens. Everything will be all right," he said, doing his best to sound hopeful for her. He gestured toward the herd in the pasture beyond the tents. "The herds are free again."
"I was thinking about Marco," Jakli said. "He's going to be lonely. Everyone will be gone. He likes you. He would never say it, but I know it. Sometimes maybe you could write to him, from wherever you are."
Shan offered a thin smile. "Sure. Write him," he said, knowing it was impossible. Outcasts and fugitives didn't correspond.
"I wish-" She abruptly stopped and raised her hand. Rifle shots could be heard, not the random volley of the nadam revelers, bu
t regularly spaced shots several seconds apart, each louder than the one before it. The last came from the top of the ridge above the encampment.
"The sentries!" Jakli shouted in alarm and stood. "Warning shots."
The encampment burst into frenzied activity. Shan could see children being herded toward the trees beyond the pasture. One group, a tight knot of boys with two Kazakh men carrying hunting rifles, ran from the Red Stone camp. The zheli were fleeing. Men collected in small groups at the entrance of each clan camp.
Shan looked up the slope and saw Lokesh, standing beside Gendun, waving at them. Shan gestured for them to get down and the Tibetans disappeared behind their rock. Moments later a moan escaped Jakli's lips as a sleek black utility vehicle appeared, followed by a troop truck. As the vehicles stopped at the first circle of tents and the troops leapt out, the knot tying itself in Shan's stomach grew ice cold. Knobs. One of the boot squads. He pushed Jakli toward the cover of a boulder.
"Maybe," he said without conviction, "it's just a security check."
Jakli just shook her head.
The knobs, clutching the compact submachine guns used for riot control, flanked their officers, as if expecting resistance, and marched forward, shouting at the inhabitants of the first camp to present papers. A line formed, but no papers were collected. One of the officers broke away and walked alone along the front of the encampments, studying the faces of those in line. Not walked. Strutted. It was Bao. He made a dismissive gesture and the first group of Kazakhs were ordered to go into their tents.
The knobs repeated the process at two, then three camps. Shan's mind raced. It could take an hour or two, and he and Jakli would have to stay on the hill, hidden, until they were done. He looked up the hill, wondering if he could steal his way to Gendun and Lokesh.
"Marco got away," Jakli said in a hollow voice. "I saw Sophie slip into the trees."
The knobs got no further than the sixth camp, the Red Stone camp. They did not bother to ask for papers, but just marched Akzu, his wife, and Malik toward the center, a hundred feet from their trucks. Bao paced around them, shouting at them. Shan glanced at Jakli. She had a knuckle in her mouth, and was clenching it so hard in her jaw that she seemed about to bite it off.
Bao barked at a soldier, who climbed into the truck and reappeared with chains in his hands.
When he looked back Jakli was looking at the mountains to the west and her eyes were full of tears. The knobs began to herd Jakli's relatives to the trucks.
Jakli slowly stood, still watching the mountains, as if Nikki might ride across a ridge at any moment. "It will be a good day for the races later," she said, the way she might make conversation over a mug of tea. Her tears were gone, replaced by a cool glint of determination.
Shan stood too, uncertain but scared.
Jakli began walking down the path to the camps. He stood alone for a moment, then caught up with her.
"You have been like an older brother, Shan," she said. "You have taught me things."
"We should stay back," Shan warned. The large rocks that hid them from view were thinning out. In another fifty feet they would be at the valley floor, in plain sight.
Jakli pointed to a rock. "There's a place with cover. The knobs will be gone soon."
She picked up Shan's hand and dropped something in it, then pushed him toward the rock. "Use it," she said urgently. "Get out of here. Go to your new life." She took a paper from her pocket and dropped it by her feet. "Nikki and I, that was like a dream. It could never have been part of this world. It will have to wait for another time." She took a step and paused, then spoke in a whisper, looking back up the slope toward the Tibetans. "Lha gyal lo." May the gods be victorious.
He darted to the rock but when he looked up she was not there. Jakli was walking to her white horse. If she rode hard, he realized, rode up the ridge where trucks could not go, she would make it.
But a moment later she slipped the saddle off, then the bridle, and slapped the horse's flank hard. It bolted away, up the ridge. Then Jakli stepped toward the knobs. There was a movement beside him, and suddenly Fat Mao was there, out of breath, shaking with exhaustion.
"I told her, don't do it," he gasped. "The knobs were all over Yoktian. Some in the school, dressed like teachers, waiting for the zheli. Some were secretly watching the horses, hoping the zheli would pick up their prizes so Bao could snare them. But she did it anyway. She said she didn't see any knobs, that she would make it look like an accident, like a gate was just left open. I told her these were boot squads. They had special techniques, they could hide and watch. Electronic surveillance. And you have three bowls already. If they take you, I told her, then you're gone, off to Kashgar, in some coal mine the next day. For the next few years."
The herd. Shan remembered how she had arrived late, her horse lathered, and recalled her words at the horse's grave. She had wanted to find a way to say goodbye, a gesture for the Kazakhs, and her uncle the horsespeaker. She was the one who had freed the herd.
"Jakli!" Shan called as painful understanding flooded over him. He stood but she was already seen by two knobs, who were running to intercept her. The knobs had her family. They had come for Jakli, who had openly defied them at Yoktian. If Jakli didn't go they would take her family to prison.
The soldiers grabbed her arms and roughly pulled her toward Bao.
"Jakli!" someone else called out. Wangtu emerged from the crowd and ran toward her. A knob slammed the butt of his gun into Wangtu's belly and the Kazakh crumpled onto the ground, groaning in pain.
Word seemed to spread through the encampment like a surge of electricity. Men, women, and children, some on horseback, converged around the knob trucks. A hundred Kazakhs, then two hundred, surrounded the knobs, who stood, weapons ready, as Bao strutted about her, ignoring the angry shouts. The knobs let go of her family and Malik charged a knob, jumping on his back, beating him with his fists. The soldier flung him to the ground and held him under his boot until two of the clansmen dragged him away. As they did so Akzu pointed. The white horse was on top of the ridge now, standing proudly on a ledge overlooking the camp. It seemed to be watching.
"Niya!" someone shouted. "Niya Gazuli!"
The knobs put chains on Jakli, at her wrists and her feet. Wangtu was on his knees, gasping, crying, holding his belly. The soldiers began to pull her by the chains, but she resisted and called out to them defiantly. The soldiers dropped the chains, and she picked them up herself, walking on her own, her head held high, to the truck that awaited her.
The murmur of Niya's name swept through the clans, which began to form a long line along the road out of camp. More horsemen began to appear on the slopes, where they had been hiding. At the north end of the valley, below the lake, Shan glimpsed a solitary man watching, astride a silver camel.
"Niya! Niya! Niya Gazuli!" the crowd chanted, until all the Kazakhs picked up the cry and it reverberated down the valley.
Bao glared at the crowd, then cast a poisonous look at the horse above them. The truck with Jakli began to move. Then Bao climbed into the black vehicle and it followed.
"Niya! Niya!" The riders on the horses stood in their stirrups and raised their fists high, the defiant shouts echoing through the mountains as the truck moved down the road.
Then, a hundred yards from the crowd, Bao's truck stopped. The major climbed out quickly and stood at the hood of the truck, bracing himself with a long range rifle, aiming up the ridge. He fired twice and the chant stopped. A woman screamed in pain and the majestic white horse stumbled. Then it dropped and its body fell off the ledge, rolling down the slope.
Major Bao called out and Jakli's head was shoved from the back of the other truck, her hair roughly held by a knob, forcing her to see the dead horse as its body slid into the rocks below. Then Bao strutted back to his truck and the knobs drove away. Shan found himself on his knees, clenching his belly, as the wise, joyful Jakli disappeared into the gulag.
Chapter Twenty
M
arco did not come back to the encampment. He and Sophie had disappeared up the valley. An hour later someone had called and pointed to a small dot moving at the top of the high ridge to the west. Marco was going home.
Gendun and Lokesh had not spoken with Shan but followed Jowa to the Red Stone camp as Shan stood watching the dust cloud of the knob trucks. Ten minutes later the three Tibetans appeared, leading horses. Shan saw but did not hear Malik giving directions to Jowa, pointing toward the high ridge Marco had crossed. At the last minute, as the four of them approached the lake, another rider raced to join them. Fat Mao.
By the time they reached the last valley Shan had taken the lead. There was no sign of Marco above as they began climbing the final steep switchback, no sign even when they reached the plateau. But Sophie was there and greeted them with a shallow bray. Jowa pointed as Shan was removing his saddle. Marco was sitting by the waterfall on the far side of the pasture.
Lokesh took Gendun's arm. "We can make food," he announced, and the two men disappeared into the cabin.
Marco finally saw Shan and Jowa, and he lumbered across the meadow like an old, weary ape. "There were to be races today," the Eluosi said to Shan. His voice sounded empty. "You would have liked the races."
"We had to come," Shan said. "We have to be sure the plans go ahead." Marco looked wearily from Shan to Fat Mao, as though for an explanation.
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