Where She Goes, Act Three: All Things Pass, and Waste Paper in the Wind

3.1 Mercy on the wall, a crack in the heart

In the eighth month after leaving Ctesiphon, the Sasanian royal city, you finally see Dunhuang.

Dunhuang is a town built inside a sea of sand.

Coming through all that yellow waste, what appears first is the shadow of trees, then the shine of water, and only at the end the walls and the smoke of houses. On a plain that looks like the end of the world, somebody has brought water here, and tamped the earth down, and grown a town out of it — as though the whole eastern world had been laid brick by brick at the far edge of the sand.

For people like you, come all this way from the far west, it is nearly a miracle.

In that moment even the most talkative of your party go quiet.

You sit in the carriage with your hand pressed the whole time on the leather bag that holds the amulet, the documents and the gold seal. The bag is warm from your grip, the corners gone soft with the sweat of your hand. You have come all this way, out of the broken country of the Sasanians, across Mesopotamia, across Khorasan, across Transoxiana and the oases, over dangerous passes, half of it a struggle in yellow sand… and now you really are here.

Dunhuang is in front of you. The Tang, further east, is in front of you.

Half the sky is already dark when you enter the town; everybody is tired, and you stop first at an inn.

But you cannot wait.

It is not the short wait for the customs pass you cannot bear. It is the thing that has been pressing on your chest since you set out, held down the whole way by sand, thirst, fright and luck — and now, all at once, it comes up.

You want an answer.

More exactly: you want a medicine, a spell, a miracle that will save the queen and save Sasanian Persia.

Pei Xinggong, Vice Minister of the Court of State Ceremonial: that is the man your father told you to find, and any elixir would certainly come out of the imperial house as well. Beyond that, you have heard that the Buddhist teaching is flourishing at Dunhuang. You follow the God of Light, and you know that the priests are out of means, that the sacred fire no longer gives you any sign, that your god no longer answers what you ask. But the Buddhist gods may still have some mercy left.

In the caves of the Thousand Buddhas below the Singing Sands there are countless gods and buddhas with the power to take away suffering. Perhaps they would be willing to hear a desperate prayer.

Then you must go in and see.

See what this eastern country, where they say the Buddha’s eye looks on the world and the Buddha’s heart pities all living things, can actually give you, your family, and your empire.

So you leave the papers with your household servants and take only Fire Feather.

The evening wind at the edge of town has already gone cold, and blowing against your face it gives the illusion of damp. In the dusk the cliff of the Thousand Buddhas is only one tall dark shape, the cave mouths set into the rock one after another, some of them still burning a votive lamp, so that from a distance it is as though the mountain itself had opened many dim eyes.

Somebody outside the caves has lit a torch; the wind presses the flame down and it crackles. A few monks and lamp-bearers move back and forth, their steps light, their hems sweeping the ground and raising a thin skin of dust.

The cave mouth is low. You bend to go in and lift the torch, and what it shows first is a ceiling blackened with smoke; then the light moves down, and suddenly the colour on all the walls comes alive.

You stop there.

It is not a prescription.

There is no secret scroll, no cinnabar, no bronze bowl, no herbs, no incantation, none of the things you have imagined a hundred times on the road. There is no wall with a way of saving a life written on it. All four walls are people. Not living people: painted people. Ranks of buddhas, bodhisattvas, arhats, guardians, strongmen, flying figures, yaksas, donors; layer upon layer of scenes out of the sutras. What is drawn on that rock is another world, one without famine, without sickness, without war, without suffering — and all of it, dreamlike, has been sealed into this cliff with clay and pigment by the living people of this one.

You hold the torch up and go a few steps further in.

There are words on the wall as well.

Line after line of donors’ names, crowded into the corners, piled up the stone, set into every gap your torchlight crosses. Some are neat, some hurried; some leave only the family and the rank; some carry a prayer for a dead parent.

Hundreds and thousands of people, long before you came, have handed this cliff their lives, their deaths, and the one thing each of them could not let go of.

For a moment you feel that the thing you have been holding on to all this way has become very small among all this noise of other people’s wishes.

And you still go forward, to a statue of the Buddha, and slowly kneel.

The torchlight moves gently on the Buddha’s face. The smile of this foreign god is neither eager nor cold. It is simply there, like something that has already seen too many births, too many deaths, too many people who would not turn round.

Fire Feather has come in behind you and has not spoken since you entered. She cannot read the scenes on the walls and cannot make out most of the writing; she only stands further off than usual. Firelight strikes the side of her face and picks out the old scars there, and for a moment she seems to wear the same look of pity. When you have stayed too long she finally calls to you, quietly.

You do not answer.

You put your forehead to the ground three times before that Buddha, and when you lift it there is dust on your brow.

Silently you ask for a medicine that can cure Queen Boran’s disease. For a miracle that will let the breath of the Sasanian empire, which is nearly cut, go on a little longer. You have come east all this way, towards the Tang, towards gods and buddhas, towards scholars, towards physicians, and you have staked the last of the empire’s hope on this.

You do not know how long it is before a little of the stone on the wall breaks off and falls on you, and you take it for an answer from the gods, and go over as though you had been given a treasure, and run your hands over that patch of wall, and pick out the writing on it character by character.

And looking closely, the wall does not say salvation.

The wall talks about giving up the body. About delivering the dead. About the life to come. About letting go.

The cave does not argue with you. It simply lays another kind of order out in front of you, in the language of the sutras:

All things in the world arise and pass away and change. Dynasties fall. People die. The body rots. The highest glory is dust in a moment. True release is not keeping a life in the world by force, and not repairing a rotted empire back to what it was, but cutting off the attachment that will not let go.

And attachment is exactly what you came here for.

You want a medicine. It gives you impermanence. You want a life prolonged. It gives you the delivering of the dead.

You look at that smiling Buddha’s face, and for the first time you ask yourself: what is it, exactly, that you cannot let go of?

Is it Queen Boran. Is it the Sasanian empire. Or is it yourself, who cannot believe that all this should end so badly?

You hardly dare go on thinking.

The torch cracks and throws out one small spark.

You come to yourself all at once, and find you have been standing before the Buddha far too long.

Fire Feather has her arms folded, leaning against the cave wall, watching you quietly. As though she has noticed something wrong in your face, she calls you again, more softly this time:

“Shall we go?”

She has woken you. You draw your hand back into your sleeve and find the gold seal there — the seal with Queen Boran’s mark and the symbol of the dynasty on it. Cold, hard, with clean edges.

It is still there. Your mission is still there. These things are not an illusion.

Outside the cave the wind comes at you again, with the particular cold of the sand hills at night.

Fire Feather looks as though something is on her mind, as though she wants to say something to you, and in the end holds it back. You stand under a willow outside the Thousand Buddhas and watch more believers come up with incense and oil lamps in their hands.

The tears are not yet dry on their faces, as though they had just watered the hope at the bottom of their hearts with them.

You call Fire Feather back, having made up your mind.

“We’re going back. We go through the frontier tonight.”

3.2 The fort and the travel permit

When you and Fire Feather get back to the inn, the confusion reaches you before you are through the door.

The courtyard gate hangs crooked; half a wine jar lies by the threshold, the wine and the sand dried to a blackish paste. There are drag marks on the ground and a mess of footprints leading to the back yard; a few cut rope ends still hang on the posts, the cuts clean. Three of the places where goods were stacked are empty, and the most important animal crates have gone with them.

Look round and the people left in the yard are all people who have never seen anything like this. The women are huddled under the eaves, a child is too frightened to cry, and a few old servants and porters stand together, each face greyer than the last.

The old servant sees you first and stumbles over, his voice gone hoarse. “Mistress, it’s bad, it’s bad—”

You do not stop; you ask as you walk in. “Where are the people? Where are the goods?”

“All taken.” The stableman gets in first, sweating. “Those guards sneaked out in the night to drink, got into a fight outside the ward gate, and ran straight into the night patrol. They took the men first, and then they followed them back here to the inn, said they’d check our origins and our cargo list. The master tried to stop them and couldn’t. Several of the important crates and three cartloads of goods were all dragged off together.”

The old servant goes on. “Those soldiers wouldn’t listen to any explanation and wouldn’t look at our papers, just said there’d been a disturbance in the night and by the rules they hold people first. They wanted the animal crates too, said they were dangerous goods and couldn’t be left at an inn.”

By this point your face has gone hard.

Fools. Those troublemaking fools, you swear inwardly — and it is no longer a question of whether to get the fools back. You know perfectly well that in a place like this, nothing is more frightening than the power in the hands of the frontier soldiers. Their discretion is enormous: a foreigner drunk, a foreigner carrying a blade, a foreigner making trouble — every one of those can be made into a case.

It is the same in every country. Pay is poor on a frontier and power is wide, and most of what the soldiers make comes out of the caravans; your strange animals and your cargo boxes are first in line. Go and ask for them after daylight and they will very likely have been shared out already.

You stand in the yard, and the thickness and the emptiness that were pressing on your chest a moment ago are washed clean by these few sentences.

The caravan master is gone. The few able-bodied men are gone too. What is left is the injured, the old servants, the women and a stableman who is no use.

Torchlight goes across their faces, all panic and fear, and nobody knows what to do.

And inside you, everything goes still. You have no time now to think about the queen, the holy medicine, the incantations and the empire. There is only one thing that matters: those men must not get that cargo into the fort.

“Shut the gate,” you say directly. “The injured are not to move about. The women and children go inside. Count what is left and see that nothing more goes missing.”

The old servant hurries to obey.

Then you look at the stableman. “Except the fastest horse, tie every animal fast. Don’t let the waterskins or the braziers run out. If we are not back by daylight, you stay here. You are not to go after us, and you are not to let anyone else out.”

The stableman is startled, and looks at you, puzzled.

But you have already turned to go.

Fire Feather asks nothing. She goes straight to fetch the fastest horse.

She shakes the reins and swings up first, then puts her hand down to you.

You use the stirrup to get up, and you have barely settled before Fire Feather cracks the whip and drives the horse out of the inn gate.

The frontier town is empty at night, with hardly anybody about, and the hoofbeats are short and sharp, one and one, breaking up in the night wind. The wind comes straight at you and numbs your face; your hem and your veil stream back and snap behind you.

Neither of you speaks on the way.

Anything said would be too much. You are counting only one thing: soldiers escorting drunks and cargo cannot move fast. As long as they have not got inside the fort, as long as the men and the goods have not been formally entered into the register, they can still be stopped.

The horse does not stop, and you ride until the sky at the horizon goes grey-white.

At last the escort comes into sight.

Several frontier soldiers leading animals, with those half-sober guards under guard, then the baggage carts and the wooden crates behind, and the caravan master walking at the very edge, grey-faced, his back gone down a whole hand’s breadth.

A little further ahead is the fort.

Fire Feather pulls on the rein and cuts straight in ahead of the column.

You use that surge forward, straighten up, and call out into the morning wind:

“Hold—!“

3.3 The last language you can hold on to

At your call, Fire Feather has already pulled up. The horse paws the ground and throws up a spray of cold sand.

The column is already at the timber barrier outside the fort.

When the escorting soldiers turn, several of them instinctively grip their spears, and one shouts at you to get down.

You do not move.

You look at the formation first, and see that the escort has not formally passed the barrier; the carts and the crates are still outside, and the desk where documents are checked is inside the gate, with the cinnabar paste and the wooden tallies still on it. So you know you are in time.

Only just. Once people and cargo are entered in the register, it really will be trouble.

The soldiers have had their evening spoiled and their faces are iron. One of them barks:

“The men who made the disturbance in the night are taken, and the goods are to be inspected. Bystanders stand clear.”

Only then do you get down.

You do not look at the bound men and you do not speak to the master. You walk straight up to the soldier.

You speak, and you speak in Chinese.

“You gentlemen have a duty to make arrests at night, and grounds to detain men. But this train does not consist only of a few drunks. It carries tribute from beyond the passes and a letter of state from a distant country. To hold all of it alike, without distinguishing what is grave from what is slight, is perhaps not the careful way a frontier deals with people.”

The soldier is stopped short.

Your Chinese is not fluent and it has an accent; and the words and the sentences are unusually correct — correct to the point of sounding like a document.

He looks you up and down, plainly not having expected a young woman from the west to speak like that. They talk quickly among themselves and come straight back:

“Letter of state or no letter of state, we inspect first. There is a curfew on the frontier. Brawling, drunkenness, carrying strange beasts — all of it is grounds for seizure.”

You switch to Sogdian at once and speak to the clerks behind them, telling them to fetch somebody who can decide.

Fire Feather stands behind you and does not make a sound; she only watches where the soldiers are standing and where the crate locks are. Some of them have already started to lift the wet felt, and the cub inside the crate is frightened enough to growl low in its throat.

You take a step forward.

“Men who brawl may be detained,” you say, still in Chinese. “Men who were drunk may be questioned. But these carts and these crates are not their private property. If there is no proper inspection, and the seals are broken without authority, and tribute from a foreign country entering the realm is damaged — who signs for it?”

At that, the brush behind the desk stops for a moment.

Sure enough, somebody looks up.

The first to come out is not an officer, only a clerk of some age, who narrows his eyes and asks, “You know our forms?”

“Not all of them,” you say. “Enough.”

The clerk’s brows go up; he half smiles, and asks again, “What country do you name? Who stands surety for you?”

“A servant of the King of Kings of Persia,” you say. “Bearing a letter of state eastward, to present myself to the Sage Emperor of the Great Tang. If we go by your court’s ceremony for envoys of foreign states, the seal should be examined first, then the letter, then the envoy’s name, and the faults of the followers asked about after. Not the other way round.”

That brings somebody at last.

Not a minor clerk, and not the patrol officer. A man rides up from the back of the column in a dark cloak, his armour not fully off, a sword at his belt, and a far cooler look about him than any of the men in front.

The others give way half a step when he comes. Even the clerk with the brush puts it down and says quietly, “Aide.”

The Aide dismounts. His eyes go to the leather bag in your hand first, and then to your face.

“You speak Chinese?”

“A little,” you answer, and lift a hand in salute. “Before the Administrative Aide of the Shazhou Area Command, this envoy would not presume to be discourteous.”

His eyes flicker for a moment, and it does not get past you.

The nervousness you had before you spoke is gone. You know you have bet right: a man who is given this much deference is no ordinary office.

If one day you go east to the Yumen Pass, remember: an Area Command has a Commander, an Administrative Aide, a Military Aide, recording secretaries and other staff; the frontier office handles inspection and registration, and the soldiers and clerks have clearly divided duties… That said, the one we shall mostly meet is the Aide.

Your mother’s teaching outside the schoolroom comes back to you — the way she went past the books and taught you how to know people.

So what you called him was not my lord, and not some vague sir, but the Administrative Aide of the Shazhou Area Command.

In that instant even the soldiers beside him go quieter.

Now the bag can be opened.

You take out the gold seal first. The face of it is not large; it carries the mark of Queen Boran’s line. Below it, the rolled letter of state, the sealing clay old but not broken. You lay the things out on the desk one at a time, in order, and even straighten the cord.

“The men who caused the disturbance are guards,” you say. “But they are not the envoy, and they cannot represent this train’s standing in documents. If your frontier wishes to detain the offenders by law, this envoy has nothing to say. But the animals in the crates, the goods carried and the letter of state presented are all entered and named. If they are seized along with a few drunks, then on the day the matter is questioned, the name written in the case will not be theirs. It will be the name of whoever made the inspection today.”

The Aide says nothing. He only picks up the gold seal and looks at it.

You go on, and try to make every sentence clear.

“First, the cargo list is here; the number of crates, carts and animals can all be checked against it. Second, the envoy’s name is here; the principal and the followers are distinct, and the men who broke the curfew are not among the envoys. Third, the animals are dangerous goods, all the more reason for them to be kept by people who know how, rather than for the patrol to pull the crates open as they please. Fourth, if your frontier wishes to verify the travel permits and enquire into our origins, this envoy will go with an officer to the record office at once. But to seize the cargo and break the seals is not ceremony.”

Only then does the Aide look up at you.

There is nothing slighting in his eyes now. There is a little scrutiny instead.

“Are you the envoy?”

“Deputy envoy,” you say. “Under orders to bring the letter east.”

“Under whose orders?”

You pause for a moment.

It is a short pause, short enough that others may not catch it. But you know yourself that you are making a last wager. You are betting that these people do not have the news from the west quickly enough; that this gold seal and this letter of state will hold you up through this one gate.

“Queen Boran,” you say.

Wind goes down the road past the fort and lifts the edge of the paper on the desk a little.

The Aide looks down, at the gold seal, and then at the Persian writing on the letter of state. He plainly does not know all of it, but he knows the mark of the seal, and he knows this is the real thing, guarded closely the whole way.

He puts a hand out to the side, and a clerk hands him the cinnabar at once. Everybody around is silent, only waiting for him to set the seal.

You can hear your own heart.

One step further, and you are through. Into the Tang. The thing you have brought out of the yellow sand and guarded all the way here needs only this one impression.

But the Aide does not bring it down at once.

He looks at the seal and its cord again, as though he had remembered something, and says offhandedly:

“Your mission has gone round in the sand a long time.”

Your fingertips tighten a little.

He is still looking at that seal, his tone so flat it is nearly careless. “The seal and cord are genuine. Queen Boran’s, and that is right enough. Only—”

He pauses before he finishes the half sentence.

“Half a month ago the Shazhou Area Command had an urgent report from the west. This queen you speak of died under a knife more than half a year ago. Who governs Persia now, I do not know.” He lifts his eyes and looks at you. “So this letter of state may come in. Whether it can be sent further up, whether you will see the Son of Heaven — that is your own fortune.”

For that instant the wind on the road seems to stop completely.

You stand there and do not lift your head. Your head is swimming and you do not fall, only because you cannot fall yet. Not here, at least.

The Aide looks at you, is silent a while, and in the end presses the cinnabar down.

“The ones who made the disturbance are punished by the rules,” he says. “The goods and the crates go through. Once inside, there is to be no more trouble.”

The soldiers beside him answer and go to untie the cart ropes. The men who were loudest a moment ago all have their heads down now.

The Aide pushes the sealed papers back to you, his tone as flat as ever, like a man who has seen a great deal of this kind of thing:

“Since you have come, go on in. And if you truly cannot put it down, you can go and ask again at the Thousand Buddhas below the Singing Sands. In a broken age people always like to ask for peace in the next life. They may not get it in this one; asking for the next is something to hold on to as well.”

With that he turns and goes, without another look at you.

Only that new cinnabar impression is left, still shining wet.

3.4 Waste paper in the wind

After the Aide seals it, everyone on the road comes back to life at once.

The crates are pushed back into place, the carts that went crooked are straightened. The master stands to one side, grey with it, his lips moving several times as though he wanted to thank you, or to defend himself, and in the end not a word comes out; he only lowers his head and bends to pick up the scattered cargo lists one by one.

The guards who caused the trouble are let go too, the rope marks still on their wrists, mostly sober now, and none of them daring to look at you.

Somebody in the mission asks quietly whether what that officer said is true. Somebody else answers that this sort of thing is hardly rare: Azarmidokht died under an assassin’s knife too, in her day. Somebody else says under his breath, indistinctly, that this time Persia really is finished.

When you walk past them the voices stop at once.

They know that you brought the people and the cargo back.

They also know that the line Queen Boran is dead was spoken to your face.

You do not look at anyone, and your step does not break. The papers and the gold seal are still in your sleeve, and everyone’s eyes are still on you, and your back absolutely must not go down.

You walk the whole length of the train, past the crates, the camels and the stablemen working on the ground, without one crack in your face, as though nothing had happened on that road at all.

You walk until you are at the town wall, until you reach a shaded corner, until at last there is nobody about, and only then do you stop.

The wall of Dunhuang is high, and the morning light makes the brick look bleached. The night’s cold is still lying at the foot of it, and the wind comes out of the gate tunnel and makes your eyes sting. You put your back against the wall and for a while you do not move.

The Buddha in the cave comes back in front of you.

Those half-closed eyes, that wall packed with donors’ names, the pure land, the delivering of the dead, the giving up of the body, the life to come. Before that, the look in the Sogdian matron’s eyes under the gallery in Samarkand: cool, clear, weighted with something, with a little pity in it you could not read at the time. Earlier still, that very short pause when your father put the seal and cord into your hands before you left. Your mother did not look at you; she only straightened the cord for you, her fingers shaking, and even the words she was supposed to say came out too fast, as though a moment’s delay would let you hear something.

In that instant, a great many pieces that would not fit together finally lock into place.

She did not die just now.

She did not die while you were on the road.

Perhaps Queen Boran was already dead when you left Ctesiphon.

Perhaps that letter of state was, from the moment it was put into your hands, a document signed with a dead woman’s name.

Your father knew some of it; the people who packed the case knew some of it; that matron in Samarkand saw some of it when she touched the cord. Only you — only you kept on holding your careful dignity, guarding it, praying over it, spending your life the whole way to buy an in time that never existed.

You remember kneeling in that cave, still asking for medicine.

A medicine that could save the queen. A road that could pull the empire back.

And what you have been guarding all this way was something that had stopped breathing long ago.

The thought eats into you slowly, grows into your head, and a cramp goes through your stomach — as though the blown sand you swallowed on that long road, the cold water, the hunger you held down, the breath you did not dare let out, had all collapsed at once.

The sunlight outside the wall goes higher, and lies on the ground, bright enough to hurt and cold enough to hurt.

There are a few children at the roadside, come out of some alley or other, circling round you, saying things you do not entirely understand, their hands pointing at your sleeve, their eyes bright, as though they were asking for sweets.

You look down at them.

And then, as though you had not had time to think it out yourself, you take the leather bag out of your coat, and push it, with the amulet and the documents and the gold seal inside it, into the hands of the nearest child.

The child is startled, and then holds the bag the way she would hold a piece of hard wood she does not understand. The other children crowd round, touching the cord, pulling at the leather corners, giggling together. They run off laughing, and the laughter is light, like a few sparrows going over along the foot of the wall.

You do not go after them.

You only sit down slowly at the foot of the wall.

The wind comes through the gate tunnel and lifts the dusty hem of your skirt. You sit there with the solid frontier wall of the Tang behind you and people and animals going past in front of you. Nobody knows who you are. Nobody would care whether a foreign woman sitting at the foot of a wall was, a moment ago, holding a gold seal that could stand for a dynasty. In light like that even your shadow looks thin.

You do not know how long you sit.

Until somebody sits down beside you with a small sound.

It is Fire Feather.

She does not ask why you are sitting here, and she does not say I knew. She only straightens her legs out a little and leans against the wall, as naturally as somebody resting at the side of a wild road. After a while she speaks, not loudly, like somebody describing a dream that was over long ago.

“When I was little, I lived in an oasis town out in the desert.”

You do not turn your head.

“A big family,” she says. “Lots of people, lots of tents. Who belonged to whom, in the end nobody could work out. I don’t know who my mother was. All I know is that the moment I opened my eyes there were a lot of people round me. Some could bake bread, some could sing, some looked after the animal crates, some could breathe fire or walk a rope.

“I had a sister. A lot older than me. She used to take me everywhere.”

She is speaking Persian, and slowly, as though to make sure you follow.

“We were poor, but we didn’t live badly. My sister could do the shows: little tricks, the rope, teasing birds, and she could quiet those half-wild animals. When she’d earned something she’d buy me a sweet cake. When she hadn’t, she’d take me out anyway. To see the birds on the hill, the lizards on the sand, the animals that come out at night to drink.

“I used to think life would just go on like that. A bit poor, a bit tiring, and none of it mattered. Like a fire basin: you light it, it goes out, and tomorrow the sun comes up anyway.”

She stops for a while.

“Then we came to Ctesiphon.”

When that name comes out, the wind at the foot of the wall seems to go a degree colder.

You turn your head at last, slowly, and see her with her head down, a thin stem of grass in her hand that her fingers have been crushing to pieces.

“First there was rioting. Then there was fighting. Then it was looting and killing.” She is looking straight ahead; her eyes are not on you. “That night the people in our house were shouting. My sister pushed me into one of the big jars we used for the tricks and told me not to come out whatever I heard. There was another woman too — maybe my mother, maybe not — and she told me not to make a sound either. When they pressed the lid down, I still thought they’d be back in a moment to lift me out.”

Her fingers move a little, as if feeling the rim of a jar that is not there.

“I did what I was told. I never came out.”

The wind goes between you, and she is quiet a moment before she goes on.

“I could see them through the crack in the jar. One went down first, then the other. My sister was still trying to hold a soldier off right to the end. That was her. Even dying, she thought she could still save somebody else.”

You listen with your throat tight, and still you say nothing.

She stops, as though something has caught in it.

The wind is strong, strong enough to blow a lot of things away: the past, the tears, the regret, the refusal. You have stopped making any sound, because by this point you already know what is coming.

“After that there was only me,” Fire Feather says. “I climbed out of the jar and there was nothing left. No people, no tents, no animals. I walked around the streets on my own, and then somebody caught me and sold me. I’ve been a slave, I’ve stolen, I’ve been handed over to settle a debt. After that, whoever was short of hands put me into their train. Today you call me an animal handler; tomorrow somebody else calls me a slave, or a pledge; the day after they find another name. It’s all much the same.”

“After that I learned better. Don’t be like my sister.” She flicks away the last of the grass in her hand. “If you want to stay alive, trust nobody, lean on nobody, and put your hand out to nobody.”

She turns at last and looks at you, and in those amber eyes there is no anger and no tears, only a tiredness that seems to have been accumulating a long time.

“So I disliked you from the start.”

Your throat moves slightly, and you do not argue.

“You’re a fine young lady. You say those clean things, you manage people, you save people; even when you hand me water it’s like you’re bending down from somewhere higher up. Full of yourself, and sooner or later you get beaten for it.” She goes on. “I haven’t met many of your sort, but the moment I do I’ve had enough of them… more than enough. And besides… you’re too like her.”

She is looking at you, her voice dropping, as though she were hesitating.

“Like… who?”

You cannot help asking at last.

“My sister.”

You are startled.

“Knows perfectly well she’ll be hurt, and goes anyway. Knows perfectly well she can’t get them back, and has to try. As if all she has to do is not let go and she can hold the sky up when it falls. Stupid as anything. Like a little kid.”

She sounds angry, and she turns fierce, and the stem of grass snaps.

“Why didn’t she hide with me? Why did she have to run out?” She is swearing now, and then she stops, as though something has caught in her throat, and after a long moment she forces it out. “She was the best of us at tricks. But there’s a saying among players: how is the same trick supposed to work twice? Why couldn’t she work it out — if she’d left the others alone and just hidden with me, maybe, maybe she’d have lived.”

When that angry run of words is finished, Fire Feather is quiet for a long time. She keeps her head down, her brows drawn hard together, the light in her eyes very dim, like a fire buried in ash: you cannot see it burning and it is scalding anyway. You can see her jaw held tight, as though she were biting down on something. It is a long while before she speaks again, and her voice is nearly a whisper:

“But in all this world, the people who gave me bread and salt and didn’t treat themselves as my master — one was her.”

She pauses.

“And one is you.”

You sit there, unable to say a word.

And Fire Feather looks as though she has finally moved the stone off her own chest; she seems lighter for it. “There are no gods in the sky, and Persia has no queen. But look properly — you’re still breathing, and I’m still alive. There’s no road back in this world. You just go forward.”

As she says it she reaches into her coat and puts something on your knee.

It is the leather bag.

There is still a little of some child’s sticky sweet on the cord, and the amulet, the gold seal and the documents inside are all perfectly fine, not one of them missing.

You stare at it and look up at her. “How did you—”

The corner of Fire Feather’s mouth finally goes up.

“Did them a trick,” she says. “Those little things don’t know gold from silver, and they don’t know a letter of state. But they like tricks.”

And as she says it she waves a hand in front of your eyes and produces, from somewhere, a small piece of sugar candy, golden, lying in her palm.

She tosses it to you.

“Take it,” she says. “It’s not time to throw things away yet.”