Prayer of the Dragon

began murmuring in his native tongue, arms flying toward the heavens. Hubei backed away several steps, then hurried off.

“I want him stopped,” Bing muttered to Shan.

“He is speaking to the ghosts, asking them to tell us the truth.

Surely the citizens of your bold new world have nothing to fear from old world ghosts. Or is it you who are scared of ghosts, Captain Bing?”

“What do you want?”

“The man who died last year. What exactly happened?”

“He was found with a chisel in his back and a bloody patch on his head where he had fallen against some rocks. A shopkeeper from Guangzhou had come here with him, his partner. But they were always arguing with each other, and with the rest of us. We confirmed it was his partner’s chisel.”

“We?”

“Hubei and I.”

“And the killer?”

“No one knows how he died. All we found was his skeleton.”

“Wearing his old ring. A skeleton with jewelry. Even the dead adapt here.”

“That’s when we organized ourselves. Signed articles governing Little Moscow, so it would be a safe harbor, a place to keep supplies.”

“And that’s when they elected you to lead them,” Shan pointed out.

“The murder made it clear that someone had to do it. I had government experience. It was my duty to accept the nomination.”

“Supply and demand again,” Shan pointed out. “After all these years, a need for protection arose, and the perfect candidate was there to fill it.”

Outside, Hostene was speaking in his tribal tongue, holding the bag of pollen up to the sky. “There are still some who consider him a killer,” Bing ventured.

“Where’s the body of the man who was killed last year?”

“I don’t know. We left him under some rocks. But when the wolves get hungry enough-” Bing finished with a shrug.

“You’re saying you haven’t been back to the grave?”

“I had no reason to go there.”

Shan considered Bing’s calculated lack of interest. He decided not to ask the question that leapt to his tongue. Instead he said, “When I go to Tashtul town, where will I find the gold agency?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Where does one go to sell gold? Officially, only the government buys gold.”

Bing replied, “You’re not actually going to Tashtul.”

“A fascinating idea, though. The miners disperse all over China come autumn, they have black markets all over China to go to. But you and Chodron, you need to convert the share of gold paid to you by the miners somewhere much closer. It’s against the law to exchange it without involving the government. The Ministry of Mines is the flaw in your business model. It restricts the upside potential of your enterprise. The worst possible partner in a conspiracy is a bureaucrat. You’d be surprised how quickly such officials can be made to sing. Investigators love to start with bureaucrats because they harbor no delusions about the criminal justice system. And this year,” he added, “some of the miners have already converted some of their gold into cash, in the middle of the summer. As if there were a new gold dealer nearby. Or a bank.”

Bing glared at him, then shrugged. “You have no way off this mountain. If you try to go to Tashtul, Chodron will make sure you’re never seen again.” He pushed the canvas flap aside, his anger building, as Hostene began sprinkling pollen on the miners’ heads. Bing cursed under his breath and hastened back to the square.

Shan found Hubei packing a sack with mining equipment near his lean-to.

“That last day Thomas was here, before I arrived, what was he speaking about? Who was he speaking with?”

“Everyone.” Hubei did not stop his packing, but did not hesitate to answer. “Anyone who came along. One moment he was hawking his wares, the next bragging that he knew how to catch criminals.”

“What did he say about catching criminals?”

“Forensics, he called it. He claimed he could tell what made a wound by examining the blood spatter, could tell if a man was dead or alive when he was stabbed or shot by whether blood had flowed out of the body. Bones. Bullets. Fingerprints.”

“What about bones?”

The miner tied off the top of the pack. “Fractures. A skull fracture from a fall made a long crack. A skull fracture from a hammer might knock out a circle of bone. A leg fracture from a car accident was different from one where the leg was held down and smashed.” The miner raised the pack onto his back.

Thomas had spoken of how a victim’s bones could betray a murderer, and then Abigail had seen Bing tossing old bones from a cliff.

“Did you help bury the man who died last year?” When the man did not reply Shan blocked his exit from the shelter. “Did he still have his hands?”

Hubei lowered the pack and rubbed a hand over his face. “There was no need for the others to know about that. We rolled the body in a blanket before they could look.”

“Which means you know his partner was not the murderer.”

Hubei glanced toward the square, where Bing was putting Hostene’s ritual instruments back into his pack even as Hostene continued dispensing pollen. “Maybe there are different murderers. New people came to the mountain this year. Last year, we softened the man’s partner up with a couple of shovel handles, enough to scare him off the mountain. We borrowed his ring before he left,” he admitted.

Shan nodded at the confirmation of his suspicion. “By my count that makes ten hands that have been severed and taken away. How many do you suppose this killer needs? An even dozen? A score? You’re a brave man, going back to your claim alone. Be sure to get some of that pollen sprinkled on your head before you leave.”

Hubei winced, rubbing at the tattooed numbers on his forearm, the nervous reaction of a former prisoner. Hubei was wise in the ways of the world. He, at least, understood that they were on the brink of disaster. His hand went to his belt. For the first time Shan saw an old military knife tucked in his waist.

“You aren’t going mining,” Shan observed.

“No one is to get past the claim Bing posted down the trail. Between patrols I’ll push some rocks around and pan the streams.”

“The problem with being in the middle of a war, Hubei, is that everyone eventually has to choose a side.”

“I’m on the side of my family,” Hubei said. “You should get out of the way. Leave the mountain, Shan, and the war ends.”

Shan said, “I’m not leaving until the murderer is caught.”

For a moment Hubei looked as if he meant to argue with Shan. Then his attention focused on the town square of Little Moscow, which had gone very quiet except for a voice chanting in Navajo. “He’s had a message.”

“Bing?”

Hubei nodded once more. “From that damned woman. He says she came to him yesterday when he was alone working his claim, asking him to give a note to her uncle. We should’ve stopped her the first day she arrived, and sent her away from the mountain. She’s nothing but bad luck.”

“He knows we are looking for her. Why didn’t he give the message to me?”

“A man like Bing doesn’t share secrets. He uses secrets.”

“He told you. He told Chodron.”

“Me, because he doesn’t read English. Only me,” the miner added pointedly.

Shan didn’t wait for Bing to return to his makeshift house. He quickly slipped inside the shelter of rock and canvas, and began searching, starting at the entry from which he surveyed the entire chamber before examining each chink in the rock wall. When he finished with the wall, he searched under the pallet on the floor, then moved to the jacket hanging on a peg. The note was there, in an inside pocket sealed with a zipper. It was written on a