The Year of Rice and Salt

They could just see the Grand Canal through the trees lining it, some two or three li to the east. Mounds of earth and timber stood by it, marking repairs or improvements. They kept their distance, hoping to avoid any army detachments or prefecture posses that might be patrolling the canal on this unfortunate day.

'Do you want a drink of water?' Kyu asked. 'Do you think we can drink it here?'

He was very solicitous, Bold saw; but of course now he had to be. Near the Grand Canal the sight of Kyu would probably pass for normal, but Bold had no paperwork, and local prefects or canal officials might very well ask him to produce some. So neither the Grand Canal nor the country away from it would work all the time. They would have to slip on and off it as they went, depending on who was around. They might even have to move by night, which would slow them down and be more dangerous. Then again it seemed unlikely that all the hordes of people moving up and down the canal and its corridor were being checked for papers, or had them either.

So they moved over into the crowd walking the canal road, and Kyu carried his bundle and wore his chains, and fetched water for Bold, and pretended ignorance of any but the simplest commands. He could do a scarily believable imitation of an idiot. Gangs of men hauled barges, or turned the capstans that raised and lowered the lock gates that interrupted the flow of the canal at regular intervals. Pairs of men, master and servant or slave, were common. Bold ordered Kyu about, but was too worried to enjoy it. Who knew what trouble Kyu might cause in the north. Bold didn't know what he felt, it changed minute by minute. He still couldn't believe Kyu had forced this escape on him. He hissed again; he had life or death power over the boy, yet he remained afraid of him.

At a new little paved square, next to locks made of new raw timber, a local yamen and his deputies were stopping every fourth or fifth group. Suddenly they waved at Bold, and when he led Kyu over, suddenly hopeless, they asked to see his papers. The yamen was accompanied by a higher official in robes, a prefect wearing a patch with twinned sparrow hawks embroidered on it. The prefects' symbols of rank were easy to read – the lowest rank showed quail pecking the ground, the highest, cranes sporting over the clouds. So this was a fairly senior figure here, possibly on the hunt for the arsonist of Hangzhou, and Bold was trying to think of lies, his body tensing to run, when Kyu reached into his bag and gave Bold a packet of papers tied with a silk ribbon. Bold undid the ribbon's knot and gave the packet to the yamen, wondering what it said. He knew the Tibetan letters for 'om mani padme hum', as who could not with them carved on every rock in the Himalaya, but other than that he was illiterate, and the Chinese alphabet looked like chicken tracks, each letter different from all the rest.

The yamen and the sparrow hawk official read the top two sheets, then handed them back to Bold, who tied them up and gave them to Kyu without looking at him.

'Take care around Nanjing,' Sparrow Hawk said. 'There are bandits in the hills just south of it.'

'We'll stick to the canal,' Bold said.

When they were out of sight of the patrol, Bold struck Kyu hard for the first time. 'What was that! Why didn't you tell me about the papers! How can you expect me to know what to say to people?'

'I was afraid you would take them and leave me.'

'What do you mean? If they say I have a black slave, then I need a black slave, don't I? What do they say?'

'They say you are a horse merchant from the treasure fleet, travelling to Nanjing to complete business in horses. And that I am your slave.'

'Where did you get them?'

'A rice boatman who does them wrote one for me.'

'So he knows our plans?'

Kyu said nothing, and Bold wondered if the boatman too was dead. The boy seemed capable of anything. Getting a key, getting papers forged, preparing the little fireballs… If the time came where he thought he didn't need Bold, Bold would no doubt wake up one morning with a slit throat. He would most certainly be safer on his own.

As they trudged past the barge ropelines, he brooded on this. He could abandon the boy to whatever fate befell him – more enslavement, or quick death as a runaway, or slow death as an arsonist and murderer – and then work his way north and west to the great wall and the steppes beyond, and thence home.

From the way Kyu avoided his gaze and slunk behind him, it was apparent that he knew more or less what Bold was thinking. So for a day or two Bold ordered him about harshly, and Kyu jumped at every word.

But Bold did not leave him, and Kyu did not slit Bold's throat. Thinking it over, Bold had to admit to himself that his karma was somehow tied up with the boy's. He was part of it somehow. Very possibly he was there to help the boy.