They thanked the man, and returned to their ponies.

From the farmer’s lonely house, they climbed a steep hillside. Edgar understood the geography better now. The course of the rivers descending from the Himalayas cut parallel north-south gorges in the Plateau, so that any trail they followed was cursed with a long succession of ascents and descents. Over the hillside lay another range of mountains, and these too they climbed, its valleys unpeopled, and over the next range they passed a small market where villagers clustered around mounds of fruit. They ascended again and reached the ridge just as the sun was setting behind them.

Before them, the mountain slope fell once again, but not to rise in another set of hills. Instead the slope was long and steep and below it a river roared, cast in the darkness of the hills.

“Salween,” said Nok Lek, triumphantly, and hissed.

They rode down the steep path, the ponies bucking with each uncertain step. At the banks of the river, they saw a boat and a lantern and a sleeping man. Nok Lek whistled. The man jumped up, startled. He wore only a pair of loose trousers. His left arm hung limply at his side, twisted as if waiting to accept a bribe. He jumped to the shore.

They dismounted and passed the bridles to the man with the paralyzed arm. Nok Lek unloaded the packs and stowed them in the boats. “The boatman will bring the ponies by land to Mae Lwin. But we go by boat, it’s faster. Please, Ma Khin Myo.” He held out his hand and she took it and jumped into the boat. “Now you, Mr. Drake.”

Edgar stepped toward the boat, but his boot slipped and caught in the mud. With one foot in the boat, he tugged, but the mud only made fierce sucking sounds. He grunted, cursed. The boat swung outward into the water and he fell. Behind him, the two men laughed, and he looked up to see Khin Myo, her hand covering a smile. Edgar cursed again, first at them, then at the mud. He tried to push himself up, but his arm sunk deeper. He tried and failed again. The men were laughing harder, and Khin Myo couldn’t hide a soft giggle. And then Edgar too began to laugh, doubled over in that impossible position, one leg thigh-deep in the mud, the other held above the water, both arms soaked and dripping. I haven’t laughed like this in months, he thought, and tears began to stream from his eyes. He stopped struggling with the mud and lay back, looking up at a dark sky through branches illuminated by the lantern. Finally, with effort, he pulled himself up and then into the boat, dripping. He didn’t even bother to clean the mud from his body; it was too dark to see, and Nok Lek had already boarded and was trying to push them off with a pole.

Once into the current, they floated quickly downstream. They left the lantern with the boatman, but the moon shone brightly through the trees. Still, Nok Lek kept close to the riverbank. “Not enough light for friends to see, but enemies can,” he whispered.

The river twisted through tree branches and past fallen trunks. The boy negotiated the current skillfully. The roar of insects was not as deafening as it had been in the jungle, as if hushed now by the susurration of the river as it ran its fingers through the shivering tree branches.

The banks were thick with foliage, and occasionally Edgar thought he saw something, but each time he convinced himself that they were only shifting shadows. An hour into their journey, they passed a clearing and a house on stilts. “Don’t worry,” the boy said. “Only a fisherman’s hut. Now there is no one there.” The moon shimmered above the trees.

They floated for many hours, and the river dropped swiftly through steep defiles, past overhanging crags and cliffs. Finally, at a wide bend, Edgar saw a collection of flickering lights. The river carried them toward it, quickly. He could discern buildings, then movement on the bank. They pulled up next to a small jetty. There, three men stood watching them, all in pasos, all shirtless. One was taller than the rest, his skin pale, a thin cigar hanging from the edge of his mouth. As the boat slowed, the man took the cigar and flicked it into the water. He reached down and extended a hand to Khin Myo, who gathered up her hta main and climbed onto the dock. There she bowed slightly and moved forward, slipping into the brush with the ease of one who had been there before.

Edgar climbed out of the boat.

The man looked at him without speaking. The piano tuner’s clothes were still soaked with mud, his hair matted against his forehead. He could feel the dried mud on his face crack as he smiled. There was a long silence and then he slowly raised his hand.

He had thought about this moment for weeks, and about what he would say. The moment called for words fit for History, to be remembered and recorded once the Shan States were finally won and the Empire secured.

“I am Edgar Drake,” he said. “I am here to repair a piano.”

Book Two

I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known—cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honor’d of them all,—

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro‘

Gleams that untravel’d world whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

Some say that seven suns, and some that nine were created, and the world became like whirlwinds; there was no solid part remaining.

12

Edgar Drake was led by a porter along a short path, past a sentry, and through a dense brush. Ahead, lights danced, framed in the branches of scattered trees. The trail was narrow, and the brush scraped his arms. It must be difficult to move a column of troops through here, he thought. As if to answer him, Doctor Carroll spoke from behind, his voice loud and confident, with an accent Edgar couldn’t place. “Excuse the difficulty of the trail. It’s our first line of defense from the river—with the brush, there’s no need to build ramparts. You would probably appreciate how hellish it was to carry an Erard through here.”

“It is trouble enough in the streets of Londpn.”

“I can imagine. The brush is beautiful too. We had a little rain last week, rare for this time of drought, and it came alive with flowers. Tomorrow you will see the color.” Edgar stopped to peer more closely, but realizing that the porter was far ahead, he began to walk again, quickening his gait. He did not look up again until the brush ended abruptly and they entered a clearing.

Later he would try to remember what he had dreamed Mae Lwin would look like, but the first vision overwhelmed all past imaginings. The moonlight swept over his shoulder to a cluster of bamboo structures that clung to the hillside. The fort had been built below a steep mountain, cresting about a hundred yards beneath its precipitous face. Many of the buildings were connected by stairs or hanging bridges. Lanterns swung from roof beams, although with the light of the moon, they seemed almost superfluous. There were perhaps twenty huts altogether. It was smaller than he had expected, flanked on either side by thick forest. He knew from the reports that there was a Shan village of several hundred people behind the mountain.

Doctor Carroll was standing at his side with the moon at his back, the details of his face dark. “Impressive, isn’t it, Mr. Drake?”