The four men turned up the slope and began walking toward the headquarters. At Edgar’s side, Carroll spoke again. “I am very pleased the piano is ready. It seems that it will be needed sooner than we thought.”

“Sorry?”

“I would like you to play for the sawbwa, Mr. Drake.” He saw Edgar begin to speak, and interrupted. “I will explain more later. The sawbwa is an accomplished musician, and I’ve told him much about the piano.”

Edgar stopped walking. “Doctor,” he protested, “I am not a pianist. I have told you this many times.”

“Nonsense, Mr. Drake. I have heard you play while you are tuning. Perhaps you are not ready for a London concert hall, but you are more than fit to perform in the jungles of Burma. And besides, we have no other choice. I told him that you came especially for him, and I must sit with the sawbwa to explain the music.” He put his hand on the tuner’s shoulder and fixed his gaze on him. “There is much at stake, Mr. Drake.”

Edgar shook his head again, but the Doctor didn’t give him another chance to speak. “Now let me make our guest comfortable. I will meet you in your room.” He called out in Shan to a boy who stood at the door of the headquarters. The emissary of the sawbwa laughed and the men disappeared inside.

Edgar returned to his room to wait for the Doctor. He paced nervously, This is ridiculous, I don’t need to be part of his games, This is not what I came for, I have told him many times I don’t play, He is like Katherine, they don’t understand this.

He waited. An hour passed, and then perhaps two, although he couldn’t be certain, and couldn’t even indulge the habit of looking at the broken watch, as he had recently left it in his bags.

Another hour. Slowly, his anxiety began to lift. Perhaps the Doctor has changed his mind, he decided, He has thought about this more carefully and now knows that it is a misbegotten idea, that I am not ready for such performances. He waited, increasingly convinced that this was true. He went out on the balcony but could see only the women at the river.

At last he heard footsteps on the stairs. It was one of the servant boys. “Doctor Carroll give this to you,” the boy said, handing him a note, bowing.

Edgar opened the letter. It was written on Shan paper like all others he had seen, but the handwriting was slouched, hasty.

Mr. Drake,

I apologize for not meeting with you as promised. The sawbwa’s emissary requires more attention than anticipated, and unfortunately, I will be unable to speak to you about your performance. My only request is this: As you know, the sawbwa of Mongnai is one of the leaders of the Limbin Confederacy, with whom British forces under Colonel Stedman have been at war for the last two months. I hope to propose a preliminary treaty with the sawbwa while he is in Mae Lwin, and, more importantly, to request that he arrange a meeting with the Confederacy. All I ask of you is to select and play a piece that will move the Prince with emotions of friendship, to convince him of the good intentions of our proposals. I have the utmost confidence and faith in your ability to select and perform a piece appropriate for this occasion.

Edgar looked up, to protest to someone, but the boy was gone. When he looked out over the camp, it was empty. He cursed.

He spent the night in the piano room, at the bench, thinking, beginning pieces and stopping, No that is not right, I cannot play that, thinking, beginning again. Thoughts of what he should play alternated with questions of what the visit meant, who the sawbwa was, and what the Doctor intended by the music, by the meeting. He stopped sometime in the early hours of dawn, when he rested his arms on the keyboard and his head on his arms and fell asleep.

It was afternoon when he woke with the impression that he had fallen asleep in his shop back in England. As he walked back to his room, he was amazed at how the camp had transformed itself overnight. The pathway had been swept of the detritus left by the rains, and covered with fresh pieces of timber. Banners were strung from the houses and fluttered in the light of dusk. The only sign of the British presence was the flag hanging outside the headquarters, which had been converted into a dining hall. It seemed oddly out of place, he thought, he had never seen it in the camp before, which now seemed peculiar—after all, it was a British fort.

He returned to his room and waited until the early evening, when a boy came and knocked on the door. He washed and dressed, and the boy led him up the steps to the headquarters, where a guard instructed him to remove his shoes before entering. Inside, the tables and chairs had been replaced by cushions laid out over the floor before low wicker tables. The hall was quiet; the sawbwa and his retinue had yet to arrive. He was led across the room to where Doctor Carroll and Khin Myo were seated. The Doctor was wearing Shan clothing, an elegantly tailored white cotton jacket hanging to the top of a paso of iridescent purple. It looked quite regal, and Edgar was reminded of the day he arrived, of how Carroll had stood by the river, dressed like his men. Since then, Edgar had only seen him in European clothes, or army khakis.

There was an empty cushion between the two of them. The Doctor was engaged in deep conversation with an older Shan man seated several cushions away, and motioned to Edgar to sit. Khin Myo was speaking to a boy who crouched at her side, and Edgar watched her as she spoke. Her blouse was of silk, and her hair looked darker, as if she had just bathed. In it, she wore the same teak pin she had worn on her walk. At last, when the boy had left, she leaned over to Edgar and whispered, “Have you prepared what you will play?”

Edgar smiled weakly. “We will see.” He looked about the room. He could barely recognize it as the drab clinic or office he was accustomed to. Torches burned in each corner, filling it with light and the aroma of incense. The walls had been draped with carpets and skins. Around the room stood servants, many of whom Edgar recognized, others he didn’t. They were all dressed in fine flowing trousers and blue shirts, their turbans clean and impeccably tied.

There was a sound at the door, and a hush fell over the room. A large man in glittering regalia entered. “Is that him?” Edgar asked.

“No, wait. He is smaller.” And as she said this, a short, plump man in an extravagantly sequined robe entered the room. The Shan servants at the door dropped to the floor and kowtowed before him. Even Carroll bowed, and Khin Myo, and—glancing to his side to imitate the Doctor—Edgar bowed as well. The sawbwa and his retinue crossed the room until he reached the empty cushion beside Carroll. They sat. They were all dressed in matching uniforms, pleated shirts with sashes, their heads tied with clean white turbans. All save one man, a monk, who sat back from his table, which Edgar understood as a refusal of food, as monks are not to eat after noon. There was something different about the way the man looked, and as Edgar continued to stare, he realized that what he first thought was unusually dark skin was a blue tattoo, which covered his entire face and hands. When a servant came and lit a bright torch in the center of the room, the blue skin stood out sharply against the saffron robes.

Carroll spoke to the sawbwa in Shan, and although Edgar couldn’t understand their words, he sensed murmurings of approval around the room. The hierarchy of the seating surprised him, that he should sit so close to the sawbwa, closer than the village representatives, and closer to Carroll than Khin Myo. Servants brought out fermented rice wine in carved metal cups, and when all had been served, Doctor Carroll raised his cup and spoke again in Shan. The room cheered, and the sawbwa looked especially pleased. “To your health,” whispered Carroll.