“Where did she go?”
He said more nonsense. Then Ganbold understood a word: “Samarkand.”
Ganbold grunted and turned away. The ancestors favored him once more by guiding him to this information.
Michel and his crew traveled the next few days without incident. Though he felt that they had escaped any immediate danger, he would rest easier when they got off the open road and reached Bukhara, where he could speak with his contacts and reconnoiter. He hoped that seeing that man had been a fluke. He feared, however, that whatever was coming for Eve would be bigger than he could handle quietly.
She had said she had murdered her husband and then said no more. Leaving Michel with questions overflowing.
In his years of business and politics, he had learned that he had to trust his instincts about people. He knew tribal politics to be rudimentary, physical, brutal. He did not know Eve well, but he did not believe she would do something unfounded. He so badly wanted to understand her.
And, of course, he knew how angry the tribes would be if they knew he was harboring her.
But he had committed to her. He wouldn’t turn her away at the first confidence she gave him. Though this new knowledge of her certainly did not ease his mind.
The crew would reach Bukhara later that evening. The landscape had already begun changing as they had gone deeper into the river valley. Ancient earthquakes had carved steep hills into the area, while the river provided the arid desert with enough moisture to cover the ground in thick, green underbrush. Now, they were coming through a rocky passage which cut a wedge between two hills. The men had slowed. Michel turned scenarios in his mind while listening to snatches of conversation echoing up the high rocky walls. A wheel may need replacing soon. A story of a girl at home. A missing pipe. A song.
Michel hulked in his saddle. He was still agitated, every new sound causing him to think they were under attack. The horses’ hooves crunched through the slate. Another man behind him laughed and said he’d lost a razor too.
Michel thought for a moment, keying in more closely to their conversations. It had also been a while since he’d seen his pen knife, he thought.
“Goddammit,” he growled suddenly. He nudged and called his horse to stop before climbing off. Behind him, the men bottlenecked, coming to abrupt stops of their own. Eve looked on as he stalked back down the line.
Michel locked onto Terence. The youth’s hazel eyes grew wide as he sat up straighter on his horse. Michel approached him, grabbed the boy by the shirt, and jerked him off the horse.
“Monsieur!” Terence cried. “What—what have I done?”
Michel didn’t respond, but tipped Terence up by the back of his pants until he was almost upside down. From his pockets tumbled a selection of items: a compass, a ring, a scattering of coins. Michel let Terence right himself, but he didn’t let the boy go. Michel reached for the saddlebag that carried Terence’s knapsack. Michel dumped it as well.
“My razor!” shouted the man who, moments before, had been complaining. Several of the others murmured as they began to see their own materials, patting themselves down for confirmation that things had gone missing.
Michel dropped Terence in a heap, and the boy scrambled up. He held up his hands, “I don’t know…” he started. “I didn’t…”
Michel pointed at him. “You’re done.”
Terence froze. “You’re not gonna leave me here?”
Michel grabbed him by the back of his shirt again and threw him over the saddle of his horse. “Not here,” Michel said. He stroked the muzzle of the horse with one hand and then led the horse to the front of the procession. “When we arrive in Bukhara, I will arrange your return to France. You are too young to be this far from home.”
“Monsieur, please,” he sputtered, “I’m useful. I’m strong. I can speak dialects the rest of you can’t?—”
“I don’t want to hear anymore. I don’t have time for this,” Michel said. He tethered the horses. “Keep your mouth shut, or I’ll kick you off the horse, and you can find your own way home.”
Terence—now covered in reddish dirt from being dropped in the road, his cropped hair a mess—closed his mouth, but Michel saw his eyes blacken with anger.
“I don’t intend to strand you, boy, but don’t press me,” Michel said, hoisting himself on his saddle, irritation, anger, and frustration warring inside of him.
The party entered Bukhara in the late afternoon, just before the dinner hour. Eve had not been through Bukhara, but as it had been settled by a Mongolian Khan less than a century ago, there were people here who shared her same lineage. Bukhara housed massive buildings made of pale brickwork that blazed yellow in the last rays of the day’s sunlight. Huge mosques and temples with domed roofs covered in turquoise tiles towered over shaded streets that cut between the thick, tall walls. Enormous rectangular iwans pushed far above the courtyard walls that contained them, showing off intricate and colored tile work. As they walked through the streets, Eve felt as tiny as a fly on the tail of a camel amongst the structures. It seemed a city built for giants.
Michel led them through the city to the northwestern corner, just outside another massive, earthen building—the city’s citadel—with walls that seemed to stretch to the clouds. Here, they would set up their yurts and housing since this would be their base for a stretch of time. Once Michel spoke with the town officials, he turned to the men and hollered at them to start setting up the campground.
Eve stepped forward and put her hand on his forearm. He stopped yelling to look down at her hand and then to her eyes.
“It’s my job,” she said. “I will oversee the camp preparations.” Then she nodded toward Terence, who was kicking rocks into the wall. “You have other things to take care of.”
He held her eyes for a moment, then nodded and indicated with his hand that she should go ahead.
Satisfied, Eve called out to the men, who were already unloading their materials. “Look at me, please,” her voice rose above them as she cut through the space. The others paused the preparation of their own spaces—some setting up yurts, others preferring their tents—to look at her. “We will have one main campfire at the center,” she called out, turning her body to make eye contact with each man. “It will be where I am standing,” she called out. “Iman,” she leveled her eyes on him, “please find the stones and the starters in the wagons and bring them to me now.”
