“The last paragraph,” Pike said. “She added it later.”

Shan skipped to the bottom of the second page. I have seen something terrible, which I may not write about. It felt like a dagger in my heart at first, but I am learning Tibetan ways to resolve things. There’s no better place to learn that you can fight monsters without becoming one yourself. If you want to have a soul here, every man must be a monk and every woman a nun, and all must be outlaws. Lha gyal lo, Nat.

“Lha gyal lo,” Pike said.“I hear Tibetans say it.”

“It means victory to the gods,” Shan said as he handed the letter back.

“Is that a prayer or a war cry?” the American asked.

The letter had only increased Shan’s foreboding. “You need to go home,” he tried for a third time.

Pike gave a bitter grin. “You don’t understand, Shan. Natalie was one of the only people I ever cared about in all this big world, in recent years. She’s been the only thing in my life that has meant anything to me. And she died in an ancient cave trying to save gods. The bastards killed her. They murdered her. Did you really think I was just going to take some photos and fly home?”

“You can’t do anything by yourself,” Shan said.

“You can’t do anything by yourself,” Pike shot back.

The words hurt, not so much because they were from a foreigner, but because they were true.

“You and I aren’t much different, Shan,” the American said. “We hate what our worlds have become and the only way we can stay true to ourselves is to push back against those worlds. The only difference is that I push back more physically than you do.”

“What you did to that man in the crematorium was cruel,” Shan said.

Pike shrugged. “I didn’t light the oven.”

They silently watched a donkey cart filled with cabbages traverse the square. “A witness was killed in Lhadrung yesterday,” Shan said at last, and began explaining what had happened to the unlucky janitor.

“You don’t know for certain who did it,” Pike said. It sounded almost like an accusation.

“No,” Shan admitted. “It was not Lieutenant Huan. It was someone close to the colonel who is allied with Huan in Lhasa. Someone who knew about Jampa delivering Metok’s message, even though we thought only the colonel, Amah Jiejie and myself knew about it. They knew that Jampa could be a witness against them.”

“If you want to catch a fox, you have to set a trap,” Pike suggested. “But first you have to find the bait that will attract it.”