Page 37 of What Remains (John Worthy #3)

Picking up languages had never been hard.

Baba used movies and turned learning into a game.

Poya might first watch a film dubbed in Pashto before progressing to subtitles, and finally to the film in its original language.

Most often this was English, but they also watched films in French and German. Russian.

At the time, Poya assumed all this was just for fun.

Now, he understood what Baba had been doing: teaching Poya the art of disguise.

The art of eavesdropping and blending in.

Of being easily forgettable. Of holding oneself still and being so ordinary that everyone else nattered on with no more thought for you than they’d spare for, say, a tablecloth. Or servant.

In other words, Baba taught Poya how to spy.

With Amu’s people, he played stupid. He made mistakes on purpose.

A trick, this: people gossiped more if they thought you were an idiot.

When the other men in the clan gathered in Amu’s yurt to drink tea and chew balls of hard qurut , Poya fixed his expression into a studied neutral.

Even when the men made comments about the boy , he didn’t look up and never turned around.

Instead, he would stare into the middle distance and tongue his own ball of salty, dried yak cheese from one cheek to the other—and listen.

Which was how he learned about Amu’s lost son, Hamzad.

Hamzad wasn’t dead. He hadn’t gone to live with another family in a distant clan. Hamzad was simply gone. Poof.

Thing was…so were all the boys Hamzad’s age. Although there were plenty of girls and younger boys in the camp, there were no teenaged boys at all.

And why was that?

The only clue was a comment made about a month after his arrival by a flat-faced, surly clansman named Mur: So, Amu, you want to bring down more bad luck? Two years now, they’ve let us be. But how long do you think before this one goes the way of Hamzad?

From the corner of an eye, Poya saw everyone else stiffen. Heads turned his way, but Poya only poured more tea into Mur’s cup and kept his own face as still as stone. Amu never did answer and eventually someone broke the silence with concerns about supplies and the coming winter.

But that exchange stuck with him, and not only because of the boy’s name.

Hamzad meant spirit or jinn. For the devout, a hamzad was a jinn assigned to a person at birth and so followed that person around.

Even though Amu wasn’t religious, perhaps he looked at Poya as Hamzad’s, well, spiritual successor?

The other thing which bothered him: just who were they ? The people which Mur said had left the clan alone for the last two years?

And what would happen if they noticed him ?