The closer they come, the more they see of Price’s features: the stubble-framed mouth, the blunt, broken nose, the deep dimple that marks the chin as though someone pressed his thumb in it when it was being baked. It’s a handsome face, in its own way, strong-featured and not unintelligent. But the eyes are ringed with something. Resignation. Implacability. A lifetime of violence. A sliver of red is visible where the lower lid curves around the eyeball. Not bloodshot eyes, then, but blood-lined ones: as though for emphasis, with a razor-edged pen. The brows that frame these eyes slope downward, from temples to nose. A frown splits them. It is not for their benefit, has been written there by the facial habits of a lifetime, by anger, concentration, or by pain. Five steps apart his smell becomes noticeable, of leather and sweat and an edge of old Smoke. In a moment they will push together chest to chest. Again Thomas thinks of the broken cigarette. If there is to be a fight, neither of them is the man’s match. He wonders whether he’ll be able to busy Price while Charlie runs for help.

And if anyone will be willing to help.

One step before their collision, Price veers aside. He never slows, walks past them, his heavy boots making remarkably little noise. At the end of the hallway, Charlie stops, looks after the man. His face is flushed. It has not been often that Thomas has heard his friend speak in anger.

“That man drowns kittens for sport,” Charlie says.

“Not for sport. Only when he’s told. But then he drowns them by the sackload.”

Thomas means to say it lightly, but his voice catches and a shiver runs the length of his damp back.

MR. PRICE

He calls me to his rooms late that night. Key-sar. That’s what they call him at school. Emperor-to-be. Julius Paul. Jules to his mother, after the manner of the French. To me he has always been Mr. Spencer, even when he was knee-high to a goose. I have known him half his life. I am father and mother to him, and also: his son. I see at once that he is angry. A riding crop is in his hand.

Go on, I say. Beat me if you must.

He does, works me over wordlessly, hitting my shoulders, back, and thighs, while I shield my face and eyes. We smoke together, he from anger, I from pain; breathe each other in. Far from estranging us, it affirms our bond. It’s what family is: the sharing of one another’s Smoke. Everything else is like a handshake: cold, formal, keeping a step apart. Isolation. Man is not born for such a thing.