“No blasphemy,” said another kind of voice, a large soft voice out of the darkness beyond the table lamp. “There’s no blasphemy allowed here, Mr. Gnash. You know that.”

It was a woman’s voice. She stepped into the light and seemed to diminish it just by standing next to it, for her skin was as black as if the shadows still clung to her. Her voice, too, contained a resonance of darkness outside the glaring lamp. The light shone on the table and on a circle of pale, miserable men.

Outside the lamp, perhaps, her voice seemed to suggest, perhaps only a little way beyond, hope and happiness might still scavenge in the dark, vague, snuffling beasts. “No blasphemy,” she said. “Please.

Spider, who is our guest?”

“A Starbridge, ma’am,” answered the boy, getting up out of the corner and dusting himself off.

“But what is his name?” She spoke in an unfamiliar accent, and seemed to grope for words before she found them, as if misplacing them in the dark. She was tall, with hair clipped short around her head.

“Abu Starbridge,” said the prince. “Ma’am,” he added as an afterthought. It seemed to suit her.

She smiled. “No one but children call me that,” she said. “It seems strange from you. Prince Abu Starbridge. I have heard your name. Come closer. I have never seen a prince before.”

He walked towards her, and when she could see him clearly, she laughed. “Why Prince,” she said.

“You’re getting bald.”

“Yes,” said Abu happily.

“I have heard your name. I heard of you among the Children of God, before the river rose.”

The man with the broken nose swore again. “Fit company,” he said. “Atheists and whores.”

“Sweet friend, don’t say it. Atheists, certainly. They are the Children of God. A child cannot worship his own father, as other men must. It’s not in nature. It is in nature to deny. Yet I am certain that when our Lord comes again, He will come from them, naked, without even a name.”

The woman said this as if it were part of a speech she had memorized in advance. As she spoke, she looked at the prince steadily, as if to measure his reaction. He smiled foolishly.

* * *

Her name was Mrs. Darkheart, and she led Abu back through secret doors to rooms where she lived with her husband and her children. In the room where she made him lie down, someone had daubed crude adventist murals over the wallpaper. And when he had been left alone, Abu stretched out drunkenly on the bed. He couldn’t decide if he felt worse lying back with his eyes closed, the bed seeming to recede from underneath him like a wave pulling back, or worse leaning upon one elbow watching figures of strange saints and upright prophets reel around him, formal and forbidding even while they danced. There was no window, but still the rain was beginning to leak in from somewhere, and in some places the paint had cracked and the wallpaper was loose. The spreading phosphorescence gave some scenes peculiar emphasis: Angkhdt on his deathbed, foretelling his rebirth, and the water had seeped through all around his head and glowed there like a halo. The risen Angkhdt, the new made flesh, purging the world with water and light, and the world seemed to glow between his fingers. Everywhere the walls were painted with quotations from the saints, unfurling in banners from their lips as they marched drunkenly around the room. Abu closed one eye and tried to make some sense out of the words.