“There’s no air in here,” the prince complained. The room seemed crowded with five people in it, now that the baby was awake. “I have a headache,” he said.

“I’m not surprised.” She reached her hand out to touch him; her fingers were dry and cool. “You’re sweating,” she said. “Are you hungry?”

“No. I’d like some water.”

She turned to the boy. “Spider,” she said. “Please bring the prince some aspirin and a glass of water.”

He went, with a puzzled expression on his face, and Darkheart, too, showed signs of impatience. “I’m not interested in his comfort,” he muttered, trying to soothe the baby by grimacing and sticking out his tongue.

“Well, you should be,” said the woman. She took up one of the prince’s hands from where it lay on the blanket. “You’re a strange man,” she said. “Why are you here? Aren’t you comfortable in your own house?”

“I have no friends.”

“It’s your conscience. Look, there’s the line.” She brought his palm up to her face, to study it more closely. “Are there many like you? Rich men with consciences. I suppose there must be.”

“We are prisoners as much as you,” said the prince.

“Yes, I can see that. Your hand is much like Darkheart’s. This is your way of breaking out. You don’t have long to live, you know.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Death by fire. Look at this.” She turned over her own hand. There, in the lap of her left thumb, someone had tattooed the mark of the gallows in white ink against her black skin. “How can people be so cruel?

You’re not an informer, are you? You know enough to hang us.”

“We pay others to do that kind of work,” said Abu. “I’m too conspicuous to be a spy.”

“Exactly,” said the woman. “It’s what I told them. One man wanted to kill you.”

“One man tried to.”

“It would have been a waste,” muttered her husband, fluttering his eyelids to amuse the child.

Many people in Beggar’s Medicine seemed to have no age. Too sour to be children, too small and bent for men, too supple for old age, they seemed a race of nocturnal gnomes—smooth, hairless, yellow, as if even their faces had taken on the official urine-colored hue of poverty. Their skins seemed fragile and too small for them, and perhaps that was why they stooped and hunched their shoulders. Perhaps if they had straightened out their knees and necks, their skin might have split along the spine.

But the Darkhearts were a different kind, and so was Spider Abject. He stood up straight in the doorway, the aspirin in one hand, a glass of water in the other. There was strength in him, not just resilience.

“Spider wants you to get his father for him,” said Darkheart as the boy came in. “That would be easy enough for you, wouldn’t it?”

Abject’s eyes filled up with tears. He seemed prone to crying, but Abu liked him for it, because he never seemed to weep at blows or curses or abuse. He bore them sullenly, and sometimes he even smiled. But when he sat with his own thoughts or when he heard some words of kindness, then sometimes he would start to cry. And when Mrs. Darkheart reached to comfort him, to smooth the hair back from his forehead, he pulled away as if from a blow.