* * *

These two antinomials kept company, not speaking, but playing music to each other. They kept apart from the others, out of a kind of delicacy, Thanakar fancied. He put them in a tent next to his own because he liked to hear them play late at night, an assortment of instruments at first, but after a while they had rejected all but two, a glass flute and a wooden one. When the doctor lay unsleeping on his cot, his mind racing through images of failed surgery, or of Charity or Abu Starbridge, or of Micum Starbridge repeating some simple action over and over, then it soothed him to hear those soft dissonances come seeping through the canvas walls, the glass flute and the wooden one, the music as evocative as speech. They played music all the time.

But after talking to Aspe, Thanakar took a horse and went, left his hospital and rode up out of the valley back towards Charn, through lines of soggy tents. The images of Charity Starbridge had speeded up into a kind of frenzy. But once that night as he dismounted on the muddy track to stand in a shelter of a wall out of the rain, to rest his leg and watch the city burning like a candle far away over the hills, he heard the splash of horses’ feet. The two antinomials sat majestic on their horses in the rain, looking down at him.

They didn’t speak; neither did he, and after a little while he climbed into his saddle again. They followed him all the way, riding slightly behind.

At dawn they came up to the city’s gates. Thanakar had feared he might be expected. But all was pandemonium, a cursing stream of men with burdens, men on bicycles, women pushing handcarts. There was no guard. People stood in the road with no place to go, the mud up to their knees, their households on their backs.

Inside the city it was worse, the streets clogged with people shouting and struggling in the rain. The fire wouldn’t spread this way for months, for here the wood was too wet to burn. Yet everywhere banks and businesses and schools were closed, the buildings empty and the streets full, the shrines jampacked with cursing worshipers. Thanakar and the antinomials abandoned their horses and continued on foot. They walked on for hours until, where two streets ran together and the houses fell away on either side, they could see the first tiers of the Mountain of Redemption rising to the sky, circles of stone battlements bulging through the mist. Thanakar felt a hand on his wrist.

“That’s where she is,” said the antinomial.

“Yes,” answered Thanakar.

“Where?”

“It’s called the Tower of Silence. There’s a section for heretics. You can’t see it from here.”

“Can you take me?” asked the antinomial.

“No.”

The man squinted, and his grip tightened on the doctor’s arm.

“I can’t do it,” said Thanakar. “I’ve got my own things to do.”