“Hypocrite!” cried the pervert. “Starbridge pederast! Liar! By God the end is coming for your kind.

Your airs and graces. I’ll live to see you . . .” His voice rose high, and again it was shut off.

“Where is she?” asked Thanakar.

His hostess made a small gesture with her eyes, and Mrs. Silkskin stepped forward. “Come with me, sir,” she said, curtseying.

The hallway was full of appraising eyes. Passing them, climbing the twisting stairs, Thanakar cursed his limp, the rattle in his knee. His guide kept her face averted and went slowly. A kindhearted woman, he thought gratefully. She waited for him at the landings. And at the top of the stairwell, they passed through a doorway and through velvet curtains into a small room furnished like a shrine. The eternal blue flame burned across the surface of a bowl of water on an altar and in the sanctuary a statue of Beloved Angkhdt reclined on a low dais, his tongue hanging out of his long jaw, two hands clasped around the base of his phallus. With another hand he supported himself upright, and his fourth arm stretched out in front of him. He held a curious symbol balanced on his palm, a high-arched model of a woman’s foot, cut off at the ankle. Around him, the walls were painted with lascivious scenes. Ornate letters gleamed in the mosaic of the floor, a persistent mistranslation of the Song of Angkhdt: “My love, I kiss the inside of your foot. More tender than any flower, riper than any fruit is the flesh there.” In certain southern dialects, old words for fruit and a woman’s sex were spelled the same.

Jenny lay in an alcove, supported on silk pillows. Her small body was washed and perfumed, and dressed in the immodest fashion of southern priestesses. It left her chest and shoulders bare. Her hair was piled high on top of her head and fastened with a comb of sandalwood. She wore carved bracelets of the same material, and her face was painted, the mark on her face painted away. Her lips and eyelids were a shining green. And her feet were bound together at the ankles, and tied cruelly so that her naked insteps pressed together, the space between them a cruel parody of a woman’s sex. She didn’t raise her head when Thanakar stepped towards her, or recognize him when he knelt down.

He could see the skin had already started to grow together on her heels, and along the balls of her feet.

He took his penknife out to slice the ropes apart, and Jenny looked at it with eyes so full of sadness that he paused. Mrs. Silkskin stood behind him. “Doesn’t she have any decent clothes?” he asked.

“No sir. Most people like her as is.”

“Then bring me a blanket. Something to wrap her in. Have a covered rickshaw waiting at the door.” He reached into his pocket and took out a fat purse. “Give this to your mistress,” he said. “Silver and gold—she’ll have to use gloves.”