The bishop laughed to see them and clapped her hands. “Old friends,” she cried. “Old friends.” And as they drifted up the stairwell they paused to greet her, joining their fourth fingers to their thumbs in careful ellipses and fluttering their wings. “They are the spirits of the changing world,” said the bishop to her companion. “New freedoms, new ideas. It’s time,” she said. And when the last had disappeared, she stooped to pick up her knapsack. “Come,” she said, and sprinted upward, not pausing, up and up until the stairwell gave out on the rooftops and a small cloister, a shrine to St. Basilon Far-Fetched, patron of travelers. She ran lightly along the balustrade, out into the open air, while the boy followed. The image of the saint hung down over vertiginous heights, and she sat down beside it, swinging her legs over the edge.

Far below her, some of the outer courtyards of the temple were already in flames, and others were full of gunfire and struggling soldiers. But for an instant the mist had cleared, and she could see the lights of the city in the distance, and the silhouette of the dark mountain, and above it a spiderweb of lights. Only for an instant. They flickered out one by one as the clouds regrouped, and then it started to rain, a sugar storm, hard and sudden, the phosphorescent drops bursting like sparks along the tiles.

The bishop jumped back into the shelter of the shrine and tried to scrape the rain out of her hair. The boy put his arms around her from behind, but she pulled free, and left the roof, and climbed a final flight of stairs up into the sanctum of the shrine, where the saint had lived. It was a barren, hive-shaped chamber, without windows or furniture, and the floor was covered with coarse sand. In the middle stood the sarcophagus of the saint, a heavy box of rotting stone. Once it had been intricately carved with scenes from distant countries, but in that room some secret force had sanded down their shapes to almost nothing, and some cancerous wind had gnawed at the stone features of the saint as he sat straddling his tomb, his arms outstretched, his hands eaten away. Sand dunes had blown around the statue’s legs. A single candle burned on the coffin lid.

The bishop sat down on the ground, and there she prepared the first meal of their journey, as if they had already traveled miles. She laid out everything that was too bulky to carry far: fruits, and spiced vegetables, and a bottle of wine. They sat and ate without a word, already sharing the peculiar silence of travelers, taking their meal as if sitting on the platform of a deserted station late at night. And when they had finished, they sat without speaking, and the bishop’s head nodded forward as if she were asleep. The boy sat staring at the candle flame, fingering his cat.