The other stayed behind. He stood next to Thanakar, wiping his shaved forehead with his scarf. They were close to the Starbridge palaces. The streets were almost empty. A motorcar sped past, spewing them with mud.

* * *

Thanakar went home. But first, slinking through the corridors and up the marble stairs, his pale companion following, he stopped at the commissar’s apartments. The door swung open onto empty rooms. The church had already repossessed the furniture. In the hallway a man was busy repainting; he was an idiot. When he made the gestures of respect, he kept his paintbrush in his hand, so that when he was finished his nose and hair were daubed with green.

The room smelled of antiseptic and incense. In Prince Abu’s bedroom, a printed notice was pasted to one wall. It said an epidemic of immorality had broken out here, and it had already killed two people—God have mercy. The document was an official one, and pinned to the bottom corner was a snapshot of an official execution. Someone had jiggled the camera, and the faces were impossible to make out.

He walked down to his own apartment. He expected to find soldiers, but the hall was empty. His housekeeper met him at the threshold—“Oh, sir,” she stammered. “Thank heaven you’ve come back.

Your mother, sir. Your mother’s woke up. She killed a man.” Thanakar took off his coat and hung it up.

Then he went past her through the library towards his parents’ bedroom, leaving her gaping up into the antinomial’s white face. “Oh, sir,” continued Mrs. Cassimer. “You can’t go in there. She’s dangerous.

She’s killed a man. Who’s this you brought home, sir?”

The antinomial unwrapped his cloak and stood dripping in his hospital clothes. Solemnly he took out his sunglasses and put them on. From his sleeve he took out his glass flute, and he examined it carefully in the light, while Mrs. Cassimer gasped and wheezed. She made the sign of the unclean, ducking her head into her armpits. “Angkhdt preserve us,” she whispered.

Hesitating at the bedroom door, Thanakar smiled. “You can put him in the room next to mine,” he said.

“Are there clean sheets?” The door was locked, with the key in it. He unlocked it and pushed it open.

Inside, the room was wrecked. Books and pieces of furniture lay at random, and the windows were all broken. His mother sat naked on the bed next to his sleeping father, her arms around her knees, her hair loose around her shoulders, and when she raised her head to look at Thanakar, he saw her eyes had changed color from the hard black of the Starbridges to a molten red, and as he watched, they changed again, a slow reel of unnatural shades fading into one another: pink, white, yellow orange, red, pink. It was the only movement in her face.