* * *

Huddled in their overcoats under the spring sun, the doctor and the prince picked through miserable streets. The antinomials had made their homes in a row of abandoned warehouses by the river, left over from the days before the war, when the city had been a busy port. The one where they had spent the night was built out over the mud on a wooden dock; walking back among the rows of silent antinomials, half a dozen times they paused on the lips of ragged holes in the flooring, the dirty water a few feet away.

At the entrance they passed over a barricade of metal beams, barbed wire, concrete blocks, piles of broken plaster, broken glass. There the prince wanted to rest and talk, but Thanakar signaled silence.

The streets here were crowded, and he was afraid someone might recognize the accents of their caste.

So, in silence, they stepped past heaps of garbage and up through filthy alleyways. It was a useless precaution, he realized. Their faces were well known. “Look, there goes the prince,” cried out a voice, a redhaired prostitute from an upper window. She waved, and Abu waved back. It didn’t matter. Few looked at them, or if they did, their faces were not hostile. Some smiled, not at him, but at the prince, and the prince smiled at everyone. And Thanakar realized that he had nothing to fear, that his friend protected them with an aura of foolishness big enough for both. Coming to this section of the city in search of drunkenness or vice, people had been robbed and even killed. It was the home of runaways, cannibals, flagellants, Dirty Folk, Brothers of Unrest, arsonists, perverts, addicts, adventists, atheists, and heretics of every kind. People had been murdered in bright day. But this morning, women smiled at them out of starving, gap-toothed faces, and men squatting on doorsteps took no notice. Boys were playing marbles in the gutter. One came running, and soon they were surrounded by a pack of dancing, tattered children.

Abu stopped and produced from the voluminous pockets of his overcoat five stone coins and a single sourball, which he proffered with apologetic solemnity. Unsatisfied, the children stood in a circle, screaming, but they seemed harmless, and in a little while they ran away. Thanakar noticed that one was imitating his limp, and another was laughing.

“You have a lot of friends,” he remarked.

Abu shrugged. “I’ve come here many times. I told you these coats were stupid.” He flapped his arms. “I should have worn a mask.”

“Never mind. We’re almost to the car.”

“How far? Can we rest now? Please don’t punish me. I can’t walk as fast as you. I realize that you’re angry at me for telling them you were there at the last battle—you know—the antinomial crusade.

Rang-river. I thought it was interesting.”

“That’s all right. They could have killed me, that’s all.”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know how to explain it. I feel safe there. I know they’re dangerous, but I can’t feel it.”