Bored, the doctor stared out of the window. They had passed into a jam of vehicles leading up to the city gates: old men pulling handcarts of what looked like garbage, a huge wagon pulled by six young men in harness. Occasionally an episcopal truck, honking impatiently, in from the factories and food collectives far beyond the city. A few Starbridge motorcars, like his own. People lined the streets, dressed in yellow clothes, the urine-colored uniforms of poverty and work. When they saw the doctor’s motorcar, they stood still and made the obligatory gestures of respect. The doctor yawned unhappily.

“He had beautiful hair,” said Abu.

“What color?”

“Brown. But very thick.”

“What color eyes?”

“Blue.”

The doctor picked his beard. “You find that beautiful? It’s illegal. He should be in prison.”

“The law can’t touch him where he is.”

“Don’t be too sure.”

“But I am sure,” exclaimed Abu. “Things are changing. Two thousand days ago, the purge cleaned out that area every month. They can’t do it anymore.”

“It’s the manpower they lack, not the will. Who will stop them, when the army comes back? You’d better pray the war lasts forever.”

“I pray for our defeat.”

They had reached the gate. Outside, traffic halted at the checkpoint, and a guard came round among the vehicles, examining papers and consignments. He peered at them through the window with feigned suspicion, while they held up their tattooed palms. Beyond them, through the massive doors, waited the ancient city of Charn, capital of the diocese, holy city, with its seven thousand pagodas and its countless shrines lining the open gutters: shrines to Angkhdt the Preserver, Angkhdt the God of Children, Angkhdt the Charioteer, warlike Angkhdt with seven heads. Now, in the early morning, each shrine was surrounded by worshipers, bending low into the opening to smear the image with blue kaya gum, chewing it into a reverent and narcotic paste, dribbling it out into their palms, bending down to smear the idol, in most cases invisible under years of blobby worship. The squatting attendant beat a drum and struck a match, and the idol would burn for a short time while the devotee stood back, hands to his chest, reciting one of the forty-seven sacred lists of obligations.

The gatekeeper saluted. Behind him waited princely Charn, with its deep, wooden, crooked, narrow streets, and at every crossroads brass statues of Starbridges on horseback—judges, generals, priests—in this season speckled with the dung of countless small green birds. Desolate Charn, with no grass or vegetation anywhere, not a living tree or flower. Summer would see them come in desperate profusion, after the sugar rain. Then the growth would rot the wooden houses with their high galleries and steep snow roofs, and send them crashing to the ground.

At the gate, the crowd around the front of the motorcar loosened and dispersed. In the gap, Thanakar could see his destination, rising over roofs and towers, still miles away, the grim Mountain of Redemption, a city in itself: circle upon circle of ramparts and black rock. It had no top. The traditions of the Prophet Angkhdt had required God’s temple to be built supported on a prison of one million souls.