When the weather changes. But I am an old man.”

* * *

Once, a barber from the middle class, an adventist or a rebel angel, had thrown a bomb at Marson Starbridge in his carriage. That had been when Thanakar’s father was still awake, and he had taken Thanakar to watch the execution. The barber had been crucified, bolted to a steel cross through the holes drilled in his wrists, ankles, and chest. He was a large man, with coarse hair and a red beard, and on the cross he had spat, and jeered at his executioners, and sung songs of insurrection. The man was a hero; in comparison, Thanakar was nothing. He was not likely to be crucified. But still, the image was in his mind all day, after the bishop’s secretary had left. He had tried to read, and study in his workroom, but his mind wouldn’t follow his directions, and he had ended up pacing nervously through his apartments, staring out the windows. Later, he went to see the prince.

The Starbridges of Charn lived in a seething warren of towers and courtyards, all parts of the same enormous building, clutched to the first ramparts of the Mountain of Redemption. To get to a point directly opposite, you took an electric car more than a mile through the solid rock, but for shorter distances there were elevators, and airless stairways, and mirrored passages bright with chandeliers. The apartments of the rich lay behind gaudy doorways; at one of the most impressive, a silver door set with the gilt image of the sun, Thanakar stopped and entered without knocking. The prince was still asleep.

His housemaid curtsied. She was a foreign girl, with a wide, flat face. It didn’t matter, said Thanakar; he would write a note. Don’t wake him. And so he sat down at a desk in the hall and took out the notepad that he always carried, but there was no message in his mind. Instead, he drew caricatures in furious, thick lines—the balding prince, grinning queasily. And then, catching a glimpse of himself in a mirror opposite, Thanakar sketched himself, taking no pity on his high forehead and long nose. The housemaid was back, curtseying, with a cup of unrequested tea.

“The commissar would like to see you, sir.”

He took the tea and let it grow cold at the corner of the desk while from memory, he sketched the commissar, Micum Starbridge, Abu’s brother-in-law. His pencil ripped through the paper. The commissar had a big chest, short neck, bristle hair, and a face, at least in caricature, like an old pig.

It was not a fair portrait. Micum Starbridge was a sad, kind man, who had fought his whole life in the eternal war. Now too old for active service, he worked in the Department of Secular Police. Though born in the twelfth phase of winter, he was still vigorous, his face soldierly, brisk, and piglike, except for his eyes. They were large, liquid, and immensely sad, qualities missing from Thanakar’s sketch. They saved his face from ugliness.