“No one you know.”

“I’ll bet. I’ll bet. Yes, well, I suppose it’s better not to know. It’s for the best.” He paused and looked around the room. “But no. Listen. I want to talk to you about my wife.”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“No.” The commissar sighed. “No. It’s not that easy. You’re not married, are you, Thanakar?”

The doctor felt the blood in his cheeks. “You know I’m not.”

“No. Of course, how could you be? Well, in some ways you’re lucky. It’s very complicated. All these regulations. I don’t give a damn about them myself,” said the commissar, and unconsciously he touched the tattoo of legal immunity on the thumb of his right hand. “But in a way, it’s a question of duty. And some of them are for the best. I can see the sense in some of them. But when something like this happens, it’s not . . . convenient. I should be able to send her to a doctor. But there aren’t any women doctors anymore, except for midwives, and that’s not the problem. I wish it were. So I thought you wouldn’t mind having a look at her yourself. I mean, I could describe the symptoms, but it’s not the same.”

“It’s against the law. A married woman.”

“Yes, I know. I’ll understand if you refuse. But I thought, well, you’re practically a member of the family.

And you’ve been so good for Abu. So discreet.”

Thanakar said nothing.

“I’m sorry to put you in this position, my boy, but I’ve been worried.”

“It’s serious?”

“No. Well, I don’t know. It’s . . . peculiar.”

Thanakar looked down at his boots. Then he nodded.

“You’ll do it?”

“Yes. For a fee.”

The commissar looked surprised. “Well, yes, of course. I suppose so. Anything you say.”

“Not like that. I want your help.” And Thanakar described his conversation with the bishop’s secretary.

“I need your protection,” he said.

The commissar waited before replying. “Sit down,” he said, and then he moved over to his desk and stood by the window looking out. When he spoke, it was to change the subject. “The war’s not going well,” he said. “Did you know that?”

“I had heard rumors.”

“Yes. It’s hard to hide so many deaths. Do you know why we’re fighting?” he asked, standing with his hands behind his back, his back to Thanakar. “I mean, not the history, of course. The cause?”

“I suppose it’s a religious controversy. The kings of Caladon are heretics.”

The commissar sighed. “They are all religious controversies. In my lifetime we have fought a dozen heresies and crushed them all. We had limited objectives, always. At Rang-river, we couldn’t spare the troops to get bogged down. We needed them for other wars—this war with Caladon was already old when I was a child. To tell the truth, we cannot win. Yet it, too, started as a war of conscience, more than a year ago, a heresy peculiar to that winter. Argon Starbridge—not the present king, you understand. His great-great uncle shared the same name. They are all named Argon, the kings of Caladon, but this one was not as foolish as the rest. He was a mystic. He taught that men, ordinary men, you know, can . . . what? Effect their own salvation? Themselves. It’s a dangerous belief. I’m not saying it’s not dangerous. Dangerous and wrong. But I don’t mean that. I mean, how did it start?”