No one followed him into the room. Thanakar had an impression of the doorframe behind him rimmed with faces, from the lintel to the sill. It was very quiet, and Thanakar could hear the sounds of the confession from the other room. The prince stood near, frowning and grinning. He took a drink from his plastic bottle.

The child was a girl, perhaps two thousand days old. The doctor approached her warily. Under her hair he could see the circle of her scalp; it looked so small and fragile, yellow in the yellow light. The light glinted in the hair along her arm. He said, “Is this she?” At the noise of his voice, the child turned her head, and he could see her puckered face.

“She’s lovely,” said the prince behind him.

“Yes,” murmured the woman softly. It was as if the presence of her child had given her strength. In her own home, her fumbling servility had disappeared. She didn’t rise, or look at them, or ask them to sit down. There was no place to sit.

The doctor cleared his throat. “You understand,” he said, “I have no medicine with me. No equipment.”

“I have faith in you, sir,” said the woman simply.

The doctor cursed under his breath and exchanged glances with Abu. He rubbed his hands together as if washing them. “What’s that smell?” he asked.

“Smell, sir?”

On the floor by the girl’s head lay a bowl full of vomit and wet feces. “This room is very dirty,” he said.

“Dirty, sir?”

“That’s what I said. Do you have any clean bedsheets?”

The woman looked up and shook her head. There was a hint of panic in her eyes.

“Never mind,” said the doctor hurriedly. He sat down on the bedside and ran his fingers over the child’s fine, almost transparent brown hair, not quite touching her. Even so, he could feel the fever in her head.

Sweat glistened on the hairs of her upper lip. “How do you feel?” he asked.

The child said nothing, and turned away her face. Under her ear he could see a place where some cosmetic cream had dried in a thick crust, and he picked at it idly with his fingernail. It flaked away, and under it he saw a red birthmark, one of the many signs of the unclean. God had marked her. Thanakar put his finger on the mark. “How long has she been like this?” he asked.

“She was born with it. Sir.” There was a note of bitterness in the woman’s voice.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I meant the fever.” But he kept his finger where it was. “You are runaways?”

“Yes. They wanted to put her in prison. They said she was a witch.”

“It doesn’t matter. I am not the purge. But I’m surprised you let me see her. You must be careful.”

The woman seemed close to tears. “Oh sir,” she said, “I thought she was going to die. Her fever just goes up and up . . .”