Thanakar recognized the boy that they had come to see. He stood casually, legs spread apart, hands on his hips. As Abu had said, he was handsome, with clean hard limbs and a delicate face, neither brutal nor empty like most in that crowd. Thanakar saw the first flickers of drunkenness in the color of the boy’s skin. It seemed ruddy and alive. And perhaps there was more to it than illusion, because for the first time the crowd seemed to be reacting, too, though the boy had done nothing yet. But people around them had lumbered to their feet, and some called out. They were staring at the dancer intently, as men might look into a fire, which has motion and energy even in stasis. For Thanakar, the drug had lit a fire under the dancer’s skin, so that when he started, with a lazy swirl of arms around his head, it seemed even after his arm had passed that Thanakar could see a burning trail behind it.

Thanakar stretched out his leg and looked around. Things had not changed since he was a child. Still he sat while others danced, his bad leg aching. He swallowed some drink and looked over at the prince’s face, as he stared at the stage with childlike absorption. It seemed unfair to envy him. Yet Thanakar could see why the prince was more at ease here than in any other part of the city. He resembled these people; he stared as they did, part of what they saw.

Thanakar took another sip to help him concentrate, because again he had lost himself, his thoughts vanishing to nothing. Why couldn’t he stare like that? The dancer somersaulted through the air, surrounded by a wheel of light, and the crowd moved and stamped. People cried out. The dancer was standing on his hands, his legs bent over almost to his head, tendrils of light coiling around him; it was incredible. Thanakar looked up at the sky, pursuing fantasies of loneliness. He felt there was a secret to loneliness, an attraction that only he out of all that crowd had failed to understand.

But he looked back when the second figure on the stage shrugged his cloak away and rose. He walked to the far edge of the platform, to where the bonfire had burned down, and pulled his hair back with the same gesture as his brother. And then he stood and raised his arms, but there was no accompanying flame. Instead, a small current of sound seemed to form around the motion, fast when the boy moved faster, stopping when he stopped. The doctor looked around to see if he could find the source. But it was not exactly music, or at least it didn’t remind him of the sound of any instrument or combination of instruments. It was more like singing, only more supple, more responsive to the slightest twist of fingers than a voice could ever be.

The second dancer made a rapid circle around his brother, the sound accompanying him, sinuous and clean. The crowd was silent, and the doctor wondered whether they could hear it too. “Do you hear it?”