The man turned back. “He’s right behind you.”

“Where?” but then Thanakar saw him, unrecognizable in his festival clothes and a demented turban of pink silk, waving down at them from the back of an elephant not far behind.

Thanakar let the palanquin go by, and as the elephant came up, he jumped for the rope ladder hanging down its side and climbed up to the howdah on its back.

“Smoothly done,” said the commissar. “Your leg all right?” It was quieter here, up above the level of the crowd.

“I hate this parade,” he continued after a pause. He reached down to stroke the elephant’s neck, and when he brought his hand back it was wet with sweat and a peculiar white scum. “Look at this. It’s murder. Poor brute. Where’s the prince?”

“At the waterfront. He’s a prisoner.”

The commissar sighed. “I was afraid of that,” he said after a pause.

“That’s all you have to say?”

“Too late now. The operation’s over.” He looked at his watch. “Limited objectives, the swine. Why didn’t he come back with you?”

“He preferred to stay.”

“Then it’s his own damn fault. Prisoner. He should be ashamed.”

“He might get hurt,” said Thanakar.

“I doubt it. I can’t see them shooting prisoners. That’s more our style, these days. Did you hear? There was a hanging at the city gallows, a big crowd. The bishop’s secretary promised them a month’s remission for every atheist they kill before five o’clock. Lying pig. As if it were that simple.” The commissar frowned. “Abu will be all right. They might knock him around some. Might knock some sense into him.” He was staring down into the flagellants, and as usual his eyes were very sad.

* * *

For a while Abu had done some good. The rioters had hung back, confused. They had held their fire, afraid of hitting him. But he was on one single rampway; there were others, and around him the antinomials were being pushed back, overwhelmed by numbers and the force of hate. The rioters were desperate for blood. They had been offered some remission for their sins, the chance of a better lifetime in whatever hell was waiting for them in the sky after their deaths, if they could only just kill one, just one, even a little one. And finally, as the minutes ticked towards five o’clock, Abu found that he could no longer hold them back, though maybe if he had been someone else, stronger, braver, smarter, better, sober . . . But the crowd no longer cared. They drove him back, pelting him with rocks and curses. In the hope of murder, they were delirious, and he would have been trampled if a woman hadn’t grabbed him by the collar and pulled him away.

She pulled him back into the dark and up a small dark slope. At the top stood a line of railway cars, and one had fallen on its side. Climbing on the wheels, the woman undid the clasp and pulled the door back along its sliding track. It revealed a hole leading down into the hillside. The woman grabbed him by the arm and pitched him in over the side. He climbed down obediently. As she stood on the door above him, preparing to descend, trying to light an electric torch with inefficiently large fingers, Abu realized she was hurt. A stone had opened up a deep cut over one eye, and there was blood crusted around her lips. She had broken some teeth, and she was crying and slobbering and wheezing music through the ragged gaps.