“The natives have always called this place Tref, at the base of the mountain, and so the city acquired that name because it was built here. Its real name is Dusktemper—bit strange, right? Religious separatists from Sjilte were the founders, and, in addition to the Manual of Techniques, they had their own holy book, a kind of allegorical short story. I can’t recall its name, but most of the local place names here they drew from it. Anyway, that’s why the Subashi of Dusktemper is called a Precentor instead.”

“What was Dusktemper named in the story?”

He thinks, and puffs out his mouth a little.

“It was an inner property of man, like spirit, or maybe it was a particular spirit. I think it might have meant holiness, but they had their own ideas about that.” He gives me a frank look that admits he’s told all he knows.

“And they divided the city into the two precincts?”

“I’m not sure. It seems right, and the city I know has had no other plan, but these priests, and people,” he waves vaguely around, “aren’t separatists. And I think this division involves a separate association of places that had been determined by the natives. They buried people over there—” he gestures over the river, “and had birth huts over on this side. The huts were raised up on high stilts and the women would hunker down in a frame over a hatch in the floor, and the midwife or whoever would reach up and lower down the child.”

I ask about the separatists. He tells me there probably aren’t any left anymore, or very few.

A carefully ramified division of labor regulates the operation of the life and death priests. Life priests, urbane, serene, dressed in satiny white and cream gowns, preside at weddings, naming ceremonies, tend the sick and perform healings when they can; death priests, subdolous and mordant, dressed in shabby subfusc, officiate at funerals, conduct autopsies and embalm bodies, attend to the dying and insane, and cast out or even imbibe possessing demons. Life priests are permitted and encouraged to marry; death priests, while not enjoined to celibacy, are forbidden to marry or to bear children. The life priests exhibit dazzling vitality; they eat only the freshest and most pure food, drink only water and fruit juice, abstain from smoking, and are alone permitted to chew bennoch resin, which gives them balsamic breath, shining teeth and sparkling eyes. They smell sweet, even the old ones. The death priests, on the other hand, are sallow or even greenish in complexion—whatever their original color—with grey whites of eyes and yellow hyena teeth. They smell stale, or wear olfactorily-garish perfume, and shed whiffs of carrion where they go. They are forbidden more than a minimum of nourishing food, and eat almost nothing that has not been dead preserved or fermenting a long time. They all drink ardent spirits, smoke copiously, and most are inveterate sweet eaters. There is no enmity between these two groups of priests, although they are compelled to avoid each other as a rule in order to maintain a pure distinction. When they do meet, a complicated protocol governs the exchange of formalities. In fact, since no one is ever born in the death precincts, all death priests are delivered into this life by life priests of the previous generation. Naturally, all life priests are ushered into whatever dream comes after by the generation of death priests who will bury them in the death district.