Perhaps. He didn’t think so, himself. The apple was ripe. Tasty, he decided.
He dropped it onto the grass among fallen ones for the small animals and stood up to cross back to the wall. No need to be greedy or childish. He’d proven his point, felt curiously pleased with himself. Settled a score with his youth, in a way.
‘Some people never learn, do they?’
One foot on a branch, one on top of the wall, Crispin looked down very quickly. Not a bird, not an animal, not a spirit of the half-world of air and shadow. A man with a full beard and unfashionably long grey hair stood in the orchard below, gazing up at him, leaning on a staff, foreshortened by the angle.
Flushing, acutely embarrassed, Crispin mumbled, ‘They used to say this orchard was haunted. I . . . wanted to test myself.’
‘And did you pass your test?’ the old man—Zoticus, beyond doubt—queried gently.
‘I suppose.’ Crispin stepped across to the wall. ‘The apple was good.’
‘As good as they were all those years ago?’
‘Hard to remember. I really don’t—’
Crispin stopped. A prickling of fear.
‘How do . . . how did you know I was here? Back then?’ ‘You are Caius Crispus, I presume? Martinian’s friend.’
Crispin decided to sit down on the wall. His legs felt oddly weak. ‘I am. I have a gift for you. From his wife.’
‘Carissa. Splendid woman! A neckwarmer, I do hope. I find I need them now, as winter comes. Old age. A terrible thing, let me tell you. How did I know you were here before? Silly question. Come down. Do you like mint leaves in an infusion?’
It didn’t seem in the least silly to Crispin. For the moment he deferred a reply. ‘I’ll get the gift,’ he said, and climbed down—jumping would lack all dignity—on the outside of the wall. He reclaimed the parcel from the grass, brushed some ants from it, and walked up the road towards the farmyard gate, breathing deeply to calm himself.
Zoticus was waiting, leaning on his staff, two large dogs beside him. He opened the gate and Crispin walked in. The dogs sniffed at him but heeled to a command. Zoticus led the way towards the house through a neat, small yard. The door was open, Crispin saw.
‘Why don’t we just eat him now?’
Crispin stopped. Childhood terror. The very worst kind, that made nightmares for life. He looked up. The voice was lazy, aristocratic, remembered. It belonged to a bird perched on the branch of an ash tree, not far from the doorway.
‘Manners, manners, Linon. This is a guest.’ Zoticus’s tone was reproving.
‘A guest? Climbing the wall? Stealing apples?’
‘Well, eating him would hardly be a proportionate response, and the philosophers teach that proportion is the essence of the virtuous life, do they not?’
Crispin, stupefied, fighting fear, heard the bird give an elaborate sniff of disapproval. Looking more closely, he abruptly realized, with a further shock, that it was not a real bird. It was an artifice. Crafted.
And it was talking. Or else . . .
‘You are speaking for it!’ he said quickly. ‘Casting your voice? The way the actors do, on stage sometimes?’
‘Mice and blood! Now he insults us!’
‘He is bringing a neckwarmer from Carissa. Behave, Linon.’
‘Take the neck thing, then let us eat him.’
Crispin, his own choler rising suddenly, said bluntly, ‘You are a construct of leather and metal. You can’t eat anything. Don’t bluster.’
Zoticus glanced quickly over at him, surprised, and then laughed aloud, the sound unexpectedly robust, filling the space before his doorway.
‘And that,’ he said, ‘will teach you, Linon! If anything can.’
‘It will teach me that we have an ill-bred guest this morning.’
‘You did propose eating him. Remember?’
‘I am only a bird. Remember? Indeed, I am less than that, it seems. I am a construct of leather and metal.’
Crispin had the distinct sense that if the small grey and brown thing with the glass eyes could have moved it would have turned its back on him, or flown away in disgust and wounded pride.
Zoticus walked over to the tree, turned a screw on each of the tiny legs of the bird, loosening their grip on the branch, and picked it up. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘The water is boiled and the mint was picked this morning.’
The mechanical bird said nothing, nestled in his free hand. It looked like a child’s toy. Crispin followed into the house. The dogs lay down in the yard.
THE INFUSION WAS GOOD, actually. Crispin, more calm than he’d expected to be, wondered if the old alchemist might have added something besides mint to it, but he didn’t ask. Zoticus was standing at a table examining the courier’s map Crispin had produced from the inner pocket of his cloak.
Crispin looked around. The front room was comfortably furnished, much as any prosperous farmhouse might be. No dissected bats or pots with green or black liquids boiling in them, no pentagrams chalked on the wooden floor. There were books and scrolls, to mark a learned and an unexpectedly well-off man, but little else to suggest magics or cheiromancy. Still, he saw half a dozen of the crafted birds, made of various materials, perched on shelves or the backs of chairs, and they gave him pause. None of these had spoken yet, and the small one called Linon lay silently on its side on a table by the fire. Crispin had little doubt, however, that any and all of them could address him if they chose.
It amazed him how calmly he accepted this. On the other hand, he’d had twenty-five years to live with the knowledge.
‘The Imperial Posting Inns, whenever you can,’ Zoticus was murmuring, head lowered still to the map, a curved, polished glass in one hand to magnify it. ‘Comforts and food are unreliable elsewhere.’
Crispin nodded, still distracted. ‘Dog meat instead of horse or swine, I know.’
Zoticus glanced up, his expression wry. ‘Dog is good,’ he said. ‘The risk is getting human flesh in a sausage.’
Crispin kept a composed face with some effort. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well spiced, I’m sure.’
‘Sometimes,’ said Zoticus, turning back to the map. ‘Be especially careful through Sauradia, which can be unstable in autumn.’
Crispin watched him. Zoticus had taken a quill now and was making notations on the map. ‘Tribal rites?’
The alchemist glanced up briefly, eyebrows arched. His features were strong, the blue eyes deep-set, and he wasn’t as old as the grey hair and the staff might have suggested. ‘Yes, that. And knowing they will be mostly on their own again until spring, even with the big army camp near Trakesia and soldiers at Megarium. Notorious winter brigands, the Sauradi tribes. Lively women, as I recall, mind you.’ He smiled a little, to himself, and returned to his annotations.
Crispin shrugged. Sipped his tea. Resolutely tried to put his mind away from sausages.
Some might have seen this long autumn journey as an adventure in itself. Caius Crispus did not. He liked his own city walls, and good roofs against rain, and cooks he knew, and his bathhouse. For him, broaching a new cask of wine from Megarium or the vineyards south of Rhodias had always been a preferred form of excitement. Designing and executing a mosaic was an adventure . . . or had been once. Walking the wet, windswept roads of Sauradia or Trakesia with an eye out for predators—human or