Zoticus put down the quill and sat in a heavy chair. One of the mechanical birds—a falcon with a silver and bronze body and yellow jewelled eyes, quite unlike the drab, sparrow-like Linon—was fixed to the high back of the chair, screws adjusted so its claws held fast. It gazed inimically at Crispin with a pale glitter.
‘You do know I am an alchemist.’
‘Martinian said as much. I also know that most who use that name are frauds, hooking coins and goods from innocents.’
Crispin heard a sound from the direction of the fire. It might have been a log shifting, or not.
‘Entirely true,’ said Zoticus, unperturbed. ‘Most are. Some are not. I am one of those who are not.’
‘Ah. Meaning you know the future, can induce passionate love, cure the plague, and find water?’ He sounded truculent, Crispin knew. He couldn’t help it.
Zoticus gazed at him levelly. ‘Only the last, actually, and not invariably. No. Meaning I can sometimes see and do things most men cannot, with frustratingly erratic success. And meaning I can see things in men and women that others cannot. You asked how I knew you? Men have an aura, a presence to them. It changes little, from childhood to death. Very few people dare my orchard, which is useful—as you might guess—for a man living alone in the countryside. You were there once. I knew your presence again this morning. The anger in you was not present in the child, though there was a loss then, too. The rest is little enough altered. It is not,’ he said kindly, ‘so complicated an explanation, is it?’
Crispin looked at him, cupping his drink in both hands. His glance shifted to the jewelled falcon gripping the back of the alchemist’s heavy chair. ‘And these?’ he asked, ignoring the observations about himself.
‘Oh. Well. That’s the whole point of alchemy, isn’t it? To transmute one substance into another, proving certain things about the nature of the world. Metals to gold. The dead to life. I have learned to make inanimate substance think and speak, and retain a soul.’ He said it much as he might have described learning how to make the mint tea they were drinking.
Crispin looked around the room at the birds. ‘Why . . . birds?’ he asked, the first of fully a dozen questions that occurred. The dead to life.
Zoticus looked down, that private smile on his face again. After a moment, he said, ‘I wanted to go to Sarantium myself once. I had ambitions in the world, and wished to see the Emperor and be honoured by him with wealth and women and world’s glory. Apius, some time after he took the Golden Throne, initiated a fashion for mechanical animals. Roaring lions in the throne room. Bears that rose on their hind legs. And birds. He wanted birds everywhere. Singing birds in all his palaces. The mechanical artisans of the world were sending him their best contrivances: wind them up and they warbled an offkey paean to Jad or a rustic folk ditty, over and over again until you were minded to throw them against a wall and watch the little wheels spill out. You’ve heard them? Beautiful to look at, sometimes. And the sound can be appealing—at first.’
Crispin nodded. He and Martinian had done a Senator’s house in Rhodias.
‘I decided,’ said Zoticus, ‘I might do better. Far better. Create birds that had their own power of speech. And thought. And that these, the fruits of long study and labour and . . . some danger, would be my conduits to fame in the world.’
‘What happened?’
‘You don’t remember? No, you wouldn’t. Apius, under the influence of his Eastern Patriarch, began blinding alchemists and cheiromancers, even simple astrologers for a while. The clerics of the sun god have always feared any other avenues to power or understanding in the world. It became evident that arriving in the City with birds that had souls and spoke their own minds was a swift path to blinding if not death.’ The tone was wry.
‘So you stayed here?’
‘I stayed. After . . . some extended travels. Mostly in autumn, as it happened. This season makes me restless even now. I did learn on those journeys how to do what I wanted. As you can see. I never did get to Sarantium. A mild regret. I’m too old now.’
Crispin, hearing the alchemist’s words in his mind again, realized something. The clerics of the sun god. ‘You aren’t a Jaddite, are you?’
Zoticus smiled, and shook his head.
‘Odd,’ said Crispin dryly, ‘you don’t look Kindath.’
Zoticus laughed. There came that sound again, from towards the fire. A log, almost certainly. ‘I have been told I do,’ he said. ‘But no, why would I exchange one fallacy for another?’
Crispin nodded. This was not a surprise, all things considered. ‘Pagan?’
‘I honour the old gods, yes. And their philosophers. And believe with them that it is a mistake to attempt to circumscribe the infinite range of divinity into one—or even two or three—images, however potent they might be on a dome or a disk.’
Crispin sat down on the stool opposite the other man. He sipped from his cup again. Pagans were not all that rare in Batiara among the Antae—which might well explain why Zoticus had lingered safely in this countryside—but this was still an extraordinarily frank conversation to be having. ‘I’d imagine,’ he said, ‘that the Jaddite teachers—or the Kindath, from what little I know—would simply say that all modes of divinity may be encompassed in one if the one is powerful enough.’
‘They would,’ Zoticus agreed equably. ‘Or two for the pure Heladikians, three with the Kindath moons and sun. They would all be wrong, to my mind, but that is what they’d say. Are we about to debate the nature of the divine, Caius Crispus? We’ll need more than a mint infusion in that case.’
Crispin almost laughed. ‘And more time. I leave in two days and have a great deal to attend to.’
‘Of course you do. And an old man’s philosophizing can hardly appeal just now, if ever. I have marked your map with the hostelries I understand to be acceptable, and those to be particularly avoided. My last travels were twenty years and more ago, but I do have my sources. Let me also give you two names in the City. Both may be trusted, I suspect, though not with everything you know or do.’
His expression was direct. Crispin thought of a young queen in a candlelit room, and wondered. He said nothing. Zoticus crossed to the table, took a sheet of parchment and wrote upon it. He folded the parchment twice and handed it to Crispin.
‘Be careful around the last of this month and the first day of the next. It would be wise not to travel those days, if you can arrange to be staying at an Imperial Inn. Sauradia will be a . . . changed place.’
Crispin looked his inquiry.
‘The Day of the Dead. Not a prudent time for strangers to be abroad in that province. Once you are in Trakesia you’ll be safer. Until you get to the City itself and have to explain why you aren’t Martinian. That ought to be amusing.’
‘Oh, very,’ said Crispin. He had been avoiding thinking about that. Time enough. It was a long journey by land. He unfolded the paper, read the names.
‘The first is a doctor,’ said Zoticus. ‘Always useful. The second is my daughter.’
‘Your what?’ Crispin blinked.
‘Daughter. Seed of my loins. Girl child.’ Zoticus laughed. ‘One of them. I told you: I did travel a fair bit in my youth.’
They heard a barking from the yard. From farther within the house a long-faced, slope-shouldered servant appeared and made his unhurried way to the door and out. He silenced the dogs. They heard voices outside. A moment later he reappeared, carrying two jars.
‘Silavin came, master. He says his swine is recovered. He brought honey. Promises a ham.’
‘Splendid!’ said Zoticus.