‘That still leaves twenty-six,’ said the glum-faced servant.
‘At least,’ agreed Zoticus. ‘We shall have a sweet winter. The fire is all right, Clovis, you may go.’
Clovis withdrew through the inner doorway—Crispin caught a glimpse of a hallway and a kitchen at the end before the door closed again.
‘Your daughter lives in Sarantium?’ he asked.
‘One of them. Yes. She’s a prostitute.’
Crispin blinked again.
Zoticus looked wry. ‘Well. Not quite. A dancer. Much the same, if I understand the theatre there. I don’t really know. I’ve never seen her. She writes me, at times. Knows her letters.’
Crispin looked at the name on the paper again. Shirin. There was a street name, as well. He glanced up. ‘Trakesian?’
‘Her mother was. I was travelling, as I say. Some of my children write to me.’
‘Some?’
‘Many are indifferent to their poor father, struggling in his aged loneliness among the barbarians.’
The eyes were amused, the tone a long way from what the words implied. Crispin, out of habit, resisted an impulse to laugh, then stopped fighting it.
‘You had an adventurous past.’
‘Middling so. In truth, I find more excitement now in my studies. Women were a great distraction. I am mostly freed of that now, thank the high gods. I actually believe I have a proper understanding of some of the philosophers now, and that is an adventure of the spirit. You will take one of the birds? As my gift to you?’
Crispin put his drink down abruptly, spilling some on the table. He snatched at the map to keep it dry. ‘What? Why would you—?’
‘Martinian is a dear friend. You are his colleague, his almost-son. You are going a long way to a dangerous place. If you are careful to keep it private, one of the birds will be of assistance. They can see, and hear. And offer companionship, if nothing else.’ The alchemist hesitated. ‘It . . . pleases me to think one of my creations will go with you to Sarantium, after all.’
‘Oh, splendid. I am to walk the arcades of the City conversing with a companionable jewelled falcon? You want me blinded in your stead?’
Zoticus smiled faintly. ‘Not a choice gift, were that so. No. Discretion will be called for, but there are other ways of speaking with them. With whichever of them you can hear inwardly. You have no training. It is not certain, Caius Crispus. Nothing is in my art, I fear. But if you can hear one of the birds, it may become yours. In the act of hearing, a transference can be achieved. We will know soon enough.’ His voice changed. ‘All of you, shape a thought for our guest.’
‘Don’t be absurd!’ snapped an owl screwed onto a perch by the front door.
‘A fatuous notion!’ said the yellow-eyed falcon on the high back of Zoticus’s chair. Crispin could imagine it glaring at him.
‘Quite so,’ said a hawk Crispin hadn’t noticed, from the far side of the room. ‘The very idea is indecent.’ He remembered this jaded voice. From twenty-five years ago. They sounded utterly identical, all of them. He shivered, unable to help himself. The hawk added, ‘This is a petty thief. Unworthy of being addressed. I refuse to dignify him so.’
‘That is enough! It is commanded,’ said Zoticus. His voice remained soft but there was iron in it. ‘Speak to him, within. Do it now.’
For the first time Crispin had a sense that this was a man to be feared. There was a change in the alchemist’s hard-worn, craggy features when he spoke this way, a look, a manner that suggested— inescapably—that he had seen and done dark things in his day. And he had made these birds. These crafted things that could see and hear. And speak to him. It came to Crispin, in a rush, exactly what was being proposed. He discovered that his hands were clenched together.
It was silent in the room. Unsure of what to do, Crispin eyed the alchemist and waited.
He heard something. Or thought he did.
Zoticus calmly sipped his drink. ‘And so? Anything?’ His voice was mild again.
There had been no actual sound.
Crispin said, wonderingly, fighting a chill fear, ‘I thought . . . well, I believe I did hear . . . something.’
‘Which was?’
‘I think . . . it sounded as if someone said, Mice and blood.’
There came a shriek of purest outrage from the table by the fire.
‘No! No, no, no! By the chewed bones of a water rat, I am not going with him! Throw me in the fire! I’d rather die!’
Linon, of course. The small brown and dark grey sparrow, not the hawk or owl or the imperious yellow-eyed falcon, or even one of the oracular-looking ravens on the untidy bookshelf.
‘You aren’t even properly alive, Linon, don’t be dramatic. A little travel again will be good for you. Teach you manners, perhaps.’
‘Manners? He sloughs me off to a stranger after all these years and speaks of manners?’
Crispin swallowed and, genuinely afraid of what underlay this exercise, he sent a thought, without speaking: ‘I did not ask for this. Shall I refuse the gift?’
‘Pah! Imbecile.’
Which did, at least, confirm something.
He looked at the alchemist. ‘Do you . . . did you hear what it said to me?’
Zoticus shook his head. His expression was odd. ‘It feels strangely, I confess. I’ve only done this once before and it was different then.’
‘I’m . . . honoured, I think. I mean, of course I am. But I’m still confused. This was not asked for.’
‘Go ahead. Humiliate me!’
‘I daresay,’ said Zoticus. He didn’t smile now. Nor did he seem to have heard the bird. He toyed with his earthenware cup. From the chairback, the falcon’s harsh eyes seemed fixed on Crispin, malevolent and glittering. ‘You could hardly ask for what you do not comprehend. Nor steal it, like another apple.’
‘Unkind,’ Crispin said, controlling his own quick anger.
Zoticus drew a breath. ‘It was. Forgive me.’
‘We can undo this, can we not? I have no desire to become enmeshed in the half-world. Do the cheiromancers of Sarantium all have creatures like this? I am a mosaicist. That is all I want to be. It is all I want to do, when I get there. If they let me live.’
It was almost all. He had a message to convey if he could. He had undertaken as much.
‘I know this. Forgive me. And no, the charlatans at the Imperial Court, or those casting maledictions on chariot racers for the Hippodrome mob cannot do this. I am more or less certain of it.’
‘None of them? Not a single one? You, alone, of Jad’s mortal children on earth can . . . make creatures such as these birds? If you can do it—’
‘—why can no one else? Of course. The obvious question.’
‘And the obvious answer is?’ Sarcasm, an old friend, never far away of late.
‘That it is possible someone has learned this, but unlikely, and I do not believe it has happened this way. I have discovered . . . what I believe to be the only access to a certain kind of power. Found in my travels, in a . . . profoundly guarded place and at some risk.’
Crispin crossed his arms. ‘I see. A scroll of chants and pentagrams? Boiled blood