‘If you can do this . . . if these birds are thinking and speaking with their own . . . will . . . you ought to be the most celebrated man of our age!’
‘Fame? A lasting name to echo gloriously down the ages? That would be pleasant, I suppose, a comfort in old age, but no, it couldn’t happen . . . think about it.’
‘I am. Why not?’
‘Power tends to be co-opted by greater power. This magic isn’t particularly . . . intimidating. No half-worlds-pawned fireballs or death spells. No walking through walls or flying over them, invisible. Merely fabricated birds with . . . souls and voices. A small thing, but how could I defend myself, or them, if it was known they were here?’
‘But why should —?’
‘How would the Patriarch in Rhodias, or even the clerics in the sanctuary you are rebuilding outside Varena, take to the idea of pagan magic vesting a soul in crafted birds? Would they burn me or stone me, do you think? A difficult doctrinal decision, that. Or the queen? Would Gisel, rising above piety, not see merit in the idea of hidden birds listening to her enemies? Or the Emperor in Sarantium: Valerius II has the most sophisticated network of spies in the history of the Empire, east or west, they say. What would be my chances of dwelling here in peace, or even surviving, if word of these birds went out?’ Zoticus shook his head. ‘No, I have had years to ponder this. Some kinds of achievement or knowledge seem destined to emerge and then disappear, unknown.’
Thoughtful now, Crispin looked at the other man. ‘Is it difficult?’
‘What? Creating the birds? Yes, it was.’
‘I’m certain of that. No, I meant being aware that the world cannot know what you have done.’
Zoticus sipped his tea. ‘Of course it is difficult,’ he said at length. Then he shrugged, his expression ironic. ‘But alchemy always was a secret art, I knew that when I began to study it. I am . . . reconciled to this. I shall exult in my own soul, secretly.’
Crispin could think of nothing to say. Men were born and died, wanted something, somehow, to live after them—beyond the mass burial mound or even the chiselled, too-soon-fading inscription on the headstone of a grave. An honourable name, candles lit in memory, children to light those candles. The mighty pursued fame. An artisan could dream of achieving a work that would endure, and be known to have been one’s own. Of what did an alchemist dream?
Zoticus was watching him. ‘Linon is . . . a good consequence, now I think on it. Not conspicuous at all, drab, in fact. No jewels to attract attention, small enough to pass for a keepsake, a family talisman. You will arouse no comment. Can easily make up a story.’
‘Drab? Drab? By the gods! It is enough! I formally request,’ said Linon, speaking aloud, ‘to be thrown into the fire. I have no desire to hear more of this. Or of anything. My heart is broken.’
Several of the other birds were, in fact, making sounds of aristocratic amusement.
Hesitantly, testing himself, Crispin sent a thought: ‘I don’t think he meant any insult. I believe he is . . . unhappy that this happened.’
‘You shut up,’ the bird that could speak in his mind replied bluntly.
Zoticus did indeed look unsettled, notwithstanding his practical words: visibly trying to come to terms with which of the birds his guest seemed to have inwardly heard in the room’s deep silence.
Crispin—here only because Martinian had first denied being himself to an Imperial Courier, and then demanded Crispin come to learn about the roads to Sarantium— who had asked for no gift at all, now found himself conversing in his mind with a hostile, ludicrously sensitive bird made of leather and—what?—tin, or iron. He was unsure whether what he most felt was anger or anxiety.
‘More of the mint?’ the alchemist asked, after a silence.
‘I think not, thank you,’ said Crispin.
‘I had best explain a few matters to you.
To clarify.’ ‘To clarify. Yes. Please,’ Crispin said.
‘My heart,’ Linon repeated, in his mind this time, ‘is broken.’
‘You shut up,’ Crispin replied swiftly, with undeniable satisfaction.
Linon did not address him again. Crispin was aware of the bird, though, could almost feel an affronted presence at the edge of his thoughts like a night animal beyond a spill of torchlight. He waited while Zoticus poured himself a fresh cup. Then he listened to the alchemist in careful silence while the sun reached its zenith on an autumn day in Batiara and began its descent towards the cold dark. Metals to gold, the dead to life . . .
The old pagan who could breathe into crafted birds patrician voice, sight without eyes, hearing without ears, and the presence of a soul, told him a number of things deemed needful, in the wake of the gift he’d given.
Certain other understandings Crispin obtained only afterwards.
‘She wants you, the shameless whore! Are you going to? Are you?’
Keeping his expression bland, Crispin walked beside the carried litter of the Lady Massina Baladia of Rhodias, sleekly well-bred wife of a Senator, and decided it had been a mistake to wear Linon on a thong around his neck like an ornament. The bird was going into one of his travelling bags tomorrow, on the back of the mule plodding along behind them.
‘You must be so fatigued,’ the Senator’s wife was saying, her voice honeyed with commiseration. Crispin had explained that he enjoyed walking in the open country and didn’t like horses. The first was entirely untrue, the second was not. ‘If only I had thought to bring a litter large enough to carry both of us. And one of my girls, of course . . . we couldn’t possibly ride just alone!’ The Senator’s wife tittered. Amazingly.
Her white linen chiton, wildly inappropriate for travelling, had—quite unnoticed by the lady, of course— slipped upward sufficiently to reveal a well-turned ankle. She wore a gold anklet, Crispin saw. Her feet, resting on lambswool throws within the litter, were bare this mild afternoon. The toenails were painted a deep red, almost purple. They hadn’t been yesterday, in their sandals. She’d been busy last night at the inn, or her servant had been.
‘Mice and blood, I’ll wager she reeks of scent! Does she? Crispin, does she?’
Linon had no sense of smell. Crispin elected not to reply. The lady did, as it happened, have a heady aroma of spice about her today. Her litter was sumptuous, and even the slaves carrying it and accompanying her were appreciably better garbed—in pale blue tunics and dark blue dyed sandals—than was Crispin. The rest of their party—Massina’s young female attendants, three wine merchants and their servants journeying the short distance to Mylasia and then down the coast road, a cleric continuing towards Sauradia, and two other travellers heading for the same healing medicinal waters as the lady—walked or rode mules a little ahead or behind them on the wide, well-paved road. Massina Baladia’s armed and mounted escort, also clad in that delicately pale blue—which looked significantly less appropriate on them—rode at the front and back of the column.
None of the party was from Varena itself. None had any reason to know who Crispin was. They were three days out from Varena’s walls, still in Batiara and on a busy stretch of road. They had already been forced to step onto the gravel side-path several times as companies of archers and infantry passed them on manoeuvres. There was some need for caution on this road, but not the most extreme sort. The leader of the lady’s escort gave every indication of regarding a red-bearded mosaicist as the most dangerous figure in the