Sailing to Sarantium

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 of a hanged thief and running around a tree seven times by double moonlight? And if you do the least thing wrong you turn into a frog?’

Zoticus ignored this. He simply looked at Crispin from beneath thick, level brows, saying nothing. After a moment, Crispin began to feel ashamed. He might be unsettled here, this staggering imposition of magic might be unlooked-for and frightening, but it was an offered gift, generous beyond words, and the implications of what the alchemist had actually achieved here . . .

‘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.