Isaac reached out for them. Yagharek stiffened, then steeled himself and let Isaac touch them.

Isaac shook his head in astonishment. He caught a glimpse of ragged scar tissue on Yagharek’s back, until the garuda turned abruptly to face him.

“Why?” breathed Isaac.

Yagharek’s face creased slowly as he screwed up his eyes. A thin, utterly human moan started from him, and it grew and grew until it became a bird of prey’s melancholy war-cry, loud and monotonous and miserable and lonely. Isaac gazed on in alarm as the cry became a barely comprehensible shout.

“Because this is my shame!” screamed Yagharek. He was silent for a moment, then he spoke quietly again.

“This is my shame.”

He unclipped the uncomfortable-looking bulk of wood from behind him, and it fell with a flat clatter to the floor.

He was nude to the waist. His body was thin and fine and tight, with a healthy emaciation. Without the looming bulk of his fake wings behind him, he looked small and vulnerable.

He turned slowly, and Isaac caught his breath as the scars he had glimpsed were brought into view.

Two long trenches of flesh on Yagharek’s shoulderblades were twisted and red with tissue that looked as if it were boiling. Slice marks spread like small veins from the main eructations of ugly healing. The strips of ruined flesh on either side of his back were a foot and a half long, and perhaps four inches at their widest point. Isaac’s face wrinkled in empathy: the torn holes were criss-crossed with rough, curving slice marks, and Isaac realized that the wings had been sawed from Yagharek’s back. No single, sudden cut but a long, drawn-out torturous disfigurement. Isaac winced.

Thinly hidden knobs of bone shifted and flexed; muscles stretched, grotesquely visible.

“Who did this?” breathed Isaac. The stories were right, he thought. The Cymek is a savage, savage land.

There was a long silence before Yagharek responded.

“I…I did this.”

At first Isaac thought he had misunderstood.

“What do you mean? How the fuck could you…?”

“I brought this onto me.” Yagharek was shouting. “This is justice. It is I who did this.”

“This is a fucking punishment? Godshit, fuck, what could…what did you do?”

“Do you judge garuda justice, Grimnebulin? I cannot hear that without thinking of the Remade…”

“Don’t try to turn it round! You’re absolutely right, I’ve no stomach for the law in this city…I’m just trying to understand what happened to you…”

Yagharek sighed, with a shockingly human slump of the shoulders. When he spoke, it was quiet and pained, a duty that he resented.

“I was too abstract. I was not worthy of respect. There…was a madness…I was mad. I committed a heinous act, a heinous act…” His words broke down into avian moans.

“What did you do?” Isaac steeled himself to hear of some atrocity.

“This language cannot express my crime. In my tongue…” Yagharek stopped for a moment. “I will try to translate. In my tongue they said…they were right…I was guilty of choice-theft…choice-theft in the second degree…with utter disrespect.”

Yagharek was gazing back at the window. He held his head high, but he would not meet Isaac’s eyes.

“That is why they deemed me Too Too Abstract. That is why I am not worthy of respect. That is who I am now. I am no longer Concrete Individual and Respected Yagharek. He is gone. I told you my name, and my name-title. I am Too Too Abstract Yagharek Not To Be Respected. That is who I will always be, and I will be true enough to tell you.”

Isaac shook his head as Yagharek sat slowly on the edge of Isaac’s bed. He cut a forlorn figure. Isaac stared at him for a long time before speaking.

“I have to tell you…” said Isaac. “I don’t really…uh…Plenty of my clients are…not entirely on the right side of the law, shall we say? Now, I’m not going to pretend that I even slightly understand what you did, but as far as I’m concerned it’s not my business. Like you said, there’s no words for your crime in this city: I don’t think I could ever understand what it was you’d done wrong.” Isaac spoke slowly and seriously, but his mind was already racing away. He began to speak with more animation.

“And your problem…is interesting.” Representations of forces and lines of power, of femtomorphic resonances and energy fields were beginning to leap into his consciousness. “It’s easy enough to get you into the air. Balloons, force manipulation and whatnot. Even easy to get you up there more than once. But to get you up there whenever you want it, under your own steam…which is what you’re after, yes?” Yagharek nodded. Isaac stroked his chin.

“Godspit…! Yes…now that is a much more…interesting conundrum.”

Isaac was beginning to retreat into his computations. One prosaic part of his mind recalled that he had no appointments for some time, and that meant he could immerse himself in research for a little while. Another pragmatic level did its job, evaluating the importance and urgency of his outstanding work. A couple of piss-easy analyses of compounds that he could put off more or less indefinitely; a half-promise to synthesize an elixir or two-easy to get out of…apart from that, it was only his own research into vodyanoi watercraeft. Which he could put to one side.

No, no, no! he contradicted himself suddenly. Don’t have to put watercraeft aside…I can integrate it! It’s all about elements arsing about, misbehaving…liquid that stands free, heavy matter that invades the air…there’s got to be something there…some common denominator…

With an effort he brought himself back to his laboratory, realized that Yagharek was staring at him impassively.

“I’m interested in your problem,” he said simply. Immediately Yagharek reached into a pouch. He held out a huge handful of twisted, dirty gold nuggets. Isaac opened his eyes wide.

“Well…uh, thank you. I’ll certainly accept some expenses, hourly rates, etc…” Yagharek handed Isaac the pouch.

Isaac managed not to whistle as he weighed it in his hand. He peered into it. Layer on heavy layer of sifting gold. It was undignified, but Isaac felt almost spellbound. This represented more money than he had ever seen in one place, enough to cover a lot of research costs and still live well for months.

Yagharek was no businessman, that was certain. He could have offered a third, a quarter of this and still had almost anyone in Brock Marsh panting. He should have kept most of it back, dangled it if interest waned.

Maybe he has kept most of it back, thought Isaac, and his eyes widened even further.

“How do I reach you?” said Isaac, still gazing at his gold. “Where are you living?”

Yagharek shook his head and was silent. “Well, I have to be able to reach you…”

“I will come to you,” said the garuda. “Every day, every two days, every week…I will make sure you do not forget my case.”

“No danger of that, I assure you. Are you really saying I can’t get messages to you?”

“I do not know where I will be, Grimnebulin. I shun this city. It hunts me. I must keep moving.”

Isaac shrugged helplessly. Yagharek stood to leave. “You understand what I want, Grimnebulin? I do not want to have to take a potion. I do not want to have to wear a harness. I do not want to climb into a contraption. I do not want one glorious journey into the clouds, and an earthbound eternity. I want you to let me leap from the earth as easily as you walk from room to room. Can you do that, Grimnebulin?”

“I don’t know.” Isaac spoke slowly. “But I think so. I’m your best bet, I reckon. I’m not a chymist, or a biologist, or a thaumaturge…I’m a dilettante, Yagharek, a dabbler. I think of myself…” Isaac paused and laughed briefly. He spoke with heavy gusto. “I think of myself as the main station for all the schools of thought. Like Perdido Street Station. You know it?” Yagharek nodded. “Unavoidable, ain’t it? Fucking massive great thing.” Isaac patted his belly, maintaining the analogy. “All the trainlines meet there-Sud Line, Dexter, Verso, Head and Sink Lines; everything has to pass through it. That’s like me. That’s my job. That’s the kind of scientist I am. I’m being frank with you. Thing is, you see, I think that’s what you need.”