“I can feel their life give out under my hands, and it is a joyous thing. It does not matter whether they are my enemies or not.”

“Not everyone is your enemy, child.”

“Oh, I know. But I do not know of anyone who is my friend. Except you, of course.” She smiled so brightly at him that he felt both touched and disturbed.

“Why did they not come?” she asked. “You said they would try to take you away today.”

“I don’t know.” He would have liked to send the imp out into the city to nose around, but he doubted if it were up to that yet. And with Griella here, he did not like to go out himself. Though he had barely admitted it even to himself, he knew he would not let her slaughter any more men, even those who were taking the pair of them to their deaths. If the soldiers came he would smite her with a spell of unconsciousness. They might even leave her alone, believing her to be just another street urchin. If she changed into her beast form again, she would surely be killed.

“No, don’t touch that.”

She was tapping the imp’s jar and exchanging grins with the little creature.

“Why not? I think it likes me.”

“Nothing must disturb it when it is rejuvenating, else it might metamorphose into something different to what it should be.”

“I don’t understand. Explain.”

“The liquid in the jar is Ur-blood, a thaumaturgical fluid. It is the basis for many experiments, and is difficult to create. But once it has been made, it is . . . malleable. I can adjust it to the needs of the moment. At the moment it is a balm for the tiredness of the imp, like wet plaster being pasted over the cracks in the façade of a house. The imp was grown out of Ur-blood, helped along by various spells and the power of my own mind.”

“Can you grow me one? What a pet it would make!”

Bardolin smiled. “They take months to grow, and the procedure is exhausting, consuming some of the essence of the caster himself. If the imp dies, some of me dies also. There are quicker ways of breeding familiars, but they are abhorrent and the creatures thus engendered, called homunculi, are wayward and difficult to control. And their appetites are foul.”

“I thought that a true mage would be able to whistle up anything he pleased in a trice.”

“The Dweomer is not like that. It extracts a price for every gift it gives. Nothing is had for nothing.”

“You sound like a philosopher, one of those old men who hold forth in Speakers’ Square.”

“There is a philosophy, or rather a law, to the Dweomer. When I was an apprentice I did not learn a single cantrip for the first eight months, though my powers had already manifested themselves. I was put to learning the ethics of spellweaving.”

“Ethics!” She seemed annoyed. “I partake of this Dweomer also, do I not?”

“Yes. Shape-shifting is one of the Seven Disciplines, though perhaps the least understood.”

She brightened. “Could I become a mage, then?”

“To be a mage you must master four of the Seven, and shape-shifters are rarely able to master any discipline other than shifting. There was a debate in the Guild some years ago which contended that shifting was not a discipline at all but a deviancy, a disease as the common folk believe. The motion failed. You and I both have magic in our blood, child.”

“The black disease, they call it, or sometimes just ‘The Change’, Griella said quietly. Her eyes were huge and dark.

“Yes, but despite the superstitions it is not infectious. And it can be controlled, made into a true discipline.”

She shook her head. Her eyes had filled with tears.

“Nothing can control it,” she whispered.

He set a hand on her shoulder. “I can help you control it, if you’ll let me.”

She buried her head in his barrel-like chest.

Someone hammered on the door downstairs.

Her head snapped up. “They’re here! They’ve come for you!”

Under his appalled stare, her eyes flooded with yellow light and the pupils became elongated, cat-like slits. He felt her slight body shift and change under his hands. A beast’s growl issued from her throat.

While she is changing. Before it is too late.

He had had the construction of the spell memorized all morning. Now it left him like a swift exhalation of breath and swooped into her.

There was a savage conflict as the birthing beast fought him and the girl writhed, agonized, caught between two forms. But he beat the thing down. It retreated and underneath it he could sense her mind—human, unharmed, but utterly alien. The revelation shocked him. He had never looked into the soul of a shifter before. In the split second before the spell took hold he saw the beast spliced to the girl in an unholy marriage, each feeding off the other. Then she was limp in his arms, breathing easily. He shuddered. The beast had been strong, even in the moment of its birthing. He knew that if it ever became fully formed he would not be able to control it. He would have to destroy it.

Sweat was rolling down into his eyes. He set the girl down, still trembling.

“Prettily done, my friend,” a voice said.

Standing in the room’s doorway was a tall old man who looked as thin as a tinker’s purse. His doublet, though expensive, hung on him like a sack and his broad-brimmed hat was wider than his shoulders. Behind him a frightened-looking young man bobbed up and down, crushing his own hat between his hands.

“Master,” said Bardolin, a swell of relief rushing through him.

Golophin took his arm. “I must apologize for the rowdiness of our entrance. Blame young Pherio here. He does not like me walking the streets in these times, and he sees an Inceptine on every corner. Pherio, the girl.”

The young man stared at Griella as though she were a species of particularly poisonous snake. “Master?”

“Put her on a couch somewhere, Pherio. You need not worry. She will not rip your head off. And hunt up some wine—no, Fimbrian brandy. Bardolin always has a stock in his cellar. Run now.”

The boy staggered off carrying Griella. Golophin helped Bardolin into a chair.

“Well, Bard, what’s this? Consorting with nubile young shifters, eh?”

Bardolin held up a hand. “No jokes if you please, Golophin. It was too close, and it has wearied me.”

“Worth a paper in the Guild’s records, I think. If this is in the nature of research, Bard, then you are certainly on the cutting edge.” He chuckled and swept off his preposterous hat, revealing a scalp as bald as an egg.

“We were expecting soldiers with an Inceptine at their head,” said Bardolin.

“Ah.” Golophin’s bright humour darkened.

“They took Orquil away yesterday. I had thought today they would take me.”

When Pherio came back with the brandy Golophin poured two glasses and he and his one-time apprentice drank together.

“You bring me to the reason for my visit, Bard: these atrocities that the Inceptines practice in the name of piety.”

“What about them? In the name of the Saints, Golophin, they can’t be after you. You’ve been the adviser to three kings. You had Abeleyn sitting on your knee when he was too young to wipe his own arse—”

“Which is why I am the one man the Prelate must bring down. Without me the King has no disinterested advisers—nor any who can tell him what is going on halfway across the world at the drop of a hat, I might add. Abeleyn knows this too, as I hoped he would. With the Prelate on his way to the Synod at Charibon he has a breathing space. Already the burnings have abated, which is why you are here today, my friend. Only the hopelessly heretical are going to the pyre at the moment, but the catacombs are still filling. By the time the Prelate returns there will be thousands there awaiting his pleasure, and if the Synod approves his actions here then there will be nothing Abeleyn can do, unless he wants to be excommunicated. Worse, the Prelate of Abrusio will no doubt try to persuade the other Prelates of the Kingdoms to instigate similar purges in their own vicariates.”