There are few moments in life when a shy, downtrodden individual can truly feel possessed by the gods; time slows, the mind steps into overdrive, and the body moves with a speed, a surety and suppleness that has never been known before. A sword blow is dodged, a falling baby saved, an arrow parts the hangman's rope. These are the times when a mortal being feels utterly alive.

Sadly, for Miliana, this was not one of those times. With a melancholy sense of certainty, Miliana watched the wall collapse and the roof above her bath begin to sag. The ceiling quietly disintegrated into a storm of falling plaster, all of which descended straight down on Miliana's head.

Boards bounced, Miliana squawked, and untold tons of dust and rubbish thundered in from above: plaster, dead insects, live insects, bat guano, and rodent husks. As the piece de resistance, a warm, soft, heavy mass landed hard in Miliana's lap, thrashing and wailing in outrage and surprise.

After the storm, there came the lull. Plaster dust swirled in the air with a curious gentility. Miliana peeled free her spectacles and rubbed the smeared lenses clean using her own bedraggled hair. She put them back in place upon her nose, and stared dully down into the far end of her bath.

A rather surprised-looking bird had landed in the tub-a gigantic orange thing shaped like an over-elaborated peacock. It had a body at least as big as Miliana, coupled with a long neck, a curved beak, and great, razor-sharp claws.

The bird sat in the bathtub and looked at Miliana; Miliana sat in the bathtub and looked at the bird. Both creatures hit on the same inspiration at the self-same time, leaped madly out of the tub, and frantically ducked behind the nearest door.

Stuck all over from head to foot with plaster dust and insect husks, Miliana gave away her hiding place with a sneeze that almost blew her rib cage out. The girl crammed herself into a corner behind a dressing table, peering blindly out through filthy spectacles as she searched for a sign of the missing bird.

Beak. Big beak! The thing had to be a predator. Miliana flicked an eye toward the bedroom door, planning a very slow, very cautious retreat into the palace halls. Nervously wrapping herself inside a soggy towel, she began to edge her way toward her bedroom door.

"Tekorii-kii-kii! Tekorii-kii-kii!"

A great, giddy head-all feathers, dust, and daze, shot out from around the doorframe behind her and gave a hoot of glee. The girl gave a rabbit-squeak of fright, lunged into cover behind the bathtub, and crouched, peering at the intruder across the enamel rim.

Flapping ridiculously stubby wings, the huge bird waddled out onto the open floor; the creature seemed to be constructed mostly of tail, which dragged behind it like the train of an empress's wedding gown. It ducked its head up and down, left and right in mindless eagerness to inspect Miliana from all sides.

Entrenched behind her bathtub, Miliana tried her best to keep the beast away.

"I'm a sorceress! Oh boy-a really powerful sorceress!" The girl raised a hand and tried to encourage a blaze of power to swirl about her fingers. Unfortunately, whatever small store of magical energy Miliana possessed seemed to have spent itself in ejecting her bathwater.

Delighted by Miliana's feeble sparks, the bird vaulted up onto the edge of the bathtub. Fixing Miliana with a giddy smile, it flapped its wings, hurtled back its head, and set the rafters ringing with a ghastly, raucous cry.

"Tekorii-kii-kii!

"Tekorii-kii-kii!"

Gaping its beak open in joy, the bird beat itself in the chest with one wingtip and proudly struck a pose.

"Tekoriikii!"

Sitting on her rump in a pile of debris, Miliana heaved a weary sigh. She reached out a hand to the bird and solemnly shook the outstretched wing.

"Miliana," said the disheveled princess. "Terribly glad to meet you."

A suspicious burbling sound in the iron boilers at the far end of the apartment made Luccio Irozzi look up from his reading with a frown. The untidy mass of tubes and spheres shuddered, bulged, then leaked out a cloud of fragrant purple steam.

"Lorenzo? Lorenzo, come and see to your toys."

Nothing could be heard except the excited scratching of a pen somewhere in the adjoining room.

"Lorenzo?"

Luccio set aside his parchments and glided bonelessly over to the door.

"Lorenzo-if that contraption explodes and slaughters me, I must warn you that my will names you as inheritor of all my debts."

Lost to the world, Luccio's companion sat at a table covered with pieces of thick yellow paper.

"Lorenzo?"

The youth kissed charcoal across the pages with bold, brilliant sweeps of his hand, outlining curves and shadows in an almost random array. Luccio crept closer, watching in fascination as the random lines crept together into pattern, shape, and form, and finally meshed to make the figure of a slim, exquisite maid combing out great sheets of silken hair.

Sitting quietly on the edge of the table, Luccio gave a wry smile and drew the sketch into his hands.

"Drawn from memory?"

"What?" Lorenzo half-surfaced from his artistic frenzy, drawing with his left hand while scribbling notes mirror-wise with his right. "No no-observed. It's all live-drawn."

"Well she must be most accommodating. Either that or stark raving mad." Luccio held aloft a frontal study and raised an incredulous brow. "Are you sure she's a suitable model?"

"Why?" Lorenzo looked up at his friend in utter incomprehension. "What's wrong with her?"

"Um… she does lack… aaah… That is, she seems to have a certain sparsity of…"

"Of what?"

"Nothing." Luccio let the subject die a hasty death. "I'm sure this look will come into fashion someday soon."

Thrilled by a good afternoon of work, Lorenzo tossed aside his charcoal and began to briskly wipe his hands on a rag, somehow managing to actually make himself dirtier. His eyes never once left the intricate array of figure drawings on his tabletop: sketches of hands, of elbows and ankles, necks and feet, and all the numerous bits of terrain held in between. The youth picked up one heavy sheet and held it up to the light to admire the best, most subtle portraiture he had ever done.

"She's fabulous! If only you knew, Luccio, just how remarkable she is. Look at the cleanliness of that line."

"Quite." Luccio gave a shake of his head and let the drawings slide, mumbling: "It's certainly a rather straight line… Lorenzo, O scholar of mine, my dearest and truest of friends, I must now ask you to leave this paradise of artistic forgiveness, and answer for me four questions. That is-four questions of the simplest kind."

Lorenzo squared a velvet cap across his brows, and adjusted the rapier that fashion dictated he wear at all times.

"Do ask. You know I am ever at your disposal."

"In which case…" Luccio opened up the connecting door and waved a languid hand in the direction of the tables with their maze of liquids, tubes, and spheres. "At what point in your ancestry was a gnome involved? Should this device be leaking? Is it dangerous? And why does it smell of cherry fondue?"

Lorenzo gave a sharp wail of dismay. He flung himself through the door and frantically began twirling valves and beating out braziers with his hat. Luccio watched the process from the safety of the door and drew his brows into a genteel frown.

"Well?"

"Well what?" Lorenzo burned fingertips as he rescued a pot of foaming liquid from the top of an oil burner.

"What are the answers to my four questions?"

"To the first-none of your business. No, it should not be leaking. And no, it isn't dangerous."

A metal sphere burst with a thunderous bang; chemicals lashed across the room, chewing into the stonework wherever they chanced to land. Luccio shook pieces of smoking shrapnel from the crown of his hat, and used a rapier blade to clear himself space upon a chair.