Resisting a dive into the water would be a trial, but he’d been warned to exercise his best behavior in the palace. The sultan did not take kindly to interlopers.

They’d been given a brief tour, and left to linger in this, the serrallo, which his master, the Frenchman, had mentioned was built less than a hundred years earlier. Elaborately detailed carvings on the walls arabesqued in precise wooden curves. Hand-painted colors were vivid jewels set into the design. The courtyard was open to the sky and bright morning light illuminated everything as if under a thousand candles. It was blinding.

Garin had never before seen such a blatant display of riches. He did appreciate what coin and barter could bring a man. Someday he would have riches of his own.

They’d come to visit an alchemist his master had met a decade earlier during a previous visit to Spain. His master had taken Garin under his wing as an apprentice. The elder man’s methods of teaching were brusque and not always pain free.

Garin missed his father, a German knight. But the man had never so much time for him as Roux offered. Roux, he followed everywhere. Roux was master, teacher, reluctant friend and—rarely—father. Garin learned much during their travels. He thought he would never cease to marvel at all the world, and its riches, could offer.

Yet he looked forward to a future with no master.

“Ahead,” Roux said in his curt manner.

Inside, a long hallway edged the courtyard. The men’s boot heels clicked dully. Here in the shade it was much cooler. A man could seek the liquid shadows and garner relief.

Garin looked at the walls, his eyes traveling high to marvel over the intricate arabesque work carved into fine, varnished woods. It was a style he’d not seen before traveling to Spain. It was decadent and pleased him to look upon it.

He favored this land of dark-skinned Moors. They were tall, brave men who decorated their clothing with opulent metals and their blades more grandly with jewels and religious carvings. They prayed all hours of the day and bore a regal mien as if a birthright.

“Ah!” Roux hastened his steps, but Garin meandered behind him at his own pace. “Alphonso!”

The two men exchanged kisses to the cheeks while Garin hung back. Even when Roux walked in through the long strands of beaded wood to the alchemist’s lab, he did not gesture for him to follow. He merely expected Garin would.

And the young man did, because he knew it was expected.

“Someday,” he muttered under his breath. “Someday I will not follow you, old man.”

Introductions were made. Alphonso de Castaña impressed Garin little. He hardly believed in men who claimed to change lead into gold, and cure all disease with an elixir of life.

The alchemist gestured for Garin to have a seat on a wicker chaise padded with damask fabric, or even look about if he desired. He and Roux had matters to discuss.

That suited Garin well and fine, though he did wish for something to drink. He was parched. A glance about convinced him the discolored liquids in the assorted vials, alembics and glass pitchers were likely not consumable. He didn’t want to look too closely at the one—was that a skinned creature inside? It had…fingers?

Garin averted his eyes from the shelves.

The room was compact, yet the ceiling high and vaulted, so it gave the illusion of a grand yet intimate area. It was packed to every wall with items of interest. More than four walls—Garin counted six. Interesting.

Dusty vases, stacks of leathered books and globes of thin glass covered every available space. Intricate metal devices must calibrate and measure, he decided. Wooden bowls and animal skins hobbled and propped here and there. Books open everywhere, some marked with a shard of bone, others tilting nearly off a table.

Garin glanced across the room where the two men spoke in low tones. His master studied a kris blade with a bejeweled ivory handle. A glint of ruby caught sunlight beaming through a grilled window. Roux did like unique weapons.

Garin stroked his fingers over a folded cloth run through with silver threading. Curious things. Unnecessary to him, but still, they were something to behold.

Only last night he’d run his fingers along the shabby torn cloth of a serving wench’s skirts upstairs in the tavern where they’d stopped to eat. She, too, had been something to behold.

But his master had been eager to find a more suitable resting spot, so Garin had left the wench with but a kiss and a remorseful sigh.

He could appreciate all his master had done for him, shown him the way and taught him skills for defense and survival. But he did not fool himself that someday he would break free and be on his own. He deserved freedom. He was no man to answer to another.

A small brass key tied through with a shimmery pink ribbon went untouched, for something marvelous caught Garin’s attention. He reached carefully behind a stack of leather-bound books and palmed the curved shape of a skull.

It was not a man’s skull, for it fit upon his palm. A child’s?

It looked like the many other skulls he had seen as he and Roux ambled over the highroads for days without end. Skulls attached to skeletons and hanging from a gallows or tree; lying roadside, detached from the neck as if fallen from a bone collector’s pack; or sitting upon a desk or windowsill in declaration of the dark arts.

The bone was creamy pale and smooth. The scalp was delineated into sections and the pieces were held together by some kind of dirty plaster. The eye sockets were large in comparison to the skull, and the jaw quite small. It was missing the lower jawbone.

It surely belonged to an infant.

Did the alchemist practice the dark arts?

Garin glanced again at the two men. De Castaña wore a white turban and his skin was brown, yet paler than most Moors. His voice was kind. He gestured gracefully with long fingers as he spoke.

Roux had mentioned something about de Castaña having angels and demons at his beckon. What foul deeds men got their hands to, Garin thought.

He turned the skull on his palm, smoothing his fingers over the slick bone. Poking two fingers into the eye sockets, he did it only because of curiosity. Hooked upon his fingers, he turned the skull and found the tiny hole at the base where it must attach to the spine.

Compelled for no reason other than it was what his hands next decided to do, he lifted the upturned skull to his ear. Slithery, silver tones clattered within. A voice without words.

“What have you there, boy?” His master fit the kris blade into the leather belt at his waist and glanced at his charge.

“Ah! No!” The alchemist clapped his hands twice over his head. “Put that down, boy. Its secrets are not for you to know.”

Roux cast him the fierce eye. Not a look Garin ever wished to challenge. He set the skull on the books, yet his fingers lingered. As did Roux’s gaze upon the skull.

“It whispers to me,” Garin said with all due fascination.

“Ah, ah.” The alchemist leaned in and snatched the skull from its perch and gave it a smart toss, catching it on his palm. “Not yet, boy, not yet.”

“But—”

There was nothing more to say. His master shuffled him toward the stringed wooden beads marking the entrance. “Take yourself out to the serrallo, apprentice. I’ll follow directly.”

Casting the skull a desirous glance, Garin licked his lips. He met the alchemist’s eyes and thought sure he’d seen a star blink in the center of each dark orb.

“Someday, perhaps?” the alchemist said with a slippery grin. “Someday, all good things.”

Garin rushed outside. The open-air serrallo beamed brilliant white sun upon his face, altering his mood for the better. Moments later he was joined by his master. Roux laid out plans to ride to the city and find a meal. Fine and well. Yet all the day, Garin’s thoughts tried to form sense of the mysterious whispers from the skull.