Quirin’s holding pens smelled of wet wool, sour fruit, and the sort of bird that ate other birds.
Ysabet waited by the gate while an old man carried a bucket along the far fence. A long-necked creature followed him on the other side, stepping delicately over a second neck laid across its back. Only when it turned did she understand that both belonged to it.
“Don’t let it see your pocket,” Quirin called.
She covered the bread in her coat.
“Other one.”
Her left pocket held the folded drawing. She moved away from the fence.
Quirin tipped the bucket into a stone trough. The animal inspected both ends with separate heads, apparently hoping a different opinion would improve the feed. He closed two catches before coming over.
He had been elderly when Ysabet first paid for his advice twelve years earlier. Now the skin below his eyes had gathered into long soft folds. His fingers remained thick and careful.
“You look ill.”
“I was.”
“Still are. Where’s the purchase?”
“In my yard. Someone’s watching it.”
“Good. Bring yourself, then.”
He led her into the narrow room adjoining the pens. Feathers hung from strings beneath the rafters, each tagged with a date and direction. There were no stuffed heads, no heroic pictures of men standing on dead beasts. A kettle occupied half the stove. On the other half a bowl of fruit steamed for something small and invisible inside a covered cage.
“I can’t pay much,” Ysabet said.
“Can you mend a feeding sling?”
“With time.”
“Then we’ll both be patient.”
She put Chaska’s drawing on the table, unfolded it, and kept her hand over the upper edge until he had sat down.
“That’s an approximation.”
“All drawings are. Move your hand.”
His face altered so slightly she might have missed it if she had not been watching. The lower lip loosened. He touched neither the paper nor the cup he had just set down.
“Where was this?”
“On a metal lid. At Darr’s sale. A man bought the whole box separately.”
“What man?”
“Edris Keth.”
Outside, one of the long-necked animal’s heads began to cough. Quirin stood quickly. Ysabet followed him to the door, frightened by the speed, but he only fetched a long brush and walked to the trough.
The coughing head had bitten off a fruit stalk that the other was trying to swallow.
“Both of you,” he told it, “are idiots.”
He worked the stalk loose. The animal looked deeply offended with two faces.
When he came back he shut the door and latched it.
“What happened when he showed you this?”
She told him, beginning with the mouse. He interrupted for quantities, timing, the size of the second eye. At the mention of the hare he took a fresh scrap and wrote something down. He asked which foot had touched her during the pigeon’s examination, whether Pip had touched the bird too, whether the sense ended before or after her skin lost contact.
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Then say so.”
“I have.”
“Yes. Keep doing it.”
By the time she reached the ring, he was gripping the edge of his chair. He asked her to describe the cuts in it, then shook his head before she had finished.
“Couldn’t see them clearly. Don’t make them clearer for me now.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“I know what remembering does.”
He listened to the spear and its collapse without another question. When she finished, he poured water into the kettle though it was already full. Water spilled over the lip. He swore and wiped it with his sleeve.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Not here.”
“Quirin.”
He looked at the covered cage. A little beak slid beneath the cloth and took a strand of fruit from the bowl.
“I used to go north with temple expeditions. Catalogues, feeding, migration counts. Nothing that required anyone to ask what the expedition wanted the numbers for.” His voice had gone flat. “There are words in this town that bring visitors after them. You already have enough visitors.”
“Do you know what’s living in my yard?”
“I may know what they want it to become.”
She had been cold since coming into the room. Now she was angry enough to stand.
“Then tell me somewhere else.”
He nodded. “The south marsh road. Beyond the third drain. Tomorrow, before the carts start.”
“I won’t bring Pip to meet someone who hides a name indoors.”
“Good. Don’t bring it.”
She remained standing. Quirin rubbed water from the back of his hand.
“If you go to your licensing clerk tonight,” he said, “ask who reads the unusual-beast notices before the office opens. It isn’t always the clerk. Edris can ask for an examination. Your purchase receipt will keep a local constable from taking it as stolen stock. It won’t answer a sacred-danger petition.”
“Can you?”
“Perhaps I can help you avoid one long enough to find someone better.”
A cart passed outside, wheel knocking over the stones. Quirin waited until it had gone.
“Bring your notes in the morning. Bring a way to carry them dry. And don’t put any old iron into its food.”
“He told me that too.”
“I expect he did.”
Quirin opened the door for her. Before she went, he lifted the damaged feeding sling from its hook and set it on the table between them. The leather was worn through where a buckle had turned against an animal’s breast.
“Not tonight,” he said. “When you’ve slept.”