Strata

once or twice, and then I started watching for it. At the moment I’m thinking in terms of a small flying robot.’
    ‘There was the raven in the ship,’ said Kin. ‘Itgot out of the box, remember? And before that it had arrived mysteriously at Kung Top. But we killed it in vacuum, didn’t we?’
    ‘I wonder if we did?’
    They passed over a village where the only movement was in the flames of a burning house, and Marco cut in briefly to tell Kin to take Sphandor’s tether while he went lower to investigate.
    The demon hung a few metres away, wings pounding the air heavily. In the early morning light Kin looked at him closely for the first time. She looked again. There was no doubt about it. He was fuzzy around the edges.
    ‘I see it too,’ said Silver. ‘As if it’s slightly out of focus. How odd.’
    Sphandor regarded them sullenly.
    ‘ YOU MEAN TO KILL ME, ’ he whimpered.
    ‘Not unless you attempt to do us harm,’ said Kin.
    ‘ THE SKINNY ONE, THE KALI-ARMED, HE WISHES TO KILL ME .’
    ‘That’s just his general wish to the universe in general, not specific to you,’ said Kin. ‘I won’t let him harm you.’
    ‘ I WILL IMPLORE BERITH TO GIVE YOU GOLD! TRESOLAY I SHALL SUMMON TO MAKE YOUR BEAUTY EVEN MORE …’
    Marco was a dot on what, if it had been more than just a muddy open space, would have been called the village square.
    ‘The place is empty,’ came his voice, ‘unless you count corpses.’
    They tethered Sphandor to a post in what had been the village forge. Kin touched his skin gingerly, and under her fingers the demon appeared to be vibrating like a wineglass in a concert hall. Touching what looked like skin felt like fur, sticky with static.
    A puzzle. She dozed off in the shade, watching Silver strip panels off the dumbwaiter and take the workshop manual from its drawer.
    When she awoke the sun was high and ’waiter modules were stacked neatly in the dust. Silver was half visible behind a pile of panels.
    Through half closed eyelids Kin watched Sphandor. He was hopping around anxiously on his tether, sometimes darting forward and passing a tool to the shand. When Silver’s hand came out and groped in the air over a make-shift brazier for the soldering iron she’d made out of a piece of scrap copper, Sphandor reached into the coals and withdrew the rod by its glowing end, laying the other carefully in Silver’s black palm.
    ‘He just picked up a piece of red hot iron,’ said Kin, ‘hot end first.’
    Silver looked at her blankly, then looked at Sphandor, then at the rod in her hand, then shrugged and turned back to the ’waiter’s innards with a preoccupied air.
    ‘It is a function of demons that they can withstand heat,’ came her muffled voice.
    ‘How’s the ’waiter?’
    ‘Only superficial damage, but you know how it is – one has to remove half the machinery just to reach one wire. I’ve nearly finished.’
    Kin stood up, stretched, and wandered out into the square. She remembered something, and looked up at the sky.
    ‘There is a raven perched on the big stone building over yonder,’ said Silver behind her.
    ‘Do you think it’s some sort of spy?’
    ‘What do you think?’
    ‘I think it’s some sort of spy.’
    ‘That’s what I think.’
    Kin turned round. ‘Where’s Marco?’ she asked. ‘It’s time we interrogated wrinklebelly here.’
    ‘ I PLEAD .’
    Silver slotted the last module into the dumb-waiter and started to clip the panels back before answering.
    ‘He said he was going to have a look around. I told him about the raven.’
    Kin shook her head. ‘Not clever,’ she said. ‘Now he’ll want to catch it. Sphandor could tell us more. About matter transmission, for one thing.’
    Silver glanced up sharply, then looked at the demon. He cringed. The shand walked over and stared at him, which made him attempt to shuffle behind the pole. Finally she took a magnifier out of the ’waiter toolkit and held it against his skin.
    ‘Commendable reasoning,’ she said at last. ‘What gave you the idea, Kin?’
    ‘He shouldn’t be able to fly, even with chest muscles like that. And at that weight he should have legs like an elephant. And there’s the fuzziness, of course, and the slight vibration.’
    Silver switched off the magnifier.
    ‘I imagine the fuzziness is due to a malfunction in the transmitter,’ she said. ‘Well, well. It’s a neat solution to the transmission problem, I’ll give them that. Very neat. Frankly, Kin, you