The Vorrh

valued most, another demonstration that the world was unfathomable and its resources unlimited, infinitely mysterious and ever changeable. His expertise in anatomy and charm surgery was in a constant state of amazement, but this brought a new pinnacle of surprise: a human eye, active and vital, long after separation from its life blood and the protective surroundings of the rest of its body. What nourished it? What let it work so frantically when the optic nerve that operated it had been so definitely severed from the brain? It was like a continually working bucket that had unknowingly lost its well. He turned to Tsungali, enraptured.
    ‘You know my only two prices are objects of use and objects of fascination.’
    Tsungali grinned through his gapped teeth.
    ‘You have brought me two bounties of knowledge and fascination: my service is yours. What can I do for you?’
    They discussed the hunter’s arm, the Wiseman prodding thoughtfully at the bandaged stump, mental calculations whirring through the room. But at the mention of Ishmael’s face, his expression darkened.
    ‘No,’ said Nebsuel definitely. ‘Such uniqueness is untouchable. Why would you want to look like everybody else?’
    ‘Because I want to become myself and live my life as a man, not as a monster. I want to be forgotten for who I am, not judged for how I have been made.’
    Nebsuel paused to digest this, then said, ‘Do you choose to be with those who see you the wrong way?’
    ‘Who else is there?’
    ‘I know some.’
    Ishmael tensed at the suggestion. ‘No, I want to go back changed.’
    Nebsuel made a clucking, swallowing sound and returned to his beaker of wine, shaking his head. Ishmael and Tsungali sat with him in silence, not looking at each other, eyes focused on their drinks. Too many moments had passed when Tsungali eventually blurted out, ‘Well? Will you do it? Will you operate on us?’
    No answer came. The healer was hardening. Tsungali looked at Ishmael and nodded. ‘Show him,’ he said, and Ishmael dipped his head in understanding.
    Ishmael pulled the long, thick bundle from under his feet and started to unwrap it. At first Nebsuel paid no attention; he had assumed the bundle to be the stranger’s bed roll. But as more and more of the blanket was unravelled, he felt something straining in his solar plexus. He knew from old what that meant, but there was no time to register it or protect himself: the cyclops’ possession was disclosed. As the last layer fell away, he began to sweat, his heart drying and fluttering, mites and dust shaken off in the straining, sticky cage of his ribs. He could not believe what he was seeing. The dark maroon of the bow’s surface seemed to ripple and bend under his enforced gaze. Ishmael’s hand was black with effort and excrescence. The eye rolled from its safe perch on the table, gravitating towards the bow and the floor. Everything in the room seemed to be turning and twisting, yearning towards Este in a curiosity that became mangled midway into abeyance. Ishmael dragged the bow down and covered it with the blanket, crudely smothering its influence under the covering. The eye stopped short of the table’s lip; in its passage, it nicked itself on the sharp wire from around the discarded cork of the wine. The room crept back to inertia. Nebsuel sank into his seat as Tsungali grinned at the excellent demonstration. There was an eerie scent in the room: something of the sea and an exotic garden, smouldered together; a flinch of ammonia, at first exhilarating, and then turning to a whiff of dread, like a leeching memory trapped and waiting in a dream.
    ‘I will do anything,’ said Nebsuel, in a voice from a distant, colourless place, ‘anything you want.’
    * * *

    The bird activated its bell of arrival and the fine sound sleeted down into the lower room like pointed snow.
    Sidrus was not expecting a communication; there was very little to be told from the river mouth. He continued rubbing the sticky balm into his porous face. The bell rang again, and he wiped the fat from his fingers, so that they would not slip as he retrieved the scroll from the bird’s dry, struggling ankle.
    It was a message that should never have been sent, one laced with mistakenness from the moment Nebsuel had penned it, in a stolen pause that had masqueraded as the friendly replenishment of wine. It told of his visitors before he knew who they were and before he understood what it was that they really