‘What’s wrong?’ he said by way of a greeting.

‘Nothing that wasn’t wrong yesterday,’ I said.

He squinted up at the cloud-filled sky. ‘Is it even eight o’clock?

‘Ten,’ I said. ‘I need to come in.’

He stepped aside. His shirt was unbuttoned, and his fly similarly so. His sun-darkened skin looked as dry as parchment, as did his close-cut hair. But I had been ungenerous: glancing into his lounge I saw only one finished bottle of spirits beside his favoured chair. Age was catching up on us all, in our own ways.

I surprised him a second time by not making my way towards the balcony. Instead, I turned inwards towards his studio space.

There was an almost total darkness in there, with only a sliver of light squeezing beneath the shutters. If only Drekenford’s singular inn could manage the same with its shutters, a guest might manage to sleep beyond the dawn. Though, perhaps like Marcus and I, most guests relied on libations to achieve that.

He gasped when I threw the shutters open.

‘Just what’s taken hold of you, Alexsander?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, turning about the room. ‘That’s to say, I don’t know the word for it. I don’t know if there is a word for it. A feeling, I suppose.’

‘I don’t trust feelings.’

‘Quite.’ I strode back towards the door. ‘But will you indulge me?’

‘Will I need to do anything?’

‘Rarely. This is the first? 1693?’

‘Well, I made sketches and such previously.’

‘But this is the first finished painting?’

He nodded.

I stared at the view from Marcus’ balcony and experienced a strange moment of vertigo, of dizziness, brought on by the sensation of being in two places at once. In clumsy brushstrokes the far side of the valley was covered in evergreen forest, the nearest rooftops peppered the middle ground, and the streets held blotchy passers-by. I looked everywhere and nowhere. I worked methodically from side-to-side, then top-to-bottom, not knowing what to look for in particular but sure there was something to be found. I let my gaze lose its focus and the view softened. Marcus’ early ineptitude was covered as colours found each other, blending and bending, until I saw a closer approximation of the town of Drekenford. I moved on to the next painting.

The same, of course, but already different. Marcus had made progress within the year; even my uneducated eye could see that. He took a slightly more detailed approach to the roof slates, tightened his show of the forest, and kept his streets empty – perhaps until he could do the people justice. The first steps towards a more playful use of light and shadow were evident. This trend continued throughout the next handful of paintings, until 1700.

I looked at the painting, and then at the painter.

‘Did you… did your night-brother paint this?’

‘We had bad storms that year,’ he said.

On closer inspection I saw, yes, it was still the day before me, despite the impression of candles in windows under a blackened sky.