I looked away. ‘Gregory, he didn’t know what had happened?’

‘Said he couldn’t remember. Kept asking about the dark, but eventually I think he realised, perhaps pieced it together – that’s when he stopped talking.’

‘Find someone else.’ I got up.

‘I hadn’t even— Look, no one is sure how this happened. Strange things can happen to a person, to the body, all on their own.’

‘You don’t believe that, and neither do I.’

‘Christophor, you think I have any say in this?’ She had the good grace to look apologetic, even if she wasn’t actually apologising.

‘You said Jan – the day-brother – took out their eyes. Have one of the daylighters look into it.’

‘They want you. The kind of “they” that get what they want. The King’s seal, Christophor.’

‘And what do they suggest I do?’ I said.

‘Just what you’re paid to do. Find out who did this to Jan, who made his body turn against him, and by what dark arts.’

‘No.’ I stepped out into the corridor, glad the walls were bone-dry.

‘Whatever this is, it isn’t some petty street-magician, Inspector.’

‘Exactly.’

‘This kind of witchcraft – that’s why they want to send you,’ the warden said. ‘They know you’re… cold. You don’t get attached. They know you’re experienced.’

‘And that’s why the answer is no.’

14th October 1721

Alexsander knew I had been upset, I could tell that much. But he didn’t let that affect his day. It was, as it always was, something he felt as an itch at the back of his mind – one that was beyond scratching.

He was slow to leave the boarding house. He washed thoroughly with a bucket of clean, cold water, with extra attention to underneath his fingernails. They were important to him, our fingers. No matter what instrument he played, no matter where he played it, they would be involved somehow. Sometimes I remembered that; I took care of them when I could.

It was perhaps mid-morning when Alexsander sat in a coffee house somewhere in the city. The pastry was tasteless, greasy, but he knew that when he ordered. He watched the street from a window-table with the same intense concentration an artist bestows on their model. Was he waiting for someone? Hoping to see someone? A woman, probably, and one of poor reputation.

He wasted an hour, perhaps two, in a small, scrubby park. The fountain he perched on didn’t work and the sun was rare between the clouds. He seemed to play the same piece again and again, until even the pigeons could take no more.

He smiled at something; I don’t know what.

The ale house was half-full, entirely uninterested. He played to backs of heads and lazy applause that he accepted graciously. A fight broke out and a man’s nose was broken. Alexsander was fascinated.

This was all I recalled of Alexsander’s day. The memory was much like a dream; some parts of the day were only available as snatches and snippets, whereas others felt vividly real to me. There seemed little rhyme or reason as to what was the former and what the latter. In the end I had no control of my day-brother’s actions, nor my recollection of them.