‘If I wanted a bellows for a companion,’ Marcus said, ‘I would have brought one up from the cellar.’

‘Bellows?’

‘You’re breathing as if your very life depended on it.’

‘Doesn’t it?’

‘I suppose it does.’ Marcus raised his glass to his lips.

‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,’ I said.

‘Why should you do anything?’

I looked at him, this slight but muscular man of roughly my own age. His habits had treated him more roughly than my own; existing, as they did, on both sides of the ettiene. The lines across his face were deeper, the veins of his cheeks and nose more pronounced, his teeth stained as much as he might try to hide it. I looked, because I had no answer for his question. Not really.

‘Has he taken your instruments?’ Marcus said.

‘No.’

‘Chopped off your fingers?’

I would not dignify that with an answer.

‘Does he chain himself to the bed at the end of each night, or lock the room in some elaborate manner, or—?’

‘I take your meaning,’ I said, before he could really warm to his subject. ‘It is not the same to simply play, it is my livelihood.’

He snorted at that. ‘Alexsander, you know how this goes. You will be gone from this place in a week, maybe two. Whatever professional pride has been wounded will heal. You’ll soon forget Drekenford, until a lady mentions a distant relative during a card game and you’ll say, “Yes, I sojourned there once, a lifetime ago.”’

‘Perhaps you’re right.’

‘It’s rare, but not unheard of.’

‘And what until then?’ I said.

‘Why, do what anyone does when they have the illusion of time on their hands: indulge your vices.’ He refilled my glass, his hand shaking as he did so.

I thanked him, but made a decision in that moment not to follow his advice. I would not spend the next handful of days drinking myself into a stupor until I fell into the first warm embrace my purse would pay for. No, I would pursue a less predictable course of action. And the more I turned over the idea the more it took root. Its tendrils crept between my teeth and around my tongue, knitting my mouth uncharacteristically closed. They spread down my throat and collapsed my lungs until I felt short of breath at the power of the idea. From there it could only spread lower. My legs sent jouncing and jiggling, and my feet tingling at unseen needles.

Marcus sat back, the small smile on his face suggesting he thought his work done, his friend mollified, his company on this lonely balcony assured.

Instead, I began to wonder how I might aid Christophor.

‘I want to help catch a witch.’

‘What do you know of witches?’ Marcus said.

‘More than I’d care to.’ I wondered if I should have kept my newfound purpose to myself. But Marcus was determined to have company, and determined that company would talk. ‘I’ve been there for every case my night-brother has worked, after all.’