“Anton, don’t play with words. Tape recorder, cassette deck, dictaphone—it doesn’t matter what it was! The older generation may underestimate technology, but at least I have enough wits to understand that. You’re young, you used to work with technology. You could have thought of something. Any telephone can record sounds nowadays. Tell me honestly: has the information been preserved?”

“I think you should be the first to show a bit of frankness,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because I hold all the trump cards.”

Arina nodded. She looked at a young waitress running past, carrying food to some table. The girl nodded, offloaded her plates, and went dashing to the bar counter.

“Agreed,” said Arina. “All right, listen.”

“Are you sure this is the right place for a private conversation?” I asked. “There are plenty of Russian tourists in here.”

“The waitress is from Riga, and she has excellent Russian too,” Arina answered. “Don’t worry, no one will hear us.”

I hadn’t noticed anything like a Sphere of Negation or any other privacy spell, but I believed Arina. Witches, even ex-witches, have their own magic.

“Then tell me,” I said.

“Anton, the main prophecies must be fulfilled. They absolutely must. The Twilight demands it . . . life itself demands it.”

“Is that so?” I asked in surprise. “And I thought the Twilight tried to obstruct the Prophets.”

“That’s a mistake,” said Arina, shaking her head. “Does it not surprise you that, for all his omnipotence, the Tiger moves so slowly?”

“Well . . .”

“The Tiger is the spur, the lash urging the Prophet on. The Tiger hurries him along, trying to make him pronounce his main prophecy as quickly as possible.”

“A bold conclusion,” I said.

The waitress brought us two more beers. She looked slightly bewildered—first, in pubs you’re supposed to buy beer at the bar yourself, and second, Arina hadn’t bothered to pay. I handed the girl a tenner without saying anything.

“I think we’d better start from the basics. Who is a Prophet?” Arina asked me. Then she answered her own question: “He’s not just an Other who is capable of forecasting the lines of probability, so that he can ‘look into the future.’ At that level all of us can ‘foresee the future,’ to a greater or lesser degree. In the right set of circumstances, even ordinary human beings are capable of similar prescience.”

“A Prophet is qualitatively different,” I said. “Another kind of Other, pardon the pun.”