Mr. Motley stood and pushed the screen to the floor.

Lin got half to her feet, her headlegs bristling with astonishment and terror. She gazed at him.

Scraps of skin and fur and feathers swung as he moved; tiny limbs clutched; eyes rolled from obscure niches; antlers and protrusions of bone jutted precariously; feelers twitched and mouths glistened. Many-coloured skeins of skin collided. A cloven hoof thumped gently against the wood floor. Tides of flesh washed against each other in violent currents. Muscles tethered by alien tendons to alien bones worked together in uneasy truce, in slow, tense motion. Scales gleamed. Fins quivered. Wings fluttered brokenly. Insect claws folded and unfolded.

Lin backed away, stumbling, feeling her terrified way away from his slow advance. Her chitinous headbody was twitching neurotically. She shook.

Mr. Motley paced towards her like a hunter.

“So,” he said, from one of the grinning human mouths. “Which do you think is my best side?”

CHAPTER FIVE

Isaac waited, facing his guest. The garuda stood silent. Isaac could see it was concentrating. It was preparing to speak.

The garuda’s voice, when it came, was harsh and monotone.

“You are the scientist. You are…Grimnebulin.”

It had difficulty with his name. Like a parrot trained to speak, the shaping of consonants and vowels came from within the throat, without the aid of versatile lips. Isaac had only ever conversed with two garuda in his life. One was a traveller who had long-practised the formation of human sounds; the other was a student, one of the tiny garuda community born and raised in New Crobuzon, which grew up shouting the city slang. Neither had sounded human, but neither had sounded half so animal as this great birdman struggling with an alien tongue. It took Isaac a moment to understand what had been said.

“I am.” He held out his hand, spoke slowly. “What is your name?”

The garuda looked imperiously at his hand, then shook it with a strangely fragile grip.

“Yagharek…” There was a shrieking stress on the first syllable. The great creature paused, and shifted uncomfortably, before continuing. It repeated its name, but this time added an intricate suffix.

Isaac shook his head.

“Is that all your name?”

“Name…and title.”

Isaac raised an eyebrow.

“Am I, then, in the presence of nobility?”

The garuda stared at him blankly. Eventually it spoke slowly without breaking his gaze.

“I am Too Too Abstract Individual Yagharek Not To Be Respected.”

Isaac blinked. He rubbed his face.

“Um…right. You have to forgive me, Yagharek, I’m not familiar with…uh…garuda honorifics.”

Yagharek shook his great head slowly.

“You will understand.”

Isaac asked Yagharek to come upstairs, which he did, slowly and carefully, leaving gouges in the wooden stairs where he gripped with his great claws. But Isaac could not persuade him to sit down, or to eat, or to drink.

The garuda stood by Isaac’s desk, while his host sat and stared up at him.

“So,” said Isaac, “why are you here?”

Again, Yagharek gathered himself for a moment before he spoke.