Behind the wretched creature stretched a pair of dirty, foul-smelling wings. They were no more than six feet from tip to tip. As Isaac watched, they half-opened, jerked and twitched spastically. Tiny pieces of organic muck spilt from them as they shuddered.

The creature’s beak opened and, underneath it, Isaac caught a glimpse of lips forming the words, nostrils above. The beak was nothing but a roughly made fixture shoved and sealed into place like a gas-mask over the nose and mouth, he realized.

“Let me tell you of the times I have soared into the air with my prey . . .” began the pathetic figure, but Isaac stepped forward and held up a hand to cut it off.

“Please gods, enough!” he shouted. “Spare us this . . . embarrassment . . .”

The false garuda staggered backwards, blinking in fear.

There was silence for a long time.

“What’s the matter, guvnor?” whispered the thing behind bars eventually. “What’d I do wrong?”

“I came here to see a fucking garuda,” rumbled Isaac. “What d’you take me for? You’re Remade, mate . . . as any fool can see.”

The big dead beak clicked together as the man licked his lips. His eyes darted left and right nervously.

“Jabber’s sake, squire,” he whispered pleadingly. “Don’t go complaining. This is all I got. You’re obviously a gentleman of education . . . I’m as close as most get to garuda . . . all they want’s to hear a bit about hunting in the desert, see the bird-man, and that way I earn.”

“Godspit, Isaac,” whispered Derkhan. “Go easy.”

Isaac was crushingly disappointed. He had been preparing a list of questions in his mind. He knew exactly how he had wanted to investigate the wings, which muscle-bone interaction currently intrigued him. He had been prepared to pay a good rate for the research, had prepared to get Ged to come down to ask questions about the Cymek Library. To be faced instead with a scared, sickly human reading from a script that would have disgraced the lowest playhouse depressed him.

His anger was tempered with pity as he stared at the miserable figure before him. The man behind the feathers nervously clutched and unclutched his left arm with his right. He had to open that preposterous beak to breath.

“ ’Stail,” Isaac swore softly.

Derkhan had walked up to the bars.

“What did you do?” she asked.

The man looked around again before answering.

“Did thieving,” he said quickly. “Got caught trying to get an old painting of a garuda from some ancient cunt out in Chnum. Worth a fortune. Magister said since I was so impressed with garuda I could—” his breath caught for a moment “—I could be one.”

Isaac could see how the feathers of the face were shoved ruthlessly into the skin, doubtless bonded subcutaneously to make removal too agonizing to consider. He imagined the process of insertion, one by torturing one. When the Remade turned slightly to Derkhan, Isaac could see the ugly knot of hardened flesh on his back where those wings, torn from some buzzard or vulture, had been sealed together with the human muscles.