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.

Nerve endings bonded randomly and uselessly, and the wings moved only with the spasms of a long drawn-out death. Isaac’s nose wrinkled at the stench. The wings were rotting slowly on the Remade’s back.

“Does it hurt?” Derkhan was asking.

“Not so very much any more, miss,” the Remade answered. “Anyway, I’m lucky to have this.” He indicated the tent and the bars. “Keeps me eating. That’s why I’d be obliged more’n I can say if you’d refrain from telling the boss that you clocked me.”

Did most who came here really accept this disgusting charade? wondered Isaac. Were people so gullible as to believe that something as grotesque as this could ever fly?

“We’ll say nothing,” said Derkhan. Isaac nodded curtly in agreement. He was full of pity and anger and disgust. He wanted to leave.

Behind them, the curtain swished and a group of young women entered, laughing and whispering lewd jokes. The Remade looked over Derkhan’s shoulder.

“Ah!” he said loudly. “Visitors from this strange city! Come, sit, hear stories of the harsh desert! Stay a while with a traveller from far, far away!”

He moved away from Derkhan and Isaac, gazing at them pleadingly as he did so. Delighted screams and astonishment burst from the new spectators.

“Fly for us!” yelled one.