When the spit was dry she disengaged. She felt a sticky seal of mucus stretch and snap as she pulled her head away from the half-finished leg. She leaned to one side and tensed, pushing the remaining paste through her gland. The ribbed underbelly of her headbody squeezed itself out of its distended shape, into more usual dimensions. A fat white glop of khepri-spit dropped from her head and curled on the floor. Lin stretched her gland-tip forwards and cleaned it with her rear legs, then carefully closed the little protective case below her wingtips.

She stood and stretched. Mr. Motley’s amiable, cold, dangerous little pronouncements broke off sharply. He had not realized she was finished.

“So soon, Ms. Lin?” he cried with theatrical disappointment.

Losing my edge if not careful, she signed slowly. Takes a lot out of you. Got to stop.

“Of course,” said Mr. Motley. “And how is the meisterwork?”

They turned together.

Lin was pleased to see that her impromptu recovery from the watery colourberry juice had created a vivid, suggestive effect. It was not entirely naturalistic, but none of her work was: instead, Mr. Motley’s muscle seemed to have been thrown violently onto the bones of his leg. An analogy perhaps close to the truth.

The translucent colours spilt in uneven grots down the white that glinted like the inside of a shell. The slabs of tissue and muscle crawled over each other. The intricacies of the many-textured flesh were vivid. Mr. Motley nodded approvingly.

“You know,” he ventured quietly, “my sense of the grand moment makes me wish there was some way I could avoid seeing anything more of this until it’s finished. I think it is very fine so far, you know. Very fine. But it’s dangerous to offer praise too early. Can lead to complacency . . . or to the opposite. So please don’t be downhearted, Ms. Lin, if that is the last word I say, positive or negative, on the matter, until the very end. Are we agreed?”

Lin nodded. She was unable to take her eyes from what she had created, and she rubbed her hand very gently over the smooth surface of the drying khepri-spit. Her fingers explored the transition from fur to scales to skin below Mr. Motley’s knee. She looked down at the original. She looked up at his head. He returned her gaze with a pair of tiger’s eyes.

What . . . what were you? she signed at him.

He sighed.

“I wondered when you’d ask that, Lin. I did hope that you wouldn’t, but I knew it was unlikely. It makes me wonder if we understand each other at all,” he hissed, sounding suddenly vicious. Lin recoiled.