“ ’Garuda aren’t . . . adept at abstract thought.’ “ David imitated the sneering tone of the speaker from the sinister Three Quills party, which had held a disastrous rally in Brock Marsh the previous year. Isaac and David and Derkhan had gone along to disrupt proceedings, hurling abuse and rotten oranges at the man on stage to the delight of the xenian demonstration outside. Isaac barked in recollection.

“Absolutely. So anyway, short of going to Spatters, at the moment I can’t work with actual garuda, so I’m looking at the various flight mechanisms you . . . uh . . . see around you. Amazing variation, actually.”

Isaac sheafed through piles of notes, holding up diagrams of finches’ and bluebottles’ wings. He untied the dead pigeon and delicately traced the movement of its wings through a rolling arc. He pointed wordlessly at the wall around his desk. It was covered with carefully rendered diagrams of wings. Close-up sections of the rotating joint at the shoulder, pared-down representations of forces, beautifully shaded studies of feather patterns. Here too were heliotypes of dirigibles, with arrows and question marks scrawled on them in dark ink. There were suggestive sketches of the mindless men-o’-war, and hugely enlarged pictures of wasps’ wings. Each was carefully labelled. David moved his eyes slowly over the hours and hours of work, the comparative studies of the engines of flight.

“I don’t think my client’s too fussy about what his wings—or whatever—look like, as long as he can get airbound as and when.” David and Lublamai knew about Yagharek. Isaac had asked them for secrecy. He trusted them. He had told them in case Yagharek visited when they were in the warehouse, although so far the garuda had managed to avoid them on his fleeting visits.

“Have you thought about just, y’know, sticking some wings back on?” said David. “Remaking him?”

“Well, absolutely, that’s my main line of enquiry, but there’re two problems. One is what wings? I’ll have to build them. Second is, do you know any Remakers prepared to do that on the quiet? The best bio-thaumaturge I know is the despised Vermishank. I’ll go to him if I fucking have to, but I’ll be sorely desperate before I do that . . . So at the moment I’m doing preliminary stuff, trying to work out the size and shape and power-source of something that would hold him up at all. If I go that way, eventually.”

“What else have you got in mind? Physico-thaumaturgy?”

“Well, you know, UFT, my old favourite . . .” Isaac grinned and shrugged self-deprecatingly. “I have a feeling his back’s too messed up for easy Remaking, even if I could get the wings sorted out. I’m wondering about combining two different energy fields . . . Shit, David, I don’t know. I’ve got the beginnings of an idea . . .” He pointed vaguely at a roughly labelled drawing of a triangle.