“Actually, I’m learning at the moment to grow filigree poppies. Remarkably difficult. Perhaps you’d care to see my efforts so far?”

Brasil shifted awkwardly. “Look, Nik, I’m not sure we’ve got time for—”

“Oh, time here is.” The smile again. “Flexible. I’ll make time for you. Please, this way.”

We left the hall and tracked left around the cherry-blossom quadrangle, then under an arch and across a pebbled courtyard. In one corner, two monks were knelt in meditation, and did not look up. It was impossible to tell if they were human inhabitants of the monastery or functions of the construct like the doorkeeper. Natsume at least ignored them. Brasil and I caught each other’s eye and the surfer’s face was troubled. I could read his thoughts as if they were printing out for me. This wasn’t the man he’d known, and he didn’t know if he could trust him any more.

Finally, Natsume led us through an arched tunnel to another quadrangle and down a short set of Earthwood steps into a shallow pit of marshy grasses and weed bordered by a circular stone path. There, buoyed up amidst the cobwebby grey scaffolding of their root systems, a dozen filigree poppies offered their tattered, iridescent purple and green petals to the virtual sky. The tallest wasn’t much more than fifty centimetres high. Maybe it was impressive from a horticultural point of view, I wouldn’t know. But it certainly didn’t look like much of an achievement for a man who’d once fought off a full-grown bottleback with no weapon outside of fists and feet and a short-burn chemical flare. For a man who’d once scaled Rila Crags without antigrav or ropes.

“Very nice,” said Brasil.

I nodded. “Yes. You must be very pleased with those.”

“Only moderately.” Natsume circled his shred-petalled charges with a critical eye. “In the end I’ve succumbed to the obvious failing, as apparently most new practitioners do.”

He looked expectantly up at us.

I glanced back at Brasil but got no help there..

“Are they a bit short?” I asked finally.

Natsume shook his head and chuckled. “No, in fact they’re a good height for a base this moist. And—I’m so sorry—I see I’ve committed yet another common gardener’s misdemeanour. I’ve assumed a general fascination with the subject of my personal obsessions.”

He shrugged and joined us again on the steps, where he seated himself.

He gestured out at the plants.

“They’re too bright. An ideal filigree poppy is matt. It shouldn’t glint like that, it’s vulgar. At least, that’s what the Abbot tells me.”

“Nik …”

He looked at Brasil. “Yes.”

“Nik, we need to. To talk to you about. Some stuff.”

I waited. This had to be Brasil’s call. If he didn’t trust the ground, I wasn’t going to walk ahead of him on it.