than ever now that their object had been revealed to be a pocket watch barely thicker than his dagger’s blade; yet though he could not credit her warnings, neither could he dismiss them, any more than he could dismiss the memory of the woman herself: her vernal voice, the quickness of her wit and of her movements, the sense that there had been, and perhaps still was, a connection between them, one that went deeper than words unsaid, questions unasked, and ancient compacts born of a moonstruck fancy: a bond brought into being by the shedding and, as she had put it, the mingling of blood, as though what had passed between them on that rooftop had been some kind of ceremony and not a shabby paroxysm of violence that had left her unconscious from a blow to the head and himself run through the leg and lucky to be alive. He wondered if he would ever see her again, and though he felt no certainty that he would survive a second encounter, he found that he desired it almost as much as he desired to possess the secret of the timepiece he had taken from her.
Now, after clearing a work space on the cluttered table, he set loupe and hunter down and pulled from an interior pocket of his waistcoat a well-worn leather-bound wallet tied shut with a length of dark ribbon. This he untied, placed on the table to one side, and flicked open with practised ease. Laid out within was a tidy assortment of files, calipers, pliers, tweezers, wires, springs, small glass vials containing various chemicals, a watchmaker’s hammer, an equally diminutive screwdriver, and other items needful for the interrogation and repair of timepieces. He glanced at Master Magnus for permission.
The master inclined his head while continuing to stroke the cat in his lap. ‘Have you enough light?’
Quare nodded; the single candle, while not ideal, would suffice for now. Turning back to the table, he screwed the loupe to his left eye and bent to his work. In one hand he held the watch; in the other, a long, scalpel-like tool he had adapted for horological use from a surgeon’s kit. Many of his most useful tools were based on or even made from surgical implements; the clockmaker and the surgeon, he had found, had much in common. But before he could begin in earnest, a movement to one side startled him, and he stepped back as a small black cat leapt onto the table.
Behind him, Master Magnus laughed. ‘Why, it would appear that Calpurnia wishes to observe your technique!’
The small cat sat regarding him through unblinking green-gold eyes, its tail curled primly about its front paws. It might almost have been a marble statuette, save for the vigorous purring that seemed to emanate from its entire body. ‘That is a very large purr for such a small cat,’ Quare remarked. ‘But if she has any advice, I would welcome it.’
‘Cats do not advise,’ said Master Magnus. ‘They command.’
At present, Calpurnia seemed inclined to do neither. Once, Quare would have found the animal’s presence a distraction, but among the many things he had learned from Master Magnus was a tolerance, even a kind of grudging affection, for cats. The master had an absolute mania for the creatures; he could identify each of his vast menagerie by name, and seemed to prefer their company to that of human beings.
‘They accept me for who I am,’ he had once told Quare. ‘They do not judge by appearances but see past the surface of things. Dogs have no choice but to love us; it is how they are made. Despite their many fine qualities, one cannot help but pity them. A cat, however, bestows its affections where it will. Thus the companionship of a cat is to be more highly valued, for cats are like mirrors in which we may see ourselves as we truly are, not as we appear to others, and still less as we would prefer ourselves to be.’
The cases of most pocket watches were easily removed, opening from the back, but in this, too, the watch at hand proved an exception to the rule: the case was all of a piece. The crystal came away without trouble, but once he had laid it upon the inside flap of his tool kit, Quare was baffled. There seemed no way inside. The edge of the dial met the side of the case precisely, and not even the fine,