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extension.
    In other words,
Benchamburg had no more idea how the vodyanoi shaped water than did
Isaac, or a street urchin, or old Silchristchek himself.
    Isaac pulled a set of
levers, shifting a series of glass slides and sending different
coloured lights through the statuette, which he could already see
beginning to sag at the edges. Peering through a high-magnification
eyepiece, he could see tiny animalculae squirm mindlessly. Internally
the water’s structure changed not at all: it merely wanted to
occupy a different space from its usual.
    He collected it as it
seeped through a crack in the stand. He would examine it later,
though he knew from past experience he would find nothing of any
interest in it.
    Isaac scribbled notes
on a pad beside him. He subjected the waterpiece to various
experiments as the minutes went by, piercing it with a syringe and
sucking some of its substance away, taking heliotypic prints of it
from various angles, blowing tiny air-bubbles into it, which rose and
burst out of its top. Eventually he boiled it and let it dissipate in
steam.
    At one point Sincerity,
David’s badger, ambled up the stairs and sniffed at his
dangling fingers. He stroked her absently and when she licked his
hand, he yelled to David that she was hungry. He was surprised by the
silence. David and Lublamai had left, presumably for a late lunch:
several hours had passed since he had arrived.
    He stretched and paced
over to his pantry, throwing Sincerity a twist of dried meat, which
she began to gnaw happily. Isaac was growing conscious of the world
again, hearing boats through the walls behind him.
    The door swung open and
shut again below.
    He trotted to the top
of the stairs, expecting to see his colleagues returning.
    Instead, a stranger
stood in the centre of the great empty space. Air currents adjusted
to his presence, investigated him like tentacles, sending a whirligig
of dust spinning around him. Spots of light littered the floor from
open windows and broken bricks, but none fell directly on him. The
wooden walkway creaked as Isaac rocked, very slightly. The figure
below jerked its head back and threw off a hood, hands clasped to its
chest, very still, staring up.
    Isaac gazed in
astonishment.
    It was a garuda.
    He nearly stumbled down
the stairs, fumbling with the rail, loath to take his eyes off the
extraordinary visitor waiting for him. He touched earth.
    The garuda stared down
at him. Isaac’s fascination defeated his manners, and he stared
frankly back.
    The great creature
stood more than six feet tall, on cruel clawed feet that poked out
from under a dirty cloak. The ragged cloth dangled down almost to the
ground, draped loosely over every inch of flesh, obscuring the
details of physiognomy and musculature, all but the garuda’s
head. And that great inscrutable bird face gazed down at Isaac with
what looked like imperiosity. Its sharply curved beak was something
between a kestrel’s and an owl’s. Sleek feathers faded
subtly from ochre to dun to dappled brown. Deep black eyes stared at
his own, the iris only a fine mottling at the very edge of the dark.
Those eyes were set in orbits which gave the garuda face a permanent
sneer, a proud furrow.
    And looming over the
garuda’s head, covered in the rough sackcloth it clasped about
itself, projected the unmistakable shapes of its huge furled wings,
promontories of feather and skin and bone that extended two feet or
more from its shoulders and curved elegantly towards each other.
Isaac had never seen a garuda spread its wings at close quarters, but
he had read descriptions of the dust-cloud they could raise, and the
vast shadows they threw across the garuda’s prey below.
    What are you doing
here, so far from home? thought Isaac with wonder. Look at the
colour of you: you’re from the desert! You must have come miles
and miles and miles, from the Cymek. What the spit are you doing
here, you impressive fucker?
    He