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felt barren and still, like a
desert encampment after a sandstorm.
    She made
coffee and checked her emails. There was a note from the marketing
manager of the Parnassus, confirming her advance for the
commission. For a moment Layla considered writing to cancel it but
quickly rejected the idea. When she looked at it dispassionately
she knew the Parnassus job was the most useful thing that could
have come out of her relationship with John Caribe. She wrote the
manager a polite acknowledgement instead. Then she fell asleep on
the bed. She was awakened some time later by a discreet knocking, a
series of soft taps on the door followed by a shuffling sound
outside, as if the person waiting was shifting from foot to
foot.
    Her first
thought was of John Caribe but she quickly dismissed it. Caribe
would have made more noise and would never have knocked so timidly.
She smoothed down her hair with both hands and opened the door. The
woman on the other side was small and slight. At first glance she
might have been mistaken for a child, although on closer inspection
Layla supposed she was in her mid forties. She was wearing skinny
jeans, a knee-length smock, grass-stained trainers, the kind of
clothes that might have been worn by a woman half her age. The
effect was incongruous and vaguely upsetting. A mapping of fine
wrinkles spread out from the corners of each eye.
    “ Hello,” Layla said. “Can I help you?” She thought the woman
was probably lost. She could see no other reason why she would be
here.
    “ Are you alone?” the woman said. “Can I speak to you for a
moment?”
    “ What’s this about?” said Layla. “Do I know you?”
    The woman hung
back on the threshold, blinking rapidly in a way that for a moment
gave Layla the bizarre notion that the woman was not human at all
but some elaborately constructed mechanical dummy.
    “ You are Layla Vargas?” she said. “I was told that you can
tell the future.”
    “ I am Layla Vargas, yes. But I’m not a savant. I don’t know
who told you I was but it isn’t true.”
    “ My name is Nashe Crawe. My husband is Demitris Xenakis, the
marksman. My son Alcander is very ill. The doctors won’t admit it
because they’re afraid of my husband but I know he’s dying. I want
you to recast his future.”
    She held up a
bag, a small sewn pouch covered in the complex embroideries Layla
recognised as charm-locks. She guessed the bag was full of coins,
or credits.
    “ This is nothing,” the woman said. “I can pay you twice this
amount.” She swung the bag to and fro on its strap. “It was Thanick
Acampos who told me where to find you. She said you can do it. She
said I should ask you straight out.”
    “ I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Layla
said.
    “ Thanick Acampos is a savant also, but she no longer
practises. She told me she knew you as a child.”
    “ You’re talking about the old woman,” Layla said. She turned
away before Nashe Crawe could answer. She didn’t want the woman to
see her face, to read the amazement and relief she knew were
written there. She had found the old woman again at last, or at
least the old woman had found her. “You’d better come in. I’ll make
you some tea.” She swept discarded clothes and a length of backing
fabric off the single armchair and on to the floor. When she
touched Nashe Crawe briefly on the shoulder to indicate that she
should sit down she felt a heavy, low-level emanation that could
have been simple nervousness but felt more like fear. Nashe Crawe
sat, resting her bag of coins in her lap like some small humped
animal. She reached upwards, twisting the beads of her necklace, a
string of pale topaz. Layla thought it remarkable that a woman like
Nashe Crawe could possibly be afraid of her. She ran water into the
kettle.
    “ I can’t do what you want me to do,” she said. “You have to
understand that. I don’t believe such things are possible. Not even
the sibyls could tell the future, not really. All art