“Ah, so your bet is on it being a psychological party trick?” Savino asked with an amused smile, as if that was not what actual divination methods were regularly relegated to in most of society, too. Of course, people tended to want the same questions asked of diviners, party or not: the big personal ones – marriages and careers, family, relationships, death. And there was always a possibility of a reading being just as self-fulfilling in the way she had described, even if it had merit. Having something foretold – be it true or false – made people act differently. That was the power of it, he thought: to grant an opportunity for one’s journey to alter, even if the destination couldn’t. (Savino could have ignored his visions of his own future, if he’d liked, and might have decided to have precisely nothing to do with Divination in his life. But he hadn’t.)

And Divination was partially psychology, of course: the positive reinforcement of some encouraging Tarot card reading could be profoundly helpful to someone’s morale, Savino thought; but this young woman was right, the imminently was a rather strong declaration for the clock to have. Savino glanced at the label reading never and wondered whether the clock actually dealt out negatives too, or if it had a bias. “Do you think it ever gives bad news, or just shows what people want to hear?” He wasn’t sure they were supposed to be sampling the auction items before they bought them, but he dug around in his pocket anyway, looking for something on him he might be able to sneak into a compartment and see. His death would have been a good test case, but he didn’t think he had anything with which to symbolise it. Instead, he found a loose coin and turned it over in his hand, considering. A question of future wealth, maybe?

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