A surprise, she said. He could not work out whether it was a good surprise or bad one from that alone, but then he did not know the exact question she had asked, so it was likely futile to try and guess at the meaning of her answer. Soon.

Probably good, he felt; but good or bad, she didn’t seem entirely convinced by its suggestion. “Yes, that’s true. And I suppose that is the trouble, with it giving one no sign of the how one arrives there, just the destination,” Savino mused, in understanding; a fierce believer in the value of divination he may be, but he also held that though certain points in the future were fixed, all the threads leading there could be – to some extent rearranged. There was some room in the journey to change how one got there. (Or so he hoped.)

“You could maybe try some –” arithmancy, he had been going to suggest, having occasionally found divining by numbers afforded a sharper sense of scale and soonness than some methods; he would use Tarot for a hint at the how of it all, he imagined. But he trailed off prematurely; a bell had rung suddenly in the room and caught him quite by surprise. He had lost track of time here, and smiled apologetically. “Oh, I think the live auction’s starting.”

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