Here in Echo, photography had still not been discovered, and portrait artists would not condescend to squander their talents on newspapers. Thus, I put my imagination to work, summoning up portraits of them in my head. (Whatever Sir Juffin might have said about my intuition, it turned out that I hadn’t guessed right a single time!)

At sunset, I took the amobiler and set off for the Right Bank. I got out and meandered along mosaic-laden sidewalks, gazing this way and that, made brief stops at cozy inns, and got a feel for the topography. Indeed, what kind of figure would I cut as a Nocturnal Representative of the Venerable Head of the Minor Secret Investigative Force if I couldn’t even track down the street where my own department was located? It turned out to be fairly easy, however. I’ve never heard of a wolf getting lost in the woods, even if they’re not the woods in which he was born. I suspect the existence of some as-yet-undiscovered “urban instinct,” whereby if you can navigate one city, you won’t feel daunted by any other metropolis.

Then I was on my way home. As it had ever been in my life, nighttime still proved to be the most enchanting time of day. Sir Juffin, by his own admission, had had a temporary quarrel with his blanket. After dinner, he didn’t retire, but steered me into his study, where we undertook to “meditate on the memory of things.” This aspect of Invisible Magic, the most abstract and obscure science of this World, was the simplest and most indispensable one for my future profession.

There are few in the World who have any inkling of its existence. A knack for Invisible Magic, as far as I understand it, is in no way linked to the wondrous qualities of the Heart of the World. Indeed, this talent had been discovered in me, an alien. Sir Juffin himself, the undisputed expert in this area, hails from Kettari, a small town in the county of Shimara. The residents of that place lag significantly behind residents of the capital when it comes to knowing how to enhance their lives by means of magic.