“I’ll manage. Anything in particular you want me to do with it?”

“Yes. You’re going to wait here until I get back. I expect to have Clavain with me when I return. But in the event he finds you first, you’re to tell him who you are and who sent you. Then you call me and ask Clavain if he’d like to talk to me. Got that?”

“And if you don’t come back?”

“You’d better call Blood.”

Vasko fingered the bracelet. “You sound a bit worried about his state of mind, sir. Do you think he might be dangerous?”

“I hope so,” Scorpio said, “because if he isn’t, he’s not a lot of use to us.” He patted the young man on the shoulder. “Now wait here while I circle the island. It won’t take me more than an hour, and my guess is I’ll find him somewhere near the sea.”

Scorpio made his way across the flat rocky fringes of the island, spreading his stubby arms for balance, not caring in the slightest how awkward or comical he appeared.

He slowed, thinking that in the distance he could see a figure shifting in and out of the darkening haze of late-afternoon sea mist. He squinted, trying to compensate for eyes that no longer worked as well as they had in Chasm City, when he had been younger. On one level he hoped that the mirage would turn out to be Clavain. On another he hoped that it would turn out to be a figment of his imagination, some conjunction of rock, light and shade tricking the eye.

As little as he cared to admit it, he was anxious. It was six months since he had last seen Clavain. Not that long a time, really, most certainly not when measured against the span of the man’s life. Yet Scorpio could not rid himself of the sense that he was about to encounter an acquaintance he had not met in decades; someone who might have been warped beyond all recognition by life and experience. He wondered how he would respond if it turned out that Clavain had indeed lost his mind.