Sergei loved the boy instantly, as though he had spent the past twenty years teaching and nursing and sheltering him. 

He felt proud of everything, even the fact that the young man had five fingers on each hand, as though his entire form was some kind of personal achievement on his father's part.

And, in this state of drunken excitement, he realized that he was reconciled to dying – reconciled to everything – because there was some small part of Elisabetta left in the world.

His stomach had been in knots for days. His shoulders had been weighed down by the grim, pressing weight of inevitability. But now he realized that inevitability wasn't as unkind as all that. Oh, it had done some terrible things – taking away Elisabetta and Ellini – but perhaps, if this boy was alive, it had all been for the best. Or, at any rate, not unambiguously for the worst.

The young man leaned against the closed door but didn't speak. He seemed quiet, cautious and capable, with a suggestion of amusement to his silence. He had something of Elisabetta's hardness. But something, too, of her tantalising unknowability.

Sergei was violently fascinated. All he wanted to do with his remaining time – be it minutes or years – was learn about this boy.

He leaned forward, half-eager and half-sheepish, and asked him whether he should be speaking English or Romanian.

"Actually, my mother's native tongue was Romany," said the young man. "But English was the lingua franca of the prison colonies."

Silence descended again. The young man seemed to wear it with ease, but it almost choked Sergei. He didn't know what to say. It would have been so much easier if it had been a daughter – even if she'd hated him, as this young man presumably did. He could have comforted her, put his arms around her. Although perhaps not, if she'd been as fiercely independent as Elisabetta.

He had her eyes – so dark they were almost metallic – and her long, interlocking lashes. Sergei remembered thinking how those lashes had made her seem so guarded, so mysterious, as though she had a portcullis in front of her eyes.

"Do you know who I am?" he asked.

The young man nodded.

"Your mother told you about me?"

Another nod.

Sergei took a deep breath – slightly hesitant, in spite of the eagerness. "How did she die?"

The young man raised his thick, sardonic eyebrows. "I think it was malaria, although there were so many epidemics sweeping the colonies at the time that it was quite difficult to be sure."

Sergei felt the reproach, but pushed onwards. "How old were you?"

"Seven. For a while, I had no home, and just lived on whatever I could steal. But then an Italian family noticed me splashing about quite healthily in the fetid puddles, and took me in as a kind of talisman against ill health. They thought, since I never got sick, I might help them to stay healthy too."

"Did it work?"

The young man shook his head. "There were no miracles in that place. They taught me a useful trade, though. I learned to hunt, and make bows and arrows, before they died. After that, I earned a living hunting swamp deer and painted storks in the terai."

"Before the liberation?"

"Yes."

"Which would have been when you were – fifteen?"

"Fourteen," said the young man, without friendliness or contempt.

"Did you hear Joel Parish's speeches? Did you go on the expedition to bring the surplus grain stores to Hyderabad?"

For the first time, the young man hesitated. "You seem to know a lot about it." The words 'for a witch-finder' were left unspoken, but nevertheless hung in the air between them, keenly felt by both.

Still, Sergei would rather have died than shown the boy he was in pain. He leaned back, and said lightly, "You should kill me."

"He doesn't want you killed," said the young man, and Sergei supposed 'he' meant Jack. "Believe it or not, I wouldn't have helped him if I thought he was going to kill you. I don't think he even means to torture you, besides what he's put you through tonight. He seems very fond of you."

"He's gone insane."

The young man shrugged. "People said he was insane when he tried to liberate the prison colonies. Perhaps it's the insane people we should be listening to."

The young man suddenly stopped leaning his back against the door and took a step forwards. Perhaps the amusement was gone, but there was no other expression to take its place. His voice was low and staccato and matter-of-fact.

"My mother told me you tried to save her," he said. "She said you were a good man, and you only did the job to support your family. I don't doubt any of this. But you were a witch-finder. I don't need to tell you what that means. Perhaps you were expecting me to be angry? Emotional? I'm neither of those things. What I am is intractable. You're my father, and I'm sure you're a good man – I don't think it's impossible to be a witch-finder and a good man. But it's impossible to be a witch-finder and have anything to do with me."

Sergei, who had lowered his eyes to the carpet for most of this speech, found that the fascination was once again stronger than the pain. He couldn't help looking up again. He wondered if the boy was really as calm as he looked. 

"What do you do now?" he asked, because there was no way to protest his innocence, or even suggest that he deserved forgiveness. There was only the fascination. "Do you live in the Northern settlement? Do you have a trade? A family?"

"I get by on my own," said the young man. "I'm a game-keeper on an estate outside the Northern settlement. But I've been going to school in the evenings," he added, with a trace of defiance, as though he didn't want Sergei to think he was uneducated. It was the first flash of vulnerability he had shown since he'd come in. "And sometimes I take the train to Manchester to hear lectures at the Mechanics' Institute."

Sergei smiled faintly. "I give lectures at the Mechanics' Institute here."

The boy nodded cautiously. "I've heard of them. Mr Gladstone says you're a voice of tolerance and reason in the wilderness of hate. It's all very commendable, but it makes no difference to me."

He trailed off into silence, and Sergei watched him, feeling far too proud to be resentful.

The boy seemed quite at home with silence. He had all the stillness and resignation of a hunter, just watching and waiting for a deer to amble past his hiding place. Perhaps he had often been alone, and wasn't used to speaking more than was absolutely necessary.

And it was this thought that gave Sergei his first misgivings. He was unspeakably proud of this boy – of his composure, his intelligence, his fierce independence. But it seemed too quiet, too calm, too lonely a life for someone so young. And if he needed help, how could Sergei reconcile himself to dying? Who else was going to help this strange, cold, wonderful boy?

"I understand," he said, putting down the whisky tumbler, which he realized he'd been nursing in his hand all through this conversation. He smiled and hooked his hands over his knees, feeling as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. "Good heavens, how civilized we're both being. I was always told that new-breeds couldn't be civilized, and I daresay you were told the same about witch-finders. I'm glad we understand each other, Shikari." He leaned forwards, raising his eyebrows. "By the way, do you prefer Shikari or Sergei?"

The boy gave him a slight, unwilling smile. "Let's use Shikari, for clarity's sake."

"Well, if you ever change your mind, Shikari, you know where I'll be. Wherever Mr Cade decides to put me."