INTRODUCTION
The Rose's Thorn

The town of Baku in Azerbaijan was a thriving port city. Will stood, looking out at the waters of the Caspian Sea, flipping a thick 50 q?pik coin between his forefinger and thumb, lost in thought. Lately, he had been dreaming.

It cannot be her, said Kirjava. Lyra, I mean.

Lately - for the past four years in fact - Will had not seen Kirjava so much as felt her, like a weight on his back, or a reverberating voice in his head. He could not remember when he had stopped seeing Kirjava as an animal - sometime in 6th Form, after homeroom, he had looked to his left one day and suddenly realized she was gone, and had been for some time. But he could still hear her voice, still felt her entwined with him, as one being: daemon and man.

"I don't know," he muttered under his breath. "I don't know." He hefted the coin with his hand, and considered throwing it across the Sea, whether he could skip it, or whether it would sink. He could imagine Kirjava, as a cat, with a sardonic expression, wiping her brow with a single paw. But if he imagined her, was that the same as the real her? Even if…and who was doing the imagining?

"Hey," said a gruff voice, "You English?" It was a man with leathery skin, Armenian or Georgian or another caucasian nationality, gazing at Will with an expression between suspicion or respect - or perhaps he was amused. Will, despite having grown into a chiseled jaw and a thick brow, still looked the part of a young student. Which, in point of fact, he was.

"Yes," he said. "I am a traveller." Will preferred traveller to tourist, not that many of the people here had enough English to know the difference. He had never liked guidebooks, sightseeing, or paying high price for things which he would never do at home. He liked people, he wanted to get to know them, like this man here.

"You are taking the ferry," said the man. "To Turkmenistan."

"Well, yes," said Will. "How did you know?"

The man fixed him with a piercing gaze. It struck Will then that he had incredible sea-green eyes, which gave him an unearthly character. Like a snake-charmer, or a hypnotist. Careful, Kirjava whispered in his mind.

The man did not answer his question. "When is your visa?"

"I'm sorry?" said Will, deciding he did not like the man, this strange foreigner interrogating him.

"Your visa," he said. "When does it begin? The Turkmen authorities are…very strict. Ferry is always late. If you do not arrive at right time, they deport you."

"Are you serious? How am I supposed to arrive at the right time if the Ferry is always late?"

"That is why I am saying, Englishman, I will help you. You must be at the office on time at least, I will get you there."

"Thank you," said Will, "but I do not need your help. I know the way to the office, and I can get there on my own." He kept his gaze steady, but he set his jaw with a determined expression - hopefully enough for this man to get the message.

The stranger blinked. "I am not helping you because you are a foreigner, and I want to take advantage. No. I am helping because you are a shaman. I can see it."

Will's heart fell through his chest. Terror, pure blind terror, filled his fingers like ice. "No. You are mistaken. I'm not. I'm not a shaman."

The man stared at him for a long time, and then blinked. He nodded. "Very well."


In the dream, he was back in the court-room. He was wearing the suit which had belonged to his father. But he had shrunk, he kept getting smaller, and the suit was baggy and huge around him as he clutched the arms of the wooden chair with white fingers. Dr. Malone was testifying as a witness.

"Classified," she said. "That is all classified, I'm afraid."

"Correct," said the prosecuting lawyer. "So you used a child as your murder weapon, isn't that right?"

"He was acting in self-defense," said Dr. Malone.

The prosecutor did not listen. "And you wanted to involve a child in your mishandling of government secrets, is that, or is that not correct Dr. Malone?"

"Objection!" shouted Will's lawyer. He turned his head, he could barely move it. His lawyer was Lee Scoresby. Hester was there next to him, her ears pulled flat, her slanted eyes glancing lazily around the court.

"Over-ruled," said the Judge. Will turned his eyes slowly, they were so heavy, he could barely see. The judge was there, it was time for his sentencing, it was all happening too early, there was nothing he could do, he looked -

The judge was his father's daemon.

"Boy," said the daemon. "You have been called."

Everyone in the courtroom stood up. They all had the heads of birds, and they began to move toward him like a cloud of shadows.


Will got to the Ferry Office at sundown. There was a bored looking secretary sitting next to a massive pile mimeo-grams. "Yes?" he said in a thick accent.

"I am here for the ferry," he said. "I have a ticket to Turkmenistan."

"What is your name?" said the secretary.

"James," said Will. "James Olsen."

"Mr. Olsen," said the secretary. "Mr….Olsen. We do not have you…until next week."

"But my date of arrival on the visa is in four days."

The secretary just stared at him.

"When is the next ferry?"

The secretary shrugged. "Next week?"

"I booked passage on this boat, almost a month ago. For boarding tonight, tomorrow at the latest."

"I do not know when it will come, sir."

Will sighed. "Great. Just great." He pinched his fingers between his eyes. "Look, I need to get there."

The secretary blinked, and then hit a few keys on an incredibly old computer that looked like it was from before the fall of the Berlin Wall. "You are traveling for business or pleasure, sir?"

How to answer that question? "Neither," said Will, "well I mean business, just business."

"And who do you work with in Turkmenistan?"

Will grimaced. "Better be pleasure, then."

The secretary looked at him with the blank expression again, then back to the computer. "Pleasure it is. The boat will arrive sometime this week. There is the special reservation fee, however. For 120 manat, I will make sure your place is held, otherwise, when you show up, if there is too little room, you may not have a place. A one-time fee, sir."

Will blinked. "A reservation fee? But I already reserved my ticket."

"This is a special reservation fee sir, just to be sure you have a place on board."

"And you cannot tell me when the boat will arrive?"

"No sir."

"Great," said Will. "Just great." He turned, and left the office.


He stood out on the parchment colored pavement, trying to figure out what to do. Before him the sky was pink and orange, and the fingers of clouds stretched over the oil-fields of Baku. He had to get to Turkmenistan, but of course, he was not sure why. He had the sensation - had had it for weeks - of his heart being constricted by a giant hand. Accompanying it was the sense that he was being pursued. Except - for almost the first time in his life - no one was pursuing him. He had a new identity, a new name - and Mary was in jail.

He turned, and saw a bird standing on the curb beside him. Instantly several things struck him. First, he knew, beyond any doubt, that this bird was a daemon. It's his, said Kirjava, the man from before. But when he turned to look straight at it, instantly, it was gone.

You are not imagining hard enough, said Kirjava.

Will turned and, looking out of the corner of his eye, was able to convince himself that the bird was actually there.

"Hi," he said.

Follow me, he imagined he heard the bird say. It turned and went up an embankment at the side of the road. So he walked after it, pulling himself up through thistles and briars to reach a rusted guardrail, and then over. The bird - he told himself, not sure whether he actually believed or if he had just gone crazy at last - was flying over a field full of oil wells. In the distance a pick-up truck was pulling out of a warehouse with rusty corrugated walls and grimy white doors.

He climbed up a hill covered with stones, to where he imagined the daemon was perched, on top of the oil well. Then he saw, in the shadow of the iron edifice, a man was sitting with a rock. The man from before.

"So," he said, "have you decided you want my help, young man?"

"Who are you?" said Will.

"You can call me Spinoza," he said. "And I am a member of the Secret Commonwealth."

"I have heard that name before," said Will. "Somewhere."

"Yes," said the man, smiling wanly, "they used to call me 'the Rose's Thorn.'"

"What does that mean?" said Will. "And how did you know?"

"Hm?" said Spinoza. "Know what?"

"How did you know I was a shaman?" said Will. "Not that I am."

"Because," said Spinoza. "You are a member of the Secret Commonwealth. But you do not know it." His bird daemon cried, a great keening wail which poured out over the oil-field - but no one heard it.