I notice that Sadaqat’s up-and-down British-Pakistani accent is flattening out. “You’ve worked magic up here, truly.”

Our warden purrs. “Plants want to grow. Just let them.”

“We should have thought of a garden up here decades ago.”

“You are too busy saving souls to think of such things, Doctor. The roof had to be reinforced, which was a challenge …”

Watch out, subwarns Arkady, or he’ll tell you about load-bearing walls and girders until you lose the will to live.

“… but I hired a Polish engineer who proposed a load-bearing—”

“It’s an oasis of calm,” I interrupt, “that we’ll cherish for years.”

“For centuries,” says Sadaqat, brushing droplets of mist off his vigorous but graying hair, “for you Horologists.”

“Let’s hope so.” Through an ornate wrought-iron screen in the cloister wall, we look down on the street four floors below. Cars crawl along and honk in vain. Umbrellas overtake them, parting for joggers running contraflow. Level with us on the much taller building across the road, an old woman with a neck brace waters the marigolds in her window boxes. New York’s skyscrapers vanish in cloud at about the thirtieth storey. If King Kong were up on the Empire State today, no one at our lowly altitude would believe the truth.

“Mr. Arkady’s Tai Chi,” Sadaqat murmurs, “reminds me of your magickings. How your hands draw on air, you know?” We watch him. Arkady may be gangly, Hungarian, and ponytailed, but the Vietnamese martial-arts master of his last self is still discernible, somehow.

I ask my former patient, “Are you still content with life here?”

Sadaqat is alarmed. “Yes! If I’ve done anything wrong …”

“No. Not at all. I just worry, sometimes, that we’re depriving you of friends, a partner, family … The trappings of normal life.”

Sadaqat removes his glasses and wipes them on his corduroy shirt. “Horology is my family. Partner? I am forty-five. I prefer to go to bed with The Daily Showon my slate, or a Lee Child novel and a cup of chamomile tea. Normal life?” He sniffs. “I have your cause, a library to explore, a garden to tend, and my poetry is becoming a little less awful. I swear, Doctor, every day when I shave I tell myself in the mirror, ‘Sadaqat Dastaani, you are the luckiest schizophrenic, middle-aged, balding, British Pakistani in all Manhattan.”

“If you ever,” I strive to sound casual, “think differently …”

“No, Dr. Marinus. My wagon is hitched to Horology’s.”

Careful,Arkady subwarns me, or he’ll smell a guilty rat.

I can’t quite let it go. “The Second Mission, Sadaqat. We can’t guarantee anyone’s safety. Not yours, not ours.”

“If you want me to go from 119A, Doctor, use your magickery-pokery because I won’t jump ship of my own accord. The Anchorites prey on the psychiatrically vulnerable, yes? If I’d had the correct type of”—Sadaqat taps his head—“soul, they might have taken me, yes? So. Horology’s War is my War. Yes, I am only a pawn, but a game of chess may hinge upon the conduct of a single pawn.”

Marinus, our guest’s arriving, Arkady subinforms me.

With a bruised conscience I tell Sadaqat, “You win.”

Our warden smiles. “I am glad, Doctor.”

“Our guest has arrived.” We walk back to the ironwork to look down on Holly in her Jamaican head-wrap. Across the road, Фshima shows his outline in the room we have above the violin maker’s: I’ll watch the street, he subsuggests, in case any interested parties pass by. Holly approaches the door with the green key I gave her yesterday at the Santorini Cafй. The Englishwoman’s having a very strange morning. On a wand of willow very near my shoulder, a puffed-up red-winged blackbird performs a loop of arpeggios.

“Who’s a handsome devil, then?” whispers Sadaqat.

I SPEAK FIRST. “We’ve been expecting you, Ms. Sykes. As they say.”

“Welcome to 119A.” Arkady’s voice has a teenage croaky waver.

“You’re safe, Ms. Sykes,” says Sadaqat. “Don’t be afraid.”

Holly is flushed after her climb, but upon seeing Arkady her eyes widen: “It isyou … you … you … isn’tit?”

“Yes, I have some explaining to do,” agrees Arkady.

Down in an alley, a dog is barking. Holly’s trembling. “I dreamtyou. This morning! You—you’re the same. How did you dothat?”

“The acne, right?” Arkady brushes his cheek. “Unforgettable.”

“My dream! You were at my desk, in my room, in my hotel …”

“Writing this address on the jotter.” Arkady picks up the sequence. “Then I asked you to bring Marinus’s green key here and go in. I said, ‘See you in two hours.’ And here we are.”

Holly looks at me, at Arkady, at Sadaqat, at me.

“Dreamseeding,” I comment, “is one of Arkaday’s mйtiers.”

“My range is lousy,” says my colleague, showing off his modesty. “My room was across the corridor from yours, Ms. Sykes, so I didn’t have far to transverse. Then, when my soul was back in my body, I hurried back here. In a taxi. Dreamseeding of civilians runs counter to our Codex, but you needed some proof of the wild claims made by Marinus the other day, and we’re at war, so I’m afraid we dreamseeded you anyway. Forgive us. Please.”

Holly’s at a nervous loss. “Who areyou?”

“Me? Arkady Thaly, as of this self. Hi.”

Up in the low cloud an airplane drags itself along.

“This is our warden,” I turn to Sadaqat, “Mr. Dastaani.”

“Oh, I’m just a glorified dogsbody, really,” says Sadaqat, “and normal, like you—well, ‘normal,’ eh? Call me Sadaqat. It’s said ‘Sa- dar-cutt’ with the stress on the ‘dar.’ Think of me as an Afpak Alfred.” Holly looks none the wiser. “Alfred? Batman’s butler. I take care of 119A when my employers are away. I cook. You’re vegetarian, I am told? So are the Horologists. It’s the”—he twirls his finger in the air—“body-and-soul thing. Who’s hungry? I’ve mastered eggs Benedict with smoked tofu, a fine breakfast for a disorienting morning. Could I tempt you?”

119A’S FIRST-FLOOR GALLERY is dominated by an elliptical table of walnut wood that was here when Xi Lo bought the house in the 1890s. The chairs are mismatched, from various eras since. Pearly light enters through the three arched windows. The paintings on the long walls were gifts to Xi Lo or Holokai from the artists: a blushing desert dawn by Georgia O’Keeffe, A. Y. Jackson’s view of Port Radium, Diego Quispe Tito’s Sunset over the Bridge of San Luis Rey, and Faith Nulander’s Hooker and John in Marble Cemetery. At one end is Agnello Bronzino’s Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time. It is worth more than the building and its neighbors combined. “I know this one,” says Holly, staring at the Bronzino. “The original’s in the National Gallery, in London. I used to go and see it in my lunchbreak, when I worked at the homeless center at St. Martin in the Fields.”

“Yes,” I say. Holly doesn’t need a story about how the National’s copy and the original got switched in Vienna in 1860. Anyway, she’s moved on to the Bronzino’s unworthy companion, Self Portrait of Yu Leon Marinus, 1969. Holly recognizes the face and turns to me accusingly. I nod, sheepishly. “Absurd, of course, and sheer arrogance to hang it in this company, but Xi Lo, our founder, insisted. We keep it there for his sake.”

Sadaqat enters from the door by the astrolabe, bringing our drinks on a tray. Nobody has the stomach for eggs Benedict. He asks, “Now, where is everyone sitting?” Holly chooses the gondola chair at the end, nearest the way out. Sadaqat asks our guest, “Irish Breakfast blend, Ms. Sykes? Your mother’s Irish, I believe.”

“She was, yes,” says Holly. “That’s grand, thanks.”

Sadaqat places a matching willow-pattern teapot and teacup, a jug of milk, and a bowl of sugar on a mat. My green tea is brewing in a black iron teapot owned by Choudary Marinus, two selves ago. Arkady drinks coffee from a bowl. Sadaqat puts a lit candle in a stained-glass cup as a centerpiece. “To brighten the place up. It can get a little tomblike in here.”