It had been a long time, but I still knew my way around.
We parked in a cul-de-sac alley just off the lane, little more than a blunt courtyard where a mountain spurra struggled to grow against the face of a wall. The spurra, or at least its little yellow spring flowers, was the emblem of Saint Calwun, and votive bottles and coins littered the little stone basin the tree was growing from.
A first floor shutter twitched at the sound of our engines, and I was glad I had asked Aemos to stow the door gun during our flight. At least we resembled a private transport.
'Stay here,' I told Eleena and Aemos. 'Stay here and wait.'
I walked back down the street in the quiet morning. I was still wearing the boots, breeches, shirt and leather coat I had put on before the auto-seance the night before, but Aemos had lent me his drab-green cloak. I made sure I was displaying no insignia or badge of office, except my signet ring, which would pass notice. Medea's autopistol, reloaded with shells from a box magazine we found on the speeder, was tucked into the back of my belt.
A stray dog, coming up from the town centre towards me, paused to sniff my cloak hem and then trotted on its way, uninterested.
The house was as I remembered it, halfway down the lane. We had passed it on the way up, and now I made certain. Four storeys, with a terrace balcony at the top under the eaves of the copper-tiled roof. The windows were shuttered and the main entrance, a pair of heavy panelled wooden doors painted glossy red, were bolted shut.
There was no bell. I remembered that. I knocked once and waited.
I waited a long time.
Finally, I heard a thump behind the doors and an eyeslit opened.
"What is your business so early?' asked an old man's voice.
'I want to see Doctor Berschilde.'
'Who is calling?'
'Please let me in and I will discuss it with the doctor.'
'It is early!' the voice protested.
I raised my hand and held my signet ring out so its design was visible through the eyeslit.
'Please/1 repeated.
The slit shut, there was a rattle of keys and then one of the doors opened into the street. Inside was just shadow.
I stepped into the delicious cool of the hall, my eyes growing accustomed to the gloom. A hunched old man in black closed the door behind me.
'Wait here, sir/ he said and shuffled away.
The floor was polished marble mosaic that sparkled where scraps of exterior light caught it. The wall patterns had been hand-painted by craftsmen. Exquisite, antiquarian anatomical sketches lined the walls in simple gilt frames. The house smelled of warm stone, the cold afterscents of a fine evening meal, smoke.