Griffin awoke slowly, eyes opening for a brief moment to take in a grey fog around him, then closing again as he lapsed back to sleep. What felt like a blink took hours, his body demanding further rest to repair itself before he finally roused for good. There was a fire blazing steadily somewhere in the room, and the heat flowed across his skin, almost stiflingly so. The heavy blankets draped across him suddenly felt oppressive, and he struggled weakly to throw them off with a small murmur of effort escaping from his lips.

‘Don’t try to move so much,’ a voice nearby told him, and he turned to see an unfamiliar face. Jet black hair, hanging in bangs around the face and tied back where it was longer, framed a pale, narrow visage and inquisitive blue eyes. The stranger began to fuss with the covers, pulling them back around his chin, and Griffin felt that he had to protest.

‘Please,’ he murmured. ‘It’s too hot.’

The stranger paused, and after a moment’s sigh, relented and pulled the top blanket away from the bed. Griffin sighed in relief, and pushed himself up into a sitting position with some difficulty under the covers that remained.

‘You’ve had quite a battle with fever,’ the stranger noted. ‘You should take it easy. It’s likely you won’t get back to your normal strength for a few days.’

‘Fever…?’ Griffin replied, trying to think through the fuzz in his brain to what he could last remember. The cold, he knew, had got the better of him in the end; he had thought for sure that he was dead.

‘You’re lucky it wasn’t worse. Master says you would have died if we had found you a few hours later. It’s been four whole days of watching over you for me,’ the other man continued, moving over to busily rearrange something on a bedside table. There was a blue collar around his neck, signifying that the care had been an assigned job rather than a labour of love.

‘Sorry to have been a burden,’ Griffin said self-consciously, feeling like an unwanted guest. He uneasily remembered that it would have been a legal risk to his rescuers — considering that he was now without an identity — and wondered what could have caused them to take that risk.

‘Not to worry; it kept me away from my normal duties for a while, and I’m quite happy for that,’ the servant continued, smiling; Griffin noted that his collar bore the enigmatic ‘E’ for ‘Entertainer’, something that could have encompassed a number of skills. ‘I’m Jackdaw, by the way. Do you have a name?’

‘I don’t know,’ Griffin admitted, reaching up to touch the still unfamiliar absence around his neck. ‘I was called Griffin, before.’

‘Then we’ll call you Griffin for now, and behind closed doors; though Master will of course have to get you a new name when he purchases the new collar,’ Jackdaw replied briskly, as if what he said was routine and of no consequence.

‘A new collar?’ Griffin sat up straighter, leaning forward to verify that his ears had relayed the correct information to him. ‘You mean…?’

‘Of course. We can’t just let you wander around without an identity, can we? The crime levels in this city are far too intense as things stand, and of course the police might have something to say to you. If they didn’t just kidnap you outright and put you to work in the cells, that is!’ Jackdaw laughed cheerfully, dismissing a life that would not come to be with a wave of his hand. ‘It’s much easier for you to join me as Master’s servant, and work off your own costs. You’re an investment, really.’

‘Why do you…’ Griffin cleared his throat delicately, wondering if he really wanted to hear the answer to his own question. ‘Why do you call your employer Master, instead of Sir?’

Jackdaw looked at him strangely. ‘Why, that’s how he prefers it,’ he replied, ‘And I strongly suggest you adopt it as a habit pretty soon yourself. He’s not so very… tolerant, of mistakes like that. Just follow my example, and you’ll do fine.’

There was a pause; Griffin studied his own hands lying in his lap, and wondered what he had landed himself in. Having a new identity so soon would certainly solve his most serious problems — it was dangerous out on the streets without an identity, with no way to report crime, no way to claim income, no way to even take proper employment — but he now had no choice in the work he was to undertake.

Jackdaw suddenly moved forwards, placing one slim hand over Griffin’s two, and looking into his face with unexpected concern. ‘You will do as you’re told, won’t you? And try to do as I do?’ he asked, his tone beseeching. ‘You don’t seem like you’re from the city, and I don’t want to see you punished like the last boy. Please just keep your head down and obey, do you understand?’

Griffin nodded after a shocked moment, too perturbed and mystified by Jackdaw’s words to easily formulate a response, and the other man moved away from him as soon as he had this reassurance. He tucked back the heavy, dark drapes at the one window in the room, and pointed to a chest of drawers by the door.

‘There’s a set of clothes in there for you, in Master’s insignia,’ he said, pointing to a silver design on the breast of his own black clothing. ‘I’d advise you to dress sometime in the next few hours. Master will be back from his morning work and he’ll want to see you once he hears you’re awake.’

Jackdaw opened the heavy wooden door to the chamber and slipped outside with one last nod over his shoulder, and the door closed behind him, leaving Griffin alone at last to absorb the situation he had found himself in.

For a while he could only sit in bed and chase different thoughts around his head, watching them run and run until at last they arrived back in the same place, only tormenting himself with worries and worst case scenarios. He had heard things about the city, of course, that did nothing to assuage those concerns, and playing at the back of his mind too was a wonder about what might have happened to Ilona. Of course she would be punished in some fashion — perhaps confined to her chambers for a while, or forbidden from attending a few balls — and her father would be angry for some time; but would she think of him, and wonder what had happened to him? Would she spare him a thought? It would probably not be long before she was given to another nobleman in marriage, and then she would most likely forget about him completely. Griffin sighed, still staring down at his own hands. Yes; it was time to put aside all thoughts of that previous life, and concentrate on making a good effort in this one. Everything that had been was closed off to him now, and he was glad for a moment that he had never known his father and seen his mother die years ago. Losing them now would have been a great burden on his shoulders, but as things stood Ilona was the only person he could miss.

He rose presently from the bed, swinging his legs over the side and then pausing for a moment to make sure he was strong enough to carry his own weight. After fumbling his way over to the chest of drawers he opened it to find a fine black velvet jacket, the same as Jackdaw’s, with the same silver insignia. The design was that of a bird of prey, perhaps a hawk, with claws outstretched as it grasped a solid ‘C’. Beside it were breeches of the same colour and material, reaching just below the knee where delicate silver buttons held them together, and white stockings to cover the rest of his legs. A shirt with white ruffs that would appear outside of the sleeves and collar of the jacket and polished black shoes completed the ensemble, finer clothes than he had ever been allowed to so much as touch before. He dressed with a little difficulty, used to loose, rough labourers’ clothes that did not need so much care in arranging, but finally managed to stand, dressed and ready. There was nothing to do then but wait; he sat up on the edge of the bed again for a while, before curiosity drew him to the window.

He was on the second floor of a large house, it seemed, that ran with three wings around a central stone courtyard. The fourth side of the courtyard was fenced and gated with ornate black iron, and beyond the spikes and scrollwork he could make out a busy thoroughfare, thronged with pedestrians and carriages. A small fountain burbled directly in the centre of the yard with a stone horse rearing from the highest tier, and he could identify a few stables off to one side of the gates. The rest of the house appeared silent and still, however; many rooms appeared to have heavy black velvet drapes, much like the ones to either side of him, pulled across the windows. All of the frames were painted black, and overall the three stories on the other wings that he could see were imposing and intimidating; he could not bear to study them long, and after determining that they would not divulge any of their secrets to him, he turned back to watch the traffic outside of the gates with more interest.

He had been standing like this for a good while when at last there was movement; two black-liveried figures scrambled to the gates and opened them wide, only moments before a great dark carriage rolled in at high speed. The silver insignia that Griffin now wore on his chest was painted large on the carriage doors, and the four panting black horses that pulled it seemed to have the same design painted on flaps of leather that hung down over their foreheads from the bridle. Black plumes danced above their heads from the same attachment, and the whole was so matched in impression to both the house itself and to Jackdaw’s strange manner that Griffin knew for a certainty it was the master of the house returned.

With much hustle and bustle the two servants who had appeared initially managed to get the gates closed and ran to the horses, where one held a bridle and the other hastened to open one of the carriage doors. Jackdaw appeared at the main door of the house, directly opposite the gates, and rushed forward to greet the man who now straightened up and stepped out of the carriage into the courtyard.

He was tall and dressed in a fine long frock coat and top hat, the colour scheme of his household re-enacted again in his own garments. He wore black leather riding boots polished to a fine sheen, and looked in good shape — broader at the shoulders than the waist, with a certain strength in his arms implied by his movements. He carried a silver-topped cane, but his face was hidden from Griffin’s sight as he stepped forward and began to confer immediately with Jackdaw, striding towards the house and disappearing in through the gaping doors. The other servants rushed to lead away the horses and disengage them from the carriage, and Griffin stepped back from the window with a sudden rush of nervousness. He returned to the side of the bed to stand, awkwardly, facing the door and waiting for the arrival of his new employer.