There's not much left to his cigarette and with no reason to ration what remains (he can get all the cigarettes and liquor and clean shirts and comfortable shoes and a great deal of most else out here in the world), Ralston spends a thoughtful moment or two sucking the rest of it down while he thinks. That it keeps Byerly Rutyer waiting is apparently of little concern.

With two blunt jabs, Ralston squashes the smoldering nub into the cheap little ashtray.

"Do you practice?"

Magic is valuable and dangerous. It's also reliable. Quantifiable. Telling. And while so many of the intelligence officers of England and America do have some hold on it, sometimes it's different elsewhere. The little old woman who had lived in this very flat had told him that she'd never learned. He'd made a cruel comment over it, and had carried the certainty like a coin in his pocket.