Scorpius thinks of cool marble floors, wide empty corridors and silence redolent of treachery and sweet biscuits. A shudder passes through him as the memory of an afternoon comes to mind, spent in the magnificent, sprawling garden, when one of his grandfather's peacocks nearly pecked his eye out. (He would never be able to forget the lurid, throbbing pain and panic of that murderous beast for the rest of his life, even if a thousand curses haunted him).