Ashraf is a talking tortoise who keeps the house of Osman Hamdi Bey and attends his library. His speech is the gift of some brush with wild magic, which has left him a singular vantage and no little wisdom; and in his master's absence the whole household is his charge. He suffers disturbance ill, and worst of all at night. Prickly by nature, he is quick with a barbed word, and his brusqueness can shade into a plain and thoroughgoing rudeness toward any who break upon his peace.
In one late-night meeting he scolded a visitor for the noise, made no secret of his vexation at being roused from sleep, dwelt upon his labours in the care of the house, and marvelled aloud at the curiosity that brings people prying. Yet beneath the gruffness he lets slip a deeper reading of the world about him, which lends the old creature a certain intrigue.
He is, besides his housekeeping, well versed in the practical arts of fixing the spectral races. He grasps the mechanics of the thing to their roots — that a single rigged heat is an easy matter, but a sustained scheme a far riskier one — and he counsels a layered approach, lest one be found out, with intermediaries set between to spread the danger of exposure. For gossip he has no patience at all, dealing with men as a merchant deals, and nothing more.
Of late Ashraf has fretted over disturbances in the library, and taken offence at any slight upon his stewardship, insisting that he does not guard the room but merely tends it whilst he is by. About his neck he wears a string with a small key upon it, and he is partial to flowers, which he likes to eat, as he likes pears and dates. When the party came, he taxed Jean-Zera with the presence of his friends among the shelves and complained of the disorder, noting that certain books were gone; the intruders, he said, put him in mind of the very company Jean-Zera kept, and he let fall that Osman had lately sought the aid of "The Shahmeran." In the end he took, grudgingly, a posy from Sidra, and so was drawn off whilst the party looked over the library.