“Er,” said Magpie, “Snoshti did it, neh, Snosh?”
But Snoshti seemed to have vanished. The crows set to clamoring about it. “Another sneaking imp vanishes!” groused Swig.
“Another?” asked Magpie.
“Aye, that scavenger was in the dungeon, but he disappeared from his locked cell.”
“They left him alone?” Magpie cried. “Jacksmoke! I need to talk to him! I need to know what”—she glanced furtively at Orchidspike—“what his master sent him down the well for really.”
But Orchidspike wasn’t listening to Magpie. The scent of the nightspink in her braid had caught the healer’s notice, and as the crows complained of imps, she quietly removed a blossom and held it to her nose. A curious look came into her old eyes. She sniffed it again, then tucked it into her apron. She stood. “It’s time we get on with the healing, lass. ’Twill be no quick job of work. I’ll see how Talon’s coming on with that food.” She bustled out.
In the corridor she took the silver-white flower out of her pocket and held it to her nose again.
“What’s that?” Talon asked, coming back with a tray.
“’Twas braided into the lass’s hair,” she said in a peculiar voice and held it out to him.
He sniffed it. “Sure I never smelled that before,” he said.
“Nor I,” Orchidspike replied, and Talon frowned. Orchidspike was the finest herbalist in Dreamdark. She knew everything that grew, and where, and what it could be used for. There simply wasn’t a flower in the forest she hadn’t smelled. “Wherever it was she went with that imp, it wasn’t in Dreamdark, that I know. Nor anywhere near.”
“Then where—?”
“I don’t know, my lad, but I’d like to. Come. We’ll begin soon.”
As Magpie ate, Orchidspike and Talon made ready for the healing. A wheel was set up by the fire and loaded with a wide bobbin of spidersilk, while a balm of angelica, hyssop, and clove was set out to simmer in a copper basin.
“The silk is a binding for the spells,” Orchidspike explained as she purified her knitting needles in the balm. “I vision a glyph into every stitch and the silk knits them together into a whole. It takes a few days for the glyphs to bond and transmute to living tissue, then the silk threads melt away, leaving behind only wings, real as they ever were.”
“Does that mean I won’t be able to fly for a few days?”
“Maybe longer, lass. This is quite severe.”
Magpie frowned and grumbled. Then Orchidspike’s knitting needles caught her eye. “Those must be djinncraft,” she said.
“Aye, my foremother Grayling chose them long ago from among the Magruwen’s treasures.”
“Did your apprentice use them to make that skin of his?”
“My what?” asked Orchidspike, startled, for the word apprentice had been much on her mind. “Ah, Talon? Neh, lass, the prince isn’t my apprentice.”
“Prince?” Magpie repeated.
“Aye, Talon will be chief one day, after his father . . .” Her voice wavered. “Indeed, that day may be at hand.”
“Would the Rathersting have a clan chief who’s a scamperer?” she asked, and at that moment Talon came back into the room. He stiffened. Magpie had simply been curious—she’d scarcely ever known a scamperer; they were exceedingly rare—but she saw his face color with shame and she cursed herself. He avoided meeting her eyes and she could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t make it worse, so she just frowned and resolved to speak no more.
When Orchidspike was ready to begin, Calypso tried to talk Magpie into lying down to sleep through the healing. “Ye can’t just go and go, ‘Pie, after what ye been through. Ye’re pale as biscuit flour and yer folks would have my feathers for it. Ye need sleep.”
But she resisted, seating herself on a low stool in front of Orchidspike’s rocker. “My mind’s buzzing too much. I wish I had my book to write in.”
“Here, Mags,” said Mingus, holding it out to her. “I got it from the caravan for ye.”
“Ach, Mingus, thank you,” Magpie said, taking it and giving him a kiss on his beak while he shuffled his feet and examined the floor.
She held her book in her lap and unspelled it so it fell open to the page she’d last written. She’d been en route to Dreamdark then and knew the devil only as “the hungry one.” So much had happened since! She had found the Djinn King in the bottom of a well. She had fallen through the darkness of the Blackbringer and lost two dear friends in it. She had journeyed to the afterworld and had her hair braided by Bellatrix! She had fallen off a cliff and been caught in a dragon’s fist. And she had learned of a gaping hole in the legends she had always cherished. An eighth ancient!
She wished she could talk to her parents. They were so far away, probably shape-shifting themselves into fish with the elders of Anang Paranga right this moment. She would tell her book instead, and maybe in the writing things would come clear. She tapped her quill against her lip and began to write.
Behind her, holding Magpie’s right wing taut while Orchidspike worked on it, Talon could just see the page over her shoulder. The crows were all around, though, so he couldn’t stare, and he caught only a word or two now and then when the birds nodded off for little naps. Magpie didn’t nap. Head bent over her book, she wrote. Orchidspike’s needles clicked steadily and the spidersilk reeled off the bobbin. Rows of spells danced off the knitting needles, rows of words filled Magpie’s page, and time passed.
She had been writing, pausing, frowning, remembering, and writing again for several hours when she finally gave voice to what was frustrating her. “Is he a snag, or isn’t he?” she blurted suddenly.
“Eh?” muttered Calypso sleepily.
“It’s just not right somehow. I can’t get past it. He leaves no rooster tracks, he’s got no smell, he’s not stupid like a snag. . . . That snag the so-called queen set on me, now that was a devil, horrid and sure. To compare them—”
“What snag, ‘Pie?” asked the crow.
“Ach! I never told you!” she cried. “Aye, it was why Poppy came to Issrin Ev, to warn me that Vesper had a snag slave she’d set after us, and it came, sure, and it was some nasty meat, I tell you.”
Talon cut in incredulously, “Lady Vesper set a devil after you?”