“I’ll be fine!”
“I’m sure ye will be, after some food and some sleep.”
Magpie tried to argue, but Calypso just looked back at her through eyes narrowed to slits, and she knew this was one she wouldn’t win, because she knew he was right. She wasn’t fit to meet either the Djinn or the Blackbringer right now. But she did hate to lose an argument so she kept on, hands on hips. “What if the Blackbringer goes back for the Magruwen tonight, eh? And we just sleep through it?”
“Is that the well?” Talon asked, pointing across the school gardens that lay blue in the twilight below.
“Aye, that’s it.”
“Can’t we just keep a lookout while you rest?”
Magpie chewed her lip.
“Aye, Mags. Sure there’s someplace cozy to camp in the attic,” said Bertram. “It’s just under our feet. We can fix ye up a nice little bed.”
And so it was decided, they would take a few hours of rest while the crows kept a close eye on the Djinn’s well.
The sprawling attic of the great manor was one long, dark, low-ceilinged room full of cobwebs and sheet-draped shapes that loomed like phantoms in the crimson light of evening. Mingus and Swig flew off together to steal food while the rest went in through a broken window. The faeries prowled among the stacks of old steamer trunks, dressmaker’s mannequins, and crates of mysterious junk, looking for a place to make camp. They peered through the cracked door of a giant armoire and found it already occupied by bats. They lifted the visor of a suit of rusted armor to a pungent wilkie nest. In one corner a fort had been built of musty books, but a hobgoblin was curled up inside reading a romance by candlelight and he waved them angrily away.
Finally they found a trunk with its lid flipped open, filled with a pile of old silk slips. Dust lay over it thick as snow, but Magpie and Talon climbed in and pushed the top layer of slips carefully into one corner, rolling the dust up with it, and the layer beneath made as soft a nest as they could have hoped for. Magpie called out quietly to the crows, and they winged their way through the dim forest of broken hat racks to perch on the trunk’s edge, depositing Batch inside with a grunt and a squeal.
The faeries watched as the scavenger rubbed at his backside and dug through the silks to come up with a diamond ring. His eyes lit up. Magpie just shook her head, the serendipity never ceasing to amaze her. Why, she wondered, had no scavenger imp happened to be present at her blessing? Here was a gift she could have used. Not for diamonds, sure, but useful things, like where the Blackbringer was lurking now. Batch mumbled, “I sat on it, it’s mine!” and Magpie and Talon shrugged as he strung the ring onto his tail with all the others.
Finally giving in to her fatigue, Magpie collapsed into the deep cushion of silks and groaned, “I can’t decide if I’m more hungry or more tired.”
“Ach, Mags, ye don’t need to decide. I know ye can eat in yer sleep,” teased Bertram.
“Aye, that I can. I’ll just lie here with my mouth open and when the food comes, drop some in.”
That sounded good to Talon too, who flung himself down on the silks and lay there, sunk in the luxurious fabric, while a bone-deep exhaustion settled over his limbs and eyelids. The exhaustion was strangely satisfying. It brought to his mind the warriors returned from a web raid, lounging in front of the great fireplace laughing and chewing lazily at whatever was put into their hands before falling asleep one by one to the glissando of their aunts’ harps.
Swig and Mingus returned, carrying between them a linen napkin that they unfolded in the trunk to reveal an instant picnic of white cake, walnuts, sugared plums, and damp, dirty radishes just plucked from the garden. Pup and Pigeon took some away with them to keep the first watch, while Mingus tossed Magpie a little square wrapped in paper. “Here, Mags,” he said.
“What’s this . . . chocolate? Chocolate?” She swooned. “Ach, Mingus, you always were my favorite!”
The other crows squawked in protest and Talon watched with curiosity as Magpie unwrapped the paper to reveal a simple brown square. She sniffed it and swooned again with rapture, and it all seemed a bit of a fuss to Talon, over a little brown square. He could tell Mingus was pleased, but the crow didn’t say much until Magpie insisted he take the first bite.
“Not on yer feathers. I stole it special for ye. Eat, lass, eat.”
“I’ll save it for dessert,” she decided. “I like that, cake for dinner and chocolate for dessert!”
Talon found that hunger did in fact win out over exhaustion, and he dragged himself within reach of a walnut, a plum, and a bit of cake. Between six crows, two faeries, and an imp the feast didn’t last long, and soon they were listening to Batch lick and suck every last dribble of plum syrup from his fingers and toes.
Magpie caught a glimpse of his pink tongue gently probing between his toes, and she grimaced and turned toward Talon, producing again the little brown square. “Ever tried chocolate?” she asked.
He shook his head and she grinned. “You won’t believe this,” she told him, breaking him off a corner.
Skeptically he took it, and he saw she was waiting to watch him eat it, and he squinted at her. “This some prank?” he asked.
“Neh! It’s why humans aren’t all bad. The Djinn might’ve dreamed up the cacao tree, but humans made this from it! Go on.”
So he tasted it. His eyes went wide, then closed, and he sank back into the silk and let the flavor overtake him. He could hear Magpie and the crows laughing at him, but it wasn’t nasty laughter and it didn’t bother him at all. When he’d finished eating his bit, he asked shyly, “Do you think I might take a taste to my sister?”
Magpie smiled. “Aye, sure! It can be my thanks for the use of her room!” She ate her own corner of the sweet and insisted on all the crows having a nibble. Then, catching a longing look from Batch, she flicked him a little piece too. The remainder she wrapped back up in the paper to save for Nettle, then sank back with a groan. “Thanks for the food, birds and mannies,” she said sleepily, then, as if remembering something, turned to Talon. “That was a fine phantasm you made before.”
“You saw it?” he asked. “What, can you see through fences too?”
“Neh, but when it jumped out of the tree and near landed on the cat’s head.”
Talon laughed. “That? No doubt it looked a fine phantasm—that was me.”