“Well,” said Batch with a wicked grin, “I always been keen to fly.”
Vesper had slid her mirror back into her pocket and was feasting her eyes upon the elegant designs engraved on Bellatrix’s blade. She laughed softly at her own good luck and wondered what that twig of a gypsy lass was doing with such a knife. Her mind turned to what Magpie had said about Gutsuck and she wondered, where was he? Well, she could only hope that whatever had happened to the cur, he’d at least dispatched that scavenger first. There was no place for Batch Hangnail in the world, not with what he knew.
She was just rising on her wings to return to Never Nigh when the crows plunged through the pines, caught sight of her, and began to caw. “It’s that wormy queen!” she heard one of them shout.
She turned with a sneer to retort but caught herself when she saw the Rathersting prince was with them, and carefully she rearranged her face into the look of lovely tranquility for which she was known. “Young Lord Rathersting,” she said sweetly when he drew nigh, riding astride a crow.
“Lady Vesper,” he returned, his eyes narrowed with suspicion.
A small falcon flew at his side and Talon asked it, “Are you certain?” to which it nodded and spiraled down to land in the temple courtyard, seeming strangely clumsy for such a hunter of the skies.
“Lady,” said the crow with the cracked beak, “won’t you tarry with us a moment?”
“Though it would be a pleasure, I must be on my way, my fine birds—”
“Ha!” one of the crows interrupted. “More like ‘low creatures, ’ en’t we, Lady?”
“Certainly not,” she said with a sweet, sweet smile.
“Then please, join us,” said another, and by the way they surrounded her and the hard looks in their eyes, she knew they weren’t asking. She took a good look at their scars and cracked beaks, their eye patches and peg legs, their scorched feathers and bandages, and thought better of trying to out-race them. With a quiver of anxiety she tightened her grip on the handle of the dagger in her pocket and dropped back down into the rubble of broken statues. The crows landed noisily and perched all around her, and the Rathersting prince leapt from his mount and joined the peculiar falcon at the clearing’s edge. They spoke under their breath together. She heard the lad whisper, “Her pocket? How can that be?” and she tensed. They couldn’t know! she thought as they turned and approached her.
“Lady Vesper,” said the lad. “We’re looking for our friend, and good gossip tells us she’s here with you.”
“Here with me?” Vesper asked, spinning and surveying the wastes of Issrin. “As you see, there is no one else here.”
“Aye, ‘tis mysterious strange,” said the crow with the cracked beak. “But who among us hasn’t seen stranger things in the wide world, eh?”
“I must ask you to empty your pockets,” said Talon.
Vesper laughed. “You think I’ve your friend stuffed in my pocket?”
Talon didn’t laugh. The crows drew tighter around Vesper. The falcon just watched. When the lad moved toward her as if he would empty her pocket himself, she hastily withdrew the mirror and held it up. “’Tis only a mirror,” she said, struggling to hide her fury beneath her mask of sweetness.
The falcon scurried forward—it didn’t move like any bird—and she heard it chuckle. Her eyes narrowed. That chuckle . . . “More pretties in the pocket than that,” it said, and she knew. She knew the voice. She stared.
The falcon shimmered before her eyes, and it was like a veil parting to reveal the leering face that haunted her dreams, the one who knew, the only one. The scavenger, Batch Hangnail, from whom she’d stolen the priceless tunic and crown in the alley behind a junk dealer’s shop in Auld Reekie. He, who Gutsuck had sworn was dead, was here, alive and leering! Choking on her rage, she dropped the mirror onto the moss and delved deep in her pocket, coming up with the knife and raising it high. Screaming a stream of profanities that made even the crows’ eyeballs bulge, she plunged it toward the imp.
Batch squealed and cowered.
Vesper’s voice choked off. A strange thing happened. The knife swerved and swung wild, veering through the air even as she clung to it and plunging in a powerful arc into her own back. Her mouth made an O of surprise as she dropped to her knees.
The noise of the crows was deafening. Talon stared, knowing the knife at once. Cursed, Magpie had said it was. Cursed, indeed! Vesper wobbled on her knees, her face draining of color. The knife had bit between her shoulder blades, but it was no mere gown or cloak she wore. Bellatrix’s knife had met Bellatrix’s own firedrake tunic, and the knife had not sunk deep enough to stick. It fell to the moss and a thin spray of blood arced from her shallow wound.
Several droplets fell upon the surface of the lady’s mirror.
Talon and the crows saw the glass suddenly warp. A hand broke through its surface and they cried out in surprise. A whole arm reached forth, then a head emerged. “Magpie!” cried Talon as she wrenched herself free of the enchanted mirror, emerging whole from the impossibly small space to lay curled on her side, gasping. Talon leapt to her. The crows squawked and screamed. Vesper sat stunned, staring at the bloodied knife on the moss.
“What happened?” Talon asked, helping Magpie to sit up. “How did you get here?”
Magpie was pale. She carefully flexed her shoulders and looked around as if waking from a dream. She spotted Skuldraig lying on the ground and reached for it, wiping Vesper’s blood from its tip and sliding it back into her sheath. Then she looked at Talon and around at the crows’ anxious faces. “I went back to the well . . . ,” she began.
“Without us? ‘Pie, why would ye go off without us?”
“It was . . . I . . .” She shook her head. “The Blackbringer had been there,” she said. “The Magruwen is gone.”
They stared at her, speechless. “Ye mean . . . ,” began Pup, but he couldn’t find the words.
“I don’t know,” said Magpie quietly.
Nearby, Batch had folded the falcon skin neatly and tucked it into his satchel. He prowled slowly toward Vesper, a look of malicious delight on his face.
“We meet again, my lady,” he said, whisker stubs twitching.
“Hoy!” boomed a voice from the sky, and they all looked up. A flurry of wings swept over Issrin Ev. Faeries. “What’s happening there . . . Lady Queen!” Gasps and shouts went round in the sky, and the Never Nigh search party—for such it was, still hunting for Poppy—descended upon the scene, two dozen strong at least.