Blackbringer (20 page)

In Nettle’s bed, Magpie hugged her feather skirt, which contained the last remnant of Maniac, and stared at the ceiling. Whether or not she had truly left herself behind in the dark, her thoughts, at least, were trapped there and wandering blind.

In the adjacent parlor Orchidspike was slumped in a rocking chair, but she wasn’t rocking. One of her precious djinncraft knitting needles had rolled off her lap and she hadn’t noticed, so lost was she in her regret. She was dreaming of an apprentice, bright with curiosity and power, to whom she could at last pass her secrets. Her remorse was like an ache that rode her heartbeat out through her entire body. She’d given up too soon. She’d stopped looking, and missed her.

Messages had been dispatched to all corners of Dream-dark and Never Nigh too, but with Magpie still silent no one had thought to tell of poor Poppy Manygreen’s sad end. Out in the gathering wind a search party of her kin was combing the woods and calling out for her, anxiety turning to anguish in their voices as the day bore on.

The worst-injured of the crows, Bertram, Pigeon, and Swig, were seeing the others off from the ramparts. Calypso looked up at the iron-grey sky just as the first raindrops fell, heavy as berries. “Fine flying weather,” he said, his grim voice at odds with his cracked grin.

“Hurry back, blackguards, ye hear?” said Swig, who sported a new eye patch as a result of a vulture’s talon gouge. “No stopping at the tavern without me.”

“Aye, Cyclops, sure,” piped Pup. “Calm yer pepper.”

“Hush and no bickering,” said Calypso sharply. “Keep ’Pie company, ye ken?” His voice softened. “Try to get her to talk about it, if ye can.”

“Shivers me to see her like this,” said Bertram, his voice weak since being throttled by a stinking vulture foot.

“And me.”

“Ye going to bring that bossy little beetleherd back here?” asked Pigeon, whose left wing was crisscrossed with neat stitches.

“Bring her? Neh. She won’t fly, that one. She has her own ways of getting place to place,” said Calypso. “But I’ll get her to come.”

“Hurry,” said Swig again.

“We’ll try.”

The three tired birds heaved into the driving rain. After an hour’s wet slog across the vastness of the forest, rain sheeting from their feathers with every wing beat, Calypso, Pup, and Mingus landed at last on the little green above Snoshti’s underground village. One glance at their caravans had them squawking and cursing. “We been ransacked! We been looted!” hollered Pup.

Mingus went to gather up the costumes that spilled out the open doors into the rain and hung them up carefully inside to dry. As an afterthought, he fetched Magpie’s book from her bunk and tucked it under his wing to keep it dry. Then they all hopped to the door of the hedge imps’ warren, rapping fast at it with their beaks.

“Get ye gone!” a snarly voice cried from inside. “She en’t here, I tell ye! And if she was, I’d have yer eyes out before I let ye to her!”

“Open up!” Calypso squawked.

“Crow?”

“Aye!”

The door swung open and Snoshti stood there, small and fearsome with her paws on her hips. “It’s about time, birds,” she said. “What’s happened?”

“I might ask ye! What happened to our caravans? And who were ye flappin at? Someone looking for ’Pie?”

“Anyone
not
looking for her, I’d like to know?”

“Eh?”

“Birds, haven’t ye heard? The Windwitch daughter is back, they say, sneaking about with imps and crows and perhaps a pet devil with a taste for faeries?”

“What? They think ’Pie—? They think we—?” Calypso stuttered, stunned.

“It must be so, neh? Ye lot show up and—spit spot!—faeries start to vanish? That queen’s behind it, telling the whole city how Magpie was with Poppy Manygreen last anyone saw of her and how they were talking devils with some crusty scavenger imp.”

“Er,” said Calypso. “Mistress, so far that’s so.”

“And where are the lasses now?”

“Well, ’Pie, she’s at Rathersting Castle, with the old healer.”

“Healer?” Snoshti growled. “Is she—?”

“Her wings . . . they’ll take some mending. Lady Orchidspike says she can do it. But that’s not the worst. She’s . . . lost, like. Been a bad blow to her, losing Poppy . . .”

“Aye,” Calypso said. “ ’Twas terrible. We . . . we lost a crow, too. There’s a bad devil come, we never seen its like. It got the better of us, and good. Mistress . . .” He looked hard at Snoshti. “It’s time. We got nothing left but our secrets, neh? It’s time ye told ’Pie the truth and let her be who she’s going to be. Ready or not.”

Snoshti returned his hard look and, at length, she nodded. “Perhaps ye’re right, old feather. Time can rush up to meet ye before ye’re ready. But what are ye to do? Ask it to wait?” She shook her head. “Neh. I’ll come to the castle, and we’ll see.”

Calypso nodded solemnly. “After all these years,” he said, “it shivers me a little to think what’s next. It’s like turning a page, neh? And starting up at the top of a new one?”

“That’s thinking small, crow. It could be a whole new book.”

Magpie was lying on the bed with her eyes closed when Talon peered in. The room had cleared out considerably. One bespectacled crow sat reading at her bedside, a bandage wrapped round his neck, and he looked up when Talon hesitated in the doorway. “Come in then, laddie,” he croaked.

Talon entered. “Is she . . . ?”

“Asleep, I reckon, or pretending. She don’t much feel like talking.”

“Ah, well, then I’ll just . . . ” He backed away.

“Neh, lad, stay. Here, sit with her. I’m starved for a smoke.”

The bird got up and Talon saw he was the one with the peg leg. He thunked heavily out of the room and down the corridor. Talon sat on the edge of the chair and looked at Magpie. Even though her eyes were closed he felt awkward staring, so he looked away.

Magpie wasn’t asleep. Her weariness kept trying to pull her down into darkness, but each time she felt herself slipping away she struggled against it. The oblivion and numbness of sleep felt too much like that sea of nothing. The terrible scenes of Issrin Ev were playing over and over in her mind, and there was no safe escape in sleep.

When Talon looked back over at her, her eyes were open and gave him a start. “Hello,” he said.

She didn’t respond.

“I thought you’d want to know, the vultures are gone,” he told her. “After the crows ran ’em off they seemed keen to get out of Dreamdark, back to wherever they came from. It seems the devil’s cleared out of Issrin too. We don’t know where he’s gone. And that scavenger imp? The crows told us about him. We found him looting East Mirth. He’s in the dungeon now.”

Magpie’s face seemed vacant and Talon didn’t know what else to say, so he pulled out something he’d tucked into his belt. “I found this at Issrin Ev. I recognized it from the other day in West Mirth, when you near killed me with it.” He laid Skuldraig on the bed beside her.

She stared at it for a long moment, then blinked. She looked up at him. Some expression flickered in her dulled eyes. “You . . . you touched it?” she asked.

“Eh? Aye,” he answered. “Just to bring it to you.”

“You shouldn’t have. Never touch it! Never again.”

He stared at her, incredulity turning to anger. “What?” He stood up. “Sure that knock on the head is why you’ve forgotten the words
thank you,
so, you’re welcome. And while I’m saying it, you’re also welcome for your life. But by all means, I won’t touch your knife again.” He spun to leave.

Magpie sat up and opened her mouth to call after him, but dizziness overcame her and she clenched her eyes shut and clutched at the knife.

“I’d try to keep that close if I were ye, pet,” said a little growly voice, seemingly from nowhere.

“Snoshti?” said Magpie, looking around, and the imp marm pushed open the carved door of Nettle’s armoire and stepped down out of it, a cascade of Nettle’s clothes spilling after her.

“Who—?” began Talon. “What are you doing in there?”

Snoshti pushed past him.

“How did you get past the castle guard?” Talon demanded.

Hearing raised voices, Orchidspike, Bertram, Pigeon, and Swig peeked into the room. “Ach! Where’d she come from?” croaked Swig.

“Good-imp,” the healer greeted Snoshti, a bit perplexed.

“Lady Orchidspike,” she replied with a nod.

“Did ye come all this way in the storm?” inquired Pigeon warily. “Ye en’t even wet.” Gesturing to the imp’s shepherd’s crook, he added, “And yer beetles. I hope ye didn’t lose ’em in the forest.”

“Don’t fret, friend crow. My beetles are safe in my mistress’s garden.”

“Your mistress?” Magpie repeated, puzzled. “Who—?”

Snoshti smiled, and her black eyes glinted. “She’d like to meet ye, in fact. She’s waiting now, so we’d best hurry.”

“But—” said Magpie.

“Now, hold on—” began Bertram.

“It’s out of the question,” protested Orchidspike as Snoshti came forward and took Magpie’s hands in her little paws. “She can’t . . .” There was a soft sparkle in the room, and Orchidspike found herself speaking to an afterimage even as she finished her thought. “. . . leave.”

For a moment an impression of the lass and the imp hung in the air, but within seconds it had glimmered out, leaving no trace of them at all. Orchidspike, Talon, Bertram, Pigeon, and Swig stared at the empty place where they had been, and the only sound was the lick of the hearth fire and a click as Swig found his beak hanging open and snapped it shut.

 

The sensation was not unpleasant. Like a swirl of moths, the brief curious touch of many soft wings, then it was over and Magpie was standing beside a river, her hands still clasped in Snoshti’s paws. “What the skiffle?” she murmured, fighting her dizziness and looking around. The castle was nowhere to be seen. What manner of magic had carried her all the way to the Wendling? The river swept quietly by, shining in the day-bright radiance of a preposterous moon.

Magpie stared at the moon—she’d never seen so vast a moon—and at its dancing reflection in the river. Her wits sang a muddled warning and it took her several moments of staring to recall that, gloomy as it was, it had been day yet at the castle. And what of the storm? No rain hung in the air here. The grass beneath her feet was dry, and silver-blue in the moonlight. . . .

It came to her where she was, and she drew her hands from out of Snoshti’s paws and backed away, staring at the imp with wide, startled eyes. For this silver land could be none other than the Moonlit Gardens.

“Snoshti . . . ,”she whispered, “am I dead?”

In the dungeon of Rathersting Castle, Batch Hangnail sat hunched in a corner with his big toes tucked into his nostrils for safekeeping. He hummed to himself and bided his time. Tattooed faces peered in at him from time to time through the little window in the door to his cell, and he pretended to take no notice of them. They brought him food and he ate it with his napkin at his neck as if he were a guest.

He seemed utterly unperturbed to find himself in a dungeon.

As soon as the guards left him alone, Batch stood, stretched, and ambled to the door. From his satchel he took the key he’d found in the mud at the bottom of the Magruwen’s well, and he slid it into the lock. It fit. It turned. The door swung open.

Such was the gift of serendipity, and a lifetime of such miracles had left Batch jaded by them. He simply closed the door behind himself and locked it again, then slunk away, singing under his breath.

“Where ye going? Where ye been?

Nighttime’s dark but morning’s grim.

Hurry where ye’re headed,

forget all that ye’ve seen.

The past is inescapable, the future’s just a dream. . . .”

He made his way through the subterranean passages, his nose and instincts leading him along the least traveled of them. He met no one. He climbed stairs, turned and turned again and, like a rat in a maze, he found his way.

Batch always found what he was looking for.

And he always found what he wasn’t looking for too. Those were the charms of a scavenger’s life, the unlooked-for pretties. This time it was a little pedal vehicle with side-by-side seats and a neat red-and-white-striped awning to keep off the rain. It hadn’t been driven since the chief’s old mum had passed to the Moonlit Gardens decades past, and no one even remembered there was a little door hidden in the yew’s roots that let it out into the world.

Humming, Batch pushed open the door and tramped down the weeds that choked and hid it. Then he climbed into the surrey and pedaled out. Once he’d gathered speed, a strange thing happened. Remnants of a floating glyph the biddy had long ago touched to her surrey awakened, and it began to rise gently into the sky.

Jaded or not, Batch’s eyes gleamed with a wild joy as he threw back his head and said, “Wheeeeee!!!”

“Dead?” repeated Snoshti with a snort. “Ach! As if I’d stand for that! Neh, pet, ye’re not dead. Just visiting.”

“B-but . . . ,” stammered Magpie. “It’s a one-way journey. Everyone knows that!”

“Do they, then? Do they know I come and go as I please? And so do all my kind, and so shall you.”

“But how?”

“ ’Twas my gift to ye at yer blessing ceremony.”

“I never knew I had a blessing ceremony.”

“Neh, for we didn’t tell yer parents. We’d been looking for ye a long time, pet, since before my time, even, waiting for ye to be born. Claws crossed, hoping! We didn’t know if it would work! It’s a lot to trust to stories and dreams, but then along ye came. Even before ye spoke your first word I was fair sure who ye were.”

Magpie stared at her. The imp’s words were like nonsense tumbling around in her tired mind.