Blackbringer (27 page)

“The well?” The shindy looked stupefied. “Neh! Sure but the mannies think it’s cursed and won’t go near it cause of the smoke and the smell of sulfur! Ye’re saying it’s the Djinn King . . . ?”

“Aye, and he’s woken up from his long sleep.”

“The old scorch himself! Explains why carrots and turnips been coming out of the ground already cooked!”

“Turnips?” Magpie repeated, flicking a glance to the window Batch had climbed in. She muttered, “That explains where the turnip came from, anywhich.”

“Hoy,” said Strag. “Better hurry on. Slink’s back.” The cat was perched on a fence post staring right at them.

“I’ll distract him,” Magpie announced. Seeing the two human lasses so near, she added, “I’m going to try on my glamour!” and she took a step and blinked herself into a little brown bird. “Talon, run for the pipe. Thanks, Strag. Blessings!”

“My pleasure, foxlick!” he called.

Magpie made straight for the cat, and she might have looked like a dull garden bird but she flew like a faerie. She zinged spirals round his head as he batted at her, and she scolded, “For shame, you suck-toe, gawping after manny scraps! The Djinn dreamed you finer than that!”

“Djinn?” scoffed the cat. “It’s the humans’ world now, bird, and we cats’ll be snug in their laps while they pick the bones of every last creature! They’ll clean their teeth with yours, if I don’t first!”

Magpie gave the cat’s whiskers a good tweak and darted out of reach so it keeled over backward swinging for her and toppled off the post with a yowl. Then she spun round and saw Talon had made it to the drainpipe and was well up it, so she sped to the windowsill, stepped out of her glamour, and sat herself down to wait for him.

When his head came into view, she said, “Slap the—” but he knocked her hand away and scowled at her. “Ach, what the skiffle, lad?” she asked, surprised.

“I didn’t come all this way to play eejit sports,” he growled, climbing up onto the windowsill. “Or to maraud manny schools with some lass who’ll tell her secrets to some plucked chicken but not me—”

Magpie stared at him.

“I saved your life,” he went on, “and I got you that skiving knife back that you near slit my throat with and you just scolded me for it like I’m some sprout, and I helped knit your wings and I haven’t asked you who you really are, even though I’ve seen you do things no faerie can do and for all I know you’re in with that devil yourself!”

Magpie flushed and replied hotly, “I didn’t ask you along, if you’ll recall,” she said, “and I’ll be happy to ‘maraud’ without you! But I am sorry if I insulted you by including you in ‘eejit’ games I’ve been playing with the crows since I was wee. You want to get back to Dreamdark and sit around fretting with all the others, you go. Better still, go on to Never Nigh, where they’re saying I’m in with the devil. You’d fit right in! But about the knife . . .” Her hand went to Skuldraig. “The only reason I didn’t want you touching it is ’cause it’s cursed and if you’d tried to use it, it would have murdered you!”

There was a thick silence between them until Talon said with an awkward frown, “Oh. Well, maybe you shouldn’t leave it lying around then.”

Magpie’s mouth dropped open, and she chuffed indignantly. “I’m sorry if nearly dying, I didn’t keep better
inventory
of my things!” Then a flicker of shame came into her expression and she chewed her lip and said roughly, “But about saving my life . . . of course, thank you. Of course! I’m sorry I didn’t say so sooner. I could barely even think; I just lost my friends. . . .”

Now Talon looked ashamed, and his blush deepened. “I know,” he said quickly. “It’s okay; I’m not grubbing for thanks. Just, all the secrets . . . I thought maybe you’d tell me, but you told that shindy—”

“I didn’t! Strag knew it all before I did! I only just found out myself—”

“Found out what?”

“Er,” Magpie said, coloring crimson as she tried to imagine telling him what she’d learned. Even in her own head it sounded preposterous, so after a long pause she blurted, “The imps and creatures gave me a blessing ceremony. I don’t even remember it. They gave me gifts, like that glamour and seeing in the dark and all. First I knew of it was when Snoshti . . . er, took me, yesterday!”

Puzzled, Talon asked, “Why? Why’d they bless you?”

Magpie shrugged. “Look, you want to maraud or neh?” she asked in a surly voice. “Or you can leave. Whichever.”

Scowling, Talon said, “Okay then, let’s go,” and they turned their attention to the window.

Inside was an empty schoolroom with two neat rows of desks facing a world map and a globe, and shelves of books on the far wall. “It looks like the schoolroom at the castle,” Talon said, “only huge.”

They leapt to the floor and crossed on foot to the door. Peering out, they saw they were at the end of a corridor, with two more doors facing them. The first room was cluttered with painting easels and lumps of clay in sad replicas of manny heads, and it stank of turpentine. The second room stank too, but the odor wasn’t turpentine. Magpie fluttered up to the top of a cabinet, and Talon climbed up beside her. Grimly they surveyed the room.

On shelves high and low creatures stood and crouched, frozen still, their eyes peeled open but lusterless. There were varmints with their tiny claws outstretched, tails curled, whiskers eerily still. Mice, voles, raccoons. A long row of dull-eyed birds stood upon the highest shelf and below them, a sad little collection of their nests and eggs. Nothing moved. For a moment Magpie thought the creatures were under some enchantment, but then she saw the jars.

They were jars not unlike those in a manny’s pantry, from which she’d once or twice pilfered jelly. But in these were no apricots or honey, only creatures afloat in stinking liquid. Skinks, snakes, tiny frogs. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed. So many eyes in the room, and nothing blinked.

“All dead . . . ,” murmured Talon, stunned. Ill from the stink and the horror of it, he quietly took Magpie’s hand. She held it tight.

“It’s a collection,” she whispered, seeing how each dead thing was labeled in neat letters.

“It’s murder,” Talon answered.

They heard muttering at the same moment their eyes fell on the butterflies. Case after case hung on the wall, of butterflies and moths pinned open dead and arranged like art.

And there in their midst was Batch Hangnail.

He stood poised at the edge of a tall cabinet. He seemed to be wearing wings. As Magpie and Talon watched, he brought his hands together, bent his legs, and sprang. It was the imp version of a swan dive, and for a moment he seemed to float, his luna moth wings catching the air, and a pure and nearly beatific look of hope came into his face. The next moment he dropped like a stone and hit the ground cursing.

“Come on,” Magpie said, dropping Talon’s hand and taking to her wings. Talon followed, leaping easily from cabinet to cabinet. They reached the corner the imp had plunged from and found there a sickening sight. The luna moth wings had not been Batch’s first attempt, clearly. One of the framed displays had been smashed open and plundered, and the cabinet was littered with butterfly carcasses bereft of their wings. One glance over the edge at the floor showed what had become of them. A litter of wings had gathered below in a drift, like leaves beneath an autumn tree, and Batch lay on his side in them, half buried and moaning.

With an icy look Magpie stepped off the edge and dropped to land sharply in front of him. He peeled open one eye and saw her, snapped it shut again, and redoubled his moaning. “Oh, woe . . . ,” he whimpered in scamper. “Woe to poor Batch . . .”

“Get up,” Magpie said impatiently, nudging him with her foot, then harder when he didn’t respond. “I said get up!”

Snuffling, he sat upright. A pretty blue morpho wing was plastered to the dribbling mucus on the side of his face.

“You’re lucky those butterflies were already dead, imp, or you’d have a bitter time of it!”

“Already dead . . .” He nodded and moaned. “Mannies killed ’em, not me! I just want to fly away. . . .”

“You didn’t really think dead wings would fly you, now, did you?”

The great slubbering imp sat in the sad debris of spent wings and sobbed. Talon came headfirst down the edge of the cabinet like a lizard and stood next to Magpie, and they both listened as the imp moaned about how the magic had worn off his flying surrey as he made his great escape.

“Can’t really blame a wretch for wishing to fly,” Talon said under his breath.

“Neh, perhaps, so long as he’s given up on maiming faeries. But you know what I
can
blame him for?” She knelt down in front of Batch and forced him to look her straight in the eyes as she said, “For not telling me about his master’s tongue.”

The life seemed to drain from Batch, so that he drooped into a miserable, quivering mass. “The tongue . . .” He fumbled for the tip of his tail with shaking hands and shoved it into his mouth, commencing to suckle it with loud, wet sounds, and his eyes squeezed tight shut.

“Imp, listen up!” Magpie said harshly, in no mood for pity. “You left out some details before, neh? And because of it I lost some friends to your master! Now you’ll tell me something else. You said your master sent you to the Magruwen for a turnip. Well, that’s blither! What’s he really after?”

With a long snuffling sigh Batch answered her. Speaking around the tail in his mouth, he said something sounding like, “Mommamammid.”

“Eh?”

“Mommamammid!” He repeated the slobbering mumble until Magpie reached out and yanked his tail. “Pomegranate!” Batch said as it whipped out of his mouth, flinging a spray of warm spittle.

Wiping her hands and grimacing, Magpie repeated,
“Pomegranate?”

Batch nodded.

“Well, that doesn’t make much more sense than a turnip! What’s he want it for?”

“Flotched if I know!” retorted the imp. His tail groped for a large and particularly lovely monarch wing, and he held it to his face and honked his nose into it repeatedly before crumpling it and tossing it back onto the heap. Particles of orange wing clung to his quivering nostrils.

“A pomegranate,” Magpie said to Talon. “What the skiffle?”

Batch caught sight of Talon’s face then and did a double take. “Munch! Ye’re one of them shouty faeries,” he declared, drawing back.

“Aye,” said Talon. “You want to tell me what happened to the others you saw?”

The imp sniffed and snuffed, wiped at his eyes and nose with the backs of his hands, pulling himself together. “Master happened,” he told him with a shiver that worked itself all the way down his tail and set his rings to rattling.

Talon noticed the brass handles on the cabinets were rattling too and realized it wasn’t Batch’s shiver that was doing it. He nudged Magpie and said, “Mannies,” and they both turned to the door.

“Quick,” Magpie said. “Put on your skin. And you, imp, you’re coming with us.”

As Talon pulled his falcon skin out of his pocket Magpie visioned the glyph for floating and Batch rose right up out of his mound of butterfly wings with a squeal. Magpie stepped hastily into her bird glamour and grabbed his tail.

By the time the crowd of white-frocked lasses thundered into the room for class, all they glimpsed were the shadows of a falcon and a small brown bird darting out the open window, dragging a squealing rodent through the air behind them.

 

“Hoy! There’s the lad in his skin!” Magpie heard Swig’s voice. “Jacksmoke, Ming, there’s the imp!”

Still in their disguises, Magpie and Talon flew up to the roof of the school as Swig and Mingus came sweeping toward them, cawing out the squawk that would alert the others to come. “Ye seen Mags, lad?” demanded Swig. He gave the little brown bird a curious look as it deposited the imp on the broad stone ledge of the roof, and just then it shivered and turned into Magpie.

Swig and Mingus gasped.

A hint of dizziness came over Magpie, and she teetered slightly on the edge of the roof before Talon reached out fast and grabbed her wrist. “Steady!” he said.

“Eh, Mags, y’all right, pet?” the birds fussed, but their voices were cut off by the noisy arrival of Pup and Pigeon, followed shortly by Calypso and Bertram.

“Ye don’t go off without telling us, ye hear?”

“Gave us a fright!”

“No more disappearing!”

Magpie let them carry on for a moment, but when their scolds showed no sign of slowing, she cut in loudly, “Ach, birds! Stop spathering! We found the imp, neh? And I found out what the Blackbringer was after.”

“Eh, what?”

“A pomegranate!”

“For true?” They all cast skeptical glances at Batch. Pigeon asked, “Ye sure he en’t lying?”

“I don’t know,” said Magpie. “You lying, imp?”

But Batch wasn’t paying attention. He was watching with a queer gleam in his eye as Talon folded up his falcon skin and put it in his pocket.

“Where’d that bird come from before, Mags?” Mingus asked.

“You mean this bird?” she said dramatically, conjuring the glamour and stepping into it. All the birds exclaimed and puffed up their feathers.

“How’d ye do that?” demanded Pup.

Magpie told them about Strag and they made her show them the bird again and again, and though she was smiling and laughing, the dizziness suddenly overcame her again. This time it was Calypso who steadied her.

“What’s that, ‘Pie?” he demanded.

“Nothing.” She tried to shake it off. “Look, it’s time we get down the well, neh? I’m keen to know what this pomegranate is all about.”

Calypso was studying her closely. He said, “Ye’re in no shape for it, little missy. Look at ye, swaying on yer feet. Sure ye’re not fit to match wits with the Djinn King! Ye need to rest, pet, like I been saying.”

“There’s no time for that, Calypso!” she protested, but even she could hear the feebleness in her voice as she said it. Her arms and legs felt leaden and slow, and her eyelids heavy. Stubbornly she claimed, “You don’t just sleep at times like this. Anywhich, it’s nightfall, and the Blackbringer will be going on the hunt anytime now.”