“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.”