Talon went on, “Not just the end of faeries, you ken, the end of everything!”

Batch yawned.

“Listen!” Talon cried. “We need you to find Magpie, do you hear? I know you find things. It’s got to be you. You’ve got to help!”

Batch withdrew his toe from his nose and commenced to gnaw on his thick toenail. In exasperation Talon cried, “Answer me!”

Calypso stepped forward. All too well he remembered the scavenger Lick and the events of Amitav Ev, and he knew the motives of imps better than Talon did. He said, “Look, ye blighted soul, what’s it going to take?”

And Batch released his toenail from between his teeth and looked at the crow with a gleam of interest.

“What’s it going to cost?” demanded Calypso. “What is it ye want?”

“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.