The crows bustled in and out the doors as they set about making camp, and before a half hour had passed they had a fire snapping in a freshly dug pit and were toasting cubes of cheese on the ends of twigs.

Pup caught his cheese on fire at once and took to waving it like a firebrand, while Mingus quietly handed Magpie a chunk that was toasted to perfection. “Thanks, feather,” she said affectionately, and he just nodded and smiled.

“How ye planning to find where the Magruwen’s hid, darlin’?” asked Bertram, dipping his cheese in his brandy and taking a wet bite.

Magpie admitted, “I don’t quite know. It’s just a guess and a hope he’s stayed in Dreamdark, but if he is, he’ll be someplace deep. We’ll ask the burrowers and scamperers. Badgers. Hedge imps.”

“Like that old hedgie who took care of ye when ye were wee?” asked Swig.

“Snoshti?” Magpie’s face lit up. “My bossy old nurse! Aye, I’d like to find her, sure, she’s a dear soul—but not likely to know much of Djinn.”

“But who is, though?” asked Calypso. “Not even faeries. Remember them faerie sprouts in the marshland had never even heard of Djinn?”

“Aye. That was wretched. Papa says the things faeries have forgotten would fill up a library the size of Dreamdark.”

“If yer father ever found a library like that we’d never drag him out of it!”

Magpie laughed. “Aye, for true!”

“All I’m saying, ’Pie,” Calypso went on, “is don’t get yer hopes up.”

“You want me to fly around hopeless?” she asked. “That what you’re saying?”

“Ach,” he sighed. “Neh. Hope away! And may we be blessed with the luck to find creatures in Dreamdark as nosy as ourselves.”

“Cheers to that,” said Bertram, raising his glass. “To nosiness.”

“To nosiness!” they all chimed in.

“When we get there,” asked Pup through a beakful of charred cheese, “we goin’ to do the play?”

Magpie groaned. “Neh, not the play!”

“Course we are,” said Calypso. “Ye know it’s the best way to wriggle into faerie society. They do love a play—next best thing to dancing. And sure ye loved it too, first time ye saw us.”

“Sure I like to watch a play,” she said. “Just don’t put me in one.”

“Someone’s got to be Bellatrix. You want Maniac playing her?”

“Fine by me!”

“Un-skiving-likely,” Maniac snapped.

“I’ll be Bellatrix!” crowed Pup eagerly. “Let me, let me!”

“Pipe down, runtfellow,” said Calypso. “’Pie’ll play Bellatrix.”

“Jacksmoke,” she grumbled under her breath.

Before the crows had been hunters they had been roving actors. That was how Magpie’s family had fallen in with them in Dreamdark and flown away to see the world. It was true there was no better pretext for dropping in on a faeriehold than to pose as players, but that didn’t make Magpie like it any better.

“Fearless Magpie Windwitch,” Swig teased. “Give her devils, give her witches, nary a shiver! But push her out onstage and she shakes like a twig.”