“Piff! Ye weigh no more than a dust mouse, so hush yer spathering. ’Twill be a sore day for me when I can’t carry my ’Pie.”

Magpie went back to scanning the sea, her chin resting on Calypso’s head. Ever since she was a tiny thing she’d loved riding him, but as she grew up she did so less and less, generally flying alongside him instead. Her own dragonfly wings were sleek as blades, many-paned like stained glass and as swift as any wings under the sun or moon. But she was tired, still drained from a two-day chase in the desert. That scarab devil had given her a time, to be sure, so she hadn’t put up a fuss when Calypso insisted on carrying her.

As far as her keen eyes could tell, the surface of the sea spread out empty all around them. They flew on, deeper into the vastness of it.

An hour passed before at last Magpie spotted a listing, slack-sailed boat. The crows circled, heaving and panting, and dropped out of the arms of the wind to go in for a closer look. Magpie stood up on Calypso’s back. She took one step into thin air and plummeted some thirty feet straight down before flicking her wings open like a fan and coming in for a sharp landing on the boat’s rail. She crouched, paused, then prowled forward like a creature, ready to spring into the air if surprised.

The boat seemed empty. Magpie waved and all seven crows came in to land. Seeing nothing amiss on deck, they cautiously descended into the fishing boat’s small cabin. There they found signs of recent human habitation: tobacco, dirty tin cups, a backgammon board open on the table. On the same table Magpie found just what she was looking for and had hoped not to find. She had hoped this would turn out to be some human mystery of no interest to herself or any of her kind. But that was not the case.

Lying on its side on the table was a tarnished silver flask with a long neck and elegant scrolled handle. Its wax seal had been broken and lay in two pieces beside it. She and Calypso exchanged a somber look.

“Might just be a coffeepot,” the crow offered hopefully. He had a chip in the left side of his beak that made him seem perpetually to grin.

Magpie’s eyes swept over the table and settled on the two halves of the seal. She took it up in her hands and her face paled. “It’s no coffeepot,” she said.

“What is it, ’Pie?” Calypso asked, hopping toward her. The other crows crowded in, curious.

“What ye got, Mags? Eh, Mags?” asked the smallest one, Pup, in a quiver of spasmodic energy.

Magpie held the pieces together. Emblazoned in the wax was a hand in the center of a flame. “It’s the Magruwen’s seal,” she said in a hushed voice.

“The Magruwen?” they all squawked, puffing up their feathers.