He was prince of the Rathersting. On a day such as this, with the chief missing and a dark presence abroad in the realm, his place was with his folk. He was ashamed of himself, of his grin, his joy, his pride. He lifted his arms, shaking open the wings of his skin, and leapt into a long tilting glide that would carry him all the way over the Deeps to the Western Sill and West Mirth.

On the way, the joy returned unbidden. There was nothing he could do about it.

While the other crows foraged for cake ingredients, Magpie and Calypso followed the raven Algorab across the vastness of Dreamdark toward the rocky rises in the west. The Dream-dark Deeps were sunk between two ridges, the Crag and the Spine. Where these faced each other across the sunken forest, long horizontal ledges of igneous rock extruded on both sides, looking quite like windowsills. Calypso pointed down with his wing as they passed above the devastation of Issrin Ev, and soon they were circling the cleft boulder into which West Mirth was tucked.

Long ago the boulder had split clean and fallen open, and inside it the hamlet was founded, a row of sweet cottages on either side of a white lane. Their rear gardens backed up to the rock face, billowing with fragrant herbs, and Magpie came in to land on the brink of the cliff above. Looking down, she thought this was the kind of place that belonged in a painting, a place that should never know of devils.

It was far too quiet.

Magpie walked off the cliff as if it were a mere step and fell fast, flicking open her wings just in time to move lightly forward in an animal prowl. The birds dropped down beside her. Cautiously she went in the back door of a cottage. All was neat as a pin within and there was nothing amiss but the beds. She prowled around them, looking, smelling. Of scent there was nothing that didn’t belong. Honeysuckle, rosemary, and soap. But the puzzling way the covers were arranged, as if tucked around sleepers who’d simply melted into the night; it shivered her. It brought to mind the fishermen’s shoes left so suddenly behind in the world when the mannies themselves were whisked, somehow, out of it.

She visioned the glyphs for memory touch, gritted her teeth, and laid her hand upon a pillow, but there was no jolt of darkness. She saw only fragments of dreams. Whatever had happened here, the faeries had slept through it, up until the very last.

All the cottages were the same.

It was only the rocking chair in the sentry tower that gave her what she still hoped not to find. A blast of darkness, hunger, and hatred. Going outside again, Magpie nodded once to Calypso, her eyes hard.

“Jacksmoke!” he croaked.

Passing the stables, Magpie heard sounds within, beetles lowing to be milked and the bleat of hungry dray pigeons. The prowl went out of her step and her faerie self returned to her with the recognition of this simple task to be performed, the care and feeding of livestock. Saddened and shaken, she walked into the stable.