She froze in the doorway.

There was never any reason to find a bird of prey in a pigeon stable. Especially when traceries of light shimmied and wove round it, tracing its falcon shape and glinting off its feathers before sliding into the dim outskirts of Magpie’s vision; when it wasn’t a falcon at all, but a disguise. Magpie saw it all in an instant, and that instant slammed into the next instant, in which she found herself hurtling at the imposter with her dagger drawn, knocking the bird to the ground and kneeling over it, the edge of the blade against its false throat.

“Shed it,” she growled.

It didn’t speak or move, and she said, “The skin. Shed it now!”

The bird lay silent as a dead thing, without even a rise and fall of ribs to give a hint of the creature hidden inside. But there was a sound. Magpie shifted uneasily in her crouch and glanced around the stable. The pigeons were bleating louder in their agitation, but that wasn’t it. She could hear a sound like the pure ring of crystal against crystal, a fluid and melodious chime that seemed to surround her. It was only when she shifted the knife slightly away from the falcon’s throat that the sound began to ebb and she felt the figure shift beneath her.

“Wait,” it said in no birdlike voice.

She thrust the knife edge again to its throat, and again the falcon fell still and the strange chime grew louder. Magpie looked at the blade and saw runes agleam on it. She realized with a jolt that it was the knife that was singing. Her eyes widened and her gaze shifted rapidly back and forth between the blade and the falcon. A magic blade! There was many a story in legend of strange weapons that mastered their masters, having wickedness and will forged into them by their makers.

In a fluid movement she drew it off the falcon’s throat and backed quickly away, staying crouched and ready to spring. The blade fell silent, and the falcon moved.

A ripple went through it, a rift appeared in its belly, and it sort of split apart and fell away, its feathers transforming as it did into a strange membranous sheath that looked like little more than a stocking. Inside it was a faerie like no faerie Magpie had ever seen. She’d seen tattoos on witch doctors, savage jungle faeries, but not like these. The black patterns on his face had grace and reminded her of only one thing: the mysterious whirls of light that had of late been spinning across her vision. She stared at him. Looking closer, she saw the features of a lad and eyes like crystals with the sky dancing through them.

“What did you do to me?” Talon gasped, falling on his side and clutching his throat.

Magpie looked at the blade in her hand, confused. It was silent. “Are you okay?” she asked, her voice wary.