“Okay?” Still clutching his throat he rose to his knees and said, “Now that I’m not paralyzed and suffocating, aye, I’m right as rain.”

“Paralyzed and suffocating? How—?”

With narrowed eyes he looked at her and at the knife. “Djinncraft,” he said. “That explains things. Who’d you steal it from?”

“Steal it? I found it in a skeleton’s spine!”

“Ah, so you stole it from the dead. How fine.”

“Call me a thief?” Magpie blazed. “Sure you didn’t find that skin in your granny’s attic!”

“Right, I didn’t. I—” He bit off his words and glared at her, then asked with a tinge of bitterness, “How did you know?”

“I know a skin when I see one,” Magpie said. “My grandfather wears one.”

“Faeries don’t wear skins!”

“Neh, they don’t indeed,” she replied, looking pointedly at the shimmering sheath gathered around his shoulders. “I never said he was a faerie.”

Talon looked at her hard. A lass, just a lass she was, wind-mussed and wearing feathers and gripping a blade such as that. For a moment there he’d thought he might suffocate and wake to find himself in the Moonlit Gardens! When she’d held that knife to his throat he’d been unable to move a muscle, even to breathe. “Who are you?” he asked her in an acid voice.

“All right in there, ’Pie?” Calypso called from outside, and both faeries started and looked to the door.

“Pie?” Talon repeated.

“Never you mind!” she said to him, then called out to the birds, “In here, I found someone!”

Calypso and Algorab appeared like shadows in the doorway, and seeing them, Talon gave the lass another hard look. He’d seen crows arrive yestermorn, shortly before the vultures.

“You from this place?” Magpie asked the lad, seeing feed sacks leaning against the pen near him, as if he’d been feeding the pigeons.

“Well, I know you’re not, if you have to ask about me,” he said. One thing about being Rathersting—folk tended to know you on sight.

“That’s a Rathersting, lass,” said the raven.

Magpie looked steadily at the lad. “I know the name,” she said. “The guardians. Fine, ancient clan. So what are you doing flying around in a stolen skin?”

“I didn’t steal it,” he said fiercely. “I made it!”

“Aye, sure.”

Talon gritted his teeth. Reminding himself he was a prince of the realm and not one to be held hostage by a strange lass, he rose to his feet and held himself tall, a full head taller than her. They faced each another, tense. “Never mind the skin,” he said. “I want to know what you’re doing in West Mirth. You’re a stranger here; don’t try to deny it. So what’s a strange lass doing waving a djinncraft blade round an abandoned hamlet?”

“It wasn’t abandoned.”

“What?”

“Didn’t you see the beds? They never got out of their beds.”

Talon felt sick. He’d known something wasn’t right in the cottages, but he hadn’t been able to put his finger on just what. The lass was right. The blankets hadn’t been thrown back. There’d been no struggle and no sign they’d risen from their beds. It was as if they’d vanished in them. “What do you know?” he demanded.