She kept ahead of her friends on the ground, doubling back occasionally and swooping over their heads to keep them on the right track. Slowly, they began to close the distance between them and Crows.

Another dilemma: soon it would impossible for her to hide from the crows, or use her flight as a navigation aid. Crows would melt into the dark, and she would be blind to him, passing within touching distance of him and never seeing him.

Daylight, and the trailing edge of the shadow, was some distance away. Once it arrived, Crows would call his birds back, and that would be that. It had to be now, then. And it had to be her.

She was right above where she thought Crows was. She beat her wings to stall her forward flight, then folded them back against her flanks. She dropped, the air roaring in her ears. She struck the twigs first, shattering them with her outstretched feet, but then came the branches and finally the ground. It was undignified, but it was quick.

She ended up at his feet, sprawled in the leaf litter, with torn leaves and split greenwood pattering down around her.

Crows cried out in alarm, something high-pitched and wailing, then he jumped back.

When she raised herself to her hands and knees, she could see almost nothing: her human eyes were defeated where her hawk’s eyes had been so clear. The vague outlines of trees, the fluttering of birds, their warning-caws urgent – and a boxy wooden crate the size of a suitcase.

That was it. That was what they’d come for. She crawled her way to it and lay over the top, scratched and torn.

‘Hey,’ she remembered to call. ‘Hey, I’m over here. I’ve got them. I’ve got the maps.’

Crows had vanished. Of course he had. He also wouldn’t have gone far. He’d be crouched in the deepest shadow, watching to see whether she was bluffing, waiting for a chance to get his maps back.

There came an answering shout, and she yelled all the louder. Crows might try something in the seconds it would take for them to find her, and he’d be desperate.

Nothing. No attempt to knock her aside, open the chest, grab a handful of maps and run. She thought she could feel the shadows around her shift and swim, but they did that wherever she looked.

Luiza burst into view first, out of breath, hair ragged. ‘Where is he?’

‘He’s here, hiding.’

She turned around, and around again.

‘You won’t see him until he wants you to,’ said Mary. ‘Careful.’

Then Mama and Elena appeared, and it looked like they might actually get away with this. Crows wasn’t going to fight them all, was he?

‘Where’s Dalip?’