“Yes, Mistress,” said the girl, with a slight hesitation that suggested she didn’t know where to look for Lirael, or why she was looking for Lirael instead of the Abhorsen herself.

“Try Prince Sameth’s workshop first,” said Mistress Finney, after a moment’s thought. “I believe she is often there, for he is making her new hand.”

The girl bent her head in acknowledgment, spun on one foot, and dashed to the stairs.

“Slow down!” called out Mistress Finney after her. “You’ll do no good if you fall to the bottom!”

The clatter of footsteps slowed a little. The falconer smiled and lifted the hawk to the perch that sat on her writing desk. The bird stepped off onto it, watching the woman as she took up her quill, dipped it in the inkwell, and made ready to write.

“Now, my dear, give me the message,” said Mistress Finney to the hawk, who once again spoke, clear and loud in the voice of Magistrix Coelle. Wyverley College, though it lay across the Wall, was close enough that Charter Magic could be wielded there. Though its location meant Ancelstierran technology could not always be relied upon, a telegraph boy’s bicycle would not fail. So it had become the de facto place for Ancelstierran telegrams to be transferred to Old Kingdom message-hawks for onward delivery to authorities in the north.

“Abhorsen, I’ve just received a telegram. It reads ‘TO MAGISTRIX WYVERLEY COLLEGE NICK FOUND BAD KINGDOM CREATURE DORRANCE HALL TELL ABHORSEN HELP STOP THIS FROM NICHOLAS SAYRE STOP VIA DANJERS VALET APPLETHWICK END.’ Now, Dorrance Hall is several hundred miles south, so this seems very unlikely. But I have heard it is some sort of secret government place, so perhaps should be investigated. I have sent telegrams to the Bain Consulate and the Embassy in Corvere, but have not yet had an answer—”

The message ended suddenly. The message-hawks were invaluable, but their minds were small and could not hold very long communications, and their capacity also varied from bird to bird. Unless you knew the particular hawk in question and counted out your words beforehand, it was easy to be cut off in mid-flow. Senders often forgot this in their eagerness to pass on important information. Nor, once a message was impressed, was it an easy matter to start again.

“Well done, my dear,” said Mistress Finney softly to the hawk, carefully drawing a line below the message she had just transcribed and initialing it “MF.” She gestured to one of her apprentices, who came and took the hawk over to its own perch, to be fed some fresh rabbit and to have a drink.

The apprentice who had heard the message from the northern hawk approached her, passing over the paper where he’d written down that bird’s missive.

“This one’s for the King,” he said. “From the Greenwash Bridge Company, at the bridge. Not marked urgent. Follow-up to their earlier report.”

“Spike it for Princess Ellimere,” said Mistress Finney, gesturing at a table adorned with numerous spikes, most of them already impaling message sheets. “She’s coming up this morning, I saw her at breakfast.”