They climbed out of the limo. It was late March, around four in the afternoon, and the temperature hovered around freezing. They were on a back road, really just a gravel track, somewhere in rural Connecticut, with a row of trees running along one side and dead-looking blackberry bushes on the other. Hayfields were all around them. There were no houses in sight.

Plum stayed behind in the car to change, and when she got out they were all in matching black. Quentin wore his overcoat instead of a parka, because it looked more magicianly, and it was black anyway, and he had no idea when if ever he’d see the limo again. He had the page from the Neitherlands folded in an inside pocket, along with the watch.

“Well,” Plum said. “This doesn’t look suspicious.”

The breeze was icy, and even though they weren’t supposed to use magic Quentin quietly added a couple of charms to keep himself warm. Off in one of the meadows Pushkar was waving at them, and they struck out toward him through the dry, unmown grass. Lionel stood behind him, looking as big as a haystack, and the blackbird came winging over from the darkening trees to settle on his shoulder. It looked much more like a wild animal out here in the country. Quentin wondered what the other birds made of it.

Pushkar had an enormous rectangular oriental carpet unrolled on the grass, a gorgeous thing with a knotted floral pattern on it in cream and pale blue and lion-gold. Pushkar was studying it and nodding slowly, sometimes bending down and smoothing out folds and making small adjustments to the fringes and to the pattern itself—it looked woven into the material, but it altered at his touch.

A flying carpet. He’d never actually seen one. Pushkar wore a multicolored, utterly tasteless game-day sweater under his parka.

“Nice rug,” Quentin said, since it was.

“Guess how much it cost?” He didn’t wait for Quentin to guess. “Seventy thousand dollars. The bird paid cash, I saw it.”

They stood around the edges. The gathering looked like a cold, formal, badly planned picnic. The bird addressed them from the top of Lionel’s head.

“We found the Couple a week ago. They are in a house two miles northwest of here. A large estate, with nothing else near it. We have been watching it, learning their routines. This morning something agitated them. We are concerned that they are preparing for something—maybe they are going to leave, maybe they will upgrade security, we don’t know. But there is no more time. We will make our attempt tonight. Questions?”

Quentin couldn’t think of any. Plum sniffled in the cold. Stoppard picked up his cases.

“Is it OK if I—?”

“Sure.” Pushkar nodded, and Stoppard stepped gingerly onto the carpet, as if he were worried it would scoot out from under him, or roll up with him in it.