‘What are you doing?’ Hissed Tal.

‘I …’ he crouched back down again. ‘Did you see her?’

‘Which one?’

‘The one that had lips like Fortune’s Eye.’

‘Yeah.’

‘She was …’

Tal nodded, blushing. ‘Yeah.’

‘We could talk to them.’

Tal gripped his shoulder more tightly. ‘No!’

‘Sa-aat!’ croaked Crowflies in agreement.

‘But I … why not?’

‘Gold faces? Sapphire weapons? At least one of them is Deathless. It don’t do to get in their way.’

‘Deathless? I thought they were bigger and made of sunslight?’

‘Not always. Sometimes they go small like us. Thing is, this is House Sapphire land and I don’t know any Sapphire Deathless that have golden lips. And that other one might be a Hunter but she didn’t have no wings. We should keep hidden, there’s probably more of them about.’

‘They seemed nice,’ he murmured.

‘Not to us they wouldn’t. One look at my ears and your hand and we’d be goners. Don’t think they’d take too kindly to your demon either.’

Sa-at flopped down, cradling Crowflies in his arms. He’d never seen the Birdkin behave that way before. It was scared, and that scared him.

They waited until the women were long gone before leaving the kennel. Crowflies seemed to have recovered itself, and took up a perch high up in the trees, scanning the streets with its compound eyes before announcing it was safe. Sa-at moved to the place where he’d seen the women and crouched down. The ground was hard here so there wasn’t much in the way of tracks, but he was able to discern which way they’d gone and from that which direction they’d come from.

He looked longingly for them but there was no sign of either woman now, their shapes already lost to the dark beneath the trees.

‘We should go before they come back,’ said Tal.

He sighed, hearing the wisdom in his head but nowhere else as he turned back towards Sorn. ‘Come on then.’

They kept to the buildings, ever-watchful, but saw no sign of other hunters or Deathless. Sa-at was relieved and disappointed in equal measure.

‘Where are we going?’ Asked Tal.

‘To see where they came from.’

‘I didn’t see any travel bags. Might be they’ve got a carriage or something nearby.’

Sa-at’s eyes widened in delight. ‘What kind of things will they have?’

‘Don’t know but— No! You can’t go taking a Deathless’s things.’

‘Why?’

‘You just can’t!’

Sa-at nodded. ‘We won’t just steal. I know the ways.’

‘No. You give to Deathless, you don’t take. That’s the way it works.’

He nodded but didn’t say any more, because he was determined to have a look and suspected Tal would be against that too.