“Change his nappy, I mean,” grinned Jim. “Not swap the little darling. Where d’you get him anyway? You didn’t have him yesterday.”

“Case anyone hadn’t noticed, we’re stopped in the middle of a blinking tunnel!” Frank’s voice floated down toward them from the Starling. “Jim, stop nattering and find out what the blinking problem is.”

But Jim wasn’t listening. One hand on baby Philip’s belly, he was staring at the birds painted around the cabin.

“Well, would you look at that … I knew I remembered the Sparrowhawk. Here, hold the nipper.”

Jim jumped off the Sparrowhawk and back onto the Starling and down into her cabin. He came back out again holding a small painted piece of wood, then, ignoring a bellow of rage from his brother, jumped back onto the Sparrowhawk.

Ben lowered his legs and peered down from the roof.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Before Lotti could answer, Jim let out a shout.

“I was right!”

“What …”

“All them birds!” Jim handed Lotti the piece of wood he had taken from his cabin. Painted on it was the delicate figure of a starling, and beneath the starling, just like beneath the robin over Ben’s berth, and the kingfisher above Sam’s, and every bird Nathan had ever painted, the tiny letters NL. Lotti took a deep breath. She knew now why the Secret Starling had seemed familiar to her when she came out of Emlyn Lock. She took the little piece of wood in her hands and handed it up to Ben.

“Ben, look!”

He took the little painting from her hands. She saw his eyes widen with shock, then cloud with something else that she recognized—the heavy dullness of a long and lingering grief.

“The Sparrowhawk!” Jim exclaimed. “Nathan Langton! It’s all coming back now—he painted the sign on the Starlin’ for us, then gave us this one as a present for our little brother, Jack, who was down in the dumps because he ’ad a cold. Well, I never! Your dad, is he? I didn’t even know he was married, let alone had kids.”

Lotti, still holding the baby, wished that Jim would stop talking. The way Ben gently stroked the little starling, as if it weren’t a painting at all but something alive and tender, made her want to cry.

With characteristic bluntness, Frank brought everyone back to their current situation.

“Touching though this is, I don’t like breaking the law unless I ’ave to,” he said. “And right now, I don’t see why I ’ave to, so let’s get a move on, shall we, and take this outside.”

Oh, thought Lotti agonizingly, where was Molly? Why was she taking so long?

“The thing is,” she started, then stopped, wondering how to explain without giving too much away that the Starling should go but the Sparrowhawk would linger a little longer in the tunnel.

“You in trouble?”