Odawa shook his head. “No, not even him. I just mean to kill Grey. I’m done with games and threats and all the childish nonsense that has filled my life for too many years. It’s time I simply dealt with Grey and got on with my life.”

“Corbae don’t die easily,” Rabedy said.

The doubt was plain in his voice. True, Odawa had dealt effortlessly with him, but he was only a poor excuse for a bogan, as his uncle liked to say. Grey . . . Grey was a corbae in his prime. In his veins ran the same blood as that cousin of his who had brought the world into being in the long ago.

“No,” Odawa agreed. “Especially not when he’s aided by the curse of his dead wife that keeps misdirecting me whenever I try to get near him. But I guarantee you this, Master Rabedy. Put him in front of me, and you’ll see how easily a corbae can die.”

Rabedy gave a slow nod. And then the world could go back to the way it had been before Big Dan brought the blind green-bree into their lives. Odawa would go away. Grey would be dead, and they wouldn’t have to worry about his coming after them for the killing of his cerva cousin. Fairy and the spirits of the wild and the green could go back to ignoring one another, and life would be so much less complicated than it had become.

“I’ll bring you to him,” he said. “But then you’ll be on your own. I won’t add to the troubles between our people.”

“All I ask,” Odawa assured him, “is for the chance to stand face to face with the man who blinded me. Give me that and I won’t need your help or that of anyone else.”

“Fair enough,” Rabedy said.

He took a piece of string out of his pocket and knotted it once, twice, and then a third time.

“Here,” he said, putting the knotted string into the green-bree’s hand. “Think of Grey as you undo one of these knots, and it should guide you to him.”

Odawa fingered the string. “There are three knots.”

“So you’ll get three tries. I can’t fit more onto that bit of string. But surely that should be enough.”

“Depending on how well they work against his wife’s curse.”

“I can’t help you with that.”

“I could still use your eyes until I find him.”

Rabedy sighed. He wanted to be done with this now. But if he was to get rid of the green-bree once and for all . . .

“Fine,” he said. “So let’s go and get it done.”

He stepped closer to Odawa and allowed the green-bree to grip his shoulder. When those strong fingers found their hold, Rabedy led them away from the dismal grey shoreline of this unhappy world that was Odawa’s croi baile.

Geordie