Blackbringer

“Jacksmoke, Talon! Where you been?”

“Me? I might ask you! Lazing about in the afterlife with dragons feeding you grapes, I ken? That what being champion does to a lass?”

“Neh!” Magpie laughed.

“Lad!” cried Bertram, hobbling over on his peg. “Fine to see ye!” The crows mobbed him, and they weren’t too bashful to hug him. “Ye’re a good lad, Talon, and I’ll miss ye fierce when we go,” Bertram told him.

“When you go? When’s that?”

“Three days,” Magpie answered with a touch of wistfulness.

“So soon?”

“Aye. We’re headed for Anang Paranga to see my folk. Sure they’ll be winding up their work with the shapeshifters soon, and I reckon once I tell them everything that’s happened, about the Magruwen being awake and all, they’ll be keen to come back here and meet him—”

“And his library,” interrupted Bertram.

“Aye,” agreed Magpie. “I wish I could be here to see Papa’s face when he sets eyes on it!”

“Won’t you be coming back with them?” Talon asked.

“Neh, not so soon as that. There’s work to do and plenty of it.”

“Champion work?”

Magpie blushed, still unaccustomed to her new title. “Sure. We got the other Djinn to find now. The dreaming places of the Azazel and the Sidi Haroun are like to be around there, maybe in one of the Yalay volcanoes, or up in the Sayash, and we might have luck. And there’s always devils to catch. Guess you’ve seen your share of snags lately, neh?”

“Aye, the dungeon’s full of ’em,” Talon said distractedly. Under his breath he muttered, “Three skiving days?”

But Magpie had caught sight of food being carried in and didn’t hear him. “Jacksmoke! I could eat slugs, I’m so famished,” she declared, her eyes following platters of fritters and apricots and cakes, and they all went to fetch their dinner. Magpie, Poppy, and Talon sat down to dine together, scarcely noticing the lads who fought for the fourth seat at the table. It was Hiss who won by stamping on another’s foot, and he spent the meal staring at Poppy and missing his mouth with his spoon.

They’d scarcely finished dessert when Talon stood and said good night and left the Great Hall. Magpie watched him go with a pang. She danced and sang with the others until the moon was sliding down the far slope of the sky, but Talon didn’t return.

Magpie and Poppy were inseparable over the next few days. They wandered through the tent camp meeting the faeries from foreign forests, and everywhere Magpie went, all eyes were on her. Faeries called blessings and held up babes to see her, and imps of sorts she’d never seen gave her posies of flowers. She blushed so much Swig predicted she’d be stained a permanent crimson, but she minded it less than she would have thought. To feel that she was a daughter of Dreamdark in these times, that was something.

She saw nothing of Talon in those days.

On the day of their departure, Magpie and the crows were toasting taters around a fire with Poppy and a clan of Iskeri stonemasons when Magpie looked up to see a falcon veer across the sky. Her pulse quickened. “Is that Talon?” she asked, pointing.

By her side, Swig snorted. “Un-skiving-likely. His skin’s long gone. Sure ye heard, Mags, neh?”

“Heard what?” she asked, puzzled.

“How he traded that crusty scavenger his fine skin? Eh, birds!” he hooted. “Mags don’t know about the lad’s skin!”

“Aye,” Calypso told her. “When Vesper’d stowed ye in that mirror we were mad frantic and Batch wasn’t keen to help find ye—ye know what those meats are like—but Talon made the trade quick as quick, soon as he heard what the imp wanted.”

Magpie frowned, flummoxed. What with Talon’s absence these past days she’d all but convinced herself their friendship was a fancy. As for the times he’d saved her life, well, wasn’t he a Rathersting? Wasn’t that what they did? But to learn he’d traded his most cherished thing to find her . . . She bit her tater so she wouldn’t have to speak. But there was an explanation: he’d saved her so she could save his folk. Simple as that.

“Three days have flown fast,” said Poppy sadly.

Magpie nodded. They were leaving at nightfall. The caravans were packed. Faeries had come from all around Dream-dark with baskets of fruit and casseroles for their journey, with breads, pots of jam, puddings, and casks of drink, and the crows had stowed it all away with greedy grins. Orchidspike had contributed several jars of a precious healing balm and Poppy a fresh batch of moonlight mist in a copper urn.

With all the hubbub of preparation, it hadn’t really hit Magpie that her time in Dreamdark had come to an end, and now she felt a hollow little ache in her gut. “We’ll be back,” she said with a lightness she didn’t feel. She’d had plenty of practice leaving folks behind, but she always knew that when she did, whatever hole her absence left would fill in fast, like a pit dug at the shore. It was just the way of things. It was her lot.

Magpie and the crows said their farewells in the new courtyard at Hai Issrin Ev. The Rathersting warriors hovered in the sky in formation with their knives held high, and as the crows crested the trees with the caravans, the warriors gave them a deep “Hurrah!”

It was a hero’s departure, and but for a small, deep pang, Magpie felt as she always did at the start of a journey, as if the world was opening before her like a window. She took a deep breath filled with eagerness, regret, excitement, anxiety, and sadness and whirled around in the air, pausing to gather herself together and dart in a burst of wild flight, out and away.

She heard a voice cry, “Wait!” and she faltered to a hover.

Talon.

She heard gasps from the faeries below before she saw him, but still she wasn’t prepared for the sight of him when he did shoot up into the moonlit sky. She stared and the crows stared, but quickly turned their surprise into hoots of approval. “Handsome wings, lad!” called Bertram.

“Fine choice!” cried Calypso.

Magpie shook her head and a slow, marveling smile spread over her face. “Uncommon . . . ,” she murmured.

He was wearing a new skin but he wasn’t cloaked in falcon feathers as before. In all ways but one he was just himself, pale wild hair and blue eyes and tattoos, and the wings that seemed to grow from his shoulder blades as naturally as any bird’s were black. Feathered wings and black. Crow’s wings.