Nell paused mid-stride with her boot still upraised. She glanced between Shrike and Wren. “Aye?”
“Before you go,” said Wren, ignoring Shrike’s puzzled look. He didn’t know much of women, but he knew better than to ask a lady her age. Instead, he enquired, “I’d wondered if you might tell us anything of past Oak and Holly Kings?”
This question did nothing to dispel Shrike’s evident confusion.
Nell, however, looked more intrigued than otherwise. “Rather little, I’m afraid. I don’t concern myself overmuch with the affairs of the Court of the Silver Wheel.”
Wren supposed that’d been rather too much to hope for. The dearth of knowledge regarding the solstice duels had driven him to desperation.
“Go to Lady Aethelthryth.” Shrike’s voice, low and soft though it might be, still startled Wren with his sudden speech—though, as Wren jerked his head up to face him, he saw Shrike had fixed his dark gaze on Nell. “Tell her I would have my boon from her afore Midsummer. If there is anyone in her acquaintance who may answer the Holly King’s questions, I bid her send them to Blackthorn.”
Nell met his gaze with a grim nod.
Wren knew nothing of Lady Aethelthryth. Nor did he have much to offer any fae. Yet he felt Nell’s quest could not go unrewarded. “Would you like the gift of letters, as well?”
Nell’s dark brows rose. “I have my letters. Though I don’t oft find use for them.”
“Oh.” Wren wondered what formed the difference between her and Shrike, or her and the ambassador, which might account for how she attained literacy whilst they did not. He didn’t think she’d take well to being asked. “Well, is there something else we might do for you in return?”
Her gaze drifted toward Shrike even as she answered Wren. “You’ve done enough.”
“I’ve done nothing,” Wren couldn’t keep from saying.
Nell’s dark eyes darted back to meet his. “Butcher has done enough.”
It wasn’t that Wren didn’t believe Shrike capable of doing something magnificent and marvellous enough to earn Nell’s loyalty in addition to her interest. Rather, he had an insatiable curiosity to know the details of his beloved’s heroic exploits.
And though he didn’t voice this enquiry aloud, he supposed something of it must have shown in his face, because Nell took it upon herself to respond to the unspoken question.
“He rendered aid,” she explained, with another glance at Shrike, “when our acquaintance was yet too fresh for one to expect anything of the kind from him.”
“It was nothing,” Shrike said almost before she’d finished speaking.
Nell raised an indignant eyebrow. “If you consider my brother’s life and liberty ‘nothing,’ then our friendship is sorely tried indeed.”
Shrike’s lips parted, but no sound emerged. Evidently he couldn’t think of a way to demur her praise of his actions without disparaging her brother.
Yet even as he failed, he succeeded, because judging by her smirk, the sight of Shrike flustered by her words proved ample balm for her wrath. In an instant her ill-temper had vanished. With a wink and a bow, she took her leave. The briars of Blackthorn grew together behind her as she wandered off into the wood.
“I suppose,” Wren said, eyeing the stag slung across Shrike’s shoulders, “tonight is the night I learn how to butcher a fresh-slain hart.”
Shrike smiled, and together they went to begin their work.
~
Wren returned to Staple Inn the next morning.
Shrike would have liked to go with him. However, Wren had before insisted he would be safe without Shrike’s protection in Mr Grigsby’s office—and, given the iron-choked air of London, Shrike had to admit it unlikely any fae threat could find him there.
Still, Shrike felt determined to do something toward defending Wren against the slings and arrows that seemed ever to beset him in the mortal realm.
And so, after Wren had gone, and after Shrike had tended his fields and flocks, he left Blackthorn behind and journeyed on through the Grove of Gates to the stable-yard well in Rochester.
He emerged from the well in his feathered form. Neither steed nor stable-boy took note as he flitted past them and on down the quiet cobblestone lanes of Rochester. None of the travellers he passed on foot glanced up to see him swoop under the arch of Cemetery Gate and wheel up around to peer in its second-storey windows. He didn’t see Tolhurst in his bed nor at his desk. Nor did he find any sign of Wren’s manuscripts from without. Or any trace of Felix Knoll.
Mrs Bailiwick’s Academy, however, lay not far distant from Cemetery Gate. And Tolhurst, as its music master, might well be observed there.
Shrike arrived at the academy to find its garden occupied. A flock of some dozen-odd mortal youths in gowns fluttered about within the enclosure of hedges and gates. They bore no weapons, unless one counted the pencils and sketch-books clutched in their hands. Shrike, curious, settled onto a particular twig atop the hedge.
