But he arrived in time to see the tail of Tolhurst’s coat vanish through a doorway within the house. The door close after him, leaving the room he’d occupied empty. Indeed, it looked quite empty even of purpose. Lumps covered in dusty sheets seemed the only furniture within it. The room offered no advantage save that of gazing down upon the garden and those who wandered within it.
Shrike waited some minutes for Tolhurst to reappear. Yet he did not do so. And so Shrike went ‘round the whole academy to peer in every window in turn. Musical notes resounded loudest at one particular window, but its lace curtains lay closed, obscuring any view Shrike might have of the occupants at their dancing lesson.
By then the afternoon had passed toward evening. Soon Wren would leave Staple Inn. If Shrike intended to meet him in Hyde Park, he would have to begin his flight there now. His efforts had gathered few hints towards solving the mystery of Wren’s missing papers.
And if the figure who wore Miss Flora’s face had indeed murdered Felix Knoll, Shrike knew it not.
~
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Any news of our Mr Knoll?” asked Mr Grigsby.
Wren’s head shot up from the penny post he’d been in the midst of sorting. In truth, he’d hardly thought of Felix since Shrike had informed him of Felix’s death, and he and Shrike had gone all the way to Rochester to learn nothing. “Not yet, sir.”
“Oh.” Mr Grigsby didn’t give voice to his disappointment, but Wren could read it on his weathered features as plain as he could read the letters piled on his desk. “Is there nowhere we might search for any hint of him?”
Felix being dead, and his body being returned to nature, and no one who knew him willing to give any information on what might have become of him, Wren had rather put the matter of Felix out of his head altogether in favour of obsessing about the Summer Solstice. He certainly hadn’t bothered with the trouble of searching for a corpse he’d never find. Not that he could say so to Mr Grigsby. “I thought it vital to remain here to be of service to you during office hours, sir.”
Mr Grigsby nodded in an amiable way which nevertheless told Wren he didn’t agree in the slightest. “You are, of course, indispensable, Lofthouse. However,” he added, tapping the open ledger before him without glancing at its columns, “I could survive without a clerk in office for an afternoon or two—or more—if it meant our Mr Knoll might be found sooner.”
Wren hesitated. He knew full well searching for Felix would turn up nothing. However, the prospect of an excuse to leave the office sounded very tempting indeed. His time would certainly be better spent training his body for the Solstice than moving figures from one column to the next in Staple Inn. He swallowed his conscience and said, “If you’d prefer it, sir, I could go out to make enquiries regarding Mr Knoll.”
Mr Grigsby’s smile of unmistakable relief did nothing to assuage Wren’s ever-increasing guilt.
The guilt continued gnawing at him as he donned his frock coat and hat to leave the office. It remained as he walked to Holywell Street. Not the worst idea for someone seeking Felix—if he were alive, the booksellers there would certainly cater to his vices—but as Wren knew Felix to be dead, he asked after second-hand dictionaries, slates, and chalk, rather than young blond gentlemen of means.
Nor did Wren ask any questions of anyone he passed on his way back through Hyde Park to the faerie ring within.
He did make some effort to justify his actions, if only to himself, as he journeyed from the Grove of Gates to Blackthorn Briar. By spending his present hours training for the solstice, he would stand a better chance of discovering what had become of Felix in the future. After all, Wren couldn’t very well find Felix if he were also dead. At present, the best he could do for both Mr Grigsby’s and his own sake was to commit himself to the ambassador’s training and wait for word from the Court of Bells and Candles.
Thus far nothing had come of Shrike sending Nell to demand his boon of Lady Aethelthryth. Wren didn’t expect to hear anything soon. He spent his days in Blackthorn racing up and down the warren watch-tower and tutoring Shrike and the ambassador in literacy.
On a particular Friday afternoon, rain fell in the fae forest—a rarer phenomenon there than in London, but not unheard of. Wren weathered it on his way to and from the Grove of Gates to spend his morning in Staple Inn. It had not abated upon his return just after noon, which kept both him and Shrike indoors. Shrike studied the dictionary at his work-bench, murmuring words to himself as he worked them out and copied them down into the memorandum-book Wren had provided. Wren, meanwhile, sat himself on the nest-bed and studied Shrike through the medium of pencil lightly sketching on vellum. He didn’t get far, however, for not an hour after he’d returned from his token duties in Staple Inn, a knock fell upon the cottage door.
Wren raised his head, puzzled. The knock had sounded nothing like Nell’s battering-ram demand. “Bit damp for the ambassador, isn’t it?”
Shrike, likewise interrupted in the midst of his academic toil, looked as though he agreed. He shut the dictionary with more care than it warranted and arose from his work-bench to approach the door. Wren leapt up from their nest-bed and hastened to follow him. He did his able best to calm his frayed nerves with the recollection that no one who wished Shrike harm could pass through the wall of thorns.
Still, he noted how Shrike held his arm behind him as if ready to shield Wren from whatever lay beyond their threshold.
The door swung open to reveal a figure smaller than Wren’s own stature—smaller than the ambassador, even—standing in the steady rainfall with as much disinterested dignity as if they stood in sunshine. A fae figure garbed in a mottled grey woollen cloak, one side dark as storm-clouds and the other a silvery shade of moonlight, topped by a thick grey fur ruff that swallowed up everything between chin and breastbone—the same fae that had wielded the crystal dagger in the Wild Hunt before Samhain. They appeared no less bizarre by the full light of day. Long grey tresses belied their smooth and youthful face, every feature small and sharp save for the enormous eyes. Wren could discern neither whites nor irises in their gaze, only glittering darkness of pure pupil; the round black eyes of a goldfinch or harvest mouse. Their uncanny gaze was well matched by their brows, likewise long and grey, with a feathered texture that lifted them off of the face altogether to curl in the air as a gentleman might wax his moustache. Though, as Wren stared, he thought he saw the tip of one eyebrow furl and unfurl like the tail of a house-cat on the hunt.
“Well met,” said Shrike, as if such visitors were matter-of-course in any given afternoon.
“Well met, my lords,” the fae echoed in a voice like a whispering wind.
Shrike stepped back to allow the fae entrance into the cottage. Likewise he dropped his arm from its shielding posture, which Wren took as a good sign. As Shrike shut the door behind them, the visitor tilted and turned their head with slow and steady poise in all directions to take in the whole of the cottage from rafters to flag-stones. All the while Shrike said nothing, and Wren, in his eagerness to follow his lead, hardly dared to breathe.
“You may call me Tatterdemalion,” they said. “My Lady Aethelthryth sends her regards and bids you grant me hospitality in your briar.”
Shrike gave Tatterdemalion a nod which bordered on a bow. “Welcome.”
Tatterdemalion served him a similar nod in turn. “My Lady Aethelthryth tells me you seek information regarding the ways of the Court of the Silver Wheel.”
“We do,” said Shrike.
“I’ve lived amongst the courts for many ages,” said Tatterdemalion, “and am acquainted with those who have lived among them for many ages more. I will answer with truth any question you care to ask.”
