Marty studied me with a confused and curious eye. “Of course. They don’t last forever.”
“Miss Larkin here isn’t well versed in the art of caring for deckle birds,” Torvus explained.”
Marty leaned back and blinked at me. “Was she raised on one of the far islands?”
“Something like that,” Torvus answered as he nodded at the supplies in Marty’s hands. “Why don’t you show her how it works?”
“Well, it’s not difficult, but you have to have the right magic for it,” Marty mused as he held up the scissors and snipped them together a few times. “And the right tools. My great-great-great-grandfather made these scissors. There’s nothing like them in the world of the four seas. Let me show you.”
Marty began cutting through the paper, and my mouth dropped open. The paper curled behind him, but not because of gravity. The parchment went against gravity and folded upwards. Each snip caused another fold, and soon something took shape.
It was a bird, much like an origami swan. The creature had a long, straight tail and wings, and a sharp beak protruded from the paper. Marty finished the last snip, and the bird opened its straight, crackling wings and took flight. He leaped up and clapped his hands around his flapping creation.
“This one is pretty spry,” he mused as he hurried over to one of the cages.
He grasped the ‘bird’ in one hand and slipped both through the bars, where he released it. The bird darted around the cage, but each attempt to slip through the bars was met by an invisible wall.
Marty turned to us with a proud smile on his face. “And that’s how you make a deckle bird.”
I craned my neck and peered into some of the other cages. “So those pieces of paper on the bottom of the cages-?”
“More of my creations.” He grasped the bars of one cage and gave it a shake.
The papers on the bottom came to life, folding themselves into the shapes of dozens of different sizes and breeds of birds. They flew up like a tornado of papery feathers and flew about their cell. They, too, were repelled by some invisible magic, and they soon settled back down to the bottom of the cage.
Marty plopped himself back down on the chair and looked to Torvus. “So what do you need sent and where? Coordinates to a buried treasure? Or is it a secret letter to one of your other lovers?”
“Neither. I want to make inquiries at every port about Captain Encina.”
Marty’s good humor dropped faster than a bowling ball out of a window. He leaned back and frowned. “He’s a dangerous man to be asking about.”
“The ones worth asking about usually are,” Torvus countered as he took up a pencil from the table and wrote out a short note. He held out the sheet to his friend. “This is what the message needs to say.”
Marty took the note and read the contents before his eyes darted up to me. “Asking about a woman aboard his ship? Does this have anything to do with her?”
“It’s equally dangerous to be curious about your client’s messages,” Torvus scolded him as he set the pencil on the table.
“I don’t like my birds to get into too much trouble,” he protested as he swept his eyes over the room. “And some of them have been in the family for generations. I’d hate to part with them now. Take this one for example.” He stood and walked over to a cage that was suspended from the ceiling near the hearth. A single piece of paper lay on the bottom. He reached in and drew out the parchment, which trembled in his hand as he sat back down. “My great-great-great-grandfather made this one. It’s the last of his special birds.”
I leaned forward and examined the paper. The edges were frayed and cracked, and the surface was yellowed. “What kind of bird is it?”
Marty brushed the tip of his finger against the edge of the paper. The parchment twitched before it slowly folded itself into a hawk, complete with chest feathers and tiny eyeballs that blinked at us. My mouth dropped open, especially when the creature opened its mouth and let out a squawk that sounded like paper rustling.
Marty grinned at me. “I think Pen likes you.”
“Pen?” I repeated.
“My great-great-grandfather named him that because a very unique pen was created to inject the ink into his paper,” Marty told me as he nodded at the pen holder on the wall above a tall table. “We give each nest of birds a different pen so no one can tell which ink we’re using at the time. My family also makes the pens ourselves. It makes it more difficult for the messages to be read by the wrong party.”
“We need your deckles to go to every port they can reach and see if Encina is making inquiries about my lovely companion here,” Torvus repeated as he nodded at me. “And perhaps ask the port masters or any of your connections whether the Admiralty is searching for her, specifically Jager.”
Marty’s face drooped. “Jager? Why do you suspect him?”
“He chased the Tempest a day ago out in the eastern waters.”
Our host leaned back and absently stroked the bird’s back. “I can see why you’re curious. I haven’t heard of the captain visiting those waters in years.”
Torvus reached into his pocket and drew out a small purse, which he set on the table. The contents clinked. “We’ll pay you, of course.”
