Shrike likewise gazed down at the wretched thing, though with less disgust and more nonchalance. He nudged the knot of briars with the toe of his boot. The vines withdrew, scraping against the packed dirt of the path as they went, leaving the weasel’s corpse behind with its serpentine form still twisted mid-convulsion. Shrike picked it up by the scruff of the neck embedded with broken thorns and cast an appraising look over it.
“Does this happen often?” Wren asked, rather than the question which had occurred to him whilst he stared at the strangled corpse and tried not to imagine what the briars might do to a larger foe.
“Now and again. They seek the hens. Sometimes they think they’re clever and burrow under the vines. Then the roots ensnare them.”
“Oh,” said Wren.
Shrike glanced from the weasel to Wren. “Does it trouble you?”
Wren wished he knew how to appear less transparent than a window-pane. “No,” he lied.
Shrike looked to the weasel again with a more considering gaze. “It’s a good omen. The flesh will feed the soil, and the hens will reap the harvest from the garden. Those who attack us will only make us stronger.”
And gazing into the soft dark eyes beneath the stern and heavy brow, Wren almost believed it.
If nothing else, it emboldened Wren enough to twine his arm through Shrike’s and follow him back into the cottage—even as the weasel’s corpse yet dangled from Shrike’s other hand.
The sun had just begun to sink below the canopy when a call rang through the wood from beyond the cottage door.
“Hail and well met, Butcher!”
Wren, seated upon the bed with his sketch-book across his knees, shared a glance with Shrike at his work-bench.
“Nell?” Wren guessed.
“Aye,” said Shrike, and went for the door.
Wren shut the cover on his drawing of Shrike at work just as Nell strode into the cottage.
“Thought I’d give you fair warning,” she announced with a grin. “Didn’t want to meet you at sword’s-point again.”
As she spoke, another figure entered the cottage in her wake—one small enough to remain hidden ‘til now in the shadow of her slender frame. Smaller even than Wren. And yet not unfamiliar to his eye.
“You remember the ambassador,” Nell continued, gesturing towards her guest with a careless wave.
“Good morrow, my lords,” chirped the spiderweb fae from behind his mask.
Shrike balked—a small gesture on his part, the slightest backward jerk of the head that might have gone unnoticed on any other man, and which lasted for the merest instant, but a balk nonetheless, and one which Wren’s keen interest readily perceived. He recovered quickly and nodded in reply. “Well met.”
The ambassador smiled. “Nell tells me you require the services of a duelling master?”
Shrike nodded again.
The ambassador swept down into his extravagant wrist-twirling bow. “Allow me to offer my expertise for your consideration.”
“And what do you ask of me in return?” said Shrike.
“I would beg a boon, my lord,” the ambassador continued. “Of your companion.”
Wren looked to Shrike, who appeared no less astonished than Wren felt. Still, if it would gain them the knowledge they sought, Wren saw no objection. “What would you ask of me, then?”
“You are a clerk by trade?” asked the ambassador.
“I am.” Wren wondered where the ambassador had learnt that—Nell, he supposed—and if he ought to explain how the profession had changed since the fourteenth century.
The ambassador did not give him the opportunity. “You have the gift of letters?”
“I do,” said Wren.
