Shrike hopped along the windowsill to find a more opportune vantage point. Most of the room remained as he’d seen it when he’d overturned it in his hunt. Now, however, a trunk sat at the foot of the bed, its lid open to reveal a surfeit of white linen shirts and silk handkerchiefs in many hues. Perhaps Wren’s manuscripts lay beneath them. If so, Felix was careless beyond measure—yet Shrike hardly expected more from him.
A latch clicked. A hinge creaked. The bedroom door swung into view. From behind it emerged Tolhurst carrying a tray laden with teapot and cups. Wren had brought similar pieces to Blackthorn over the course of his evening visits.
Tolhurst laid the tea-things out for his nephew with almost as much care as Wren had done for Shrike. Felix received them with far less gratitude than Shrike had felt. Tolhurst, all smiles, spoke too softly for Shrike to hear from the other side of the glass with feathers over his ears. Felix likewise muttered his replies with a disinterested scowl.
Then Tolhurst, still smiling, turned away from his nephew toward the window.
Shrike braced himself to take wing.
But Tolhurst took no notice of the little bird perched on the window-sill as the threw the curtains wide—much to his nephew’s chagrin.
“…ghost in the castle,” Tolhurst concluded, his speech becoming clearer to Shrike as he drew nearer to the window.
Felix, one arm thrown over his eyes to block the sunlight, made a reply Shrike couldn’t hear.
“A medieval spirit haunting the ruin,” Tolhurst continued as he tied back the curtains. Perhaps he hoped his nephew would benefit from the sight of the quaint town and its surrounding countryside. Shrike doubted Felix, who according to Wren loved nothing more than urban vice, would find much to sustain him in Rochester. “Sighted in the tower the very day you arrived. Not a knight—a yeoman in a furred cloak and feathered cap. Perhaps some poor soul murdered in the siege. Or more likely a trick of the light. Still, you cannot now say nothing of interest has occurred in Rochester this week!”
Shrike couldn’t catch Felix’s reply. He doubted it came in the affirmative.
His nephew’s poor attitude did not deter Tolhurst’s smile as he returned to the bedside. From the nightstand he took up a small bottle. While shrike couldn’t read the letters printed on the paper label, he recognized the shape and pattern as something like the laudanum Wren had left for him after the Winter Solstice. Tolhurst dispensed several drops into a teacup, poured tea over it, and passed it to his nephew, who drank the resulting concoction with a grimace. Shrike couldn’t blame him. Tolhurst had given Felix a far greater dose than Wren had given Shrike. The tincture couldn’t taste anything short of bitter. Shrike supposed mortals, being weaker, required more medicine than fae to withstand the trials of a misadventure like Felix had endured in the Court of Hidden Folk.
As Felix sipped his uncle’s brew, Tolhurst looked to the books scattered across the counterpane. He picked up one in particular, examined its spine, then flipped it over to leaf through its pages. His brows rose. He closed the book and set it down again with a few words Shrike couldn’t make out. Whatever they were, Felix rolled his eyes at them.
Tolhurst took up another book from the nightstand and held it out to Felix. After a long moment, Felix accepted it in the manner of one accepting the gift of a live viper or a dead rat. Tolhurst seemed accustomed to this as well, for his nephew’s reluctance did nothing to strike the beatific smile from his otherwise unremarkable features. With a few words more—to which Felix did not reply—Tolhurst left the room and shut the door after him.
With the nephew now free from his uncle’s scrutiny, Shrike eagerly awaited any hint of where Felix had hidden Wren’s manuscripts.
Felix continued glaring down at the book Tolhurst had given him.
Shrike, ever seeking a better vantage point to examine the room, flitted from one end of the window-sill to the other.
Felix’s head shot up like a hart who’d caught the hunter’s scent. His ice-blue eyes fixed on Shrike. With greater speed and strength than Shrike would have assumed possible given his weakened state, Felix drew back his arm and hurled the book at the window.
Shrike leapt off the sill just as the book’s spine struck the glazing bars. A single pane cracked. Through it, as Shrike fluttered ‘round the window, he glimpsed the gold embossing in the book’s leather cover. While he could not read the letters along its spine, he recognized the symbol on its front—a cross like those adorning certain points in the cathedral.
It seemed prudent for the moment to abandon Felix to his dissipation. Shrike swooped away beneath the Gatehouse arch to the other side of Tolhurst’s rooms. The window he found there looked in on the front chamber with the hearth. The desk stood beneath that very window. Tolhurst sat at it now. He had his head bent over neat stacks of papers, absorbed in concentration. Either he had not heard his nephew’s outburst, or he had already heard so many similar outbursts that the latest one did not prove worthy of his attention.
Shrike likewise took a great interest in the papers. But no sooner had he alighted on the windowsill than he realized they were not Wren’s manuscripts. They were simply more of the same dots arranged on rows he’d found on his first search of the gatehouse. Evidently they formed the bulk of Tolhurst’s craft. For a music master, as Wren claimed Tolhurst was, Shrike saw precious little evidence of music and heard still less.
Chimes echoing from the cathedral bells drew Shrike’s notice to how near the sun had sunk toward the horizon. He took wing again, this time north-west, and kept on over and past the River Medway. London lay scarcely thirty miles off by the crow road—as Nell so oft said—and a shrike might fly just as swift. Certain it was easier than navigating the sea between realms from iron to iron again.
Shrike reached Hyde Park just as crimson sunset began turning to purple twilight. The copse of trees surrounding the toadstool ring sufficed to disguise his transformation from prying mortal eyes. Then he stretched his legs and strode to Achilles to await his Wren.
Only to find his Wren awaited him.
Like in the cathedral, Wren didn’t notice Shrike’s approach. Shrike supposed the encroaching darkness and eternal fog didn’t help matters. He cleared his throat as he drew up to the statue.
Wren flinched—then relaxed as his eyes fell on Shrike and welcome relief broke out across his freckled features. “There you are! I was worried something had happened.”
“No,” Shrike said honestly. “Nothing happened.”
Wren took up his rapid pace toward the toadstool ring. Shrike fell into step beside him—at arm’s length. Though their eyes met many times, as Shrike didn’t like to take his eyes off Wren now that he might have his fill of the sight of him, and Wren kept stealing glances back, they didn’t speak again until they’d fallen through the realms-between-realms and stood in the Grove of Gates.
“What kept you?” Wren asked in a tone of curiosity rather than accusation.
Shrike told him all he’d seen, or failed to see, in Rochester. They set out for Blackthorn as he spoke.
“What might Felix read to incur his uncle’s disapproval?” Shrike asked at the conclusion of his tale.
