“But you will rejoin us,” Nell pressed.
“Aye,” Shrike conceded.
Nell seemed satisfied. She nodded to Shrike, then gave Wren a bow whose sweeping arms appeared somewhat mocking. With that, she turned away from them both and vanished into the streaming crowd.
“What masks remain?” Wren asked Shrike.
“None but one,” Shrike replied.
“And for whom?”
Shrike glanced over Wren’s head at the surrounding crowd.
Wren turned to follow his eye.
A rag-and-bone seller across the way boasted a mighty stack of blood-stained broadsides several feet taller and many years older than Wren himself. The piles of bones surrounding it proved even more varied.
The booth beside the rag-and-bone seller held still greater interest for Wren. Enough clockwork to keep all of London in time whirred and ticked together in a profusion of brass. Yet while a great many pocket-watches hung from the surrounding branches, they were outnumbered by the multitude of queer instruments Wren couldn’t recognize. And what watch-faces he did see didn’t seem to keep the same twelve hours as his own watch. One particular delicate contraption of minuscule glass globes suspended in concentric wires seemed to track the phases of the moon. The purpose of the clockwork fish with shimmering brass scales swimming up and down inside the confines of a bell jar, Wren couldn’t begin to fathom.
Between the two booths wandered a fae who might have looked almost human, save their pointed ears, their iridescent blue-black-violet feathers instead of hair, and the glistening membrane sliding sideways across their eyes beneath their lids every time they blinked.
But when Wren turned back to Shrike, he found Shrike gazing down at him and him alone.
“Follow me,” said Shrike, and strode off.
Wren followed him. It wasn’t difficult. Shrike carved a path through the crowd as a sickle through wheat. Fae fell away before his steps, leaving plenty of room for Wren to scurry along in his wake. Their stares made the nape of his neck prickle. He ignored it.
Shrike led the way all through the winding arcade of the Moon Market. The tapestries and awnings and flickering will-o’-th’-wisps dwindled as they went. Then they ceased altogether, and Wren and Shrike stood alone in the dark forest beneath the cracked-porcelain moon.
Only the distant echoes of the market’s din broke through the wintry silence. Wren peered into the shadows, straining his eyes to see what fae would emerge to claim Shrike’s final mask.
The slight creak of leather against leather reached Wren’s ear. He whirled towards it. Silver streams of moonlight limned Shrike beside him and showed his satchel open, with his hand delving into it. He withdrew the final mask still wrapped in its protective cloth. His deft fingers plucked away the folds to reveal a face formed of ivy, with vines pouring forth from its eyes and mouth. Only Wren’s prior knowledge of Shrike’s craft gave any hint of its leather construction, for his eyes beheld delicate pointed leaves glistening faintly green, indistinguishable from those running over the tree-roots beneath his tread.
And Shrike held it out to Wren.
Wren stared up at him in disbelief. “For me?”
Shrike smiled.
Wren took the mask with reverence. It seemed almost too beautiful to behold, much less grasp in his own unworthy hands. To think Shrike had crafted it for him in particular…
“Thank you,” Wren said, though the words hardly felt sufficient.
All the moreso when he glanced up to find Shrike delving into his satchel once again. He withdrew another parcel. This time, he held it out to Wren still swathed in a protective layer of silk.
Wren handed back his mask for Shrike to hold as he took the second parcel in bewilderment. “What’s this?”
Shrike gave him a look that bade him unwrap it.
The silk alone was precious. What lay beneath it proved far more precious still. The smooth fabric flowed across Wren’s palms and gave way to leather of equal softness, gathered together in an intricate Celtic knot at one end, and falling away into a hem like the ragged edge of autumn leaves. Over-turned, its folds parted to reveal a cunningly-crafted tome as tall as Wren’s hand and as thick as his thumb. Its blank pages fluttered in the evening breeze.
Only then did Wren recognize what he held. He’d never seen its like outside of antiquarian collections, and even amongst those it proved rare indeed. A gyrdel-book of the kind which might have hung from the belt of a medieval monk in the days of knights. For Wren, a sketch-book in a leather shroud. Except its pages didn’t bear the rough texture of rag-paper. Beneath Wren’s fingertips, they felt soft and smooth as moonbeams.
“Vellum?” Wren breathed, hardly able to believe it. He glanced up at Shrike again just in time to see him affirm his guess with a solemn nod. “When did you make this?”
Shrike’s modest smile appeared all the more handsome by silvery moonlight. “While you were in London.”
Wren hardly knew how to even begin thanking him. The sheer beauty of the craft took his breath away.
