Gisane laughed. “You’ll have to forgive her, my lord,” shesaid, placing a hand on Mari’s shoulder. “She’s never met anyone so grand before. We’ll not forget your kindness.”
With a final wave and farewell, we turned to leave, leading Fane (and Baldbeak, who was perched on her flank) back to the road.
“You made quite an impression,” I said.
“I suppose I should start planning for my wedding,” he said soberly.
“She’s six,” I said flatly.
“Then I have at least twenty years to ready myself.”
“And your bride-to-be is half your height and missing both her front teeth. An impressive conquest indeed.”
We rode a little way, then stopped to transform ourselves into the people we needed to be at Spire. Patrick wedged a little mirror into the crook of a tree branch and worked a bar of soap into a lather. I watched as he shaved his neat beard carefully and shrugged on his impeccable black coat. The motley one that I had repaired went back in the saddlebag.
“There is a dress for you in my pack,” he said. “So that you look the part when we reach Spire.”
“Adress?How on earth …”
“I had it made in Quell. I had hoped I would persuade you to travel with me, and I like to be prepared.”
“How do I know it will fit?”
“I have an eye for measurements.”
“And what am I to make of that statement?”
“Make of it whatever you will. Just try it.”
I ducked into a patch of bushes to change. To my eternal annoyance, he was right. The dress fit almost perfectly. When I emerged, he watched as the Hair dressed itself, twisting and folding until it had created an elegant updo, without any interference from me at all. It took longer than usual and was moresluggish, with the dye, but it still managed to arrange itself into an approximation of respectability.
“Remarkable,” said Patrick.
Showing off, the Hair loosed one tendril to fall along my neck and collarbone, curling slightly. It caught the morning sun and gleamed like a pint of dark beer, a little of its red shining through the black. Patrick reached out and took it gently, giving it a tug.
“So lovely,” he said. Then, glancing quickly at my face: “The sunlight.”
I made a face. “It looks like someone emptied a bucket of pitch over my head.”
“Well,” he said, businesslike again, “no one will recognize you, from a distance at least. Yes”—he took a step back to examine me—“I think we have done rather well. You look the very picture of a scholarly young lady.”
He turned to Baldbeak. “There’s not much we can do to make a giant raven look respectable,” he said. “We’ll have to aim for ‘amusingly eccentric accessory.’ The rich often have such things.”
“You speak as if you aren’t one of them.”
“I wasn’t always,” he said. “But I have studied them for a long time. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some ravens to talk to.”
Patrick lifted his hand, and the air changed. I felt it before I saw anything—like a ripple beneath the skin of the sky. Then came the beating of wings. At first, just one raven swooped down. Then another. And another. A dozen of them came in a rush, gathering from every direction. Within moments, he was surrounded: the ground around him alive with them, the air churning as more spiraled down.
Flock, said Baldbeak happily.
Patrick turned in the midst of them, and the birds wheeled with him. His lips moved—words too low for me to catch. The ravens listened, their glossy heads tilting. One by one, he touched them lightly—on the wing, the breast, the beak—hisvoice changing with each touch, as though giving a different command. Then the whole mass took flight.
Patrick lowered his arms slowly. For a long moment he stood there, still as stone, the faint wind tugging at his cloak. Then he glanced back at me. His hazel eyes were unreadable. “Where are they going?” I asked.
“Oh, here and there,” he said evasively.
We reached our destination in little more than an hour after that. The farmland gave way to little hamlets, which started to run together the closer we got to the town. Spire itself was a gracious town of yellow stone, the monastery at its outskirts ornate, but not ostentatiously so.
