“No,” he said. “But . . . hurry.”
I hurried. Even with the pixies lighting my way, I descended those steps so fast that I nearly fell several times, catching myself on the bannister, driving splinters into the soft meat of my palm. The farther down I went, the farther down the pixies went, the light from their bodies revealing more and more of my surroundings. There were the shelves against the walls, packed with bins of potatoes and parsnips and onions. The faint scent of Amandine’s magic hung in the air around them; these were probably the same staples as had been down here when I was a child. There were the racks of preserves. Nothing had changed.
If nothing had changed, then the table at the center of the room was still there. I hurried toward where I remembered it being, the light spreading out before me like honey, and all I had was hope and fear, mixing together in my throat until I could no longer swallow.
The light reached the table. Two cages made of twisted briars rested there, far enough from the edge that there was no real risk of them falling over, even if their occupants had possessed the strength and will to throw themselves against the walls. I could see movement from inside, but it was slight, and the light was dim enough that I couldn’t tell which was which.
“Tybalt!” I had thought I was running before. I had been, apparently, wrong. Now I virtually flew, flinging myself bodily across the intervening space to grab the closer of the two cages. The thorns bit deep into my hands, stinging and tearing. Amandine wouldn’t have considered that a problem when she was constructing her portable prisons: after all, she healed even faster than I normally did. She had lost touch with the fact that other people could be hurt.
There was no latch. Furious, I let go of the cage and grabbed the silver knife from my belt, using it to hack at the bars. They refused to yield. The knife twisted in my hand, hilt slippery with blood. I shoved it back into its sheath and grabbed the iron knife instead, slashing at the cage.
The bars gave way as easily as air, charring and curling away from the bite of iron. I dropped the knife onto the table and pulled the cage door open, making no effort to avoid the thorns.
Huddled at the back of the cage, the large black bird it contained looked at me with avian mistrust, her wings as close to mantled as the narrow confines of her prison would allow. As I watched, she opened her beak and croaked weakly, trying to warn me off.
“Jazz,” I said, relieved and disappointed in the same measure. Freeing her first meant when I freed Tybalt, I could hold him tight, and never need to let him go. “Jazz, honey, it’s me. Come on. I’m here to free you.”
This time, her croak was louder, and more obviously a threat. She hunched her shoulders, fluffing out the feathers on her throat and head, trying to make herself look huge. Some of the fear that had faded came surging back.
“Jazz. It’s October. Don’t you know me?”
A caw, harsh and angry.
“Oh, oak and ash. Quentin, we’ve got a problem.”
“What?”
I turned to look at him. Jazz was still compacted in the back of her cage. She wasn’t going to fly away. Yet. “I don’t think Mom fed them, or watered them, or let them have any light for . . .” How many days had it actually been? When I added in the time dilation of the Babylon Road, it was almost impossible to say. “For days,” I finished finally. “She doesn’t know who I am.”
Which meant Tybalt might not know either. Inappropriate laughter clawed at the back of my throat, threatening to rise up and choke me. Everything we’d gone through, everything we’d done to find August’s way home, and now the people I’d been trying to save could be as lost as she was, and with nothing as simple as a bargain with the sea witch to blame. Magic can be reversed. Trauma isn’t that simple.
“Watch her,” I said, picking up my knife and shoving it into my belt. “I’m going to check on Tybalt.”
I didn’t even have to touch the cage. As soon as I reached for it his paw lashed out, claws drawing four lines of pain down the back of my hand and adding more blood to the mess already there. I closed my eyes.
“Damn you, Mother,” I whispered. Then, careful of the claws, I opened my eyes and picked up the cage by the handle. Thorns dug into my palms. I didn’t care. “Quentin, can you get Jazz, without leaving her room to fly away? May will never forgive me if we lose her.”
“Of course,” he said. He was already moving to do as I had told him when he asked, “Where are we taking them?”
There was really only one option. The Luidaeg’s back door was too far, and there was no way we could carry two cages full of angry, uncomprehending shapeshifter through the swamp without losing one or both of them. The mortal world was out for similar reasons.
“Shadowed Hills,” I said. “Maybe Jin can help.”
“Okay.” Quentin didn’t argue. He was a good squire. Better than I deserved, some days.
The pixies lit our way as we carried the cages out of the root cellar and back into the kitchen. I only looked back once, checking to see that Quentin had Jazz contained. He’d removed his jacket and was holding it over the front of the cage. Birds don’t like the dark. If she was really thinking like a bird, she wasn’t going to try to get through the fabric. It was a simple solution, but a good one, and it might be enough to keep her from breaking free.
May would never forgive me if I let her girlfriend fly off to live out the rest of her days as a raven—and those days would be very, very long. A transformed skinshifter is as ageless as any pureblood. Jazz could remain a raven for centuries, unable to remember what had been done to her, unable to change back.
That wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t going to let it.
There was no sign of either Amandine or August as we carried the cages around the tower and down the garden path to the gate. The door remained closed, making it clear that we were no longer welcome here, if we ever really had been in the first place. This wasn’t my home. Maybe it never had been.
Tybalt hissed and snarled and threw his weight against the bars as we walked across the meadow beyond the tower. His fur was thick enough to shield him from most of the thorns, but every so often one of them would manage to break through to the skin, and his yowling would take on a note of genuine pain. Then he’d go right back to thrashing, trying to get me to drop the cage and let him go.