“The Page of Frozen Waters commands the crows,” said Niamh. Avery, who had almost forgotten she was there, turned to look at her. All her attention was for the Crow Girl. “She tells them where to go and what to do, and they serve as her eyes and her spies, all across the Up-and-Under. Are you spying for her still?”
“No,” whispered the Crow Girl. “Not for days and days and days, not since before the Queen of Wands went—” Her eyes widened and she clapped her hands over her mouth, like she could somehow cram the words back inside.
“Since the Queen of Wands went where?” asked Avery.
The Crow Girl lowered her hands. “Missing,” she said miserably. “Since the Queen of Wands went missing. Everyone blamed everyone else, and the King of Cups told the Page of Frozen Waters to see what she could see, and so she let the crows fly, she let us all fly, and not all of us … not all of us came back. Some were eaten, yes, and some were lost, and some found another way.”
“The Queen of Swords,” said Niamh.
The Crow Girl nodded. “She can cut old bonds. She cut me free, and all she asked was that I stay and serve her, be a crow in her court, and not in anybody else’s. But I was and am and will be a crow still, because some things can’t be taken back, and so she doesn’t mind when I join children on quests, or steal fruit from her orchards. It’s having me, not taming me, that matters. I’m had, I truly am.”
“But where’s Zib?” asked Avery. “She’s not with the Queen of Wands. She’s lost and she fell and no one made an ice slide to catch her, she didn’t have a ruler to break her fall. She could be hurt. We have to find her.”
“No one has to do anything,” said the Crow Girl. “You could learn how to be happy without her, I know you could.”
Avery blinked at her slowly, like her words made no sense at all. Of course he could be happy without Zib. He wasn’t entirely sure he knew how to be happy with her. They’d only been together since the wall, and most of their time in the Up-and-Under had been strange and frightening and not what he’d call “happy” at all. Zib wasn’t where his happiness was harbored.
But she was his friend, still, and she’d gone out of her way to help him, even when he hadn’t been very nice to her, even when it would have been easier for her to walk away. She could be happy here in the Up-and-Under, where things only made as much sense as they absolutely had to, where beasts could talk and fruit could taste like anything it wanted. Maybe if they couldn’t be happy together, they could be unhappy together, and maybe … maybe that was just as good. As long as they weren’t alone.
“It doesn’t matter whether I’m happy or not,” he said. “I have to find her.”
The Crow Girl shivered, shaking herself so that the feathers of her dress and in her hair puffed out. It should have looked silly. Somehow, it just looked scared. “Then I’ll help you,” she said.
“I won’t,” said Niamh. They both turned. The drowned girl looked at them with weary eyes, spreading her empty hands in front of herself. “I can’t. The Page of Frozen Waters is there, and all my ice can’t touch her, because there’s nothing in her left to freeze. She’ll catch me again, catch me and cage me, and this time, I won’t be able to get away. I’ll mark the path from the king’s protectorate back to the improbable road, and I’ll wait for you there, but I won’t help you. Please don’t ask that of me.”
“I won’t,” said Avery, who knew what it was to be afraid. “Only be safe, if you can, and we’ll see you when all this is over. All three of us will see you.”
“I wish you well,” said Niamh, and stepped into the rushing water of the river, and was gone.
Avery looked at the Crow Girl. “I’m frightened,” he said.
“As am I,” she said. Then she smiled, big and bright and earnest. “But that’s a good thing! Frightened means you’ve the sense to be afraid, and it’s cowards who get things done, more often than not. Now. She’s your friend, and part of your quest, like it or not. Which way would she go?”
Avery hesitated, thinking as hard as he could about Zib. He knew distressingly little about her, and maybe that was reasonable—it wasn’t as if they’d ever met before, or like they’d had time to spare since their journey began. Everything had been place to place, and no pauses for care or comfort or the trading of stories. But maybe that was part of the answer. Zib liked to move. Of course she hadn’t stayed still and waited for them to come and find her. He’d pushed her away, away from him. He’d left her vulnerable to the Page of Frozen Waters. She’d fallen, and then she’d gone somewhere.
Somewhere else.
If she had landed in the water—and he didn’t want to think about her landing in the water, didn’t want to think about her falling that far without anything to break her fall and hitting the surface of the river hard enough to break something else—she would have been swept along with it, away from the cliffs. If she had somehow managed to avoid the water, and avoid hurting herself too badly to move, she would probably have traveled in
