The Master of Ravens had sent Maggie into the world of Men to learn what Faery could not teach her.
Under another name, Maylee Fox, she had entered the wilderness of human affairs, carrying the memory of a compact with the Ravenqueen and the suspicion that the world was coming apart at its seams.
She had not expected Gotham, a grand experiment in bankruptcy, corruption, and human endurance.
Maylee survived among its homeless children until Sister Bridget of Our Lady delivered her to Homestead, that improbable refuge on the border.
There, among bread ovens, broken machines, and lessons in acrobatics, she learned the useful art of appearing ordinary.
But Maylee was no ordinary girl.
The lighthouse signals were intended for a watcher who served a power older than the machinery he commanded.
The body was merely a disguise; its destruction had interrupted a transfer from somewhere beyond the ordinary world.
The black-clad figure found hanging in the woods had been another messenger, carrying in its head fragments of a map—and a name that refused to remain written.
Herr Claus had been searching for that same name.
Beneath Gotham’s North Tower, Lady Blackbird examined a brass cylinder recovered by her shadowrunners.
Its delicate inscriptions resembled neither engineering notation nor any known language, yet one symbol showed a fox enclosed within a circle of ravens.
“Maylee Fox,” said AoQi, the boy in blue.
Lady Blackbird raised an eyebrow. “An associate of yours?”
“An associate of circumstances.
She once interrupted a machine that was trying to enter our world.
Unfortunately, it remembered the interruption.”
The shadowrunners exchanged glances.
They had encountered machines with grudges before, although rarely machines powered by supernatural resentment.
The boy explained that the dragon’s heart and the Clockwork Golem beneath Gotham were responding to the same signal that had animated Maylee’s mechanical pursuers.
The Mirror of Unnaming was the instrument through which their hidden master sought to erase the boundaries between worlds.
Lady Blackbird understood at last why her commission had been so carefully worded.
Far below, two hearts beat in unison.
And somewhere in the dark, the Fox heard the call of the Ravenqueen.
ping:
