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something in between that, according to the boys, allowing them longer leaps and slow, directed falls. They can grip a short blade, too. Some other magic is upon them, or else they are not true kenku at all.”
    The council members prattled on again, displayed some of their old panic, but Londih stood firm. He let them continue for a short while, then banged the Crook again. “What else might they be, Orick? Some new beast even you know nothing about?”
    “I do not know, Honored One. Perhaps—”
    Before Orick could answer, the door to the council chambers opened again, and in strode the one person Londih had not expected, had not even thought to wait for. A man who, while officially a member of the council, had not joined its deliberations in two decades, not since shortly after Londih had become Crook of Haven.
    There, in the dust-filled shaft of light, stood the Old Stargazer, Defender of Haven, come down from his mountain home.
    The sight of the old man should have filled Londih with courage, but it did not. Instead it turned hisveins, sent a shiver of ice up his spine, cold as the stars Londih had once seen in the old man’s eyes, all those years before, when first he dared breach the threshold of the observatory’s forbidden rooms. He shuffled slowly, the old man. His body was stiff. That was not new, though, and not cause for alarm. All of Haven knew the man was ancient—no one living had ever known him to be anything other than a white-haired, thick-bearded, deeply wrinkled man—but something had changed about him, and it took some moments before Londih realized what it was that shocked him. It was the old man’s eyes. They were wild and peaked beneath his brow. They were, at the same time, emptier. They were the eyes of someone desperate and slipping away. The stars he had seen there when he was a child—the suns—their light had gone out of the Old Stargazer, and only its absence remained.

    Despite the coming of the Old Stargazer, the meeting did not change its tone, did not move more quickly toward any resolution. Many of the younger council members did not even remember the days when the old man had been a part of daily life in the village, when he had walked among the people regularly enough that he knew some of their names,something he most certainly no longer knew, unless he somehow scried upon the people from his tower. Still, he had continued to defend Haven from the observatory, or at least Londih assumed he did, as they had experienced no catastrophes, no attacks, not in the many years since his withdrawal.
    When exactly had it happened? Londih could not remember, but it had been many years. Londih remembered when the Old Stargazer would come down for early morning walks along the farmer’s terraces, how he would help himself to the apples growing there, how the villagers never complained, thankful for what they owed him. He had lived in Haven for generations, had outlived their fathers and their fathers’ fathers even as he kept them safe, first with warding spells and then with more direct magic, when the times called for it. It was said he could call a storm of fire with a gesture, a shattering of the strongest armor with a whisper. He could dissipate a party of road agents as a man blew out a candle. He could turn back an invading army with a wave. In return for his protection, Haven kept him fed and his home in good repair, whenever he asked it.
    In return, they gave him some share of their crops. In return, those aware of what he meant to Haven left fresh flowers on his fence’s gate. In return, theysewed him robes, and then later clothes for Nergei, his adopted son.
    Nergei. Londih was not exactly sure when the Old Stargazer had begun his withdrawal, did not know it by day and date, because he had not been watching for it. Still, he had a good idea. Most likely it was the day the Old Stargazer had returned from the woods not with a basket of herbs and mushrooms, fit for his alchemy, but