'Shame you didn't think further,' Granny went on.
'Mistress?'
'There's the bits of more than one egg here.'
'Mistress?'
'Hodgesaargh,' said Granny patiently, 'this phoenix laid more than one egg.'
'What? But it can't! According to mythology-' Oats said.
'Oh, mythology,' said Granny. 'Mythology's just the folktales of people who won 'cos they had bigger swords. They're just the people to spot the finer points of ornithology, are they? Anyway, one of anything ain't going to last for very long, is it? Firebirds have got enemies, same as everything else. Give me a hand up, Mister Oats. How many birds in the mews, Hodgesaargh?'
The falconer looked at his fingers for a moment.
'Fifty.'
'Counted 'em lately?'
They stood and watched while he walked from post to post. Then they stood and watched while he walked back and counted them again. Then he spent some time looking at his fingers.
'Fifty-one?' said Granny helpfully.
'I don't understand it, mistress.'
'You'd better count them by types, then.'
This produced a count of nineteen lappet-faced worriers where there should have been eighteen.
'Perhaps one flew in because it saw the others,' said Oats. 'Like pigeons.'
'It doesn't work like that, sir,' said the falconer.
'One of 'em won't be tethered,' said Granny. 'Trust me.'
They found it at the back, slightly smaller than the other worriers, hanging meekly from its perch.
Fewer birds could sit more meekly than the Lancre wowhawk, or lappet-faced worrier, a carnivore permanently on the lookout for the vegetarian option. It spent most of its time asleep in any case, but when forced to find food it tended to sit on a branch out of the wind somewhere and wait for something to die. When in the mews the worriers would initially perch like other birds and then, talons damped around the pole, doze off peacefully upside down. Hodgesaargh bred them because they were found only in Lancre and he liked the plumage, but all reputable falconers agreed that for hunting purposes the only way you could reliably bring down prey with a wowhawk was by using it in a slingshot.
Granny reached out towards it.
'I'll fetch you a glove,' said Hodgesaargh, but she waved him away.
The bird hopped on to her wrist.
Granny gasped, and little threads of green and blue burned like marsh gas along her arm for a moment.
'Are you all right?' said Oats.
'Never been better. I'll need this bird, Hodgesaargh.'
'It's dark, mistress.'
'That won't matter. But it'll need to be hooded.'
'Oh, I never hood wowhawks, mistress. They're never any trouble.'
'This bird... this bird,' said Granny, 'is a bird I reckon no one's ever seen before. Hood it.'