"No one else has a stronger motivation to see the story completed, and - have you seen the sky lately. The Raven is obviously somehow involved in what's been happening."

"What about the sky?"

"You haven't noticed a sudden increase in the number of crows?"

"No..."

Fakir looks up.

The number of crows isn't exactly overwhelming on this corner of campus - there are a few hanging on various buildings. It's far more than usual, but it probably only looks particularly weird if you're a birdwatcher or the sort of person who has decided that corvids are The Enemy.

"They were congregating around the girls' dorm yesterday," he says, mentally counting the number of crows he can see from here. Sixteen or seventeen.

"That's... weird?" he guesses.

"It's evidence that the Raven's agents are closer than we might think. Come to think of it, I don't know that we have any reason to believe that Princess Tutu hasn't been serving the Raven's interests this whole time."

"No," he says. "Have you, like, met her."

"Not personally."

"Well, I'm pretty sure she's not serving the Raven's interests on purpose. Because she's a stupidly nice magic ballet princess."

"People aren't always what they appear."

"I'm not a good person but I know one when I see one!"

"I'm sure."

He scowls.

"Anyway. Let me know if you see Mytho."

"Fine. You too."

"Fine."

He walks off to continue his search.

And Serafin goes off to find Duck and report what he learned.

"Hey! He's not in the library or the practice halls or any of the classrooms or the park."

She did check all those places. She runs pretty fast when she wants to.

"Fakir hasn't seen him either. And he says there's a bunch more crows around than usual lately and they've been hanging around the girls' dorm. And he thinks Princess Tutu might be working with the Raven."

"Well, we know the last part's wrong. He's right about the - are they crows? I can never tell crows and ravens apart. Can you tell them apart, or are they different words for the same thing? Anyway, I was gonna check Rue's room when she wasn't in class, but then there were all these crows around it."

"Maybe they're after her. Maybe she's working with them."

"Rue wouldn't try to destroy the world! If that's what the Raven wants to do, I'm actually sort of unclear on that. But I guess she could be... well, we don't know right now. ...are there any places besides campus and the dorms that have a bunch of crows swarming around them?"

"That's a good question. Let's find out."

"We could check the whole town street by street but I think what we want for this is height - d'you think the church just lets people climb the tower whenever they want?"