I took his hand and pushed it back into his pocket. Then I put my arms around his neck again, stared him straight in the eye, and said, “Jerith, I am really, truly glad to see you. Okay?”

He looked away. “You’re annoyed I don’t believe you. That’s all I hear.”

“Then your goddamned parrot is broken, Jerith! The stupid thing broadcasts a tiny bit of annoyance and completely ignores the relief I feel...”

I stopped shouting, started thinking.

“Whoa, slow down,” Jerith said. “Your thoughts are all jumbling together — ”

I interrupted him. “After Roland collapsed, Alex felt sorry for him, but Roland couldn’t hear it. And you can’t hear how glad I am to see you. They don’t broadcast good thoughts, Jerith! Little irritations come through loud and clear, but not the positive stuff.”

“Lyra, that doesn’t make sense,” he replied, shaking his head. “It’s hard enough to believe parrots evolved the ability to broadcast thoughts. I mean, there’s no evolutionary advantage to their kind of telepathy, is there? Caproche’s animal life is so primitive, other species scarcely have thoughts. So don’t ask me to make another leap of faith and believe parrot telepathy is selective. Evolution is strained to the breaking point as it is.”

“Then screw evolution,” I said. “The little buggers didn’t evolve. They were summoned from hell.”

“Come on...”

“Don’t dismiss me! The things only eat Silk, right? Silk is a weapon, Jerith, you said so yourself. Eating Silk is like dining on dynamite. If they were normal animals, they’d eat grass or something.”

Jerith sighed. “Yes, it’s unusual they only eat alien plant matter. But that scarcely means they’re demons.”

“Okay, they’re aliens then,” I said. “They’re aliens brought in during the war, the same time as the Silk. Come to think of it, Alex and I found a carrying crate for them earlier in the evening. One side for Silk, the other side for the parrots. A one-two punch: a biological weapon and a psychological one.”