SOMETIMES IT PAYS TO BE TRICKY Damn and blast! That rancid piece of excrement, Carter, has had her ransacked out of Clancy! Tricky returns to her cottage to find it turned upside down. An action that means she’s got three days to leave the district or face punishment. Randolf Carter, head of the district, is spreading lies and suspicion about her kind, making life difficult – it’s not the first time he’s had her ousted. But it wasn’t just an ordinary ransacking; they were searching for something. Using her gifts, Tricky traces the energy left by the men and spies another creature’s among it: a jackdaw. Swift and wily, it’s pinched her precious gemstone, a piece of black Obsidian. But at whose bidding? Communicating with birds is a rare ability and she knows all who possess it. Tricky wants her stone back, but coming up against people as backhanded as Carter won’t be easy, especially when he’s got one of her kind in his employ. But she’ll handle it, oh yes she will. She just has to be careful and a little bit tricky. Good thing she is then, isn’t it? Adept at working with energy and time as well as communicating with trees, Tricky is lured into something bigger than ownership of a gemstone, and finds out, in this the first of Tricky’s tales, that it pays to be a little bit tricky.