Fie scowled, baleful, at the dirt. “Aught else you want to tell me? Tatterhelm’s got a meaner cousin? The king’s really two asps in a fancy robe?”
“I still don’t know what Viimo meant about ghasts,” Tavin said.
“Me either.” Fie’s gut twisted. Pa had taught her how to call Swan teeth just on principle, for they had but a largely useless few. Still, in the handful of times she’d blinked through the life in a dead Swan’s spark, she’d heard no whisper of ghasts. And that, like so many things, bode ill.
Grim silence settled over them once more as Fie plaited a whole new set of troubles into the ones on her head.
Then Tavin’s voice broke in. “I really have to know: Which one of us is Pissabed?”
* * *
He didn’t want to be a Crow no more.
Fie had rolled Hangdog’s tooth between her thumb and forefinger since they’d made camp by the flatway at sundown, so long that it had pressed trenches into both fingers. She didn’t stop as she stared into the campfire now, a half-eaten heap of dinner cooling in the bowl beside her.
Hangdog had been born to be a chief like Fie. But he’d been willing to give it all up to get what he wanted.
She couldn’t help but wonder what that was like.
“What if…” Jasimir’s voice rattled her from her thoughts. “What if we went to the Hawks? Before Trikovoi, I mean.”
Fie closed her eyes. She knew why the prince would ask; she knew the sense it made in his head. But ten hostage kin and one dead traitor had dragged on her heart all day, and all she wanted was to eat her dinner and not fight until dawn.
Then, to her surprise, Tavin spoke up. “We can’t trust the Hawks.”
Fie blinked at him.
So did Jasimir, his face darkening. “Then why are we even going to the Marovar?”
“Because the Hawks in the Marovar answer to the master-general.”
“They all answer to Aunt Draga. If we find a league marker, I can just put my hand in the fire to show I’m a Phoenix, and—”
“We’ll never get that close,” Tavin said, terse. “We look like Crows. The best-case scenario is that they laugh us away. The worst case … You saw what they did in Cheparok.”
Fie knew he didn’t just mean the bribes. It rattled her, though, to hear him say it.
“Not all Hawks are bad,” Jasimir argued. “For the dead gods’ sake, you’re a Hawk.”
Tavin shook his head. “It doesn’t take all Hawks to get us killed. It just takes one. I’ll sent a message-hawk to the master-general once we reach the Marovar, but out here, I don’t trust—” He cut off, caught his breath, and closed his eyes. “I—I don’t trust other Hawks to protect us.”
A stiff silence fermented over the campfire.
Fie rolled Hangdog’s tooth in her fingers until it hurt. Never have to burn another body, never deal with Oleanders. We’d forget he was a Crow.
“Fine,” the prince said eventually. “Knowing Rhusana, she’ll want to take the throne in about two moons, on the summer solstice like a true Phoenix would. That leaves a moon and a half for her to … to remove Father.” Fie tilted her head at that. “One week for Father’s funeral, one more for the full coronation ceremony. She won’t settle for anything less. So if we don’t make it to the Marovar by the end of Peacock Moon…”
“King Surimir has a hunting accident,” Tavin finished.
Peacock Moon yielded to Crow Moon; then Phoenix Moon began the new year at solstice. Crow Moon meant roadside vendors peddling charms to ward off sin, a month to cast off the year’s follies and misfortunes, shorter viatik, shorter tempers.
Crow Moon was ripe for tragedy, like a king tumbling down a long set of stairs. Fie’s brow furrowed. “Rhusana goes straight to the throne after him? Thought the king had a brother.”
“Hunting accident,” Prince Jasimir said, grim.
“But didn’t your uncle have a daughter?”
“Hunting accident.”
Fie gave the prince a long, narrow look. “How’d the queen first try to off you, again?”
Tavin coughed into his fist. It sounded strangely like “hunting accident.”
“Maybe you lot ought to lay off hunting awhile,” Fie said.
Tavin laughed outright at that. Jasimir, surprisingly, covered a smile with a hand. Fie couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen him smile.
Fie couldn’t help grinning back. Maybe it would be all right, at least for a little while. They weren’t her kin, but the sharp edges of their pomp had worn off enough to abide for now.
Then Jasimir set his empty bowl down. “I’ll take watch.”
“No,” Tavin said, swift as a gate slammed shut. “Leave it to Fie and me.”
The prince frowned. “You know Mother wouldn’t want me to be deadweight.”
“She’d want me to do my job,” Tavin said, stiff. “And that’s keeping you alive.”
“You managed it fine in the palace.”
“We’re not in the palace.”
The prince’s gaze shifted to linger on Fie. His frown deepened. “Suit yourself.” He rolled out his sleeping mat and lay down without another word.
Fie couldn’t fault Tavin’s reasons; it’d be too easy for the Vultures to snatch the prince up if he alone kept watch. She was also dead sure this wasn’t the last time they’d have this quarrel.
She rolled Hangdog’s cold tooth betwixt her fingers again, over and over. Tavin broke the quiet soon enough. “Is there any chance you can sustain a glamour until the Marovar?”
Fie pursed her lips and reached for Pa’s bag of teeth. Peacocks had plenty of witches, but they had an even more abundant desire to pay as cheap as possible. “Pa may have, eh, underestimated our stock,” she allowed. “You want to look like the prince again?”
“We don’t know what we’re up against. And I’m his body double for a reason.”
“That wasn’t an ‘aye,’” Fie noted. Tavin didn’t elaborate. She fished a Peacock witch-tooth out of the bag anyhow, then sat on her knees before him.
The spark tittered as she called it to life, a Peacock gentlewoman who’d spun fanciful illusions for the royal nursery to gain favor with the queen. The older she’d gotten, the more cruelty and ambition had rotted her away, leaving battered servants, cheated merchants, and swelling coffers. When the plague came for her, she wove her own delirium dreams, giggling at the sights right up until Pa’s blade touched her throat.
“What do you see?” Tavin asked.
Fie opened her eyes. “A Hawk full of sauce and nonsense,” she answered, and handed him the tooth. “Keep this on you until the glamour breaks.”
“I meant when you—I don’t know—wake up a tooth? Is that what you do?”
“I see their lives.” Fie squinted at the prince’s sleeping face, tallying up the differences to paint onto Tavin. “Their choices.” A straighter nose; a rounder eye. “How they died.” Ears set a little lower. “What they did to Crows. I’ve seen how every other caste lives. Hold still.”
Though Tavin had tucked the tooth up a sleeve, it hummed yet in Fie’s mind, clear as a bell. She traced a path for the Birthright along Tavin’s face, fingers skimming a breath away from his skin. The nick on his brow vanished; the arch of his nose shallowed; the curl smoothed from his hair at the nape of his neck.
She tried not to think on the heat that grew beneath her fingertips, or whether it came from him or from her.
She also tried not to think on the fact that she’d have to do every bit of it again when the tooth burned out two nights hence.
Tavin watched her hand pass in quiet until she reached for his burn-scarred knuckles. Then he twitched back. “Leave it. Please. I’ll … cover it up.”
Startled, she only nodded.
“Is there anything else?” he asked.
Fie studied Jasimir’s face, then turned back to Tavin. Something was amiss. She frowned, searching for the flaw. “Aye. Hold on.”
Tavin exhaled. “We’ve n
ever thanked you, have we? For any of this.”
“Crows don’t get thanked. We get paid. Sometimes.”
“I’m serious.” He’d stopped watching her weave the glamour, gazing dead-on at her now. “You could have taken Viimo’s deal. You could have had your family back. But you didn’t give us up. Thank you.”
Fie went still.
She scrabbled about her head for a scrap of wrath, anything to carve another line betwixt her and the Hawk. But all she could think of was Pa and Wretch and Swain and Madcap and every Crow she’d lost, and the hateful wisp of hope that she might find them again.
Fie’s own words failed her, and his still raced about her head, and to her dismay the knot in her throat broke open. The camp’s firelight blurred with tears.
“Oh—oh no. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry. Twelve hells, I’m bad at this.” Tavin fumbled his sleeve about his thumb and reached for her, then caught himself. “Er … may I?”
She managed a wordless nod. Hawks didn’t ask. Fie had no notion how to deal with one who did.
Tavin dabbed at her face. “I promise you, when Jas is safe, I’ll help you get them all back. I’d swear to the Covenant, but I suspect you’re getting tired of that.”
Fie gave him a weary look. “Don’t try to sell me pretty words, Hawk boy. We both know you’ll be nailed to the prince until one of you dies.”
He glanced sidelong at Jasimir. His answer did not come as quick or easy as she thought it would, nor as loud. “I have to disappear. After … the Marovar. It’s a divine mandate when a Phoenix prince survives the plague. It’s a cheap hoax when his guard conveniently lives, too. Taverin sza Markahn died a quarter moon ago; I’ll be trapped in the palace’s shadows if I go back. And I will not live as a ghost.”
The words spilled before Fie could catch them: “Not anymore.”
Something sudden and starving flashed through Tavin’s face then, flames tearing through silk. “Not anymore.”
He sounded too alike Pa, only a week ago: We need this deal. Only Tavin didn’t need to cut any oath; he needed to cut himself free.
Fie refused to feel sorry for a Hawk, even a pretty one mopping up her face. Instead she said, “Well, we’ll have to live through this mess first.”
“They’re all short lives.” He bent a shallow smile. “The cleverest girl I’ve ever known told me that, so it must be true.”
“The cleverest girl you’ve ever known got her family captured by a monster.” Her voice hitched. Tavin shook his head and caught another tear, then another, a slow thumb trailing down the side of her cheek.
“The queen did that,” he said. “And the governor. And Tatterhelm.” Then, quiet: “Jas and I did that. I’ll do everything I can to make it right.” His hand dropped to graze her knuckles, still battered from when she’d split them on Viimo. “I can fix that, if you’d like.”
She nodded, her voice failing her.
Tavin gathered her hands in his, brow furrowing. The same needling heat flared about her fingers as new skin swallowed the scabs. She couldn’t help a sharp breath.
His gaze flicked up to her. “Sorry. I’m not all that good at healing.”
Fie saw it, then, the flaw in his façade: the campfire lit his dark eyes closer to gold than Jasimir’s flickers of gray.
How did she know that?
She couldn’t ken why she couldn’t bear to change it. She hated him for trying to give her hope. She hated herself for hoping at all.
And then, with horror and fury, she found she hated her traitor heart, for burning quiet with something that was not hate at all.
A sick frost rolled down her veins. Hawks didn’t fancy Crows, they used them. Tavin had wooed her kin well enough when he needed their help. This was naught more than another round of that dance.
And even if it was more—no. That road wasn’t meant for either of them, not a Hawk, not a Crow—
Didn’t want to be a Crow no more, the memory of a skinwitch hissed.
Hangdog hadn’t wanted it.
Did Fie?
Enough. None of it mattered anyhow, not with the oath still at all their throats. She yanked her hands free and turned away. “You want to help me? Fix your head on your own job.”
“What do you mean?” Tavin asked, but his tone betrayed him: He kenned her clear. And he wanted to be wrong.
All more of his mummery, she told herself. It was a mercy she couldn’t see his face.
“You know what I mean.” Fie unfurled her sleeping mat and lay down, waiting for an answer.
None came. “Wake me for second watch,” she muttered, and closed her eyes.
* * *
When Fie took up second watch, the prince waited until Tavin’s breath had evened out and only then eased himself up on an elbow.
She’d expected it: he’d gone to bed far too prickly to stay there. Her voice stayed low, skimming through the campfire sparks. “Aye?”
To her surprise, Jasimir scooted closer, one eye yet on Tavin. “Why can’t you read?”
“Why can’t you keep your own business?” Fie snapped back, ears burning. “You really got up to rub that in my face?”
“No—I—I apologize.” Jasimir grimaced. “That came out wrong. I just don’t understand—couldn’t you have asked Swain to teach you, if it bothers you this much?”
Fie scowled into the dark; she knew square why she hadn’t asked. “Crows use our own marks. We don’t need to read.”
And she hadn’t minded the difference right up until a day ago, when a pretty Hawk boy accidentally carved that line between them.
Jasimir picked up a stick of kindling and wrung it in his hands. “I thought … if you wanted to learn, I could help.” When Fie stared at him, wordless, he stumbled on. “I have to do something to be useful or I’m going to go mad. And you’re going to be a full chief someday, and my mother always said a leader needs to be as skilled as anyone they lead, and…” He jabbed the kindling in the dirt. “And if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that you want to be the best chief you can.”
Fie almost burst into a bitter laugh at that. What she wanted would make her a terrible chief. But the prince was a roundabout sort of right: she wanted to be a capable chief.
And she wanted to not shrink inside each time Tavin carefully read out a flatway sign now, pretending he was thinking aloud and not fooling anyone for a moment.
“When can you teach me?” she mumbled.
Jasimir snatched up the kindling, sitting straighter. “During your watch, while Tav’s asleep. Then he can’t tell me I should be resting instead.”
Fie mulled it over. This wasn’t about her, not really; he wanted to play charity at a Crow, and more likely than not he wanted to do something without his Hawk’s go-ahead for once.
Besides, Fie knew her Crow marks; she knew scores of walking songs; she could recite the histories of their chiefs and their gods. That was good enough for Pa.
Fie studied the trees twisting beyond the firelight, and for a moment, she thought the forest watched back. Patches of night yawned in something like an uncanny face peering from the bushes.
Then a passing breeze ruffled the brush. The face broke into naught more than leaves.
Fie pinched at Pa’s tooth. He hadn’t needed more than Crow marks to be chief, but that was before lordlings and skinwitches and queens had crashed down on all their heads.
Maybe, to keep the oath, she needed to be more.
Fie let the tooth go and looked at the prince. “Where do we start?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE BEACON
“Is that edible?”
Fie resisted the call to sigh. “No.”
“You’re not even looking,” Tavin accused.
“Because you’re pointing at the mushroom.” Its vivid orange cap had jabbed into Fie’s sight like a thumb as she trudged past, a nub of brightness in the gray-green hillsides. And by now, she’d kenned too keen to how Tavin took interest in that which stuck out.
Four days had broken since leaving Crossroads-Eyes’ shrine. Since then, Fie had settled into as near a routine as she could manage: Follow the main flatway north. Hide from the sound of horses or Hawk patrols. Try not to miss Madcap’s walking songs.
Ignore the hollow sting in her gut every other night, when she glamoured Tavin’s face away with a new Peacock tooth. Catalogue a new way she could tell him apart from the prince: a tilt to his brow, a stray freckle by the corner of his mouth. How the slightest gesture seemed weighted with motive.
How the weight of his gaze shifted on her.
Sleep half the night. Chew a few bitter laceroot seeds. Trade out watches with Tavin. Scratch out a few new letters with Jasimir. Trade dark for a dawn the prince still prayed to.
Follow the flatway north, as squash fields bled into sprouts of maize, then orchards and rocky pastures. North, toward the Hawks, toward the Marovar, toward a Covenant oath kept.
Fie had moments of anger and moments of doubt, and worst of all, moments of terrible peace. Moments to wash up alone, to watch the sunrise in silence, to sharpen the chief’s blade by herself.
She ought to have hated it. She surely hated that she didn’t.
“Fine. Is that edible?”
But not as much as she hated Tavin’s way of passing the time.
This time she had to turn to see what he’d found. It appeared to be a rock.
“The moss,” he clarified as her face darkened.
She couldn’t bite back the scowl anymore. He’d asked the same question of dozens of plants in the last few days. “If you want to soil yourself for three days, aye.”
“That sounds useful.” He grinned at her and the prince. “You two are making the same face again.”
“Because neither of us wants to know how that’s supposed to be useful,” Fie said. “And—”
A rumble beneath her soles cut her short. She sighed and started toward the bramble at the roadside. “Riders. Come on.”
The boys hadn’t tried to fuss her like they’d fussed at Pa; it seemed they’d been cured of that in Cheparok. They hurried into the bushes, crouching to peer through the leaves as Fie called up a Sparrow tooth just to be safe. A few breaths later, a few horses trotted by, their riders cowled in the faded lavender hoods of young Owl sojourn-scholars. They had the deeper brown skin of Owls from the western coastal academies, darker than Fie and much darker than Vultures.
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