The Merciful Crow

by Margaret Owen

  What do you want, Fie?

  The first shoots pierced through: she wanted him more than fire or steel or games, hungered for him in a way she couldn’t fathom, couldn’t reconcile, couldn’t stop.

  It didn’t matter.

  She thought of the wolf in winter. She thought of hunger greater than fear.

  And the terrible truth took root:

  If it didn’t matter what they wanted, it wouldn’t matter if—just once—they got it.

  When, not if.

  Fie took Tavin’s face in her hands and kissed him.

  At first he hardly stirred, and for a horrid moment she thought she’d made a mistake, that she’d misjudged it all, that he’d think her a fool—she pulled back—

  Then a strange, slight shiver passed through him, and a breath later, she found that meant the last of his restraint had snapped.

  He didn’t kiss her back so much as drown himself in her. His fingers wound themselves in her hair, mapped out the bones and planes of her back by touch, fitted her hips against his; his mouth sought hers like a cure, starving and fierce, only to wander down her throat until she could scarce breathe.

  A light scrape pricked at her collarbone—and then her head flooded with heat, with need, with dizzying awe and fear and desire, all anchored to thoughts of—her?

  Oh. She drew Tavin back to her mouth. “Mind your teeth.”

  “Yes, chief,” he murmured, and set about doing just that.

  She didn’t mean to slide her hands below his shirt, yet she found them there, roaming along scar and muscle and rib and finding her hunger only growing, a fire that sparked from skin striking skin and burned without mercy. Soon the shirts were an afterthought. One rasped question and granted permission later, the rest of their clothing followed suit, forgotten even faster in the crash of thunder and the fire driving them both.

  Before, when she’d lain with Hangdog, it had been matters of urgency, a hasty exchange of services. Needs met and dismissed with one eye still at watch, one ear still pressed to the ground, ready to flee.

  Now Fie didn’t know if she could tear herself away, caught in a way that felt like binds breaking, lost in a way that felt like being found. Tavin too moved with urgency, but it was a curious kind, a need to discover every place that made her shiver or gasp or bite her fist to keep from crying out. And then he found them again, and again, and again; Fie knew only the fire arching through her, through him, again and again, until it finally left them both trembling and tangled in the dark.

  After, as she lay in his arms under their ragged cloaks and stolen furs, she told him: “You know this won’t be easy.”

  In answer, he pulled her closer and kissed her one more time. Then he told her: “You make me believe I can do something better with my life than die.”

  “Oh.” She did not know what else to say besides “Well. You should.” Then she wriggled farther away from the cold of the passing storm. “Wake me for second watch.”

  It was a strange thing, to fall asleep feeling safer for the warmth at her back. To fall asleep feeling safe at all.

  Where her dreams went that night, no Vultures followed.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE FOOL

  Tavin did not wake her for second watch.

  Fie roused on her own anyhow. The humming did it, quieter than before, and somehow familiar by now. She pushed her head out from the pelts and found him sitting up beside her, eyes on the dark valley below.

  “What’s that song?” she mumbled, resting her chin on his stomach.

  He smiled down at her in a fashion Fie would have called revolting a moon earlier. Damn him, making a foolish sap of her. “It’s an old watch-hymn my mother used to sing. It’s supposed to help you keep awake.”

  “Seems like it works.”

  “Well enough.” He threaded a lock of her hair through his fingers. “How … how are you feeling?”

  She knew a question behind a question when she heard one, sleepy as she was. “You surprised me. Figured you’d know all there was to tumbling, but…”

  He tensed. “It’s … complicated,” he said, an edge of uncertainty in his voice. “Gender’s never mattered to me, but I—I didn’t want to get anyone with child. So if that was a possibility, we just did other, er, activities. Was it—were you—”

  “Aye. You did right.” She relented and gave him a crooked grin, and was secretly tickled when he relaxed, his breath settling into an easy rise and fall. “But I won’t mind if you want more practice.”

  He huffed a laugh at that, one that rumbled through her, too. His fingers curled tighter in her hair, his thumb resting just below her ear. “I wish I could do it all right. Flowers, poetry, awkward conversations with your parents. You know … courtship.”

  “Told you I don’t truck with those,” she said through a yawn. “Can’t even read poetry.”

  “I’ll read it to you. I guarantee it will be terrible.” He grinned. “There will be nineteen verses. Your eyes will absolutely be likened to starless skies. So will your hair. I’m not very creative.”

  “Stick with flowers.” Fie wrinkled her nose.

  “Or knives. Weapons. That’s what Hawks give one another, anyway. Half of Dragovoi’s armory comes from the year the master-general chose her spouses.”

  “I’ve already go half a sword.” She traced the shiny lines of his burn scar, curious. “Who gave you this?”

  She felt his breath catch, the skin beneath her cheek stilling for a heartbeat or two. Then he said, “Someone who didn’t know what they were doing.”

  The old bitterness in his voice reminded her of Hangdog.

  She didn’t ask more, only twined her fingers with his until the rise and fall of his chest steadied again.

  Then she pushed herself up and reached for her clothes. “I’m getting my laceroot. And then I’m taking watch.”

  Tavin opened his mouth to argue and yawned instead. When Fie returned, she settled beside him and shifted his head onto her lap.

  “I don’t suppose I can convince you to sleep more,” he sighed, weariness bleeding his words together.

  “Maybe when you stop slurring.” She couldn’t scrape the wry smile from her voice. “Now quit fussing and get some rest.”

  Fie took his disgruntled grumble as surrender. The rhythm of breath on her knee evened out as she turned her eyes to the dark beyond the cave.

  Somewhere, beyond the quiet, beyond the heat of her and her Hawk, somewhere she couldn’t see—the Vultures waited for her.

  For a moment, the weight of the unreadable dark crushed in all about Fie. The best trackers in Sabor hunted her. The queen had sold the Crow caste to a prey-beast’s death. And her family lived only as long as their monstrous captor found them useful.

  Fie ought to have rolled Pa’s tooth in her fingers. Instead they twisted in the hair at the nape of Tavin’s neck. It shouldn’t have comforted her; it did anyhow.

  The peculiar Hawk at her knee believed they could put it all to rights. Believed in her. Believed in a life with her after this.

  Perhaps he was a fool after all. Or perhaps he’d gotten something else right.

  Fie kept one hand on her Hawk and both eyes on the ebbing dark.

  A few hours passed before shuffling echoed from deeper within their cave. The prince had woken. Fie’s gut twinged. Jasimir was bound to ken what her absence meant. The question was how he’d take it.

  The hue of the cloud-dusted horizon said she had another hour or two before they had to face him. Maybe less, if the skinwitches had made good time tonight.

  She called a Vulture tooth to life and gripped a stolen fur. The trail lit up—

  And stopped a bare league off, in the valley below.

  Fie sucked in a breath and shook Tavin’s shoulder, trying to keep her head steady. “Tavin—Tavin—”

  He jerked awake. “What’s wrong?”

  “The Vultures.” She staggered to her feet, swaying as blood rushed down her numb legs. “I ju
st looked—they’re—they’re too close—”

  “How far?”

  “A league, maybe.”

  Tavin swore and shouted for the prince. He and Fie scrambled about for clothing and blades, stumbling into each other in the dim. Cold guilt thudded about Fie’s belly. If she’d held out longer with her three teeth; if she’d taken first watch; if she’d checked sooner—

  Calloused hands cupped her cheeks, stilling her. “This isn’t your fault.”

  “Twelve hells it isn’t,” Fie spat. “I’m the—”

  “The only reason we’ve made it this far. We’re all in over our heads.” Brute honesty chewed a ragged edge in his voice. “You’re the only one treading water. We can vanish once we clear the cave, and they’ll lose us again, all right?” She didn’t answer. He pulled her close, leaning his brow on hers. “Fie. They’ve been closer than this twice now, and we’ve still outrun them thanks to you.”

  “But we have to keep doing it, keep outrunning them, all the way to the Marovar,” she whispered. “And they only have to catch up once.”

  At the grate of a throat clearing, Fie and Tavin jolted apart. Jasimir stood a few paces away, face ironed blank. “What’s wrong?”

  “The Vultures are a league off,” Fie blurted.

  Jasimir’s eyes widened, then landed on her. “How did they get so close?” he asked, frosty.

  “We all needed to rest.” Tavin strode past the prince. “And now we need to get out.”

  Fie followed him, furs and cloaks bundled under an arm. Behind her, she could have sworn she heard the prince mutter, “‘Rest.’”

  A flush ran up her neck. She did not look back.

  They left minutes later, Fie dragging three Sparrow teeth into harmony as sunrise ripped the dark seam of the horizon. Spindly fingers of Vulture tracking spells pried all about the cave behind them, fumbling over rock and tree like a drunkard who’d dropped his purse in the dark.

  All through the morning they hurried on, through beech and spruce and bristling pine, as the trees thinned and yielded to snow-patched black stone. A hushed murmur through the leaves swelled to a full-throated roar once they reached the gnashing river.

  “It’s the Fan,” Tavin said as they paused at the top of the banks. He hadn’t spoken since they’d left the cave. None of them had. Instead they’d glanced over their shoulders again and again and rushed ahead. “This is where it starts, from the glaciers.”

  It looked nothing like the sedate ribbon Fie recalled from Cheparok. But the river was far, far from the southern deltas now, and so were they.

  Tavin sat and unrolled one of the stolen pelts from his pack, then cut two wide strips and handed them to Fie. “Wrap your sandals. We’ll be crossing snow and ice soon.”

  “Where are the Vultures?” Jasimir asked over the water’s rush.

  Fie reached through her triad of teeth and grimaced. “League and a half? We’ve gone northeast. They’re going due north.”

  “They must think we’re trying the Sangrapa Pass.” Tavin waved at a dip between two gray peaks leagues north, then handed two more hide strips to the prince. “It’s the fastest route to Draga. But Trikovoi is beyond the Misgova Pass.” He pointed to a toothsome, winding slope to the east. “We can clear it tonight. And if we make it through Misgova without them catching on…”

  It could give them the lead they needed. Fie still heard the question behind the question. She dug a fistful of Sparrow teeth from her bag. “But if they catch on, they’ll know we aim for Trikovoi, and then we’re rutted.” Tavin nodded, grim. She fed the teeth into gloves she’d stripped off a dead Vulture days ago, trapping them against her palms. “So I’ll make sure they don’t.”

  “You fainted yesterday,” the prince said. “Are you certain—”

  “Aye,” Fie snapped, and pushed on the hide binding her sandals until the nails poked through. “We done dawdling?”

  They were done dawdling. Tavin led them along the river, following a game track drawn with a toddler’s shine for nonsense curves. Trees shrank to thorny scrub, and scrub to grass and wiry lichens. Shaggy goats paid them no heed, nibbling daintily at any sprouts of green.

  On they climbed, on and on and up and up, and with every breath Fie marked the path of the skinwitches, the searching talons of their tracking spells, the distance between them. It did not grow fast enough, but it grew, enough to keep her weaving tooth after tooth into her triad.

  That old headache grew as well, starting as they picked their way over a rope bridge strung across a great ice-mottled ravine. Fie fought it off as best she could. The pain was only another note in the harmony that, by all the dead gods, she would hold until they’d cleared Misgova Pass.

  Then as the noon sun crested above, dizziness struck, sending Fie to her knees. She retched up bile and just barely caught herself before the Sparrow teeth slipped into discord.

  “Is it the teeth?” Jasimir asked.

  “It’s the height,” Tavin answered as she scoured her mouth with clean snow. “Mountain sickness. Some people aren’t used to climbing this far up.”

  “Aye,” Fie croaked, and let the Hawk pull her back up, his hand lingering in hers. “Just … keep going. We have to clear the pass.”

  “I can carry you.” Tavin’s grip on her tightened.

  “Not with that pack you can’t.” She forced her feet into an aching stagger again. “Come on. We clear the pass tonight, or we don’t clear it at all.”

  They pushed on, picking a switchback trail over ground that tilted ever steeper. Only plain rope bridges marked the passage of any life here, lashed between boulders, over ravines, along cliff faces. They had just set foot on one when the wind whipped at them, clawing at her cloak and tearing through the rags and fur beneath. Fie turned her face to the rock only to stop the sand pushing into her clenched eyes.

  “Keep going!” Jasimir shouted as the bridge bucked.

  Fie fumbled along the quivering rope, sliding on her knees. Another blast of wind meant her eyes stayed shuttered. She scrabbled about until her fingers caught in the gap between frosty planks, then pulled herself forward. One plank. Two. Four. She lost count, dragging herself through the howling wind.

  At last her hand scraped on solid stone. She heaved herself onto the blessed steady earth, crept into the shelter of a boulder where the prince already huddled, then curled into a shaking ball. A moment later something heavy and warm flopped over her. She had a notion who that was.

  “Let’s never do that again,” she wheezed.

  “I have bad news for you,” Tavin said into her shoulder, voice muffled in cold and rag. “We have to do that again. A lot.” Then he straightened with a groan. “How are you doing?”

  She pushed herself to her knees. “I’ll hold up.”

  “I’m fine,” the prince said sharply behind her. “Let’s go.”

  Tavin pulled Fie to her feet again. Her bones felt hollow and sick with a three-tooth song. She swayed until he steadied her. “We’re almost at the summit,” he told her. “Almost there. Just hang on.”

  This time he did not let go of her hand, anchoring her as they stumbled on through the cold.

  Fie’s sight dimmed with each step, her skull pounding. A chant, half a prayer, sifted from the haze: Keep the harmony. Keep your eyes open. Keep the oath. Look after your own.

  The world bled into blinding white ice and hard black stone, into one footfall after another, into blurring peaks and burning lungs and belly acid on her tongue.

  Keep the harmony.

  On, on, on they climbed, higher and higher, into snow that buckled and swallowed them to their waists, through wind that near stripped them from the earth.

  Keep the oath.

  The sun had sunk near halfway to the horizon when Tavin stopped. “There.” He pointed to a shallow rise ahead. “The summit. After this we’ll clear the pass in no time. Then I’ll send Draga the message-hawk for Trikovoi’s plague beacon, and all we have to do is walk from there. Just a little mo
re, Fie.”

  She tried to nod. Tried to keep her eyes open. Tried to hold the harmony.

  She couldn’t.

  Look after your own.

  Her knees buckled. The teeth snapped into screaming discord, then drowned beneath the roar in her ears.

  As everything faded away, part of Fie whispered, They only have to catch you once.

  When her eyes cleared of shadows, the world was a-tilt, rocking steady and even. Tavin’s taut face above drowned in a sky that had begun to lose its light. He’d wound up carrying her after all.

  Shaking, Fie called three Sparrow teeth to life, but she already knew what she’d find. The webs of skinwitch spells peeled away from her and the boys, but the damage was done. The Vultures had changed course for Trikovoi. She’d cost them their lead and betrayed their destination in one swoop.

  Look after your own.

  She’d failed to keep the only rule Crows had. Tears rolled down her face and froze there.

  “It’ll be all right,” Tavin said quietly.

  Her whisper broke halfway through. “I’m sorry.”

  Jasimir jabbed into her line of sight, pausing at Tavin’s side. “So what now? The Vultures know—”

  “We keep going.” Tavin did just that, passing the prince.

  Jasimir strode to catch up. “You keep saying that, but that isn’t working, is it? We’re going to keep doing precisely what Tatterhelm thinks we’re going to do? What’s the point if she’s going to keep giving away our location?”

  “Leave it alone, Jas.” For the first time, Fie heard an open warning in Tavin’s voice.

  “It’s time to go to the Hawks. If she can’t throw the Vultures off—”

  “Leave. It.”

  “This is my life, our lives at stake here!” Jasimir shouted. “My condolences if that conflicts with who you want in your bed this week!”

  Tavin stopped. His grip on Fie shook, anger rolling off him like a heat wave.

  “Put me down,” Fie said, partially to head him off from saying some fool thing.