Tavin set her on her feet. “Can you walk?”
“Aye.” Fie wobbled a moment before planting herself sturdy in the snow.
Then she slapped the prince.
A resounding crack bounced off the stone as he gaped at her, hand on his jaw. His eyes flicked over to Tavin’s face before flinching back to Fie’s.
“First of all,” Fie snarled, “you keep your voice down out here, unless you fancy an avalanche. Second. Aye. I fouled up. Likely I’ll do it again. But Ambra help me, you leave who’s bedding who out of it, or I swear to every dead god I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Jasimir spat. “Leave me to die out here? Let the Oleander Gentry ride down your caste?”
“The sad thing,” Fie hissed, “is you really think you’re better than Rhusana.”
Jasimir’s whole face tightened, then crumpled. Wind shrieked through the comb of the summit behind them.
Eventually Tavin spoke, softer now. “Changing course now does nothing. Trikovoi is still the closest fort in the Marovar. And we still have to clear this pass tonight.”
He took Fie’s hand and headed down a snowbank.
“If you’re wondering,” he said after a long moment, “that is what it’s like to deal with the king. And every one of us knows Jas is better than that.”
Fie wasn’t so sure. She kept that much to herself. “The king throws a tantrum when his Hawks stop doting on him for an hour?”
“The king throws a tantrum when someone else wants his toys. Jas takes after his mother more.” Tavin grimaced. “And you were right. He’s afraid I’m abandoning my duty.”
Fie tilted her head. The prince looked fair alive to her. “How?”
He squeezed her hand and gave her a strained smile. “For you.”
“Oh.” Fie couldn’t stave off a smile of her own.
“I didn’t expect to find meaning and purpose and all that when I faked my death, but here we are.”
“Here we are,” Fie echoed. “I didn’t expect all this trouble when I thought we were picking up two dead lordlings.”
“Two exceptionally handsome and charming dead lordlings.”
“I should have burned that quarantine hut down with you both inside.”
“And here I thought you didn’t have a romantic bone in your body.”
“Don’t get used to it,” she returned, and realized that she wanted this: his jests, his laugh, his hand in hers as they traveled on. Even with the skinwitches haunting each step, the notion of walking the roads of Sabor with her kin at her back and him at her side … that was something to want and to have.
If they made it out.
Ahead of them, mountain upon mountain scraped at the sky; at their backs, the prince ground his teeth.
Somewhere out there waited Trikovoi. Somewhere much, much too far from here.
* * *
They pushed on.
After the sun tumbled below the horizon, the waning Peacock Moon lit their way, ghosting off sheets of snow and ice and wet rock. More than once, Fie looked back at the ragged trail they’d carved and cringed. The Vultures needed no spell to follow them this far.
Through the night they stumbled. Snow yielded to stone, and stone yielded to gravel and thin, spiteful moss. The slopes rose and fell in sharp crags and shallow basins, bridge after rope bridge spanning the only way onward.
Finally they reached the trees, whip-thin pines clustered as if huddled for warmth. Black boughs choked the moonlight until they had naught to see by. She slept a few brief hours curled in Tavin’s arms, then made him trade the watch to her and rest, her head tucked beneath his chin. When the sun crested the horizon, they split cold, greasy strips of dried beef three ways and set off again.
By noon, if she looked back to Misgova’s summit, she could see Vulture riders picking their way down the pass.
They pushed on.
By midafternoon her bones gave out, run too dry to carry her and the teeth both. Tavin picked her up once more and didn’t set her down until the mountains grew too dark to continue.
She insisted on taking first watch. When he woke for the second, he asked for a Peacock glamour.
Through the dark, and through her tears, she gave him as close to the prince’s face as she could manage.
When she woke, only half a league remained betwixt them and the skinwitches.
They pushed on.
Briars knotted about the slopes, digging thorns into their arms. After the bramble trapped the prince a fourth time, Tavin led them clear of the forests, into plain sight but free of snares. They chased the rising sun east over rattling slides of slate and through a gnarling canyon spiked in great fingers of stone.
By noon, between heaving breaths and the scream of her three teeth, Fie could hear the faint clip of hoofbeats on stone.
Tavin tried to steer them from the open plains now, aiming for ravines or slopes ragged with boulders and outcroppings. The nails studding Fie’s soles near wore down to toothless nubs as they bit paths over barefaced rock.
Then, with the sun prodding the western horizon, the rough terrain wore out. The three of them stopped behind a boulder, weighing their choices: a broad shallow ravine below, or a stretch of shattered slate ahead. Tavin took an experimental step into the slide. A rock slid free and set off a small cascade. He looked over his shoulder. Fie followed his look and saw no Vultures, but that meant naught to her.
“The ravine won’t give us away,” she said.
“This is faster,” Tavin said shortly. “We just have to cross before they notice.”
“Fine.” The prince strode into the slide, not looking back.
Fie followed, uneasy. The rocks slipped and rolled beneath her feet as she struggled to keep up, keep her balance, keep the harmony. Wave after wave of broken stone tumbled down the hill in their wake. Even if the Vultures couldn’t break through her triad of Sparrow teeth, this spectacle all but begged to betray them.
Pa’s broken sword banged at one hip, the bag of teeth swinging at the other.
You have to keep the oath, Fie.
Halfway across the shattered stones, the prince fell.
It all happened faster than Fie thought possible:
In one heartbeat, Jasimir teetered ahead of her.
In the next, he’d slid yards away, rolling in a tangle of slate and rag.
He skidded to a halt and staggered to his feet, bedraggled but whole. Below him, the ripple of falling rock grew, and grew, until stones the size of Fie’s head toppled down the hill in a cracking cacophony.
Then a mournful hunting horn swelled above the falling rock, sweeping from the valley at their backs.
The Vultures had found them.
“Get to the ravine!” Fie bolted down the hill, half sliding as the footing buckled and shifted. The roar of blood and adrenaline clashed in her ears with the clatter of plummeting rock. Then they slowed and stopped at the edge of the gorge, and she realized half the noise came from hoofbeats upon hoofbeats.
They hurried toward a steep game track winding into the canyon but had made it just a few paces when Tavin yanked both Fie and Jasimir to a stop. Not a half league downhill, riders cantered into the gorge’s mouth.
“Bridge,” Jasimir gasped, pointing to a rope bridge farther down, spanning the narrowest neck of the gap. “If they don’t notice us cross—”
“Done.” Tavin turned on a heel. Fie cursed the dead god who’d invented hills, legs burning as pure adrenaline carried her back up the game track. Something coppery stained each agonizing breath. They reached the bridge a minute later, squinting down the canyon. Riders thundered toward them, just a quarter league and a few bends of the canyon walls away.
Fie lurched toward the bridge. Tavin caught at her arm.
“Wait.” He touched two fingers to her lips. They came away bright with crimson. “Fie. You’re—you have to let the teeth go.”
“They’ll find us,” she gasped, mountain and sky spinning in her sights.
�
��They’ll absolutely find us if you’re dead.” His hands wrapped around her shoulders. “Let them go.”
“But—” Jasimir’s eyes locked on the Vulture riders.
Look after your own. She shook her head. Not Misgova. Not again. She was a chief.
“Let them go.” Tavin’s hold on her tightened.
Her vision blurred before she could muster a retort. Only adrenaline had kept her moving this long, she kenned it as well as he did. One moment of fraying focus was all it took.
Fie buckled.
A tooth slipped away, then a second, and the third.
“Bridge. Now.” Tavin waved the prince on, then guided Fie onto the swaying planks, one hand braced on her spine.
Another hunting horn howled down the stone.
The canyon floor heaved below, not even thrice a man’s height away. Fie near vomited.
“Hang on.” Tavin’s fingertips pressed in a steady half-moon between her shoulders. “Just have to get over the bridge.”
Jasimir looked back. “We can’t outrun them. Not like this.”
“Keep going,” Tavin barked.
A horse’s scream ripped down through the gorge.
Fie tried to train her eyes on the end of the bridge, on one fixed point. Make it off the bridge. Keep on your feet. Keep going.
The hoofbeats rose like a tide.
“We won’t make it,” the prince called. “Maybe we can negotiate—”
“They negotiate using arrows, Jas. Keep going.”
“We’ve already lost!” Jasimir stopped and spun around, a few planks from the end of the bridge. “It’s over. She’s too weak—”
“Fie,” she interrupted, hoarse.
“What?”
“You know my name.” She spat blood into the canyon below. “If I’m about to die for you, you can damn well use it.”
Jasimir looked from her to Tavin and took a deep breath. “They … they aren’t after you. If I give myself up, the two of you can escape.”
Wind and hoofbeats and hunting horns crashed around the rock walls.
Tavin’s face tightened. He looked at the canyon and at the bridge, and then he looked at the prince.
“Yes,” Tavin said, “you can.”
He pulled Fie to him and pressed a swift, soft kiss to her mouth.
“It’ll be all right,” he whispered.
And then he shoved her back.
Fie crashed into the prince. The two of them fell not onto rickety plank but steady ground, over the gorge at last.
Steel clattered and flashed. Fie scrambled to her knees. Something dropped from her arms onto the ground beside her—Tavin’s pack, and something cold and heavy—
A scabbard. A short sword. Unbroken.
Tavin knelt on a plank, wrapping one hand around a cord, the other holding his remaining blade aloft.
His voice rang hard as iron. “Keep the oath.”
And in one terminal sweep, he cut the ropes of the bridge.
It happened faster than Fie thought possible:
In one heartbeat his eyes held hers.
I can do something better with my life than die.
In the next, he was gone.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
LITTLE WITNESS
Where horns and hooves and howling wind had raged, now reigned silence.
Fie did not hear Tavin hit the ground. She did not hear the prince cry out beside her. She did not hear the triumphant yips of skinwitches scenting their victory at hand.
She heard naught a thing but the horrified roar in her skull.
Jasimir crawled over to the edge of the canyon, his mouth moving in the fading sunlight. Shouting? Was he calling down to the Hawk? To the Vultures?
Keep the oath.
Tavin’s last words sent the cogs in her head grating into a mad spin. The gates opened; noise and fear and wrath flooded back in.
Gone, he was gone—
You have to keep—you have to—
She had a screaming prince and a broken bridge and a pack of Vultures coming for her head. And she had an awful cold part of her that knew no matter what, getting caught by Tatterhelm could bring naught but hell on their heads.
With a ragged sob, she drew Pa’s broken sword. Then she hurled herself at the prince.
He didn’t see her coming. She slammed into his back, knocking him flat to the ground. Something crunched in his pack.
“What in the twelve hells are you doing?” he gasped.
“Stay down,” she growled through her tears. “You’ll give us away.”
Jasimir thrashed, trying to toss her off his back. “No, we have to help him—he can’t—we can’t just—”
The hoofbeats slowed below. If the prince kept yelling, they’d all be rutted.
Fie flipped the broken sword and leveled its jagged, trembling point to Jasimir’s right eye.
“Stay down and shut up, or else,” she said, ice in her voice, ice in her spine, ice in her gut. “You can still be a king with one eye.”
Jasimir went still. For once, he’d taken her at her word.
“… don’t understand!”
Tavin’s voice drifted up from the ravine.
“I’m not—you—you’re after the prince, right?” he whined. “He abandoned me, him and that Crow girl—they cut the bridge—”
“Shut him up.” A gravelly bass rolled off the stones. Fie had heard it before: Business of the queen.
Fie heard a crack and a brief yelp. If she strained, she could peer just over the edge.…
The Vultures surrounded Tavin, trapping him against the far rock wall, their backs to her. Tavin had yanked his sleeves around his hands and wrists, hiding his burn. His left shoulder sagged in a way that made Fie queasy, and blood painted his mouth and chin bright in the dying light.
“No, you’ve got it wrong,” Tavin said, piteous as Barf begging for scraps. “I’m the double. The prince took off with that girl. They tricked me, they cut the bridge while I was crossing. I’m just a decoy to slow you all down.”
Jasimir squirmed beneath her. Fie twitched the sword’s jag closer. Tavin always had some scheme up his sleeve, she had to believe in him—
And if that scheme meant dying for the prince?
Her fingers slipped a little on the hilt.
She inhaled through her nose, imagining cold iron running down her backbone, keeping her steady.
“If he’s right, we’re losing time.” A third skinwitch twisted about to scan the canyon. Fie ducked from sight.
“It’s a bare-assed lie.” Viimo’s drawl echoed up. “Princeling doesn’t fancy girls. He ain’t running off with one. The double’s the one with a shine for the Crow.”
“No,” Tavin pleaded, “they left me, they left me—”
Fie knew it for a ruse. She kenned his game now: let them chew over the half-baked lie and never know they’d swallowed another whole.
The words still tore at her heart without mercy.
She’d abandoned him just like she’d abandoned her kin in Cheparok, in the hands of murderers, all for the sake of this damned oath.
“This one’s noisy for a Hawk,” another skinwitch observed. “I’m with Viimo.”
“You have to believe me,” Tavin babbled. “They’re getting away—”
“Pipe down.” Another crack and cry. Fie’s gut wrenched.
She wanted to set the canyon ablaze. She wanted to wipe the blood from his face. She wanted to leave naught of the skinwitches but scorched earth.
Broken steel shuddered in her hand, less than a finger-span from Jasimir.
“One way to know for certain,” Tatterhelm rumbled. “Test him.”
Test him? She didn’t dare try for another look. She caught a jingle, a thin scratch-scratch-scratch—then a hiss. Murmurs swept through the Vultures.
“Aye,” Viimo said. “It’s over. That’s our prince.”
“Pack him up,” ordered Tatterhelm. “We’ll send a message-hawk to the queen after we get back to the ca
ravan.”
The air clotted with shuffling, grunts, and whickering horses. Fie kept still, kept steady, kept the broken blade trained on the prince’s eye lest he ruin it all, kept thoughts of Tavin at arm’s length.
She shivered. Tears streaked down her chin, landing in Jasimir’s dusty hair. She told herself she would not grieve.
Part of her knew she didn’t. Grief scarred over wounds. This, now—all this meant was she still couldn’t stop the bleeding.
A horn shrieked the marching order to a chorus of victory whoops. Slow and unstoppable, the hoofbeats and horns drained from the ravine, until only the howling wind remained.
Tavin was gone.
Fie rolled off the prince and, for a long moment, stared at the sky purpling like a bruise above.
She wanted Tavin’s smile. She wanted his arms around her, the warmth of him at her back, the moment not three days past where she believed, really believed, that perhaps they two could put things to rights.
But it didn’t matter what she wanted when it was far, far from her grasp.
In the long, fearful months after she’d found the ruins of her ma, night after night, she’d kept watch with Pa. Madcap, newer to the band than Fie, had called her Little Witness: the dead Crow god, a beggar girl who saw all misdeeds and recorded them for the Covenant’s judgment. Likely Fie looked the part, staring out into the dark from under Pa’s cloak with her wide, solemn, black eyes, her hair in ragged tufts that she wouldn’t yet let Wretch tidy.
It wasn’t long before someone told Madcap what had happened to Fie’s ma, and they never called her Little Witness again. But Pa told no one the truth of it: Fie only kept watch because she couldn’t bear to dream.
Instead, Pa told her stories.
He told her tales of tricksters and queens as they sat and watched the roads for strangers in the night. He told her of heroes who fought monsters from beyond the mountains and seas. He told her of Ambra and the tigers she rode, the villains she conquered, the fires she burned through Sabor. He told her how every witch of a caste was one of their dead gods reborn, even him. Even her.
And when Fie at last fell asleep, she did not see her mother. She saw adventures grander than her world of dusty roads and shrouded dead. And she wanted to believe Pa: once upon a time, she could have been a god.
The Merciful Crow Page 23