“You know how.”
Jasimir sighed. “You think the people are less than animals.” Silence waxed, then waned. “I swore an oath. I don’t care if I have to personally beg every Hawk in the Marovar. The Crows will have guards.”
Pretty words, pretty words. She didn’t doubt Jasimir, not after the last week, but she had precious little faith in the mercy of Hawks.
“Aye,” she lied.
“Something’s bothering Aunt Draga. She’s not … like this.” Jasimir picked at the sleeve of his sleeping robe. “I’ll make my case again after we’ve got your family back.”
“And if that doesn’t work?” Fie couldn’t help but ask. Somewhere out in the night, Crows were supposed to be celebrating their moon. And that meant that somewhere out there, Oleanders were preparing to ride.
“Then I’ll make it again, to as many Hawks as it takes, as many times as it takes,” Jasimir said. “I swore an oath.”
How long would the Crows have to wait?
The prince’s own words echoed from the ravine, more than a week past. How much more will you let them take from you?
She’d get her kin back. She’d get Tavin back. She’d stop the queen. And someday—someday she might fall asleep feeling safe again.
For tonight, it had to be enough.
Twin Hawks stared down at her from their portraits, imperious. Fie wished someone had bothered to paint her mother before the Oleanders tore her to pieces. The peculiar itch wormed about the back of her head once more.
Somewhere in the hall, a muffled hum of a watch-hymn threaded the quiet. Fie knew that, wander as she might, she’d never outrun it. There was no way out of Trikovoi for her until the Hawks let her go.
“Thank you for saving my cat,” Fie said, stiff. “I should try to sleep.”
* * *
Four knocks came at noon, ringing through the prince’s room.
Fie set down her practice slate as Jasimir answered the door. Corporal Lakima stood outside, stony-faced and tight-lipped, gaze shifting from the prince to Fie and her wobbling letters. “The master-general calls for you.” Jasimir and Fie traded looks. Lakima coughed. “There’s a message.”
Lakima scarce had time to clear the way before Jasimir and Fie flew out, half running down the hall.
When they burst into the commander’s study, Draga didn’t even glance up from the sole parchment on the now-cleared desk, her face gray and hard as Fie’s slate.
“Close the door.”
Lakima pushed it shut.
“They’re in the Fallow Vale, an hour’s ride north from here,” Draga said. “Tatterhelm walked out to meet my scouts himself.”
“Did they attack?” Jasimir asked.
“No. He … he brought Taverin with him. With a knife to his throat. And then he handed the scouts this.” Draga began to read aloud. “‘To Master-General Draga Vastali szo Markahn: I, Greggur Tatterhelm, acting in the name of Her Majesty the queen, order you to surrender the traitor Jasimir Surimas sza Lahadar.’” She licked her lips. “‘Should you fail to comply, you will share his charges of high treason, conspiracy, fraud, and criminal blasphemy. Moreover…’”
Draga trailed off. The parchment rattled beneath her fingers, and suddenly Fie saw red-brown flecks on the sheet. Something cold hooked into her belly and dragged down.
The master-general cleared her throat and continued. “‘Moreover, we have custody of the prince’s accomplices, including ten Crows and the Hawk Taverin sza Markahn. If you wish to recover them alive, you will send the prince and no more than one escort, unarmed and on foot, to the Fallow Vale at dawn. Any sign of additional reinforcements or attempts to free the hostages will result in their immediate execution.’”
The cold hook dragged harder.
Draga sucked in a breath. “‘Finally, for every day you delay, we will consider it an insult to the justice of Her Majesty and will submit an accomplice to the appropriate punishment. You will find the queen’s justice’”—Draga leaned back and twitched the parchment—“‘attached.’ I … I don’t know who…”
A crooked, brown-gray worm rolled onto the desk, trailing a smear of red.
For a moment, Fie saw not a desk in a stone room but a dusty dawn road of years ago. That time, she’d been too young to know the bloody-tipped twigs for aught but a curiosity.
Now, near a dozen years later, she knew a little finger when she saw one.
Sometimes the drag of horror hit a low so deep in Fie that she couldn’t even begin to reckon with it, only wait for the rest of her head to catch up.
She blinked. Inhaled. Took stock of the buzzing in her ears, the words of the letter, the gray of Draga’s face, the silence of the prince, the sluggish thunder of her own heart.
There wasn’t much time before the sickness would hit. Before wrath choked every drop of reason from her thoughts.
Before Tatterhelm sent another finger to point at her.
She hadn’t much time.
Fie forced herself to step forward, reach out, and touch the spur of bone jutting from the flesh.
The spark stung when she called it out.
“Pa,” she gasped.
And then the sickness caught up.
Jasimir hurried her to a wash basin just in time. When she finished retching, he handed her a goblet of water, looking back to Draga. “We can ambush them. I’ll go in with one Hawk—”
“It’s a trap.”
“I can try to hide your riders,” Fie coughed, then spat into the basin.
Draga shook her head. “Did I stutter? This is a trap.” Her eyes had gone cold and dark. “They’re going to kill all the hostages, no matter what.”
“The letter says—” Jasimir started.
“The letter is bait. All he wants is for you to walk into the Fallow Vale unprotected, thinking you can save them.”
“I have to try.”
Draga gripped the desk chair. “No. Rhusana wins the moment you walk into his camp. If you care for the Crows, all of them, you can’t give yourself up. Not without forsaking the whole caste. You have to cut your losses.”
Fie’s belly-sick passed, wrath flaring in its wake. “Easier said when it’s not your loss to cut.”
“Don’t tell me about my losses,” Draga snapped.
“Don’t pretend you give a damn about my caste,” Fie hissed back. “If Tatterhelm had a dozen Hawks—”
“Tatterhelm has—” Draga cut herself off, running a hand over her hair. “This is why he takes hostages: he wants us shaken, he wants us making mistakes. If we give him the prince, it’s all over. I could follow him all the way back to the royal palace with a mammoth army, but as long as he keeps that knife on—on Jasimir, there won’t be a single damned thing any of us can do.”
“Your song’ll change when he starts sending pieces of a Hawk,” Fie spat.
Draga stared at her. Jasimir inhaled sharp at Fie’s side but said naught.
“It will not,” said the master-general in a voice that sliced high and razor-thin.
“Aye? Maybe the first day it won’t, when it’s just Tavin’s little finger.” Fie’s own voice rattled with fury. “If Tatterhelm gets impatient, maybe he’ll just send the whole hand.”
“Tavin’s your blood,” Jasimir added, voice rising. “What about the Hawk code? What about ‘I will not forsake—’”
“I know the code!”
Draga’s shout shattered over the stone walls. In the stunned quiet, she strode to the window, staring out through the crossed iron bars. Steel shuddered and clinked in her hair.
“Taverin has always known his duty. We serve the nation first.” A crack in her voice filled in with granite. “When you act in anger, you’ve already lost. Jasimir, being a king means sometimes you choose who to sacrifice. Today the choice is ten Crows and a Hawk, or the Crow caste and Sabor. Do you understand?”
Jasimir didn’t answer.
Draga didn’t turn from the window, but her spine pulled stiff as Pa’s little finger o
n the desk. “Do you understand?” she repeated, harder than before.
Silence stretched thin as spider silk, then snapped when the prince whispered, “Yes.”
Fie felt the sucker punch in her bones. He wouldn’t look at her.
“Consider yourself lucky, because today I’m going to make this choice for you,” Draga said, facing them once more. “Corporal Lakima, return these two to their own rooms. I want a watch posted to make sure they stay there.”
As before, Draga should have looked to the prince. Instead her eyes burned on Fie.
“Yes, master-general.” An iron grip settled on Fie’s shoulder.
“You can’t—” Fie protested.
“Shut the door,” Draga muttered, dropping into the commander’s chair. “And tell someone to bring me some gods-damned wine.”
* * *
At first, Fie screamed.
She cried out with fury: fury with Draga for sentencing her family to a wretched death, fury with Jasimir for letting her, fury with Pa for sending her to safety in Cheparok, fury with Tavin for stealing into her heart and tearing it asunder, and, most of all, fury with Sabor, with the Covenant, with the dead gods.
Then she crumpled with shame: shame for giving up her own, shame for failing to keep her one rule as a chief, shame for not scratching and clawing her way out of Trikovoi.
Then, at last, she wept with grief, and when she did, she grieved for more things than she could count, than she could name, but most of all, she grieved for the brief thread of hope that had sparked when she saw Tavin’s beacon burning in the gate of Trikovoi.
When she was done weeping, she slept without dreams.
And when she woke, it was by the light of the Crow Moon.
For a while, she lay in the dark on her foul, soft bed in her foul, safe room, her thoughts winding up and spinning out like a spindle. Would Tatterhelm send a piece of someone else in the morning? Or would he cut off more of Pa?
Would she let him?
Every heartbeat in her ears was an accusation.
Draga was right: the whole Crow caste hung on Jasimir reaching the throne.
Jasimir was right: he understood what was at stake.
Tavin was right: he could have done something better with his life than die.
Fie searched the dark for answers and found none.
But that made sense. She had no right to expect answers here in this safe, quiet, too-damned-soft room, not with her people caught in Tatterhelm’s hell.
If she wanted a way out, she had to hunt it down herself.
Slipping out was easy enough: a Peacock-tooth illusion crafted a second Fie to stumble from her room, startling the guards long enough to let the true Fie sidle behind them. Once she’d rounded a corner, she sent the illusion back to her room, then traded the Peacock tooth for a Sparrow’s.
And then she hunted.
Fie wound through hall after darkened hall, some narrow, some yawning, some guarded by grim-faced Hawks, others empty as a gambler’s oath. Her slippers left no mark on the stone as she passed.
All she needed was a way out, she told herself. Then she’d take up her teeth and her steel and bring down as many Vultures as she could before—
Before they killed her. Or worse, kept her alive. Tatterhelm had more skinwitches than she had Crows, and he had grunts, and he had skin-ghasts. All he would do was start sending pieces of her to Jasimir.
It was always going to come to this.
Tavin had always known. So had she. Ever since she’d crawled out of Cheparok. No—ever since she’d fallen from the bridge of the Floating Fortress.
No—ever since Pa had thrust the chief’s sword into her hands.
What do you want, Fie?
Her caste, or her kin. Thousands of Crows, ridden down by day and night. Or ten of her own, dying by pieces.
That’s the game, get it?
The road had trapped her, and she couldn’t see which way was right. Every hope, every oath, every scrap of faith she’d had in Hangdog, in Tavin, in Jasimir, one way or another, they’d turned to arrow after arrow in her eye.
She stumbled. Smacked into a wall. Sagged against it.
One way or another, she would lose everything.
Fury howled in her heart. This was all wrong. She’d learned to fight like a Hawk. She’d learned to read and write like a Phoenix. She’d kept her head steady, burned her teeth, broken the only Crow rule. She’d near killed herself day after day, road after road, mountain after mountain, to keep the damned oath.
And she would still lose.
There was no way for her to win. There never had been.
How much more will you let them take?
She slid down the wall and curled there, shaking. This was the game. This was the true Money Dance: the rest of the castes could spin and whirl and scream at the Crows, take what they wanted, as long as they wanted, knowing that the Crows couldn’t do a gods-damned thing to stop it. Sabor had never once intended for her to win.
They didn’t believe a Crow could.
Far away, a watch-hymn eased into the silence. Fie ignored it.
Then the hymn wandered into a lonely trickle of notes. One she’d heard nigh every morning.
Fie scrambled to her feet, heart pounding. It couldn’t be Tavin—yet her unsteady legs pushed her forward, following the sound. He’d said his mother sang it—maybe Fie would never see Pa again, but at least she could make this much right—
She shadowed a Hawk through a door and stepped into the frigid Marovar night. Stars sprayed over the brutally clear sky above, crowned in the circlet of Crow Moon rising.
Dead ahead of Fie, a Hawk woman leaned on a watch post, staring into the mountains, humming a watch-hymn that sometimes splintered around a choked breath.
Dark as it was, Fie could still mark the razor flash of steel feathers in her hair.
She’s a mammoth rider in the Marovar, Tavin had whispered by a campfire a moon ago.
The question in Fie’s skull unwound.
Twin Talons. But how—
She knew what it meant.
For a moment she swayed in place, still cloaked in the Sparrow tooth, her head a-riot with a thousand threads that suddenly knotted and pulled tight.
Stitch by stitch, the tapestry unfurled, stretching on and on until she saw not a weaving but a wrathful way out.
How much more, the prince had asked, will you let them take?
This was the dance. This was the game. The one she wasn’t meant to win.
But now—she had fire. She had steel.
She knew her road.
The prince had sworn to protect her caste. He had sworn to make the Oleanders pay.
She was a chief; he was a prince. And one of them was a liar.
Fie waited for another guard to crack the door, then flitted back into the halls of Trikovoi, bound for her room, her swords, her teeth.
Bound for the prince.
Bound for the Fallow Vale.
Whether or not she burned her crown on a pyre, she was a chief. It was time she looked after her own.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE SLAUGHTER BELL
Fie didn’t intend to stir the ashes where she tread, but she did all the same.
Fie didn’t intend to feel bad for Jasimir, either, but that happened, too, as he stumbled on the hobbles round his ankles. She yanked him upright, none too gentle, and prodded him on with the point of Tavin’s short sword. Her pity had only extended to a stolen—liberated—Hawk cloak about his shoulders to ward off the predawn chill.
He shot her a dark look but kept walking, hands bound before him. Fie suspected the prince had choice words for her.
That was partly why she’d gagged him with a twist of rag before dragging him into the Fallow Vale.
She’d been here before, or at least near enough to watch it burn. Once, the valley had held a village. Once, that village had cut a chief’s husband and child down. And once, a plague beacon went unanswered. Now all that wa
s left was blackened earth, and a mark on her map that read ashes.
As she marched the prince on, a fretful wind picked at long-cold cinders and scraped grit over crumbling stone walls and barren fields. Every hut, every corpse, every field had been put to the torch; everywhere the plague had touched. That alone could halt an outbreak: burn all to ash and leave it be for years, for generations, until the grass at last grew green over the remains.
Fie had to give Tatterhelm his due: with a shifting haze of windborne cinder and myriad walls to shelter behind, he couldn’t have picked a better place to hole up.
Especially if he had untold numbers of skin-ghasts to hide.
Gray light leached into the dark over the valley’s eastern wall, warning of a sunrise the prince wouldn’t see today. Fie’s throat knotted. All this had begun in the Hall of the Dawn; so, too, would it end with the rising sun.
“Faster,” she muttered to Jasimir. Tatterhelm might not wait before taking another piece of Pa. The prince gave her a look of pure disgust, but she pushed him on. They slowed as they passed the first burned-out house, peering for any slip of the skinwitches or their skin-ghasts.
It’s a trap, Draga rasped in her memory.
Fie’s sandal-nails crunched through something black and brittle. A whisper of escaping bone-sparks told her what she’d trod upon.
“That’s far enough.”
Tatterhelm’s voice clapped like thunder ahead. Fie started and gave Jasimir’s shoulder a sharp jerk.
The Vulture rounded a scorched corner, one hand locked about the back of Tavin’s neck. The other held a dagger to Tavin’s throat.
Still alive. Fie froze. Tavin was still alive. They’d bound his wrists before him. A lattice of dried blood streaked the side of his face, and bruises darkened his jaw, his arms, nigh everywhere she looked. Why hadn’t he healed himself? Had they simply beat him until he couldn’t keep up?
But he walked yet, breathed yet. He was there.
She hadn’t really believed she’d see him alive again. Not since he’d cut the bridge.
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