One she’d never seen made for Crows.
Two fingers, pressed dead center above two eyes. It meant “The Covenant sees,” that it would remember what they had done today, when it weighed their deeds at the end of their lives. It would remember the choices Fie had made. Every last one.
It was supposed to be an honor.
The Covenant sees.
Fie didn’t realize her fists were clenched until she felt her nails biting into her palm. She shook out her hands and turned from the headwoman, muttering, “We should go.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
SAFE AND SOUND
They pushed south for a few hours after leaving Karostei, and though Fie saw the sense in it, she felt all too keenly every fleck of dried blood under her short-gnawed fingernails, every bruise, every smudge of what was optimistically mud, but more likely to be some skin-ghast slime.
But there was no use stopping until they found a proper place for all of them to wash up, as every ghast had been pulled off a dead sinner, and every Crow who had tangled with them needed to scrub that sin off. By the time the road wandered close enough to a broad riverbed, the sun was rolling lazily near the horizon.
“The Vine?” one of Tavin’s guards asked, tipping his spear at the waters. Master-General Draga hadn’t let her only son go haring off with only a turncoat Vulture for protection, which was probably wise considering Tavin was also the dead king’s bastard son. Instead, he’d been flanked by three soldiers so stone-faced, they made Lakima look like she had a flair for the dramatic.
“The Sprout,” Madcap answered. “It’s an offshoot of the Vine, trickles out a score league from here or so.”
The soldier’s stone face faltered for a moment. Fie reckoned he’d only ever barked orders at Crows and had yet to sort out how he felt when one answered him without bowing, scraping, and tossing in a “m’lord” or five.
“We’ll make camp here,” Fie announced, catching Lakima’s eye. “Best to get everyone cleaned up soon as we can.”
“Yes, chief,” the corporal said smoothly, and pulled the oxen’s harnesses to lead the supply cart to the side of the road. They’d divvied up rations with Jade’s band just out of Karostei and sent them off with the cart the Crows usually hauled bodies on, but there was still enough in their supplies to tide Fie’s band until they reached the procession.
The newer Hawks traded looks Fie didn’t miss but dismounted after a moment.
“Little assistance, if you please,” drawled a voice Fie wished she could miss. Viimo the skinwitch had been granted a horse, where she sat with her hands bound in front of her, reins wrapped round her wrists, knees lashed to the saddle, and a broad grin on her pale-pink face. “Seein’ as all these precautions”—she flapped the reins—“was your lot’s idea.” She nudged her horse closer to Fie. “Help a lass out, aye?”
“No,” Fie said flatly, and walked away. Wretch laughed and went to untie the Vulture.
“Not even a ‘thank you kindly’ for all my troubles,” she heard Viimo call after her. “I could’ve let your half-prince lout here wander all about the countryside while the queen made a dress outta your hide!”
Fie ignored her. The skinwitch had been one of the hunters who had hounded her, Tavin, and Jasimir across Sabor; Viimo had helped their leader, Tatterhelm, take Fie’s kin hostage; and worst of all, at the last possible moment she’d turned on Tatterhelm, buying Fie time to save her Crows. Fie didn’t know if they would have made it out without Viimo’s help, and that, to her, was an unforgivable debt she’d never asked to owe.
“Can someone get the salt and soap-shells?” Fie asked Lakima’s Hawks, then pointed to the river. “Crows, we all need to wash up, even if you don’t think you touched a sinner today.”
Khoda rummaged through the cart. “Should we do the same?”
She shook her head, then paused. “You all stayed outside the walls, you’re fine. But Tavin…”
“You could take him upstream,” Varlet said, “to be safe. Can’t pick up aught from sharing our water that way.”
Bawd fired off a wink with all the subtlety of a rock to the head. “Aye. Much safer.”
Fie shot her a dirty look, but there was no denying that the last few hours had ground by so slow partially because she’d spent most of it trying not to leer at her Hawk. The easy chatter they’d fallen into had stiffened back into unease on the road, where she had to be a chief and he had to be a king’s bastard and neither quite knew how to manage those with an electric storm brewing between them.
Even now Tavin looked taken aback, swinging a pack down. Then he caught Bawd’s renewed furious winking. “Oh. Uh. Yes. That would be … safer.”
“We’ll get to work setting up camp.” Corporal Lakima tossed Tavin the sturdy satchel Fie made up after every beacon, with a change of clothes, rags for drying off, and its own pouches of salt and soap-shells.
Khoda paused, to Fie’s surprise, looking from her to Tavin. “If it’s just the two of you, is that … er … safe?”
Fie buried her burning face in her hands.
“I think we’ve established everyone’s going to be safe,” Tavin said, short. “Repeatedly.”
Khoda looked annoyed. “I meant—with the skin-ghasts—”
“I can assure you of my personal commitment to Fie’s safety, and I suspect she’ll be ensuring mine as well, and really I’d like to leave it at that before we ruin the word safe any more than we already have.” Tavin started toward the riverbank, then stopped, mouth twisting. “Where are we going again?”
“Somewhere safe,” Fie mumbled into her palms, then straightened up and set off across the crunching, dry riverbed pebbles. “Come on. The rest of you stay close to camp.”
Summer had withered the Sprout enough to leave wide borders of sunbaked mud and long-dead river grass, but the water still ran deep and swift enough in the middle. Fie couldn’t make herself look back at Tavin, only trusting his footsteps and the hair prickling on the back of her neck to say he was following her.
Fie didn’t stop until they’d rounded a crook in the river far enough from the camp to give them some quiet. “This’ll do.”
She set her satchel down on the bank and fished out her salt and soap-shells. Tavin’s shadow fell over the open bag, and she glanced up on instinct. He was staring down at her, and she could have sworn something troubled flickered out behind his eyes like a snuffed lamp.
He gestured awkwardly at his shirt. “Should I be, er, not wearing clothes for this?”
“I’d rather you weren’t,” Fie blurted out, then wondered if she could knock Tavin out with a handy rock and insist he’d imagined everything when he woke up.
He just laughed and crouched in place. “That makes two of us,” he admitted.
“Wash them or burn them, you choose. Hold out your hands.” Fie shook a few soap-shells into his palms. “These first, then the salt.”
Despite her candor, she found herself averting her eyes as he pulled off his shirt and waded into the Sprout. It was nonsense; they’d seen each other without so much as a stitch on plenty of times a moon ago, albeit not out in the open like this. Yet whether it was the time apart or something more, something felt unsettled between them.
Fie made herself splash into the water downstream of him, still in her own shirt and leggings, stopping when it reached her belly. “I didn’t ask before,” she called back as she cracked the soap-shell hulls, “but … how do you feel about … the king?”
She heard Tavin go still, and when he answered, it was with a stiff, surprising sort of anger. “The only bad thing about my father’s death was that Jas wasn’t ready for it. And that it gave Rhusana an opening. Apart from that…” He let out a breath. “We’ve lost nothing worth mourning.”
“You don’t think Jas could have gotten through to him?” Fie asked, cautious. The king had left more scars on Tavin than just the burn on his wrist; only Tavin could say how well they’d healed.
“No, I don’t.” Tavin’
s voice tightened. “Surimir spent his entire life doing only what served him. He knew people were suffering, dying from problems he could fix, and he just didn’t care. People are still dying because of him.”
Fie sank into the river up to her nose, chewing over her next question and finding no good way to ask it. She ducked her head under, then popped back up in a fizzing cloud of suds and made herself look Tavin’s way. “You were born before Jasimir.”
He shook his head, back still to her. “I was, but—I was never trained to rule. I have no business sitting on that throne. You might as well put a horse up there.” He coughed a laugh. “Twelve hells, you’d do better leading the country than me.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” Fie splashed back toward the bank to fetch her salt. Life after life, you’ve failed. “You’d do better with the horse. Come get your salt.”
She’d already dusted herself down by the time he reached the water’s edge, so she just carried the rest of the bag to him. “Arms out,” she said, and rained sparkling flakes over his outstretched wrists.
Then she caught one of his hands and tried not to think too hard about the way his breath caught, too. She rolled her thumb in a steady, even circle over the back of his hand, over tendon and scar, feeling his pulse jump beneath her fingertips with only river water and melting salt between them.
“Scrub with the salt, at least that hard,” she said, and let go. “Everywhere. I’m not taking any chances.” She handed him the bag, then stepped back into deeper water and cracked a grin at him. “And if you miss a spot, I’ll know.”
Then she ducked her head underwater again before it could burst into flame. Even just touching his hand had sent a jolt through her, one that reminded her in no uncertain terms that it had been a sore long moon without her Hawk.
She stayed under about as long as she could manage, trying to cool her head. Sadly, it was beyond even the river’s help.
When she surfaced, Tavin was rinsing salt from his hair. He straightened up, uncertain. “I think I got everything,” he said. “Are we … Can I—”
“Aye,” Fie said. “If you want to be really safe, you can pray to the Eater of Bones not to take you, but—”
He crossed the space between them before she could finish, pulling her into his arms.
Then, to her surprise, they stayed that way: up to their waists in the river, her forehead resting against his rattling heart, his arms wound almost too tight around her. Tavin didn’t speak, didn’t stir, didn’t do aught but hold her as close as he could.
First she realized he was shaking; then she felt his chest shudder beneath her cheek and knew something was wrong.
“Tavin?” She tilted her head up to look him in the eye.
Fie thought she’d seen more than enough terrible things for one week, but clearly she was wrong. The boy she loved was crying.
“What is it?”
“I—” He cut himself off, looking like he was about to be sick. He shook his head. “I can’t—”
Fie laid her hand against the side of his face, and he closed his eyes, leaning into her palm. “Show me,” she said, and moved her fingers to brush his mouth. He sucked in a breath, then nodded, lips parting just enough for her fingertip to catch on a tooth.
The teeth of the living always sang brighter than the dead, even more so when they were still part of the person. There was no need to call Tavin’s ghost from a spark in a bone, for there was no spark—only a rush like wildfire that swallowed her whole.
She felt his stab of fear when he’d realized Rhusana had painted targets on the Crows. Unending needle-pricks of anxiety, of impatience, of growing anger as he bartered with his mother for permission to find his chief. The brief reprieve as Viimo traced a steady, clear trail to lead them to the tooth bag.
Then—horror, when he reached it.
Tavin had told Fie he’d found the bag at the roadside, and that much was true. But Drudge hadn’t emptied it out and cast it aside like she’d assumed.
Instead, she felt the moment Tavin rounded the bend in the road, found a still-smoking ruin of corpses and ash strewn across the flatway, and drew a catastrophic conclusion.
She felt something irreparable break in Tavin as he all but threw himself from his horse, stumbling through the embers toward a figure burned beyond recognition, lying beside a charred leather bag.
He’d always known she wasn’t immortal, that she could bleed and weep and fall like anyone else. But deep down, he’d never really believed it. He’d never believed she’d do anything but simply refuse to die.
And even after Viimo shook him from his screaming, after she told him that wasn’t Fie lying dead in the burning grass, that his chief was still alive—it didn’t mend what had been broken.
It didn’t matter that he’d found her again just hours later, furious and filthy and beautiful in the wreckage of Karostei. For those few, terrible moments, he’d known what it was to see the girl he loved dead. And that could not be unbroken.
Fie jerked her hand back and found tears streaking down her own face. “Oh—hells, Tavin.”
Tavin bowed his head until his brow met hers. “I thought you were gone,” he said, voice cracking. “I thought if I was faster, or if I’d left with you, or … I thought I lost you, Fie.”
“You didn’t.” She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to fight. She wanted to find Drudge and give his band a proper funeral. She wanted to kick Drudge’s fool skull off a cliff. She’d told him not to call two Phoenix teeth at once, that he’d lose control. He’d done it anyway, and from what Fie had seen in those fleeting, awful glimpses, it had cost all his Crows their lives. “I’m fine. I’m still alive.”
“I know,” Tavin said, but his hands still shook as he brushed her hair back from her face. “I just—can’t stop seeing it, and then—you’re gone again.”
She drew him nearer the shore, nearer to her, until their lips met, and whispered against his mouth, “I’m here.” Then she kissed him like she’d wanted to since the moment she’d left Trikovoi: like a jealous god hungry for tribute.
She dug her fingers along his spine, grazed her teeth along the pulse in his jaw, seized tangled handfuls of his damp hair tighter and tighter until he gasped her name like a prayer. She answered by dragging them both to their knees. If the fear of losing her had overthrown him, she would be the fire and flood that drove it out.
She took his hand again, no salt between them now, and slammed it over her heart. “Feel that,” she ordered, fingers locked in the curls at the nape of his neck, her stare boring into his as her heart thundered against his palm. “Is that gone to you?” He shook his head, wordless. “Am I gone to you?” she demanded.
He stared at her, wide-eyed and breathing hard. Then he pulled her closer, his voice low and fierce and desperate in a way she hadn’t heard before. “Never.”
He said it against her lips, against her throat, against her hipbone after they’d managed to drag themselves mostly ashore and free themselves of their sodden clothes. He spelled it on her with his mouth, with his hands, until it was her turn to make a prayer of his name, and even after that as they fell into the same dance they’d taught each other a moon earlier. Between moments when all he could say was her name and moments when neither of them could speak at all, still he swore never.
The sky ripened to sunset well before the ghosts between them were laid to rest. For a while they lay together in the quiet, watching sparrows flit across gold-soaked clouds as cicada-song drifted from the trees.
Eventually, the last of Fie’s ghosts shook its chains too loud for her to ignore.
“I—” she started, and her voice broke. She coughed and tried again. “I … had to give mercy to—to children today.”
Tavin had been tracing an idle pattern across her collarbone; he stopped and shifted to look at her. “Oh, Fie,” he said softly. “I’m so sorry.”
It was one thing to know her own wounds, but hearing someone else say she’d been hurt always made her bl
eed anew. Her face crumpled as she curled into his arms. “I’ve never … They were so little, and they didn’t have to … they didn’t have to die. It’s not right. That damned arbiter killed them all. I had to cut their throats, and he didn’t even have to look them in the eye.” She buried her face in the hollow of his neck. “It’s not right.”
He rubbed her back until she steadied, chin resting on the top of her head. “I knew … this was going to be bad,” he said. “But I didn’t know it would happen this fast.”
“There’s thousands of people like that arbiter, all across Sabor. They talk and look like anyone else, but they’ll take any excuse to get rid of Crows for good.” Fie swallowed. “And all they were waiting for was permission.”
“Do you think that’s what happened to the man who stole your teeth?”
“Aye. We met because some scummers were harrying his band, and I chased them off with fire. Likely Drudge crossed someone like that after he stole my teeth, and he figured he’d do the same.”
“But Phoenix teeth never burned you.”
“Reckon he lost control,” she said unevenly. “I warned him they’d fight. Did—did you see any teeth in the grass?”
Tavin shook his head. “I didn’t see any, but I also had … other things on my mind.” He grimaced. “Whoever attacked them probably wanted to make sure Crows wouldn’t get teeth that dangerous again.”
“Covenant forbid,” Fie drawled. “Then they might actually have to stop killing us.”
“Imagine that.” Tavin still drew circles on her back, but the bewildered note in his voice said it was just as much to distract himself as her. “Every time I think we’ve hit the bottom of how bad it is, we just peel off another layer, don’t we? And they’ll let their own children die if it means hurting the Crows. What do you even do against something like that?”
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