Of all the sights Fie expected to see before she choked to death, Prince Jasimir vomiting on the corpse of an Oleander hadn’t made the list.
The world went dark, shouts fading from her ears—then the weight at her back abruptly slackened. She staggered forward, the skin-ghast’s arm still locked about her throat. Someone grabbed her, and then with a jerk, the arm fell away. She gasped and coughed, eyes watering.
The prince knelt beside her, pinning the skin-ghast’s arm to the ground with Tavin’s sword. Scraps of gray skin littered the ground around them, wriggling and unfurling still. The skin-ghast’s head flattened out like raw dough, then swelled again. Just beyond it lay the dead Oleander.
He still had a few strands of Fie’s hair clenched in a fist. Enough to make a new puppet for Rhusana, once they’d finished with her.
“Now can you spare a Phoenix tooth?”
Trust Jasimir to get petty at a moment like this. Fie shot him a glare and scrabbled for her string.
The Oleanders had drawn their steel, the other skin-ghasts lurching toward them with a faint whistle. Still too many to fight.
Not too many to outrun.
The Phoenix tooth answered Fie’s call.
A dead witch-king roared in her bones, and golden fire bloomed in a shrieking arc. The Oleanders’ horses crashed into one another as their riders swore. Yet they didn’t flee, as if they doubted her.
As if they doubted the wrath of a Crow.
Fie fed the fire her fear and her fury; the ghost of the Phoenix led the charge. Flames turned into a wall, into a wave, into the jaws of a terrible beast crashing down around them.
The Oleanders fled then.
“Grab what you can,” she wheezed. Jasimir pulled her to her feet and lunged for their packs.
Fie tossed the Phoenix tooth at the dead Oleander, burning every last strand of her hair in his hand. A golden wall stretched along the road, keeping the Oleanders at bay. The tooth wouldn’t last but a few heartbeats more, but Fie prayed that’d give them enough of a start.
She and Jasimir fled into the trees.
She didn’t know how long they ran, only that golden fire waned to more mundane orange that shrank behind them. Hoofbeats drummed through the forest, chased by shouts, taunts, torchlight. More than once she and Jasimir huddled in the brush until a pale rider or a slithering skin-ghast passed and the quiet dark returned.
Eventually they cleared the woods. A sickle midnight moon gleamed above, its weak light catching on the mellow slopes of a pasture studded with goats and cattle.
Fie pointed. A few dozen paces away, a crude wooden structure sheltered great heaps of hay. “There.”
Jasimir nodded. They hopped the pasture fence, then the one around the hay, and crawled into a discreet hollow.
For a long moment, neither of them stirred. Fie simply blinked at the sky, breathing in the dust-honey smell of the hay, trying to think of anything but the horror of what hunted them now. From the pounding of her heart and the shivers still rattling her ribs, that was a lost battle.
“Bronze,” Jasimir croaked. “The man I killed. He had a bronze-tipped spear. For Hawks at village outposts.”
“Aye,” Fie said.
Another creaking pause. Then: “I killed someone.”
“Tavin said…” Fie’s voice broke. “He said it gets easier.” Jasimir didn’t answer. She forced herself to sit up and dig in her pack. “Also said he barfed on the body the first time, too, so you’ve that to bond over later.”
Jasimir made an odd sound that turned into a wavering, desperate laugh. He covered his eyes. “What in all twelve hells did we just … What was that? What were those?”
Fie gulped. She could reckon with skin-ghasts the way she reckoned with sinners: distant enough to blunt the horror. Or at least she could try.
“Never heard of a Swan witch as could do that.” Fie pulled out strips of dried fruit and jerky and passed half to him, ignoring her trembling hands. “Looked like just … skins. But I never heard of a skinwitch as could do that, either.” The memory of clammy, empty skin clung too tight. She made herself bite off a chunk of meat and chewed awhile, too belly-sick to swallow but a little at a time. “Likely that’s what ran through our camp before Gerbanyar. You saw one close-up, aye? When the Vultures tried to jump us.”
“We thought it was a trick of the dark.”
“But half the group ran off once the others went down,” she mulled. “The fleshy ones. And the skin-ghasts only ran through our camp before, naught else. So they won’t attack on their own; they need people to follow. That’s good for us.”
Jasimir choked on his dried fruit. “How is any part of this good for us?”
“Oleanders don’t ride by day, not yet, and the Vultures are off our trail for now. We stick to the roads until nigh sundown, hole up somewhere off the track for the night, and likely we can skip their ken.” Fie uncorked a water skin and took a swig. “We can still make it to Trikovoi before the end of Peacock Moon.”
Jasimir let out a long breath and drew a new one. “How … After everything I’ve done, everything you said about my father … why do you still care about saving him?”
“I don’t.” She tilted her head back, letting her eyes close just a moment. If ever Fie had felt like mincing her words, it wasn’t now. “He’s been a bad king to me, and he doesn’t sound like all that good of a father to you. But it gets worse if Rhusana takes his place. And I can’t save any of them alone. Not Tavin, not my kin, not even the king. Not without the master-general’s help.”
“Aunt Draga will get your family back,” Jasimir said. “She already has to rescue Tavin, since they’re blood relatives. The master-general will follow the Hawk code.”
Part of her dared to hope he was right. The rest of her called it foolishness. She couldn’t think on which one hurt more. Instead she said, “I’ll take watch.”
“We should split it.” Jasimir sat upright.
She shook her head. “If the Oleanders come round, I’ll need to set off Sparrow teeth soon as I can.”
Jasimir rubbed his face. “Then I’ll help you stay awake. We can take turns sleeping around dawn.”
If Fie was too tired to argue with that, then she needed the help. “Do what you like,” she sighed.
The night returned to quiet, broken only by muffled lowing of cattle and the iron toll of slaughter bells.
One of Fie’s untamable questions broke loose: “Why didn’t you go with the Oleanders?”
Jasimir didn’t answer for so long, she wondered if he’d fallen asleep anyhow. “I had a tutor,” he said at last. “A scholar on the ethics of ruling—everything I need to weigh when I make decisions for the good of the kingdom. She’s written dozens of scrolls on political power and rulers who succeeded and rulers who failed. There’s a wing in the royal library named for her. She was one of my mother’s best friends before … before.”
He blinked, as if searching the stars for answers to a question he couldn’t ask aloud yet.
“She said exactly what you did. That people pay me, in loyalty and in blood and in coin, because if enough people do, then I can repay them by making their lives better as their king. But…” He shook his head. “She didn’t say anything about the Crows. Not that the nation would collapse without you. Not how the other castes prey on you anyway. Her life’s work is the architecture of countries. She—she has to know. But she didn’t even talk about it once.” He swallowed. “There’s … no real reason for me not to know, is there?”
“No,” Fie said quiet. “There isn’t.”
He buried his face in his hands again. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. “The most powerful people in the kingdom can’t even say the problem is real.”
“They know it is,” Fie said grimly, scanning the dark for torches. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be so hell-bent on pretending it isn’t.”
“I don’t know how to fix it.”
And I don’t think we can.
Fie’s eyes burned. “Tavin said that, too,” she said, hoarse. “You can’t fix it, not everywhere and not all at once. But you can begin by keeping the oath. By telling the Splendid Castes and Hunting Castes that we’re part of Sabor.”
“I hate it,” Jasimir admitted. “I hate being the heir. Nothing can ever be simple or easy. Most of the time it just feels like … like choosing which finger to cut off that day.” He glanced over at her and sighed. “And here I am whining about hard choices to the girl whose family is being held hostage by my enemies.”
Fie laughed.
It was not a happy laugh.
But nor was it an angry one this time.
“Now you’re catching on,” she said wearily.
Iron bells clanked soft across the pasture. A thin cloud smeared the moonlight across the sky. A rider passed down the distant road, and both of them held their breath, listening for the whistle of skin-ghasts, until the hoofbeats faded.
“I’m sorry,” Jasimir said. “I thought … I thought I knew who I had to be, to deserve the crown. But all that’s done is brought you pain.”
Before Fie could answer, a flicker of torchlight kindled in the woods at pasture’s edge. She and Jasimir both went still, then shrank into the hay. A Sparrow tooth sparked to life.
A woman strode out of the trees, flanked by two hollow-eyed skin-ghasts. Her linen cloak flapped like the skin-ghasts’ lank arms as she swept her torch about; the skin-ghasts’ empty faces followed that flame.
The Oleander woman’s gaze passed over the hay heaps. She took a few steps closer.
Please, Fie begged the Sparrow tooth, the dead gods, the Covenant, aught that was listening. She was so, so tired of monsters at her door. Please, just let her pass.
A goat grazing nearby raised its head and bleated, the slaughter bell clanking at its throat. Another goat joined in.
The woman hesitated, then turned back to the woods. Soon enough the shadows swallowed her and the skin-ghasts both.
Fie let the Sparrow tooth go, eyes blearing. A long, long watch lay ahead. But at least she wasn’t keeping it alone.
“I … owe you another apology,” Jasimir said, twisting straw round his fingers. “You were right. I thought all Tavin saw in you was company in his bed. I thought that was all he could possibly want with … with a Crow. But you were more.”
The stars above blurred and burned with tears. Fie squeezed her eyes shut again.
“He looked at you the same way you look at roads.” Jasimir’s voice cracked. “Like where they go frightens you, and you love them for it.”
“Tavin told me you’d be a good king.” Fie’s voice stayed rough and low. “He believed it enough to give himself up. So maybe you earned the crown after all.”
Jasimir attempted a wan smile. “You can’t start being nice to me. It’s terrifying.”
Maybe they could make it like this. Fie didn’t want to let herself hope, but she hadn’t wanted to get attached to a mouthy Hawk, and that hadn’t square worked out, either.
Maybe they could make it to Trikovoi and get her kin back, get her Hawk back, save the Crows.
Maybe they could change Sabor.
“You get Nice Fie until sunrise,” she told the prince. “Then I am never letting you forget that you barfed on a corpse.”
The moon hung at an hour past midnight.
“Was your ma like the master-general?” Fie scraped the question from the exhausted fog in her skull.
Jasimir hesitated. “She … she was and she wasn’t. The army called her and Aunt Draga the Twin Talons for a reason, but in private, they were very different. Mother had more of a mind for diplomacy and court games. She could ruin anyone in one breath if they crossed her. Most of court quickly figured out not to.” His voice hitched. “Fie, I think—I think Rhusana murdered my mother.”
Fie straightened. “What? How?”
“Father uses Swan pavilions to host smaller events of state. He started going to Rhusana’s more and more one summer, then bringing her to the palace itself, and then by winter solstice…”
Fie remembered that day in cold Hawk Moon, when every beacon in Sabor lit up in black smoke. “What happened?”
“The doctor said Mother was ill, but they wouldn’t let anyone see her until … until the pyre. There were marks all over her throat, I saw them. And two moons after they burned her, we had a new queen.”
“So Rhusana poisoned her?”
“I don’t know.” Jasimir stared into the cold night. “No. I do. I just don’t know how she did it. I … I haven’t told anyone. Not even Tavin.” Jasimir shivered. “Maybe I should have sooner, but … he would have thought I was … weak for doing nothing.”
“Tavin or your father?”
His mouth twisted, bitter. “Both.”
Almost daybreak. Fie wasn’t awake, not truly, just staring into the hazy dark.
Jasimir’s mouth moved, forming words scarce above a whisper. He’d muttered the chant to himself enough times that Fie had lost count. “… I will not run from my fear,” he mumbled. “I will not forsake my blood. I will not dishonor my dead. By my steel, I swear.”
It wasn’t a watch-hymn, but Fie supposed the pretty words of the Hawk code worked near as good.
“I will follow until I must lead. I will shield until I must strike. I will fight until I must heal. By my nation, I swear.”
Another pinprick of torchlight pierced the night. Jasimir jostled her elbow.
They watched it bob and weave through the woods, finally fading from sight.
Jasimir started up again: “I will serve my nation and the throne above all,” he recited. “I will not dishonor my blood, my nation, or my steel. And I will not abide a Hawk who does. By my blood, I swear.”
Pretty words. Words of a prince.
At the eastern horizon, the weight of the night began to ease.
The dawn broke.
When Jasimir told Fie to sleep, she didn’t fight, curling in the hay. She woke with the sun square in her eyes a few hours later. Not near enough rest, but it’d tide her over.
They split more dried fruit, shook off the straw, and staggered to their feet.
“Here.” Jasimir held out Tavin’s sword.
She sheathed it, then bit her lip.
“Where…” Fie’s voice came out a squeak. She cleared her throat. “Where did we leave off with reading?”
“Ta … Trilo…?” Fie scowled at the flatway signpost. “Is it Trikovoi?”
Jasimir moved his finger along the symbols. “Ta, then ri, becomes tri. Ka, then o, becomes ko. Va—”
“With oi is voi. Trikovoi. Aye. I know.” The prince had shoved letter after letter before her nose for the past four days, even carrying about a scrap of slate and a soft, pale rock to write with. This far northeast, the flatways wound quiet round the mountains, their dry dust only stirred by wandering Owl scholars and Sparrow farmers carting vegetables and livestock to the markets of the Marovar. By day, there were precious few distractions from Jasimir’s academic zeal.
It hadn’t been easy. The first evening, they’d tussled when she told him to be stingy with their dwindling dried meat. He’d stormed off into the firs again, carrying a length of rope and his dagger. Dinner had been thin and their words short, and after sundown the whistles of skin-ghasts had driven them into the trees once more.
Then she’d woken to grouse roasting on an improvised spit, a dead pheasant lying in a rope snare nearby, and the prince kneeling to the dawn.
Jasimir had straightened and held up a scrap of slate. A few plain letters were scrawled across it. “Let’s try this again.”
And from there they’d slowly jostled each other into a routine. She still felt it, the hard ache of silence where Tavin’s laugh ought to have been, the cold absence of fingers that had brushed against hers, the longing to catch him watching her again. The prince didn’t hum any watch-hymns; she didn’t wake to find that someone had covered her with a spare pelt. In all the small things that ought to have been there and weren’t, she missed Tavin the most.
But she had an oath to keep. So did the prince.
And so they did. They shared the quiet as Oleander torches lit the woods, as skin-ghasts prowled beneath the trees they’d climbed. And when the danger passed, silence filled in with letters on slate, stories of the court and of the road, memories traded and admired and mourned.
He said foolish things sometimes, asked questions only someone who’d grown in a palace would have. And when Fie told him as much, sometimes he frosted over again and kept quiet awhile. But more and more often, he simply nodded and listened to why.
“Next challenge,” Jasimir said. “How many leagues to go?”
Numbers. Those were even worse than the alphabet. Fie squinted at the end of the sign. “Two tens and … five?”
“Four. But you were close.”
“So are we.” Fie added up the distance. “Three days’ walk.”
“That’s the end of Peacock Moon.” He rubbed the back of his neck, mouth twisting.
Fie pointed to the nearest league marker. “You know what happened when they lit the plague beacons for you? They sent up colors like ordinary round the palace, all the way out to red. Then every other league marker in Sabor burned black. Last time they did that…” She faltered. “… was nigh on a half-dozen years ago. For your mother. So if aught happens to the king, we’ll know.”
“I didn’t know about that,” he said, quiet.
“Aye. Madcap told me it was a thousand-thousand royal ghosts.” Fie scowled. “Scared the piss out of me.”
Jasimir laughed at that. Then he sobered. “Any change with … with the Vultures?”
Like Tavin, he had a shine for questions beneath questions. She rested a hand on the unbroken sword and called on a Vulture tooth. “The trail’s too far off to read all the way out,” she answered, then reached for a different tooth on her string. Pa’s spark burned there. “Could be past Gerbanyar by now. And Pa’s still alive. That’s all I know.”
No telling how Tavin was keeping. Dead or alive, the skinwitches had stolen him farther than she could see.
“Three days,” Jasimir said after a beat. Then he produced the scrap of slate. “We have a lot of reading practice to do.”
They made it another day and a half before the Covenant caught up.
Seven days since they’d lost Tavin and returned to the roads. It was a generous stretch, but one Fie had always known would end.
The sun was hanging low at their backs, and the prince blushing through the third verse of “The Lad from Across the Sea,” when she saw it waiting down the road.
The dead gods’ mercy called them onward: a string of bloodred smoke needled the sky.