Pa kept more Pigeon teeth than they could ever hope to use. After all, teeth were the easiest and cheapest viatik at hand, and city folk of any caste seldom parted with anything valuable without a knife in their face to encourage them. With the Birthright of luck, Pigeon teeth could bend fortune in the smallest ways: a timely look to catch a pickpocket, a spare three-naka coin in the gutter, a solid guess on six out of twelve gambling shells.
Pigeon witches, though, could play fortune like a flute. They wrought havoc or blessings as they willed, inviting a flush harvest as easy as a citywide scourge of rats. Lucky for Sabor, witches of the Common Castes were among the rarest, and their wayward teeth even rarer.
And at dawn, Pa hoisted the only Pigeon witch-tooth he had into the clammy air, knotted his fist around it, and closed his eyes.
Fie saw no change, but after a moment Pa lowered his arm. “Done.”
Hangdog just shook his head and began walking down the road. He’d called it a waste; he’d been the only one. The rest of the band knew that with half their supplies burned up in the ruined wagon, they were sore overdue for good fortune.
“What comes now?” Tavin asked, standing behind Jasimir.
The prince knelt in the packed dirt of the flatway, face turned to the east and the rising sun, lips moving in a silent prayer. Barf sat beside him, tail flicking in the dust. Fie had heard the Phoenix caste kept rituals to honor the dawn. At the moment, she would have rather honored some breakfast.
“No telling,” Pa answered, rubbing a hand over his beard. “But we’ll know when it finds us.”
His eyes locked on the empty road behind them, where naught lurked but dirt washed in dawn-gray shadow. Then he slung a weighty sack from his back and fished inside, emerging with two teeth.
“Fie.” His hand twitched toward her.
She took the teeth. Twin Pigeon sparks burned inside—not witch sparks but the plain kind.
“It’s time you learned to use two at once. That was too close last night.” That should have been his Pa voice. Instead it was his Chief voice, quiet, immovable—unsettling. It rose as he turned to the rest of the band. “Swain. How far left to go?”
The lanky Crow tweaked a rolled-up map jutting from his pack. “We’re near the coast. One day until we walk the Fan region proper. From there, two days to the Cheparok fortress.”
“I sent a message-hawk to our contact in Cheparok before we were quarantined.” Tavin helped Prince Jasimir to his feet. “He’s a Markahn stationed in the markets. His commanding officer will alert the governor to light the fortress’s plague beacon once I give them the signal. That gives us an excuse to walk right up to Governor Kuvimir’s front gate.”
Pa nodded and whistled the marching call, casting one final look behind him. “Then let’s hope our good luck holds out awhile.”
Good luck came swift, wearing the face of ill fortune: a black finger of smoke beckoning over the treetops an hour later. Hangdog sulked the entire short walk to answer the beacon, and Fie couldn’t help chewing over her own doubts.
When they returned to the flatway with a flush viatik of two river oxen, a new wagon, and all else they fancied from the dead sinner’s abundant property, Fie’s doubt was naught but dust in their trail. She hadn’t even had to cut the sinner’s throat.
“How many villages are like that?”
Fie looked up from the twin teeth in her salt-lined palm. She was allowed to ride in the wagon with the prince as long as she practiced her toothcraft, but thus far the two Pigeon canines only squabbled in her grasp like fussy toddlers.
“Like what?” she asked.
The prince leaned on the wagon’s railing, watching the vine-laced cypress reel past as he rubbed Barf’s ears. The tabby hadn’t strayed from his side all morning, save to beg attention from Tavin. “Friendly. Generous. Was that just the tooth at work?”
“No.” She leaned back against a sack of rice, then hissed as a splinter from the wagon’s rough planks slipped into her thumb. “The Covenant marked that sinner long before we used the tooth. Likely the village wanted him gone. That skinflint sucked up all their wealth and squatted on it. Luck didn’t do any of that. Luck just made them wait to light a beacon until we were the nearest band of Crows.”
“I see.” Jasimir pursed his lips, tugging on the hood that hid his topknot. A walking song from Swain seeped in over the rumble of the wagon.
Fie picked out the splinter and sucked on her thumb, grimacing at the whisper of salt beneath her nail. “What’s Your Highness really after?”
“I … I suppose I’m wondering why the Crows are still here if it’s all that bad.” Jasimir unfurled the words slow and careful. “You have no home. I don’t know why you would stay in a place that doesn’t want you.”
Fie’s fist closed around the teeth a little too tight, thoughts skittering around her head like water off hot iron.
It was the same as Jasimir calling her bone thief, as leaving his dagger hilt unwrapped. He didn’t know better. He didn’t mean hurt by it. To a prince, this was all a week’s mummery before he paraded, glorified, back to Dumosa.
But that did naught to lessen the damage.
Fie’s hand shook as she pointed to the road. “That is my home, cousin.” She pointed, again, this time to the rolling hills due north. “That is my home.” The thin blue rag-edge of sea to the southern horizon. “That is my home.” And last, she pointed to the Crows scattered around the wagon as Swain’s walking song wound down. “This is my home.”
Wooden wheels ground against the sand-grit road, scraping at the silence that stretched betwixt Fie and the prince. Finally she trusted her voice enough to continue.
“We stay in Sabor because it’s our home. Aye, the villages don’t want us, but the sinners always do. Every plague-fearing soul sleeps easier knowing we’ll come when they call. So you ask why we stay? Because the plague stays. Because someone out there needs mercy. And because this is our damned home.”
“I didn’t mean to offend—” the prince began.
“You’ve been good as dead for two days and no one cares,” Fie interrupted. “Why don’t you leave? Ask a village with a live plague beacon if they want Crows or kings more, and you’ll know which of us the country can do without.”
The wagon rocked as Tavin swung himself up to peer at them over a railing. “Do we need a healer in here?”
“What?” Fie asked, startled but not surprised. The Hawk seemed to have a sense for when the prince’s pride risked a puncture. Barf chirped at Tavin until he scratched her chin.
“Do we need a healer?” he repeated, giving an exaggerated wave of his witch-sign. “Because it sounds like someone’s getting skewered.”
Jasimir’s cheeks darkened. “We were … having a discussion.”
“Of course.” Tavin rested his own chin on a forearm. “You know, you two are almost making the exact same face right now.”
Fie hadn’t known what to expect when his Peacock glamour ebbed away, but pretty-boy blood ran plain strong in the Markahns. By daylight, he still looked the prince’s kinsman but more the Hawk, one the world had gnawed at like a mutt gnawed a bone. He tilted his head at Fie. “I’d pay good Saborian coin to watch you have that discussion back at the palace. You’d tear half the court to shreds.”
Hangdog sent a foul look their way.
“Only half?” Wretch asked from the road.
For once, Fie caught no whiff of schemes in Tavin’s grin. “I’m hoping the other half would figure out to run for their lives. If they don’t, that’s entirely their fault.”
Fie couldn’t stopper up a laugh. This time, Hangdog wasn’t the only one to shoot her a look.
She ducked her head, ears burning.
Pa cleared his throat from the driver’s bench. “How’s that practice, Fie?”
“Coming along,” she snapped, and unfurled her fist. The teeth had bit two hollows into her palm. Beyond the wagon, Wretch set on a new walking song, a marching hymn to the dead god Crossroads-Eyes.
“Lord Hawk.” Pa patted the bench. “A word.”
Tavin clambered over to Pa. Jasimir hunched into a sulk disguised as a nap, but Fie paid it no heed, glowering at her Pigeon teeth. Wasn’t her fault if nobody else had cut him a slice of hard truth before.
“How may I be of service?” Tavin asked, settling beside Pa.
When Pa spoke, Fie had to strain to hear over the cart’s rattle. “Tell me about the queen’s Vultures.”
Fie caught her breath.
The bench creaked as Tavin shifted. “Are they on our trail?”
“Something is.” Pa flicked the reins. “They won’t catch up unless they’re riding devils themselves, but…”
When, not if. No wonder Pa had stared at the road so.
Fie stole a glance at Prince Jasimir. He’d traded the fake nap for a true one, eyes shut against the noon sun, head lolling against the railing.
“Rhusana keeps five skinwitches in her pay,” Tavin muttered low. “Four are just trackers. Damned good trackers, but you, me, or Fie could easily drop them in a fight.”
“And the fifth?”
Tavin paused. “Greggur Tatterhelm,” he said at last. “The queen’s favorite. Biggest northman I’ve ever seen. You’d swear his father had a deviant shine for mammoths. He cuts a notch in his helmet for every mark he brings in, one if they’re alive, two if they’re dead.”
“Tatter-helm,” Pa drawled. “Quaint.”
“He’s not the best skinwitch, nor the fastest. But he’s all twelve hells to cross.”
“Hm.” The bench creaked again under Pa’s weight. “And this lord in Cheparok, he’s sound and true, aye?”
“What?”
“You boys trust him to hold to your plan?”
“Of course,” Tavin said a little too loud. Pa let the unanswered silence speak for itself. Tavin lowered his voice. “The governors of the Fan have been the crown’s strongest allies for centuries. Besides, Cheparok sits on the biggest trading bay in the south. No country will do business with a nation on the brink of civil war. Kuvimir’s been very clear who he stands with.”
“I see.”
The last time Fie had heard Pa use that tone was just yesterday, when the Crane arbiter had told them their viatik was only firewood.
“It’s all been arranged,” Tavin said. A wiry strain of conviction twined about his words, the kind that said you’d draw blood trying to pull them loose. “He’ll take Jas in once we get to Cheparok, and then Tatterhelm will have to go through the governor.” He stood. “Let me know if the Vultures get closer.”
“Aye.” Pa waited until Tavin had jumped clear of the cart, then half twisted round. “You catch all that, girl?”
“Aye, Pa,” Fie answered, quiet, eyes on the road behind them. The wagon rolled on.
“Then keep practicing.”
“Aye, Pa.”
“There. Harmony.”
Fie tried to brand the moment into her memory: the rosy campfire against the dark, the cool, sandy earth pressing against her crossed legs, and most of all, the two teeth humming in her hand.
“Harmony’s the key,” Pa said, nodding his approval. “They don’t wake up the same, they don’t burn the same, but they’ll burn together if you strike a balance betwixt them.”
Using one Pigeon tooth always felt like stepping on a loose paving stone: an odd, sudden tilt, and then it was gone. Calling on two was wholly different. Now fortune flowed like a river around her, eddies coiling about her fist. Whorls also bloomed round Pa, likely from the lingering witch-tooth’s pull.
Fie gave one coil an experimental tug with her mind. It lit up … then sputtered out as the teeth’s harmony frayed. Both sparks flared and died as she swore.
Pa chuckled. “First step’s the hardest. Just a matter of practice from here.”
“I’ve been practicing all day,” she grumbled.
“Do you want to take a break?”
Fie looked over her shoulder. Tavin stood on the other side of the fire, stretching an arm. “If you want, I’ll teach you to play Twelve Shells.” He waggled his fingers at Jasimir and Hangdog. “Oh, look at that—twice in one day. Now you two are making the same face.”
“Because you always do this,” the prince grumbled, just loud enough for Tavin and her to catch.
Hangdog was less subtle. He ran a thumb down the scratch across his cheek, thunder in his brow. “Keep your own business.”
“You keep yours,” Pa rumbled. “Go on, Fie. You’ve earned a rest.”
Fie reckoned anything that riled the prince was worth doing. She rocked to her feet just as Hangdog’s snarl echoed across the clearing. “Just because he can’t rut his own women out here doesn’t mean he’s welcome to ours.”
She froze, an angry flush clawing up her neck, as the camp went quiet. Every Crow eye stuck on her.
Pa’s voice cracked across the clearing like a whip. “You’ll keep a civil tongue, boy, or you won’t use it at all.”
“I didn’t mean to cause you trouble,” Tavin whispered close behind her. She started. Damn if the dead Hawk Queen hadn’t trained the boys well. “We … we can forget the game.”
That settled it. Fie’d be cinders in a pyre before she let Hangdog say who she could sit at shells with.
“You need a whole set of gambling shells, aye?” she asked, a little too loud. “Madcap? Can we use yours?”
Madcap tossed their small leather bag over Swain’s head, then followed it with a less-than-discreet wink. Fie ground her teeth and stalked to a clear patch of sandy dirt big enough for both her and Tavin.
He sat a moment after she did, glancing sidelong at Hangdog, then dragged a line in the dirt between them. “It’s a fairly simple game. We both start with six shells.” Fie handed half the bag over. He dropped his shells into two rows of three, and she followed suit.
“There are twelve rounds,” Tavin continued. “Each round, you can either take a shell from my side…” He reached for a shell on her side of the line. She seized his wrist out of habit. He snorted a laugh. “Or try to stop me from trying to take one from yours, just like that. Once you touch a shell, it’s yours. After twelve rounds, whoever has the most shells wins.”
She let go of him and blamed the flush up her neck on the campfire. The one a solid dozen paces off. “That’s all?”
“For the basic game. At court we play a couple different variations”—his voice hitched for the briefest moment—“but those are more … complicated. Any questions?” She shook her head. “Then on the count of three. One—two—three.”
He tried for the same shell as before. She caught his hand before it came close.
“Well done,” he said, and drew a tick mark to the side. “Round two.”
This time she caught him again, reaching for an outside shell.
“Beginner’s luck,” he huffed, the corner of his mouth tilting up even as he sat back.
“You’re easy to read,” Fie returned. That was a half-truth. She’d sorted a handful of truths about the prince’s Hawk by now, though most ran as deep as the line in the sand between them. Yet one was clear enough: she’d met holy pilgrims who put less effort into getting to their dead god’s tombs than Tavin did trying to make it onto her good side.
Time to sort out an uglier truth, then.
“Round—”
“It wasn’t right,” Fie interrupted. “What Hangdog said about you.”
About us, that ugly voice whispered. Fie kept that to herself.
Tavin blinked at her, wordless. She’d managed to throw him off-balance once more. The question was if that meant Hangdog had the truth of it.
“Thank you,” Tavin said quietly. “If you’re concerned I’m going to hurt him—”
“He shouldn’t have said it,” she said, cutting him off again. It’d take a harder push to crack the Hawk. “We have two more days to Cheparok. He’s going to keep saying things he shouldn’t.”
“And I’m going to keep ignoring them.” Tavin glanced across the fire to the prince, then back to her. “My … the old queen, Jasindra, had a favorite Hawk proverb: ‘When you act in anger, you have already lost your battle.’”
Fie reckoned that hadn’t worked out too well for the dead queen. She also reckoned she’d best keep that to herself as well. Instead, she asked, “Did you see her much?”
“Every day.” Tavin’s voice roughened at the very edges. “She raised me like her own, though … King Surimir made sure Jas and I remembered who was the prince. But you could say the queen and my mother were close.”
He’d not mentioned his mother before. Not with the prince in earshot. “Is she with the palace Hawks?”
A shadow slipped across his face. “No. She’s a mammoth rider in the Marovar.”
Fie whistled under her breath. Mammoth lancers had to be hammered of stern stuff. Only the sternest guarded the ancestral Hawk stronghold of fortresses scattered about the northeastern Marovar mountains. “Sure it’s a proper holiday, riding for the master-general.”
Tavin cracked another honest smile. “You want to know a secret?”
“Aye.”
“My mother once told me Master-General Draga just wants to be left alone with her spears, her mammoths, and her husbands and wives. But she’ll bring all twelve hells down on anyone who takes her away from that.” Tavin tossed a shell from hand to hand. “In retrospect, maybe that contributes to the ‘don’t get angry’ philosophy.”
Fie wrinkled her nose. “Reckon ‘don’t get angry’ is a lot easier to say from the back of a mammoth, too.”
“The mammoth probably helps,” Tavin admitted. “Round three.”
Fie came away with a shell this time, snatching it before he could stop her.
“You know what else helps?” Tavin asked, grimacing as she added the shell to her side. “A bag of Phoenix teeth. Round four.”
“Teeth burn out. Phoenix witches don’t.”
“One. Two. Three.”
They both seized shells. Tavin stayed silent as he placed his stolen shell in the gap she’d made in his rows. Something was amiss; he always had a parry to every strike.
“There are Phoenix witches, aren’t there?” Fie asked.
His mouth twisted. “Right now? Only King Surimir. If Rhusana kills him before another witch appears…”
Fie filled in the blanks herself. With all of their dead gods buried under the palace, any Phoenix stood near as good as a witch on its grounds. But outside of their palace, and outside of their witches, there was only one way to call down that terrible fire.
The bag of Phoenix teeth that now dangled at Pa’s belt.
“Round five,” Tavin said.
He won that round, stealing a shell faster than she could stop him. Her mind was only half there, scrubbing at notions of teeth and royals. A question chipped loose. “That why the prince’s so fussed to save the king?”
“I don’t even know that the thought’s occurred to him.” Tavin rolled the shell in his fingers. “Jas cares about the welfare of his country, and he looks up to his father. And generally, he frowns on coldblooded murder, which is something I look for in a monarch.”
Fie didn’t decide to ask the question; it just seemed to fly out on its own: “Do you really think he’ll be a good king?”
“You don’t?” Tavin looked up, brows raised. She let her silence answer. That same taut-wire edge crept back into his voice. “It’s been my job to die for Jas since we were seven. I’m not about to die for a bad king.”
“Must be nice to have a say in dying on a bad king’s account,” Fie muttered.
Tavin didn’t seem to hear her, rolling the shell around scar-dappled fingers. “Dumosa loves him. The Peacocks are practically catapulting their sons at him for suitors. The king’s council thinks he’s the sharpest heir in generations. And his aunt is master-general, so the Hawks won’t be a problem.”
“For him.”
“For anyone.” Tavin had slipped wholly off-balance now. “We’re bound to protect every Saborian. You know, if we’d camped nearer a league marker last night, the Hawks on duty could have run the Oleanders off.”
Fie tensed, wondering if this was a road she could go down with a Hawk witch, even one trying to make it to her good side. “You didn’t see it?”
“See what?”
“At least one Oleander carried a Hawk spear last night,” Fie said. “Bronze-tipped, for the village outposts. They aren’t running off the Oleander Gentry, Hawk boy. They’re riding with them.”
Tavin stared, silent, at the void in his rows where the gambling shell in his fist belonged. Fie waited for the inevitable denial. Of course he hadn’t seen it; of course he believed no Hawk could do such a thing.
“Jas … Jas can fix it once he’s king,” he said instead. “You swore him to that.”
Fie sat back, startled. But if they were digging into ugly truths, she carried more than her share. “This morning, hours after an Oleander raid, your king-to-be didn’t ask me how he can better protect the Crows. He asked me why we don’t just make it easy for him and leave. So I ask you again: You think he’ll be a good king?”
“Fair enough.” Tavin sighed and at last dropped the shell in place. “If it helps, you two are more alike than you’d think.”
“I’m—” Fie’s voice came out louder than she wanted. She tamped it down to a hiss. “He and I are nothing alike.”
“Oh? Round six.”
“He’s spent his life having everything handed to him, with a roof over his head, all the food he wants, and the best guards in the nation.” She seized a shell from his side, scarce caring as he swiped one of hers. “Reckon it slipped your ken that I haven’t.”
“No, but he’ll fight to the death for what he believes in, like you. And he lost his mother, too, just a few years ago—”
“Who told you about my ma?” Fie demanded.
Tavin looked pointedly at the campfire, where Pa knotted new teeth into his string.
Pa? When did Pa trust outsiders so?
Fie bit the inside of her cheek. “I’ve no duty to like him because both our mas are dead.”
“You don’t have to like him at all,” Tavin said. “I just suspect it’ll be easier to carry out that oath if you two find common ground. Both of you have been raised to lead your people since birth, for example.”
“Don’t care.”
“And neither of you are looking forward to it.”
Any scorching reply died in Fie’s throat, gutted on that notion.
Half of her wanted to slap him. She didn’t know why.
The other half of her could only think of the moment Pa had handed her his broken sword and told her to cut the Sparrow man’s throat.
“I want to be chief,” she said.
Another half-truth.
“Round seven,” said Tavin.
She wanted to be chief.
When, not if.
She had to be chief. She wanted—
There was a line there, as clear as the one drawn between her and the Hawk. She wanted to flash her own steel the next time a guardsman tried to make her jump. She wanted to tell off the next village that tried shorting them on viatik, and punch herself a new tooth string if anyone pushed back. She wanted to light every Oleander ablaze until fire turned the night to sunrise.
But the cost of all that wouldn’t come out of her hide alone.
Look after your own.
Crows had one rule. And she had to be a Crow chief.
He won the next five rounds, played in silence but for the countdown. Fie didn’t care. The sooner this damned game was over, the better. She’d learned her lesson for digging into ugly truths with pretty boys.
“Round twelve.”
The shells caught the firelight, studding the sand. Tavin was winning. On “three,” she made a halfhearted grab for his side.
He caught her, of course. Fingers landed on her wrist, then let go—but not wholly, the tips trailing across the back of her hand, following ridges of vein and bone.
“What do you want, Fie?” he asked.
She’d been asked what she wanted before: her price from the prince, which branch of a crossroad she favored, what to leave in a shrine’s viatik stash. Matters for a chief, matters of business, matters of surviving another day.
Tavin didn’t mean survival. He meant the way she wanted steel, and fire, and games with pretty boys. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had.
And she had no good answer, only a bitter true one. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t it?”
Heat crept up her neck again, and a little anger—but not at him, at herself, for not wanting to pull away.
She did anyhow, swiping all of his shells in one fell swoop. Then she stood and dusted herself off. “I win.”
“Beginner’s luck,” he said with a shrug and a smile.
A thousand thoughts clamored for attention as Fie strode across the camp, tossing the bag of shells back to Madcap and ignoring their surprised yelp.
“Where you headed, Fie?” Pa asked as she passed.
“Washing up,” she said, short, and stopped at the wagon for a fistful of soap-shells. “I’m on watch tonight, aye? It’ll wake me up some.”
“Aye.” A lilt said he knew that was only half the reason. True, she did need to keep sharp tonight.
She also sore needed to cool her head. The burn of Hangdog’s glower did naught to help as she marched out of camp.
They’d used this site a few times before, enough that she could pick her way down to the nearby creek easy by the light of the dwindling moon. Sandy earth yielded to hard, sticky mud by the water, mosquitos whining in her ear as they skirted the tongues of yellow-eyed skinks.
Fie rolled up her leggings and waded to where the stream ran fast and clean, sucking a breath at the chill.
What do you want?
She splashed cold water on her face and bare arms, then paused. Sometimes she caught her reflection in panes of glassblack or polished brass, and sometimes in streams like this. She’d seen her own face well enough to know it now even as a silver-edged shadow in the water: a rounded nose, broad mouth weighed in a frown, wide black eyes. Hair near as black, pin-straight only after she washed it, the ends always bristling up where the mask strap left a crease. Sometimes a smudge of road dust on the point of her middling-brown chin. She couldn’t say if anyone called her pretty; outside the Crows, most everyone only looked her way when she wore a mask.
Now her eyes threaded her silhouette in the brook, searching for a hint of whether she’d been pretty playing shells by firelight.
Then she kenned her own folly and ground the soap-shells betwixt her palms until their hulls split, ears burning. The sharp-smelling sap foamed into suds once she worked it into her face, arms, and hair, wishing she could go deep enough for a proper wash. Maybe once this was all over the prince’s cousin would spare a bit of hospitality.
The thought of over made her pause.
Over meant a Covenant oath kept. It meant no more fear of the Oleanders, not with an armed guard of the Crows’ own. Over also meant no more lordlings.
Fie’s stomach gave a mutinous twist.
Enough.
Gritting her teeth, she splashed deeper until the water reached her waist, shuddering at the chill. Then she sat and plunged her head below the water.
The cold shocked her skull mercifully empty, even if she could only take it a scant moment before bolting to her feet. Annoyance set in a moment later. She ought to have stripped out of her clothes first, even if she’d dry off quick enough keeping watch by the campfire. But her head was in a twisted way tonight, and it didn’t seem she could think straight for the life of her. She turned to slog back.
A shadow waited on the bank.
“You reckon that bastard’s shining to you?” Hangdog’s sneer slid across the water.
Something in his voice said she was better off staying in the creek. Fie didn’t answer. When Hangdog got himself in a temper like this, she knew better than to try aught but look for a way out.
“You reckon he’ll take you away and polish you up so much that the gentry forget what you came from?” he continued. “Don’t fool yourself. That oath’s trash. You’re only good to his kind on your knees.”
The angry simmer flared fierce. “Oh aye, and I was never that to you? Us fooling about moons ago doesn’t give you a spit-weight of say in who I talk to.”
“I didn’t know you were just practicing until you found a lordling to lie with,” Hangdog shot back. “You think he wants aught more from you than an easy—”
Footsteps crunched toward them. Most of Fie prayed it was a Crow. A treacherous part of her wanted someone else.
Wretch stepped into a patch of moonlight, hefting an armful of empty water skins. “You fall in that creek, girl?”
Relief tumbled down Fie’s spine. She wrung out her shirt’s hem. “Something like that.”
“Help me fill these, will you?” Wretch tossed a water skin to her.
Hangdog looked from her to Fie, then stomped back toward the camp.
Wretch didn’t speak until his footfalls faded. “He corners you again, you call for me, all right?”
“I can handle him on my own,” Fie mumbled, surprised when her eyes burned. The anger had boiled down to mortified spite. “I just … All I did was play a damn game.”
Wretch dropped the water skins on the bank and waded out to Fie, shaking her gray-streaked head. “Aye, all you did was play a game. And with a pretty boy. And if it were fair, that’s all there’d be to it.”
Wretch wasn’t much for sentiment, but she gripped Fie’s shoulder anyhow. “I would have left you to handle Hangdog. We all know you could trounce him twice with your eyes shut. But when he followed you? The only reason that pretty boy didn’t come haring after was because I beat him to it. And we both know where that road would have led.”
Fie did. And she hated it. All this mess over a stupid game.
“We’re two more days off Cheparok. Then you’re clear of all this nonsense, and we’ll have a Covenant oath to cash out and no more fretting over Oleander rides. That’s a mighty thing, Fie.”
“Aye,” Fie said softly. Two days and it would all be over.
“They’ll come up with a fancy name for you,” Wretch teased. “Tell stories for centuries. Fie Oath-cutter. Fie the Cunning. Fie, the Crow Who Feared No Crown.”
“I’ll settle for Fie, Who Never Saw an Oleander Again.” Fie rubbed her eyes.
There was less jest than truth when Wretch said, “So would we all.”
That night passed, and two more, without Fie looking at Hangdog or the lordlings if she didn’t have to. Instead she huddled in the wagon, practicing her toothcraft as the road turned from sand to rocky clay, and bristling pines shifted to copses of stout palms. Each field they passed seemed lusher than the last, a distant thin ribbon of green broadening into the Fan River, which gave the region its name. That ribbon pointed straight to a hard, jagged line against the coin-bright sea: Cheparok.
And that river marked their way, flashing coy as Fie fought to strike harmony with pair after pair of teeth. As Cheparok neared, Pa looked over his shoulder less, but a telltale creak of the wagon seat still gave him away each time. At least the Pigeon witch-tooth had kept any plague beacons at bay until after they’d passed.
By the time they drew within half a league of the city’s western gates, Fie’s shirt clung horribly to her skin, half from the choking air and half from the murderous sun overhead. Cheparok’s towering walls didn’t even have the decency to cast a long enough noontime shadow to offer respite.
Pa whistled a stop and guided the oxen to the side of the road, then twisted in his seat to face her and the prince. Tavin climbed up into the wagon bed a moment later, prompting a disgruntled mew from Barf as she peered out from behind a sack of rice. The other Crows gathered round.
“Hold up a moment.” Pa cast his gaze about and waited until a band of Owl sojourn-scholars had passed down the flatway. “All right, here’s the pinch: they’ll have Vulture witches at the gate.”
“Why?” Prince Jasimir frowned.
“Checking for witches, mostly unregistered ones from the countryside. That’d be no trouble, but…”
“They’ll spot me for a Hawk witch,” Tavin finished. “One who’s supposed to be dead. So how do we get past?”
“Can’t hide you in the wagon. Odds are we’ll be searched.” Pa continued even as Prince Jasimir tilted his head at that. “We burned our only Sparrow witch-tooth on the Oleanders. We can sneak you through with two plain Sparrow teeth … but the Vultures will pick up on any spell I’m casting when they test my witch-sign. So that leaves Fie.”
Fie’s stomach dropped. “What?”
When, not if.
“It’s time.” Pa held out a fistful of Sparrow teeth. “How’s that practice?”