“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?”