Jasimir flinched. “She’s got a point.”
“She usually does,” Tavin said under his breath.
“She’s right here,” Fie snapped.
“Apologies. You’re right, he’ll expect us to go straight to the master-general. But we can use that to throw him off. Markahns run every fort in the Marovar, so any of them will take us in and send word to Draga. From here the nearest fortress is Trikovoi, in the southern end of the mountains. If we make it, we’ll be safe.”
“We?” she asked. “Or you two? I’ve dealt bad with enough Hawk scummers for one moon.”
Tavin’s mouth twisted. “You’ll be fine while you’re with us,” he admitted. “And Draga. Draga hates unpaid debts.”
“That makes three people I can trust, out of every fort in the Marovar.” Fie gave him a long, cold scowl that said plain how much faith she put in those three. “What of the rest?”
The look Tavin gave her said even plainer that she was right to doubt. “The rest know what happens if you cross Draga.” He stood. “We need to get as far from Cheparok as we can tonight. Are we ready to move?”
“Lead the way,” Prince Jasimir said, collecting his torch.
Tavin held a hand out to Fie.
Something hitched in her gut.
I did what you wanted. Handog’d yelled that and taken an arrow in the eye in payment. It didn’t take a scholar to square out who he’d been serving on the bridge instead of the Crows.
Yet she was the one walking away from her people now.
She forced her fist to uncurl and let Tavin help her up.
The three of them worked their way along the dark channels, through winding corridors and down crumbling stairs. Sometimes curious rat-shrills pierced the dark ahead, but they left only bones and dung by the time Fie arrived. Finally they reached a long drainage channel scarce as tall as her waist.
“This is the last,” Tavin promised behind her, dousing his torch. “Then we’re out.”
Out.
Pa wouldn’t make it out of the city tonight.
Pa wanted her to keep the oath.
Fie steeled herself and eased into the water.
And so the three of them left Cheparok the way they’d arrived: crawling on hand and knee.
Fie didn’t know how long she splashed through the empty dark before a slivery silver glow sliced over the water’s surface ahead. She crawled faster and faster—
And found herself below a square of iron lace. Tavin reached up to the middle of the grate and turned some unseen panel. The iron creaked and shuddered. With a heave, he shoved the grate aside.
For a moment, Fie could only stare at the night above, dusted in a belt of stars, buckled by a newborn Peacock Moon. She’d seen it near every night of her life, yet …
Her people, her home. If they could see the moon now, it would be through a cage of rooftops and plaster.
This was not like any other night of her life.
Tavin’s hand jabbed into her sight. “Fie?”
She let him pull her up one more time.
* * *
The walls of Cheparok loomed colossal behind them, skirted in a sour, briny fog. Blots of lantern-light singed holes in the mist, dotting an outdoor market along the eastern bank of the Fan River, just like the one before the western side’s gate for Common Castes.
Fie’s belly churned, half from nerves, half from hunger. Her frown dug deeper as she followed the lordlings into the haze.
Even if they could keep one step ahead of the Vultures, it would take near three weeks to get to the south end of the Marovar. And all they had were the boys’ blades, Pa’s broken sword, and a bag of very inedible teeth.
Jasimir had said days ago that the king could be dead before the end of Peacock Moon. Fie wasn’t sure they’d make it that long, either.
Fie’s stomach growled again as they passed slabs of spiced shark and onion searing on a griddle, kettles of honeyed maize-meal, stacks of buttered panbread, and more, all meant for those with coin. She tried not to look. Her nose, however, could not be leashed in.
A Crow shrine. They’d find a Crow shrine outside the city and see what could be foraged from the viatik stash. Fie had managed on an empty belly plenty of times.
A woman guarding a griddle cracked an egg over sizzling lentils, then rained a pink glitter of sea salt and paprika into the pan.
Fie bit her lip.
Tavin paused at the stall a moment, then hurried on. A few steps later, a calamity erupted at their backs, pots and pans clanging to the ground amid a flurry of swearing.
“Don’t look,” Tavin mumbled to them and sidled behind a stall, then turned his hands out. Three dumplings sat in each palm. “Found us some dinner.”
Fie’s eyes widened. “Did you steal those?”
“Borrowed,” Tavin said. “Relieved. Liberated.”
“So stolen,” the prince said, flat. His hand paused halfway to a dumpling.
“Academically speaking.” Tavin waggled his fingers, straining for his old humor. “But I have it on good authority that they taste exactly like dumplings obtained through more orthodox means.”
Fie knew square how Pa felt about thieves.
She didn’t know if the hunger did it, or the wear of the long day, but either way her Chief voice came back. With a vengeance.
“You ken me, aye?” Fie jabbed a finger at him. “See how I walked through that whole market without taking a damned thing? The last thing we need right now is an angry merchant bringing Hawks down on our heads.”
“Only if they catch you,” Tavin said with a haggard grin.
She didn’t smile back. “If you’re fixing to keep me along as your stand-in for chief, then you’d best act like it. Steal what you please when you’re not mumming as a Crow. But if you’re going to keep rolling our fortune-bones over something slight as an empty gut, I’d rather turn around right here and go try my luck with the Floating Fortress.”
Tavin raised an eyebrow. “There are shorter ways to say ‘I don’t want a dumpling.’”
“How about ‘don’t steal, bastard boy’?” she shot back. “Is ‘steal again and I’m out’ too many words for you?”
His grin faded. “No, chief.”
She gave a stiff nod. And then she swiped two dumplings. “Rule number two: don’t waste food.”
Prince Jasimir had the decency to look faintly disapproving as he also took two.
Before Fie could take a bite, she caught splinters of torchlight on steel in the corner of her eye. A pair of Hawks strolled down through the market, spears tipped against their shoulders.
She shoved her thieved dumplings into her bag and jabbed an elbow at Tavin. He blinked up around a mouthful and sighed, resigned. “It’s that sort of day, isn’t it?”
He stuffed the second dumpling into his mouth and led them away from the road, into the great swells of grass-studded sand betwixt them and the bay. Fie couldn’t say how long they stumbled through the dunes, sharp seagrass whipping at her legs, only that the walls of Cheparok had shrunk too far and yet not enough by the time they stopped.
“Here.” Weariness sapped the expected lilt from Tavin’s voice as he gestured to a copse of squat sandpines at the edge of the beach. “This is … this is good.”