When Fie took up second watch, the prince waited until Tavin’s breath had evened out and only then eased himself up on an elbow.
She’d expected it: he’d gone to bed far too prickly to stay there. Her voice stayed low, skimming through the campfire sparks. “Aye?”
To her surprise, Jasimir scooted closer, one eye yet on Tavin. “Why can’t you read?”
“Why can’t you keep your own business?” Fie snapped back, ears burning. “You really got up to rub that in my face?”
“No—I—I apologize.” Jasimir grimaced. “That came out wrong. I just don’t understand—couldn’t you have asked Swain to teach you, if it bothers you this much?”
Fie scowled into the dark; she knew square why she hadn’t asked. “Crows use our own marks. We don’t need to read.”
And she hadn’t minded the difference right up until a day ago, when a pretty Hawk boy accidentally carved that line between them.
Jasimir picked up a stick of kindling and wrung it in his hands. “I thought … if you wanted to learn, I could help.” When Fie stared at him, wordless, he stumbled on. “I have to do something to be useful or I’m going to go mad. And you’re going to be a full chief someday, and my mother always said a leader needs to be as skilled as anyone they lead, and…” He jabbed the kindling in the dirt. “And if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that you want to be the best chief you can.”
Fie almost burst into a bitter laugh at that. What she wanted would make her a terrible chief. But the prince was a roundabout sort of right: she wanted to be a capable chief.
And she wanted to not shrink inside each time Tavin carefully read out a flatway sign now, pretending he was thinking aloud and not fooling anyone for a moment.
“When can you teach me?” she mumbled.
Jasimir snatched up the kindling, sitting straighter. “During your watch, while Tav’s asleep. Then he can’t tell me I should be resting instead.”
Fie mulled it over. This wasn’t about her, not really; he wanted to play charity at a Crow, and more likely than not he wanted to do something without his Hawk’s go-ahead for once.
Besides, Fie knew her Crow marks; she knew scores of walking songs; she could recite the histories of their chiefs and their gods. That was good enough for Pa.
Fie studied the trees twisting beyond the firelight, and for a moment, she thought the forest watched back. Patches of night yawned in something like an uncanny face peering from the bushes.
Then a passing breeze ruffled the brush. The face broke into naught more than leaves.
Fie pinched at Pa’s tooth. He hadn’t needed more than Crow marks to be chief, but that was before lordlings and skinwitches and queens had crashed down on all their heads.
Maybe, to keep the oath, she needed to be more.
Fie let the tooth go and looked at the prince. “Where do we start?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE BEACON
“Is that edible?”
Fie resisted the call to sigh. “No.”
“You’re not even looking,” Tavin accused.
“Because you’re pointing at the mushroom.” Its vivid orange cap had jabbed into Fie’s sight like a thumb as she trudged past, a nub of brightness in the gray-green hillsides. And by now, she’d kenned too keen to how Tavin took interest in that which stuck out.
Four days had broken since leaving Crossroads-Eyes’ shrine. Since then, Fie had settled into as near a routine as she could manage: Follow the main flatway north. Hide from the sound of horses or Hawk patrols. Try not to miss Madcap’s walking songs.
Ignore the hollow sting in her gut every other night, when she glamoured Tavin’s face away with a new Peacock tooth. Catalogue a new way she could tell him apart from the prince: a tilt to his brow, a stray freckle by the corner of his mouth. How the slightest gesture seemed weighted with motive.
How the weight of his gaze shifted on her.
Sleep half the night. Chew a few bitter laceroot seeds. Trade out watches with Tavin. Scratch out a few new letters with Jasimir. Trade dark for a dawn the prince still prayed to.
Follow the flatway north, as squash fields bled into sprouts of maize, then orchards and rocky pastures. North, toward the Hawks, toward the Marovar, toward a Covenant oath kept.
Fie had moments of anger and moments of doubt, and worst of all, moments of terrible peace. Moments to wash up alone, to watch the sunrise in silence, to sharpen the chief’s blade by herself.
She ought to have hated it. She surely hated that she didn’t.
“Fine. Is that edible?”
But not as much as she hated Tavin’s way of passing the time.
This time she had to turn to see what he’d found. It appeared to be a rock.
“The moss,” he clarified as her face darkened.
She couldn’t bite back the scowl anymore. He’d asked the same question of dozens of plants in the last few days. “If you want to soil yourself for three days, aye.”
“That sounds useful.” He grinned at her and the prince. “You two are making the same face again.”
“Because neither of us wants to know how that’s supposed to be useful,” Fie said. “And—”
A rumble beneath her soles cut her short. She sighed and started toward the bramble at the roadside. “Riders. Come on.”
The boys hadn’t tried to fuss her like they’d fussed at Pa; it seemed they’d been cured of that in Cheparok. They hurried into the bushes, crouching to peer through the leaves as Fie called up a Sparrow tooth just to be safe. A few breaths later, a few horses trotted by, their riders cowled in the faded lavender hoods of young Owl sojourn-scholars. They had the deeper brown skin of Owls from the western coastal academies, darker than Fie and much darker than Vultures.
Jasimir let out a sigh of relief as they passed, and shifted to stand. Fie yanked him back down.
The tremors only grew. The sojourn-scholars twisted to look at their backs—then cursed as more horses cantered into sight. Dust billowed up from the road, wheeling into one more ring about the Owls as the new arrivals surrounded them.
“What is the meaning of this?” one Owl scholar demanded, coughing.
As the dust settled, one jagged silhouette stood apart from the rest. Four lines of new-cut steel shone brighter than the older notches carved into a helm crowning a mountain of a man.
Tatterhelm.
Her kin’s killer, not twenty paces away. One Phoenix tooth, maybe two, and Fie could take him down—
And lose the prince, the oath, everything Pa had trusted to her, because she couldn’t also take down the rest of the skinwitches riding with him. A sick kind of wrath paced in her heart, rattling its bars; for now, Fie kept it caged.
“Business of the queen,” Tatterhelm boomed. “You see any bone thieves on this road?”
“The Merciful Crows?” Another Owl cocked his head. “Whatever for?”
Tatterhelm pressed his mount closer. “Business of the queen,” he repeated. “Looking for three of ’em. Won’t ask again.”
The scholars traded looks. “We didn’t see three,” the first Owl said, slow. “We saw a band yesterday, perhaps a score? They were bound northwest, I believe to Livabai.”