“They could’ve fallen in with another band.” That Vulture’s voice scraped all too familiar; last time Fie had heard it, the skinwitch had been huddled in the bloody sand. When Fie squinted, she could make out bandages swaddling Viimo’s hands. She’d survived Cheparok after all. “To throw us off, since we figured out where they’re headed.”
A grunt echoed from the ragged helm as it swiveled about, slowing when the eye-slits turned Fie’s way.
She lit another Sparrow tooth swift as she could, snapping it into harmony. The twin teeth showed her each beacon of a gaze, as before. This time, some gazes fractured into spidery branches picking at the tracks on the road—skinwitches sniffing for their marks. None stuck.
Glee flashed through Fie at that. Skinwitches were like hounds: they needed to know a scent to track it. Without something that belonged to her or the lordlings, they couldn’t sift their footfalls out of the flatway. So far, the Vultures had their wits alone to lead them, and those were about to lead them astray.
Tatterhelm let out a harsh cry and lashed his horse into a gallop. The rest of the Vultures followed, leaving three Owls in the dust and three fugitives in the brush.
Fie tallied them up as they left: less than a score of Vulture riders, fewer than Viimo had numbered, all carrying naught but a few packs and furs. She thumbed Pa’s tooth: the spark flickered yet.
Once the Owls had shaken off the dust and carried on down the road, grumbling about the indignity of it all, Fie sat back. “They’ve a caravan.”
Tavin rocked on his heels. “How can you tell?”
“The horses,” Jasimir answered for her. “They’re packing just enough supplies to camp a day or two. They must have a supply caravan trailing them. I suspect that’s also where they’ll have the…” He faltered. “The hostages.”
That sick wrath shook its cage once more. Fie stuffed it down.
Near three weeks left in Peacock Moon. That’d be time aplenty for other castes to ride to Trikovoi, but for Crows with beacons to answer, that’d be cutting it close. Too close to waste any lead they could scrape up.
Fie picked at Pa’s tooth the way the Vultures had picked at the road: angry with what it couldn’t tell her. Then she pushed herself to her feet. “We keep moving.”
She felt Tavin’s eyes on her as she shoved her way back to the road, but all he said was “Yes, chief.”
* * *
“Now you write it.”
Fie took the twig from Jasimir and fumbled about for a grip that felt right. None did. Her fingers shook as she carved a tremulous line in the dirt, then another, and another.
They looked nothing like Jasimir’s tidy letters; hers were overlarge and tilting like a drunk. Her ears burned.
“This is nonsense,” she mumbled, and dropped the stick.
Jasimir scuffed out her first attempt, then handed the twig back. “My mother said my letters wobbled like colts when she first taught me to write,” he said. “It’s like anything else: it just takes practice. Try again.”
“Do you miss her?” Fie began to scratch out another line.
“Every day,” he sighed. “Mother made sure I never ran out of scrolls to read or strategy games to work through. She said a sharp mind did more on the throne than a sharp sword. But Father would have preferred me to be”—he blinked through the campfire, where Tavin stretched on a sleeping mat—“someone different.”
“You know it’s his job to die for you.” The second the words flew out, Fie silently cursed herself. Tavin scarce needed her to fight his quarrels.
“It’s his job to keep me alive,” Jasimir corrected, stiff. “Just like it’s my job to keep the country alive. Mother raised us both to know our duty.”
“Oh aye, he’s supposed to take an arrow for you, and you’re supposed to suffer a crown for him. It all evens out.”
The jibe sailed clear over the prince’s head. “Exactly. Besides, when he’s not on duty, he gets to do whatever he wants. And unlike me, he can go right back to doing that once we return to Dumosa.”
“And if he doesn’t want that?” Fie’s writing stick stalled in the dirt. “To go back?”
The prince let out a baffled laugh. “As opposed to—to this? Cowering in bushes, washing in puddles, and eating scraps? He’s a Hawk. He has no business living like a—”
He cut himself off, but not near soon enough.
A log popped in the campfire, spewing up sparks in the silence.
“Like what?” Fie asked, just to make him say it out loud. Her hands shook.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Like a Crow?” She threw the stick down across the half-scrawled letter. “You palace boys, you’re too good for this life, aye? You don’t deserve to be treated like me.”
Jasimir held up his hands, voice rising. “I don’t know! There has to be some reason why the Covenant lets this happen to you—”
“You mean your pa,” Fie spat. “There has to be a reason your pa lets this happen.”
Tavin rolled over, yawning, and Fie’s gut lurched. She scuffed a foot through her letters swift as she could.
“What…” Tavin sat up. “Why’re both of you awake?”
“It’s naught,” Fie answered, at the same time Prince Jasimir said, “I was teaching her to read.”
Fie’s very skin crawled with fury and humiliation. “Was not.”
Prince Jasimir stared. “What is the matter with you? We’ve been at it for five days now.”
“Shut up,” Fie hissed, desperate. Maybe if Tavin went back to sleep, he’d forget he saw anything.
You reckon he’ll take you away and polish you up so much that the gentry forget what you came from? Hangdog sneered, a shadow on a creek bank long gone.
“You ungrateful little—”
“Jas.” Tavin cut the prince off. “Be quiet.”
Jasimir drew himself up, looking wholly betrayed. “Are you—”
Tavin held a hand up, brow furrowed, searching the dark. “Do you hear that?”
Fie sifted through the noises one by one: the creak of smoldering firewood. Leaves murmuring in a weak wind. The soft trill of faraway cicada song.
Just beyond it all, a thin, uneven whistle.
Not the sort Fie issued for marching orders or the steps of the Money Dance, nor even the sort Swain half hummed under his breath while he tallied inventory. The nearest thing Fie could recall was a hunched-up poppy-sniffer she’d passed in an alley years ago, a forgotten reed pipe resting on his slack bottom lip. Every wheeze had skimmed off a faltering note.
And somewhere beyond their campfire, it sounded as if scores of those poppy-sniffer whistles were closing in.
“Trees. Now. Grab what you can.” Fie had started keeping a few bowlfuls of earth near their campfires for moments like this. She threw the dirt over the flames, smothering them in an instant. Then she blinked away the deeper dark and shoved as much as she could into her pack.
The whistles whined louder.
Mercifully, the prince was not barefoot this time. He and Tavin had scaled a sturdy oak, and Fie followed them up, calling two Sparrow teeth. She settled on a thick bough, teeth alight, and tried not to think on all the supplies still left below.