The whistling rose to a soft shriek, mere paces from camp.
Fie had seen her fair ration of terrible things in her sixteen years: scummed sinners, long-dead Oleander victims, the aftermath of a plague beacon gone unanswered. She’d heard campfire tales of monsters, devils, ghosts of wretched souls even the Covenant refused. All stories, she’d told herself. The only monsters she’d seen were humans with something to hide behind.
But by every dead god, she was starting to believe now.
Fie heard the dull clang of a pot overturned, a flap of a sleeping mat, strange wet leathery sighs, and above all, the whistles. But the dark hid the camp below too well. She could see shifting ripples of piecemeal moonlight and no more.
Worse, the twin Sparrow teeth ought to have shown her gazes peering about camp, so she might turn them away as needed. The teeth burned steady as they always did, and yet—
Fie saw naught below.
No searching looks, no scouring beacons, no Vulture gazes prying about the dirt. Only shifting, slippery night.
A brief sizzle drifted up, chased by a whiff of something rancid and burnt. Then the whistles shifted, flowing out of the camp, away to the north.
Fie didn’t let out her breath until long after the final quiet shrill seeped away.
“Anyone see what that was?” she whispered.
“No.” Tavin’s voice shook. “Jas?”
“I’ve no idea.”
Fie rolled Pa’s tooth about, half to think, half to comfort herself with the familiar spark. What would he do, hunted by the night itself?
Same as he ever did: keep them safe.
“We’ll stay up here until sunrise. You two try to sleep. Tie yourselves to the branch if you can.” It would be a long, cold few hours. Fie resigned herself to spending it thinking on what had passed through camp and flinching at every twig snap. “I’ll finish out my watch.”
* * *
The dawn gave them no answers.
It did, however, allow them a small mercy. The supplies they’d abandoned were knocked about the clearing as if a drunkard had bumbled into them, but near all of it was salvageable. Beyond that, the visitors had left only two signs of their arrival. The first were strange, writhing drag marks all about the dirt.
The second was a thin film of something sticky and charred, left behind on the campfire’s now-dead coals. The outline was too plain to deny: a flat wedge with five dents at the broad end.
“It’s a footprint,” Tavin said. “Who steps in hot coals and doesn’t scream?”
“If we’re right about Rhusana being a witch, maybe those were people under her thrall.” Jasimir glanced at Fie, cautious.
She ignored him. If the prince thought a raid from an unseen nightmarish beast was enough to make her forget what he’d said, he had sore underestimated the depths of her spite.
Instead she cinched her pack shut. “We can ponder it on the road. Daylight’s wasting.”
Jasimir sucked in a breath. She ignored that, too.
Then Tavin pointed over her shoulder. “Fie, look.”
She twisted round. Above the treetops, a thin column of orange smoke coiled in the air to the north.
It seemed the Covenant had a long day in store for her. With a sigh, she yanked her pack back open.
“How far is it?” Tavin asked.
“Plague beacons start black.” She rummaged about for the goat-hide map. “Every league marker nearby lights up purple smoke. Then every league marker that sees purple lights blue, and then it goes green, yellow, orange, and red.” Sure enough, a new red curl rose from the south, where they’d passed a league marker the afternoon before. “So five or six leagues.” She spread the map out. A web of rivers and roads scrawled across the leather in seared lines and Crow signs, mottled in forests or hills.
“Is it Livabai?” Tavin peered over her shoulder. “Because that’s bound to be a trap.”
His breath caught her hair in a sore distracting manner. Fie gritted her teeth and tried to focus on the cities. Livabai sat on the shores of a lake, and she didn’t see one within seven leagues. “No.”
Her finger traced the flatway line, prodding out the beacon’s probable sources. The answers were not kind. “We know it’s north of here. If we’re lucky, it’s due north. If we’re less lucky, we’ll need to head west at the next crossroads. Worst is if it’s east.”
“Trikovoi’s northeast,” Tavin said. “So why is east bad?”
“Because then the plague’s more like to be in Gerbanyar.” She read out the city’s Crow signs. “‘Cold.’ ‘Don’t stay overnight.’ And best of all, ‘Oleanders.’”
Tavin’s frown cut sharp as Hawk steel. “That’s too risky.”
“They’re all too risky,” Fie said. “Pa told you: Crows go where we’re called.”
“And if you’re being called into a trap?” His frown didn’t budge. “Vultures passed us yesterday, then our camp was overrun by the world’s worst band of pipers, and now suddenly there’s a plague beacon from the same direction they both headed. Even if this one is fine, how long do you think it’ll take Tatterhelm to figure out that’s how he can lure us in?”
“He’ll have to find a town that lets him first. Hate us or no, people know what happens when they attack Crows in the open.” Fie pointed to a vale on the map near Trikovoi. The lone Crow mark there said “ashes.” “There was a village here once. They decided the chief asked too much for viatik and cut down her husband and child. The band carried word out, and next time that village lit a plague beacon, no one answered until after the whole valley rotted. Saw it burn myself. Any town that lends Tatterhelm their plague beacon knows they’ll meet the same.”
Tavin stood, arms crossed. “He may not give them much of a choice in the matter.”
“I still have to answer,” she fired back. “It’s my duty. I don’t get to only do it when it’s easy, any more than you get to guard the prince only when he’s safe. And if you think the rest of the region won’t lash out at Crows for a shirked beacon—”
“I won’t risk thousands of lives to the plague,” Jasimir said, abrupt. “She’s right. Besides, we need more supplies or we’ll never last in the mountains. The only way we’ll get them is the viatik.”
“Easier to say when your caste hasn’t caught the plague since Ambra,” Tavin grumbled. “But fine, I’m outvoted.”
“I’ll handle the body.” The hilt of Pa’s broken sword prodded Fie in the side. “All you two need to do is hope it’s not Gerbanyar.”
* * *
“I suppose I could have hoped harder,” Tavin admitted the next morning.
A black serpent of smoke writhed into the sky above, whelped from the signal post of Gerbanyar.
“Masks on,” Fie ordered, unhitching hers from her pack. “From here on out, keep your mouths shut and your eyes sharp, ken me?”
Tavin glanced sidelong at her. It was one of his many-sided looks, saying we’re walking into trouble, saying none of us are ready, saying none of us can walk away.