“The king throws a tantrum when someone else wants his toys. Jas takes after his mother more.” Tavin grimaced. “And you were right. He’s afraid I’m abandoning my duty.”
Fie tilted her head. The prince looked fair alive to her. “How?”
He squeezed her hand and gave her a strained smile. “For you.”
“Oh.” Fie couldn’t stave off a smile of her own.
“I didn’t expect to find meaning and purpose and all that when I faked my death, but here we are.”
“Here we are,” Fie echoed. “I didn’t expect all this trouble when I thought we were picking up two dead lordlings.”
“Two exceptionally handsome and charming dead lordlings.”
“I should have burned that quarantine hut down with you both inside.”
“And here I thought you didn’t have a romantic bone in your body.”
“Don’t get used to it,” she returned, and realized that she wanted this: his jests, his laugh, his hand in hers as they traveled on. Even with the skinwitches haunting each step, the notion of walking the roads of Sabor with her kin at her back and him at her side … that was something to want and to have.
If they made it out.
Ahead of them, mountain upon mountain scraped at the sky; at their backs, the prince ground his teeth.
Somewhere out there waited Trikovoi. Somewhere much, much too far from here.
* * *
They pushed on.
After the sun tumbled below the horizon, the waning Peacock Moon lit their way, ghosting off sheets of snow and ice and wet rock. More than once, Fie looked back at the ragged trail they’d carved and cringed. The Vultures needed no spell to follow them this far.
Through the night they stumbled. Snow yielded to stone, and stone yielded to gravel and thin, spiteful moss. The slopes rose and fell in sharp crags and shallow basins, bridge after rope bridge spanning the only way onward.
Finally they reached the trees, whip-thin pines clustered as if huddled for warmth. Black boughs choked the moonlight until they had naught to see by. She slept a few brief hours curled in Tavin’s arms, then made him trade the watch to her and rest, her head tucked beneath his chin. When the sun crested the horizon, they split cold, greasy strips of dried beef three ways and set off again.
By noon, if she looked back to Misgova’s summit, she could see Vulture riders picking their way down the pass.
They pushed on.
By midafternoon her bones gave out, run too dry to carry her and the teeth both. Tavin picked her up once more and didn’t set her down until the mountains grew too dark to continue.
She insisted on taking first watch. When he woke for the second, he asked for a Peacock glamour.
Through the dark, and through her tears, she gave him as close to the prince’s face as she could manage.
When she woke, only half a league remained betwixt them and the skinwitches.
They pushed on.
Briars knotted about the slopes, digging thorns into their arms. After the bramble trapped the prince a fourth time, Tavin led them clear of the forests, into plain sight but free of snares. They chased the rising sun east over rattling slides of slate and through a gnarling canyon spiked in great fingers of stone.
By noon, between heaving breaths and the scream of her three teeth, Fie could hear the faint clip of hoofbeats on stone.
Tavin tried to steer them from the open plains now, aiming for ravines or slopes ragged with boulders and outcroppings. The nails studding Fie’s soles near wore down to toothless nubs as they bit paths over barefaced rock.
Then, with the sun prodding the western horizon, the rough terrain wore out. The three of them stopped behind a boulder, weighing their choices: a broad shallow ravine below, or a stretch of shattered slate ahead. Tavin took an experimental step into the slide. A rock slid free and set off a small cascade. He looked over his shoulder. Fie followed his look and saw no Vultures, but that meant naught to her.
“The ravine won’t give us away,” she said.
“This is faster,” Tavin said shortly. “We just have to cross before they notice.”
“Fine.” The prince strode into the slide, not looking back.
Fie followed, uneasy. The rocks slipped and rolled beneath her feet as she struggled to keep up, keep her balance, keep the harmony. Wave after wave of broken stone tumbled down the hill in their wake. Even if the Vultures couldn’t break through her triad of Sparrow teeth, this spectacle all but begged to betray them.
Pa’s broken sword banged at one hip, the bag of teeth swinging at the other.
You have to keep the oath, Fie.
Halfway across the shattered stones, the prince fell.
It all happened faster than Fie thought possible:
In one heartbeat, Jasimir teetered ahead of her.
In the next, he’d slid yards away, rolling in a tangle of slate and rag.
He skidded to a halt and staggered to his feet, bedraggled but whole. Below him, the ripple of falling rock grew, and grew, until stones the size of Fie’s head toppled down the hill in a cracking cacophony.
Then a mournful hunting horn swelled above the falling rock, sweeping from the valley at their backs.
The Vultures had found them.
“Get to the ravine!” Fie bolted down the hill, half sliding as the footing buckled and shifted. The roar of blood and adrenaline clashed in her ears with the clatter of plummeting rock. Then they slowed and stopped at the edge of the gorge, and she realized half the noise came from hoofbeats upon hoofbeats.
They hurried toward a steep game track winding into the canyon but had made it just a few paces when Tavin yanked both Fie and Jasimir to a stop. Not a half league downhill, riders cantered into the gorge’s mouth.
“Bridge,” Jasimir gasped, pointing to a rope bridge farther down, spanning the narrowest neck of the gap. “If they don’t notice us cross—”
“Done.” Tavin turned on a heel. Fie cursed the dead god who’d invented hills, legs burning as pure adrenaline carried her back up the game track. Something coppery stained each agonizing breath. They reached the bridge a minute later, squinting down the canyon. Riders thundered toward them, just a quarter league and a few bends of the canyon walls away.
Fie lurched toward the bridge. Tavin caught at her arm.
“Wait.” He touched two fingers to her lips. They came away bright with crimson. “Fie. You’re—you have to let the teeth go.”
“They’ll find us,” she gasped, mountain and sky spinning in her sights.
“They’ll absolutely find us if you’re dead.” His hands wrapped around her shoulders. “Let them go.”
“But—” Jasimir’s eyes locked on the Vulture riders.
Look after your own. She shook her head. Not Misgova. Not again. She was a chief.
“Let them go.” Tavin’s hold on her tightened.
Her vision blurred before she could muster a retort. Only adrenaline had kept her moving this long, she kenned it as well as he did. One moment of fraying focus was all it took.
Fie buckled.
A tooth slipped away, then a second, and the third.
“Bridge. Now.” Tavin waved the prince on, then guided Fie onto the swaying planks, one hand braced on her spine.
Another hunting horn howled down the stone.
The canyon floor heaved below, not even thrice a man’s height away. Fie near vomited.