Fie almost started laughing.
Hangdog had been right. She’d dragged the prince this far, she’d given everything she had and more, all for an oath he’d never meant to keep.
“Don’t you fret.” The Oleander flicked his hand. “We’ll handle them, Highness.”
Fie’s sight dimmed.
“Let’s get you back to Dumosa.” The Oleander waved off the skin-ghasts holding Jasimir, then reached out to help him up. “Your father’s waiting.”
Fie took some wretched comfort in the fact that even if she died here and now, the Covenant would not forget the oath. The prince could run from her, from Pa, from every Crow in Sabor, but he’d carry that oath to the grave and beyond.
It would have to be good enough.
Jasimir straightened. He took the Oleander’s hand.
Then he yanked the man closer. Steel flashed, a thorn darting through torchlight.
The Oleander man gaped, dumbfounded, at the dagger in his belly.
“There’s been a misunderstanding.” Jasimir jerked the dagger free. “I’d have sworn that prince is dead.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE CROW AND THE HEIR
Of all the sights Fie expected to see before she choked to death, Prince Jasimir vomiting on the corpse of an Oleander hadn’t made the list.
The world went dark, shouts fading from her ears—then the weight at her back abruptly slackened. She staggered forward, the skin-ghast’s arm still locked about her throat. Someone grabbed her, and then with a jerk, the arm fell away. She gasped and coughed, eyes watering.
The prince knelt beside her, pinning the skin-ghast’s arm to the ground with Tavin’s sword. Scraps of gray skin littered the ground around them, wriggling and unfurling still. The skin-ghast’s head flattened out like raw dough, then swelled again. Just beyond it lay the dead Oleander.
He still had a few strands of Fie’s hair clenched in a fist. Enough to make a new puppet for Rhusana, once they’d finished with her.
“Now can you spare a Phoenix tooth?”
Trust Jasimir to get petty at a moment like this. Fie shot him a glare and scrabbled for her string.
The Oleanders had drawn their steel, the other skin-ghasts lurching toward them with a faint whistle. Still too many to fight.
Not too many to outrun.
The Phoenix tooth answered Fie’s call.
A dead witch-king roared in her bones, and golden fire bloomed in a shrieking arc. The Oleanders’ horses crashed into one another as their riders swore. Yet they didn’t flee, as if they doubted her.
As if they doubted the wrath of a Crow.
Fie fed the fire her fear and her fury; the ghost of the Phoenix led the charge. Flames turned into a wall, into a wave, into the jaws of a terrible beast crashing down around them.
The Oleanders fled then.
“Grab what you can,” she wheezed. Jasimir pulled her to her feet and lunged for their packs.
Fie tossed the Phoenix tooth at the dead Oleander, burning every last strand of her hair in his hand. A golden wall stretched along the road, keeping the Oleanders at bay. The tooth wouldn’t last but a few heartbeats more, but Fie prayed that’d give them enough of a start.
She and Jasimir fled into the trees.
She didn’t know how long they ran, only that golden fire waned to more mundane orange that shrank behind them. Hoofbeats drummed through the forest, chased by shouts, taunts, torchlight. More than once she and Jasimir huddled in the brush until a pale rider or a slithering skin-ghast passed and the quiet dark returned.
Eventually they cleared the woods. A sickle midnight moon gleamed above, its weak light catching on the mellow slopes of a pasture studded with goats and cattle.
Fie pointed. A few dozen paces away, a crude wooden structure sheltered great heaps of hay. “There.”
Jasimir nodded. They hopped the pasture fence, then the one around the hay, and crawled into a discreet hollow.
For a long moment, neither of them stirred. Fie simply blinked at the sky, breathing in the dust-honey smell of the hay, trying to think of anything but the horror of what hunted them now. From the pounding of her heart and the shivers still rattling her ribs, that was a lost battle.
“Bronze,” Jasimir croaked. “The man I killed. He had a bronze-tipped spear. For Hawks at village outposts.”
“Aye,” Fie said.
Another creaking pause. Then: “I killed someone.”
“Tavin said…” Fie’s voice broke. “He said it gets easier.” Jasimir didn’t answer. She forced herself to sit up and dig in her pack. “Also said he barfed on the body the first time, too, so you’ve that to bond over later.”
Jasimir made an odd sound that turned into a wavering, desperate laugh. He covered his eyes. “What in all twelve hells did we just … What was that? What were those?”
Fie gulped. She could reckon with skin-ghasts the way she reckoned with sinners: distant enough to blunt the horror. Or at least she could try.
“Never heard of a Swan witch as could do that.” Fie pulled out strips of dried fruit and jerky and passed half to him, ignoring her trembling hands. “Looked like just … skins. But I never heard of a skinwitch as could do that, either.” The memory of clammy, empty skin clung too tight. She made herself bite off a chunk of meat and chewed awhile, too belly-sick to swallow but a little at a time. “Likely that’s what ran through our camp before Gerbanyar. You saw one close-up, aye? When the Vultures tried to jump us.”
“We thought it was a trick of the dark.”
“But half the group ran off once the others went down,” she mulled. “The fleshy ones. And the skin-ghasts only ran through our camp before, naught else. So they won’t attack on their own; they need people to follow. That’s good for us.”
Jasimir choked on his dried fruit. “How is any part of this good for us?”
“Oleanders don’t ride by day, not yet, and the Vultures are off our trail for now. We stick to the roads until nigh sundown, hole up somewhere off the track for the night, and likely we can skip their ken.” Fie uncorked a water skin and took a swig. “We can still make it to Trikovoi before the end of Peacock Moon.”
Jasimir let out a long breath and drew a new one. “How … After everything I’ve done, everything you said about my father … why do you still care about saving him?”
“I don’t.” She tilted her head back, letting her eyes close just a moment. If ever Fie had felt like mincing her words, it wasn’t now. “He’s been a bad king to me, and he doesn’t sound like all that good of a father to you. But it gets worse if Rhusana takes his place. And I can’t save any of them alone. Not Tavin, not my kin, not even the king. Not without the master-general’s help.”
“Aunt Draga will get your family back,” Jasimir said. “She already has to rescue Tavin, since they’re blood relatives. The master-general will follow the Hawk code.”
Part of her dared to hope he was right. The rest of her called it foolishness. She couldn’t think on which one hurt more. Instead she said, “I’ll take watch.”
“We should split it.” Jasimir sat upright.
She shook her head. “If the Oleanders come round, I’ll need to set off Sparrow teeth soon as I can.”