It wasn’t a watch-hymn, but Fie supposed the pretty words of the Hawk code worked near as good.
“I will follow until I must lead. I will shield until I must strike. I will fight until I must heal. By my nation, I swear.”
Another pinprick of torchlight pierced the night. Jasimir jostled her elbow.
They watched it bob and weave through the woods, finally fading from sight.
Jasimir started up again: “I will serve my nation and the throne above all,” he recited. “I will not dishonor my blood, my nation, or my steel. And I will not abide a Hawk who does. By my blood, I swear.”
Pretty words. Words of a prince.
At the eastern horizon, the weight of the night began to ease.
* * *
The dawn broke.
When Jasimir told Fie to sleep, she didn’t fight, curling in the hay. She woke with the sun square in her eyes a few hours later. Not near enough rest, but it’d tide her over.
They split more dried fruit, shook off the straw, and staggered to their feet.
“Here.” Jasimir held out Tavin’s sword.
She sheathed it, then bit her lip.
“Where…” Fie’s voice came out a squeak. She cleared her throat. “Where did we leave off with reading?”
* * *
“Ta … Trilo…?” Fie scowled at the flatway signpost. “Is it Trikovoi?”
Jasimir moved his finger along the symbols. “Ta, then ri, becomes tri. Ka, then o, becomes ko. Va—”
“With oi is voi. Trikovoi. Aye. I know.” The prince had shoved letter after letter before her nose for the past four days, even carrying about a scrap of slate and a soft, pale rock to write with. This far northeast, the flatways wound quiet round the mountains, their dry dust only stirred by wandering Owl scholars and Sparrow farmers carting vegetables and livestock to the markets of the Marovar. By day, there were precious few distractions from Jasimir’s academic zeal.
It hadn’t been easy. The first evening, they’d tussled when she told him to be stingy with their dwindling dried meat. He’d stormed off into the firs again, carrying a length of rope and his dagger. Dinner had been thin and their words short, and after sundown the whistles of skin-ghasts had driven them into the trees once more.
Then she’d woken to grouse roasting on an improvised spit, a dead pheasant lying in a rope snare nearby, and the prince kneeling to the dawn.
Jasimir had straightened and held up a scrap of slate. A few plain letters were scrawled across it. “Let’s try this again.”
And from there they’d slowly jostled each other into a routine. She still felt it, the hard ache of silence where Tavin’s laugh ought to have been, the cold absence of fingers that had brushed against hers, the longing to catch him watching her again. The prince didn’t hum any watch-hymns; she didn’t wake to find that someone had covered her with a spare pelt. In all the small things that ought to have been there and weren’t, she missed Tavin the most.
But she had an oath to keep. So did the prince.
And so they did. They shared the quiet as Oleander torches lit the woods, as skin-ghasts prowled beneath the trees they’d climbed. And when the danger passed, silence filled in with letters on slate, stories of the court and of the road, memories traded and admired and mourned.
He said foolish things sometimes, asked questions only someone who’d grown in a palace would have. And when Fie told him as much, sometimes he frosted over again and kept quiet awhile. But more and more often, he simply nodded and listened to why.
“Next challenge,” Jasimir said. “How many leagues to go?”
Numbers. Those were even worse than the alphabet. Fie squinted at the end of the sign. “Two tens and … five?”
“Four. But you were close.”
“So are we.” Fie added up the distance. “Three days’ walk.”
“That’s the end of Peacock Moon.” He rubbed the back of his neck, mouth twisting.
Fie pointed to the nearest league marker. “You know what happened when they lit the plague beacons for you? They sent up colors like ordinary round the palace, all the way out to red. Then every other league marker in Sabor burned black. Last time they did that…” She faltered. “… was nigh on a half-dozen years ago. For your mother. So if aught happens to the king, we’ll know.”
“I didn’t know about that,” he said, quiet.
“Aye. Madcap told me it was a thousand-thousand royal ghosts.” Fie scowled. “Scared the piss out of me.”
Jasimir laughed at that. Then he sobered. “Any change with … with the Vultures?”
Like Tavin, he had a shine for questions beneath questions. She rested a hand on the unbroken sword and called on a Vulture tooth. “The trail’s too far off to read all the way out,” she answered, then reached for a different tooth on her string. Pa’s spark burned there. “Could be past Gerbanyar by now. And Pa’s still alive. That’s all I know.”
No telling how Tavin was keeping. Dead or alive, the skinwitches had stolen him farther than she could see.
“Three days,” Jasimir said after a beat. Then he produced the scrap of slate. “We have a lot of reading practice to do.”
* * *
They made it another day and a half before the Covenant caught up.
Seven days since they’d lost Tavin and returned to the roads. It was a generous stretch, but one Fie had always known would end.
The sun was hanging low at their backs, and the prince blushing through the third verse of “The Lad from Across the Sea,” when she saw it waiting down the road.
The dead gods’ mercy called them onward: a string of bloodred smoke needled the sky.
CHAPTER TWENTY
ROYAL GHOSTS
“How far off?” Jasimir asked, squinting at the plague beacon. It near blended into the sundown-soaked sky.
“Seven leagues. A day.” Fie squinted at the angle of the sun, the lines of the mountains. “Due east, so could be close to Trikovoi. Could also be another trap.”
“We would know if the Vultures passed us, right?” Jasimir rubbed his chin. “Do you suppose the Oleander Gentry have gotten clever?”
“Maybe.” A curl of unease twined in her gut. If she didn’t answer, the Covenant would stack every one of the plague-dead on her head alone.
If she did … Tatterhelm could be waiting.
“Let’s keep going,” Jasimir said. “Either we reach the beacon first and can look for signs of a trap, or we reach Trikovoi first and I’ll ask Aunt Draga to loan us an escort.”
“‘Us’?”
“My caste hasn’t caught the plague since Ambra,” he said firmly. “I’ll just wash up after to be safe. Didn’t I tell you? A leader should be skilled as any of their followers.”
“Aye. And then you said you were too good to live as a Crow.”
Jasimir cringed. “Right. Well. Let’s say my perspective has shifted.”
Fie allowed herself a strained laugh as they started walking, but her heart wouldn’t settle. Always watch the crowd. She hooked a finger around a Vulture tooth on her string, then reached for Tavin’s sword.