“You can’t—” Fie protested.
“Shut the door,” Draga muttered, dropping into the commander’s chair. “And tell someone to bring me some gods-damned wine.”
* * *
At first, Fie screamed.
She cried out with fury: fury with Draga for sentencing her family to a wretched death, fury with Jasimir for letting her, fury with Pa for sending her to safety in Cheparok, fury with Tavin for stealing into her heart and tearing it asunder, and, most of all, fury with Sabor, with the Covenant, with the dead gods.
Then she crumpled with shame: shame for giving up her own, shame for failing to keep her one rule as a chief, shame for not scratching and clawing her way out of Trikovoi.
Then, at last, she wept with grief, and when she did, she grieved for more things than she could count, than she could name, but most of all, she grieved for the brief thread of hope that had sparked when she saw Tavin’s beacon burning in the gate of Trikovoi.
When she was done weeping, she slept without dreams.
And when she woke, it was by the light of the Crow Moon.
For a while, she lay in the dark on her foul, soft bed in her foul, safe room, her thoughts winding up and spinning out like a spindle. Would Tatterhelm send a piece of someone else in the morning? Or would he cut off more of Pa?
Would she let him?
Every heartbeat in her ears was an accusation.
Draga was right: the whole Crow caste hung on Jasimir reaching the throne.
Jasimir was right: he understood what was at stake.
Tavin was right: he could have done something better with his life than die.
Fie searched the dark for answers and found none.
But that made sense. She had no right to expect answers here in this safe, quiet, too-damned-soft room, not with her people caught in Tatterhelm’s hell.
If she wanted a way out, she had to hunt it down herself.
Slipping out was easy enough: a Peacock-tooth illusion crafted a second Fie to stumble from her room, startling the guards long enough to let the true Fie sidle behind them. Once she’d rounded a corner, she sent the illusion back to her room, then traded the Peacock tooth for a Sparrow’s.
And then she hunted.
Fie wound through hall after darkened hall, some narrow, some yawning, some guarded by grim-faced Hawks, others empty as a gambler’s oath. Her slippers left no mark on the stone as she passed.
All she needed was a way out, she told herself. Then she’d take up her teeth and her steel and bring down as many Vultures as she could before—
Before they killed her. Or worse, kept her alive. Tatterhelm had more skinwitches than she had Crows, and he had grunts, and he had skin-ghasts. All he would do was start sending pieces of her to Jasimir.
It was always going to come to this.
Tavin had always known. So had she. Ever since she’d crawled out of Cheparok. No—ever since she’d fallen from the bridge of the Floating Fortress.
No—ever since Pa had thrust the chief’s sword into her hands.
What do you want, Fie?
Her caste, or her kin. Thousands of Crows, ridden down by day and night. Or ten of her own, dying by pieces.
That’s the game, get it?
The road had trapped her, and she couldn’t see which way was right. Every hope, every oath, every scrap of faith she’d had in Hangdog, in Tavin, in Jasimir, one way or another, they’d turned to arrow after arrow in her eye.
She stumbled. Smacked into a wall. Sagged against it.
One way or another, she would lose everything.
Fury howled in her heart. This was all wrong. She’d learned to fight like a Hawk. She’d learned to read and write like a Phoenix. She’d kept her head steady, burned her teeth, broken the only Crow rule. She’d near killed herself day after day, road after road, mountain after mountain, to keep the damned oath.
And she would still lose.
There was no way for her to win. There never had been.
How much more will you let them take?
She slid down the wall and curled there, shaking. This was the game. This was the true Money Dance: the rest of the castes could spin and whirl and scream at the Crows, take what they wanted, as long as they wanted, knowing that the Crows couldn’t do a gods-damned thing to stop it. Sabor had never once intended for her to win.
They didn’t believe a Crow could.
Far away, a watch-hymn eased into the silence. Fie ignored it.
Then the hymn wandered into a lonely trickle of notes. One she’d heard nigh every morning.
Fie scrambled to her feet, heart pounding. It couldn’t be Tavin—yet her unsteady legs pushed her forward, following the sound. He’d said his mother sang it—maybe Fie would never see Pa again, but at least she could make this much right—
She shadowed a Hawk through a door and stepped into the frigid Marovar night. Stars sprayed over the brutally clear sky above, crowned in the circlet of Crow Moon rising.
Dead ahead of Fie, a Hawk woman leaned on a watch post, staring into the mountains, humming a watch-hymn that sometimes splintered around a choked breath.
Dark as it was, Fie could still mark the razor flash of steel feathers in her hair.
She’s a mammoth rider in the Marovar, Tavin had whispered by a campfire a moon ago.
The question in Fie’s skull unwound.
Twin Talons. But how—
She knew what it meant.
For a moment she swayed in place, still cloaked in the Sparrow tooth, her head a-riot with a thousand threads that suddenly knotted and pulled tight.
Stitch by stitch, the tapestry unfurled, stretching on and on until she saw not a weaving but a wrathful way out.
How much more, the prince had asked, will you let them take?
This was the dance. This was the game. The one she wasn’t meant to win.
But now—she had fire. She had steel.
She knew her road.
The prince had sworn to protect her caste. He had sworn to make the Oleanders pay.
She was a chief; he was a prince. And one of them was a liar.
Fie waited for another guard to crack the door, then flitted back into the halls of Trikovoi, bound for her room, her swords, her teeth.
Bound for the prince.
Bound for the Fallow Vale.
Whether or not she burned her crown on a pyre, she was a chief. It was time she looked after her own.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE SLAUGHTER BELL
Fie didn’t intend to stir the ashes where she tread, but she did all the same.
Fie didn’t intend to feel bad for Jasimir, either, but that happened, too, as he stumbled on the hobbles round his ankles. She yanked him upright, none too gentle, and prodded him on with the point of Tavin’s short sword. Her pity had only extended to a stolen—liberated—Hawk cloak about his shoulders to ward off the predawn chill.
He shot her a dark look but kept walking, hands bound before him. Fie suspected the prince had choice words for her.
That was partly why she’d gagged him with a twist of rag before dragging him into the Fallow Vale.
She’d been here before, or at least near enough to watch it burn. Once, the valley had held a village. Once, that village had cut a chief’s husband and child down. And once, a plague beacon went unanswered. Now all that was left was blackened earth, and a mark on her map that read ashes.
As she marched the prince on, a fretful wind picked at long-cold cinders and scraped grit over crumbling stone walls and barren fields. Every hut, every corpse, every field had been put to the torch; everywhere the plague had touched. That alone could halt an outbreak: burn all to ash and leave it be for years, for generations, until the grass at last grew green over the remains.