“By the Covenant’s measure and the dead gods’ eyes, you’re a chief,” he recited. “Deal their mercy. And look after your own.”
The string felt heavier than before. She’d looked after two false Crows; now she had a band of ten true ones. But she had Pa, and she had Wretch, and she had a prince’s oath.
And she had a bag of Phoenix teeth. That helped.
Pa sat across from her once more and raised an eyebrow. “So. You and the Hawk lad?”
She hid her face in her hands. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Naught to be ashamed of, either,” Pa said, treading cautious. “He saved all our lives on the road. Tatterhelm thought he had the prince and didn’t care to keep toting spare hostages. Your boy blew his own ruse to keep us alive, knowing he’d take twelve hells for it. He’s got his head on right.”
“It’s all a wash, anyway,” she sighed, searching her hems until she found a thread to pick. “I near got his brother killed. And I paraded his biggest secret about before half of Trikovoi. He hardly even looked at me. Reckon we’re done for.”
Pa gave her a narrow look. “I reckon he started shining to you the moment you punched him. By the time Tatterhelm brought him in, that boy lit up like a torch anytime he caught your name. That’s a dedicated kind of shine to be sure. I’d wager some faith on it.”
For the second time that afternoon, she had no answer, no matter how she scoured the table for one.
“Excuse me.” Jasimir’s voice carried from a few paces away as he walked over to the table. “We found … this.”
He held out Swain’s scroll.
Fie took it in a shaking hand and spread the crackling parchment. For the first time, the letters ordered themselves for her: lines of a walking song, of lore, of lives here and gone.
“I was thinking…” Jasimir rubbed the back of his neck. “There are scribes in the fort. I could arrange for one to sit with the Crows and keep recording as long as you’re in Trikovoi. And if you’ll allow it, we could make a copy of this scroll … for the royal library.”
Fie looked up at him and found her smile to be well-watered. “Aye. Swain would have liked that.”
Jasimir returned her smile. “That wasn’t the only thing we found.”
Fie followed his gaze to the door, where Wretch had just walked in.
In her arms squirmed a very dirty, very grumpy gray tabby.
“Little beast trailed the caravan all the way from Cheparok,” Wretch groused. “You’ve Madcap and your Hawk lad to thank for sneaking her scraps and keeping her out of sight.”
Barf squirmed free and trotted over to Fie, sniffing at her sandals. After a moment the cat rolled on Fie’s feet, squalling a reprimand. She only yowled louder when Fie picked her up and buried her face in Barf’s dusty fur.
“Reckon she missed the cat most,” Wretch said.
“Reckon she missed her pretty Hawk boy most,” Madcap called from across the room.
Barf mewled in indignation when tears dampened her fur, and wriggled loose once more. Fie tried her best to scowl through leaky eyes.
“I miss silence,” she declared, then relented, scrubbing at her face. “And I suppose I missed you lot, too.”
* * *
Fie slipped away after dinner while her kin sang a rowdy camp song and danced about a fire burning in the courtyard’s great brazier. A few of the morning’s mammoth riders hung about, comparing scars and trading tales.
She just needed a fresh breath, that was all. She’d go back to the barrack and sleep with her kin, as she had every night of her life until Peacock Moon.
Or she could go back to her room. Her own room, quiet and private, where no one would ask aught of her, where she could wash off the ashes, curl up in a bed, and work at the knots in her head and her heart over the road that stretched before her now.
A treacherous part of her had loved the silence of the mornings, keeping watch over her tiny band of false Crows, the solitude and peace.
Perhaps Pa had understood that when he said no chief wanted their duty.
Perhaps she wouldn’t have that kind of peace much longer.
Fie went looking for her room.
That turned out to be a feat easier intended than accomplished. Trikovoi’s winding corridors swallowed her whole, sending her up stairways and down them again, round and round training yards and mess halls, circling like a hound settling to bed. At last a doorway spat her out onto a walkway between towers just as the last edge of sunlight sank into the mountains.
And there she found Draga and Tavin, leaning against the wall, heads bowed to speak quick and quiet. Tavin looked up when the door swung shut behind Fie. A raw shadow darted through his expression before he screened it off again.
Now she knew where he’d learned that from.
Draga saw what caught her son’s eye and muttered something, then pushed off the wall and headed toward the other door.
Fie reckoned she hadn’t really ever been looking for her room.
She steeled herself and walked nearer to Tavin, trying to ignore the rattle of her heart shaking its cage. “What did she say?”
“That she didn’t raise a coward.” Tavin’s voice rang hollow to Fie’s ear; his face stayed blank.
“What does that mean?” she asked, half to drive him to speak again. She wanted to hear his voice. She wanted to know he’d not suffered too much with Tatterhelm.
She wanted to know if he’d forgiven her.
Tavin levered himself onto his feet proper, still not looking her way. “It means we should talk somewhere better than here.”
Fie followed him up a set of stairs that curled about a tower, lead dragging in her gut. At the top waited a cold brazier and a handful of benches.
Tavin held a hand over the brazier, then jerked it back, gaze flicking to Fie. His shoulders dropped.
He trailed fingers over the coals, and golden fire sprang up in their wake.
“When—” His voice cracked. He cleared his throat but did not pull his hand from the brazier. Flames curled and danced along the lines of his burn scar. “When I was seven, the king came to Dragovoi. Mother told me to stay out of sight, but … he saw me. I looked exactly like Jas. And Surimir knew that about eight years earlier, on his own wedding night, he’d been drunk enough to command Mother to his bed while Aunt Jasindra was still at the reception.”
Fie’s belly churned. Tavin had told her of Hawk loyalty to the crown, of Surimir’s fondness for abusing it. Yet she couldn’t fathom how one of the gods’ favored Phoenixes could sink to that terrible depth.
Tavin wasn’t done. “Mother never formally acknowledged me as her son and heir. It’d raise too many questions about my father. I don’t know how many half castes there are, but … when you’re half a Phoenix, you can’t just play with fire, you have to deliberately try to not get burned. Mother could teach me only the blood Birthright. So. You asked where this”—he turned his burnt wrist—“came from. When Surimir saw me, he had a strong notion of what I was. And he held my hand in a fire until I figured out how to prove him right.”
More than ever, Fie wanted her hand in his. She wanted to stay by his side, plant herself betwixt him and the king if they ever saw that monster again. She wanted to burn down Surimir’s ugly palace and teach him the price of treating his people like toys.