For a moment, Fie saw not a desk in a stone room but a dusty dawn road of years ago. That time, she’d been too young to know the bloody-tipped twigs for aught but a curiosity.
Now, near a dozen years later, she knew a little finger when she saw one.
Sometimes the drag of horror hit a low so deep in Fie that she couldn’t even begin to reckon with it, only wait for the rest of her head to catch up.
She blinked. Inhaled. Took stock of the buzzing in her ears, thewords of the letter, the gray of Draga’s face, the silence of the prince, the sluggish thunder of her own heart.
There wasn’t much time before the sickness would hit. Before wrath choked every drop of reason from her thoughts.
Before Tatterhelm sent another finger to point at her.
She hadn’t much time.
Fie forced herself to step forward, reach out, and touch the spur of bone jutting from the flesh.
The spark stung when she called it out.
“Pa,” she gasped.
And then the sickness caught up.
Jasimir hurried her to a wash basin just in time. When she finished retching, he handed her a goblet of water, looking back to Draga. “We can ambush them. I’ll go in with one Hawk—”
“It’s a trap.”
“I can try to hide your riders,” Fie coughed, then spat into the basin.
Draga shook her head. “Did I stutter? This is a trap.” Her eyes had gone cold and dark. “They’re going to kill all the hostages, no matter what.”
“The letter says—” Jasimir started.
“The letter is bait. All he wants is for you to walk into the Fallow Vale unprotected, thinking you can save them.”
“I have to try.”
Draga gripped the desk chair. “No. Rhusana wins the moment you walk into his camp. If you care for the Crows,all of them, you can’t give yourself up. Not without forsaking the whole caste. You have to cut your losses.”
Fie’s belly-sick passed, wrath flaring in its wake. “Easier said when it’s not your loss to cut.”
“Don’t tell me about my losses,” Draga snapped.
“Don’t pretend you give a damn about my caste,” Fie hissed back. “If Tatterhelm had a dozen Hawks—”
“Tatterhelm has—” Draga cut herself off, running a hand over her hair. “This is why he takes hostages: he wants us shaken, hewantsus making mistakes. If we give him the prince, it’s all over. I could follow him all the way back to the royal palace with a mammoth army, but as long as he keeps that knife on—on Jasimir, there won’t be a single damned thing any of us can do.”
“Your song’ll change when he starts sending pieces of a Hawk,” Fie spat.
Draga stared at her. Jasimir inhaled sharp at Fie’s side but said naught.
“It will not,” said the master-general in a voice that sliced high and razor-thin.
“Aye? Maybe the first day it won’t, when it’s just Tavin’s little finger.” Fie’s own voice rattled with fury. “If Tatterhelm gets impatient, maybe he’ll just send the whole hand.”
“Tavin’s your blood,” Jasimir added, voice rising. “What about the Hawk code? What about ‘I will not forsake—’”
“I know the code!”
Draga’s shout shattered over the stone walls. In the stunned quiet, she strode to the window, staring out through the crossed iron bars. Steel shuddered and clinked in her hair.
