“Taverin has always known his duty. We serve the nation first.” A crack in her voice filled in with granite. “When you act in anger, you’ve already lost. Jasimir, being a king means sometimes you choose who to sacrifice. Today the choice is ten Crows and a Hawk, or the Crow caste and Sabor. Do you understand?”
Jasimir didn’t answer.
Draga didn’t turn from the window, but her spine pulled stiff as Pa’slittle finger on the desk. “Do you understand?” she repeated, harder than before.
Silence stretched thin as spider silk, then snapped when the prince whispered, “Yes.”
Fie felt the sucker punch in her bones. He wouldn’t look at her.
“Consider yourself lucky, because today I’m going to make this choice for you,” Draga said, facing them once more. “Corporal Lakima, return these two to their own rooms. I want a watch posted to make sure they stay there.”
As before, Draga should have looked to the prince. Instead her eyes burned on Fie.
“Yes, master-general.” An iron grip settled on Fie’s shoulder.
“Youcan’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 hadmore 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.
