Fie wasn’t sure they’d improved much since.
A few Crow gods loomed in the murals: Loyal Star Hama guarding sleeping Crows, Crossroads-Eyes leading them away from treacherous roads, Dena Wrathful and her hundred-hundred teeth. Pa had left Fie and her ma in Dena Wrathful’s own ruined temple for Fie’s early moons; Ma had told her that they’d known Fie for a witch when, soon as she could crawl, they’d found her giggling among the shrine’s bones night after night.
This shrine’s idol splayed six worn hands, clasping a compass, hammer, staff, blanket, basket, and crow. A cart wheel made her crown.
Maykala.Patroness of weary travelers. Proper to be sure. Fie bowed to her ancestor and pushed through the doorway’s faded crowsilk curtain, scooping up her sandals from the threshold.
Hangdog slept yet in a heap beneath the shrine’s eaves. The other Crows shuffled about the clearing, rolling up sleeping mats and shaking out cloaks. They gave a strange wide berth to the fire, where Pa tended to a smoking griddle and a growing stack of panbread.
Arasp-rasp-raspdrew Fie’s eye to the culprit: the lordlings sat across the fire from Pa. One of them dragged a whetstone along an unsheathed blade; the other stared, grim, into the flames. They’d changed to mismatched crowsilk shirts and trousers from the shrine’s viatik stash. Both wore the castoffs like ill-fitting costumes.
Beside them sat Besom, the shrine’s keeper and maybe the oldest Crow Fie had ever known, with Barf the tabby curled in her lap. Not many Crows lived long enough to feel the ache of old bones. Those who did spent their elder years keeping the teeth-spells of a haven shrine alight, passing rumors and warnings from band to band, and pointingthem down different roads so no one region wound up glutted with Crows. Besom’s hair had grayed long before they’d met, her brown hands stained night-purple from picking and weaving the crowsilk lichen that bearded the tree boughs. Though her fingers were gnarled as old vines, they worked a web of thread nimbly enough as she mumbled to Pa.
“Three?”
“Three, aye. We’ll stretch them as long as we can.”
Fie headed over as Besom fished in a bag lying in the sun-yellowed grass. No doubt the old keeper was knotting Phoenix teeth into a chief’s string for Pa. Neither lordling glanced up from fire or sword-whetting. It was a blessing in disguise, for even by daylight Fie couldn’t mark which of the two was the prince.
As soon as Fie sat, Pa plucked the puff of panbread from the griddle, dropped it into a clean rag, drizzled it with honey and a pinch of salt, and handed it to her. “Here.”
One lordling paused the scrape of stone on steel. “Oh, are we eating now?”
That amiable act could only be the Hawk boy. Both lordlings eyed the stack of panbread like tax owed to the crown; Fie recalled them saying they hadn’t much to eat for three days.
She looked the Hawk boy square in the eye and bit off a chunk of panbread.
“Aye, we can eat now.” Pa twisted about to call to the rest of the Crows, and likely also to hide his grin. His voice carried across the clearing. “Breakfast time, you lot.”
Tavin flicked his hand at her. “Pass a couple for me and Jas, will you?”
“Can’t. Hands’re full.” Fie took another monstrous bite.
The Hawk muttered a curse and scrambled to reach the panbread heap before the others. Pa scarce had time to dash salt over two rounds before Tavin snatched them away. Prince Jasimir shot Fie a dirty lookover the campfire, waiting while Tavin bit off a scrap of each, chewed them over, then tore off the untouched halves and handed them to the prince.
There was a moment’s peace as Pa salted panbread and passed it to Crows. Then Prince Jasimir spoke up. “Your glamour’s wearing off.”
Tavin swallowed with a grimace. “We can leave it for a few days.”
“Don’t they have Peacock teeth? They can fix it.” The prince jerked his head at Pa.
Pa raised his eyebrows. “You’ve a Peacock glamour, then?”
Tavin nodded. “For my face. I mean, I’m Jas’s double for a reason, but you can still tell us apart without one.”
Fie pursed her lips. So far, the only difference she’d spotted betwixt the lordlings was which one mummed at liking the Crows.
“Sorry, lads. We don’t have enough spare Peacock teeth to glamour you all the way to Cheparok. And on that notion…” Pa dropped a wheel of dough onto the hot griddle, then pointed his tongs at the lordlings’ fraying topknots. “Those? They have to go.”
He was right. Both lordlings had inherited a gold cast to their brown skin from the northern Hawks, but it’d take a close study to pick them out from Crows, and their dark hair and eyes only helped. The topknots, though… those would mark them for royals on sight.
“Absolutely not.” Prince Jasimir recoiled. “I’ll just keep my hood up. I’m sure you have long-haired Crows.”
“Only ones that fancy lice,” Wretch chipped in as she nabbed a piece of panbread and held it out for Pa’s salt.
Behind her, Swain let out an unvarnished laugh. “Madcap bet me two naka these boys would blow their own cover by the end of the day. I bet we wouldn’t make it to a league marker. At this rate I’m bound for fortunes.”
“Because I won’t cut my hair?” the prince asked, stiff.
