Jasimir flinched. “She’s got a point.”
“She usually does,” Tavin said under his breath.
“She’sright here,” Fie snapped.
“Apologies. You’re right, he’ll expect us to go straight to the master-general. But we can use that to throw him off. Markahns run every fort in the Marovar, so any of them will take us in and send word to Draga.From here the nearest fortress is Trikovoi, in the southern end of the mountains. If we make it, we’ll be safe.”
“We?” she asked. “Or you two? I’ve dealt bad with enough Hawk scummers for one moon.”
Tavin’s mouth twisted. “You’ll be fine while you’re with us,” he admitted. “And Draga. Draga hates unpaid debts.”
“That makes three people I can trust, out of every fort in the Marovar.” Fie gave him a long, cold scowl that said plain how much faith she put in those three. “What of the rest?”
The look Tavin gave her said even plainer that she was right to doubt. “The rest know what happens if you cross Draga.” He stood. “We need to get as far from Cheparok as we can tonight. Are we ready to move?”
“Lead the way,” Prince Jasimir said, collecting his torch.
Tavin held a hand out to Fie.
Something hitched in her gut.
I did what you wanted.Handog’d yelled that and taken an arrow in the eye in payment. It didn’t take a scholar to square out who he’d been serving on the bridge instead of the Crows.
Yet she was the one walking away from her people now.
She forced her fist to uncurl and let Tavin help her up.
The three of them worked their way along the dark channels, through winding corridors and down crumbling stairs. Sometimes curious rat-shrills pierced the dark ahead, but they left only bones and dung by the time Fie arrived. Finally they reached a long drainage channel scarce as tall as her waist.
“This is the last,” Tavin promised behind her, dousing his torch. “Then we’re out.”
Out.
Pa wouldn’t make it out of the city tonight.
Pa wanted her to keep the oath.
Fie steeled herself and eased into the water.
And so the three of them left Cheparok the way they’d arrived: crawling on hand and knee.
Fie didn’t know how long she splashed through the empty dark before a slivery silver glow sliced over the water’s surface ahead. She crawled faster and faster—
And found herself below a square of iron lace. Tavin reached up to the middle of the grate and turned some unseen panel. The iron creaked and shuddered. With a heave, he shoved the grate aside.
For a moment, Fie could only stare at the night above, dusted in a belt of stars, buckled by a newborn Peacock Moon. She’d seen it near every night of her life, yet…
Her people, her home. If they could see the moon now, it would be through a cage of rooftops and plaster.
This was not like any other night of her life.
Tavin’s hand jabbed into her sight. “Fie?”
She let him pull her up one more time.
The walls of Cheparok loomed colossal behind them, skirted in a sour, briny fog. Blots of lantern-light singed holes in the mist, dotting an outdoor market along the eastern bank of the Fan River, just like the one before the western side’s gate for Common Castes.
Fie’s belly churned, half from nerves, half from hunger. Her frown dug deeper as she followed the lordlings into the haze.
