She reached into the cart, prodding what seemed like the nobler of the bloody heaps. “They really royals, Pa?”
“Just the one. Other was his body double.”
Fie tugged back the linen until torchlight landed on a boy’s rust-flecked face, looking for all the world like he was sleeping. Maybe a little afraid. Maybe he’d been awake when Pa’s blade touched his throat.
She pursed her lips. “So that’s what a sinner prince looks like.”
The dead boy sat up.
“Well, no,” he said, “but I’ve been told I’m fairly close.”
CHAPTER THREE
A COVENANT OATH
Fie didn’t intend to punch the boy, but she did all the same.
Fie didn’t intend to scream, either, but that happened, too, and with enthusiasm. As did tripping over her feet as she bolted back, landing on her rear in the damp grass. Hangdog’s curses and Pa’s roaring laughter only muddied her panic.
The dead boy yanked his left hand loose from the bindings, wincing as he felt his jaw. Gore on his plain long-sleeved tunic made it impossible to tell if any of the blood was new. Fie scrabbled about to arm herself with a rock as the other shroud also began to stir.
“Here, here,” Pa said, wiping tears from his eyes as he reached into the cart to help free them. “You’ve gone and spooked my girl.”
“There’s an understatement,” the boy said, dry. He glanced down at the wiggling shroud beside him. “Jas, as your personal guard, I feel obligated to warn you”—he pointed at Fie—“that oneis easily startled.”
Fie’s mind was a fly in her hollow skull, buzzing in fruitless circles. The dead boys were moving. The dead boys weretalking.
The dead boys weren’t dead.
“Yech.” The bodyguard slid out of the cart, wincing at the crackle of his blood-stiff shirt. “Is pig blood always this vile? Next time I fake my death, I’m picking something more glamorous. I hear poisoning’s in vogue.”
“Pa.” Her voice came out strangled. “Did we just kidnap royals?”
Pa grinned ear to ear. He loved a good jest, but Fie wasn’t sure the Phoenix caste would find abducting the heir all that amusing. “Told you, Fie, just the one. And only on account of them asking kind.”
A prince and a guard. A Phoenix and his Hawk, then. Fie didn’t know if she wanted to scream or laugh. Perhaps this was all one garish nightmare. If they were lucky—
“You’recertainwe weren’t followed?”
The quiet voice belonged to the boy the bodyguard had called “Jas.”
Jasimir.Everyone knew the crown prince’s name. As the prince untangled himself, neither he nor his guard seemed to note how every mutter had died like birdsong before a storm. The Crows eyed the lordlings as if twin serpents had slipped from the shrouds. By torchlight the two blood-soaked boys were nigh identical in their wide, sharp-jawed faces, sleek black topknots, and loose linen shirts and trousers. Where his Hawk guard was all good-natured ease, though, the prince was as grim as if he were truly at his own funeral.
But it took more than a crown and a frown to faze Pa. “Oh aye, we were followed.” He pried a tooth from his string and tossed it aside. Fie couldn’t believe he’d burned a whole Sparrow tooth without her catching on. “Pair of the queen’s trackers. They tailed us to the bridge and no farther.”
“Cur.”
The prince, the Hawk, and Pa all looked up. Wretch’s mask was off as well. Fie knew when she called Pa “Cur,” they were in for a spectacle.
“I see you’re busy ministering to the needs of the royal louts here,” she cooed, voice rising, “but I don’t suppose if, perchance, when it suits your fancy, you might share with your kin what nonsense, suicidal,scum-brainedscheme you’ve just dragged us into?”
The Hawk bodyguard moved first, striding toward Wretch. “Of course, I apologize. We’ve been quite inconsiderate.” He tapped his right fist to his lips and held it out in greeting. Wretch, taken aback, did the same, and they clasped hands briefly. “My name is Tavin. I’m sure you’ve figured out who my friend is.”
“We’ve a notion,” Hangdog drawled, leaning on the cart. There was a nasty edge in his voice, the kind he got when he hungered for a fight. “Got bored of your palace,cousins?”
The prince’s face darkened at the slantways insult. Before he could bite back, his Hawk guard flicked his hand, dismissive. “I don’t typically commit wide-scale blasphemy out of boredom. Repeat assassination attempts tend to motivate a man, though.”
Wretch scowled. “If someone doesn’t start talking sense, I’m getting as far clear of here as possible.”
