He rocked back on his heels. One hand ran over his mouth, fingertips pushing down into the sides of his jaw. Then he stood and looked away.
In the startled silence, Fie wondered if she’d meant her words for Tavin or for herself.
The prince’s voice cut through the air. “Enough. It’s not his fault.”
“If by ‘not his fault’ you mean ‘square his fault,’ then aye.”
“He saved your life not ten minutes ago.” Jasimir’s tone soured onyour. “Haven’t you been berating us since day one for not standing up for the Crows? Make up your mind whether you want our help or not.”
“You call that help? Your Peacocks and Hawks listen to crowns, not Crows. Deal with them when you’re not hiding behind our masks, and I’ll call that help.”
“I already swore an oath to do just that, and if you think that won’t cost me dearly—”
“Oh aye, such a trial,” Fie sneered. “Poor little princeling has to treat us like people.”
Tavin spoke before the prince could fire back. “We need to get moving.”
“To where?” Fie lurched to her feet, wearing a scowl. “The Vultures know we’re headed northeast. They’ll block the flatway to the Marovar.”
“We don’t have anywhere else,” Tavin said shortly. “They can’t go too far from their supply caravan, which slows them down in bad terrain. We can keep ahead of them if we stay off the roads.”
Fie sucked in a breath. “I won’t be able to see plague beacons.”
“No,” Tavin agreed, “you won’t.”
He didn’t know what he was asking. Lordlings got to look away when they wanted to. Fie’d never had a choice in keeping her eyes open.
“You won’t be able to walk us into another trap,” the prince muttered.
“Jas.” Tavin shook his head.
Fie waited for the rest of what he ought to say:I know we’re asking more of you. But your Crows need you. We need you. I need you.
She knew it all already. Believed some of it. The rest—the rest she wanted from him.
But he didn’t offer another word. And she would not ask.
Perhaps she’d pushed him far enough after all.
Perhaps she’d pushed too far.
But going off the roads… She’d already turned her back on her kin. What would the Covenant think of her turning her back on sinners?
Didn’t want to be a Crow no more.
Fie’s hands curled into dust-lined fists. The Covenant knew the oath she carried now. And Pa wanted her to keep it. It was plain as that.
She shifted her pack and squinted for where afternoon sunlight needled through the cedar boughs. “We go northeast,” she said finally, and set off through the trees, back to the sun.
Fie’s hands burned with salt in a hundred tiny scrapes, and yet she kept scrubbing.
The sun had long slunk below the horizon before they’d stopped for the night. They’d pushed up in thick silence through the bristling hills, up into rockier ground, onto thinner game trails, always searching the growing dark for skinwitches closing in. When they’d staggered to a halt by a pond in the crook of a steep hillside, she’d waited for the boys to refill the water skins, then burned the remains of her arm-rags on the campfire and took the salt and soap-shells to the pond.
She couldn’t wash up proper here, not a few paces from the campfire. Even though Tavin had been badgered into sleeping while dinnercooked and the prince didn’t shine to girls at all, stripping down in front of lordlings didn’t sit right.
But scrub as she might, she couldn’t shake the memory of Pa’s sword sliding through flesh. By firelight, the salt and suds on her arms might as well have been blood. Even a string of bubbles on the pond’s surface reminded her of the gash across the sinner’s throat.
“Was that your first time killing someone?”
