“You heard Tavin,” Jasimir said, steely. “No chances.”
“Understood, Your Highness. Ah—if I may.” He brushed a dusty patch off Jasimir’s sleeve. “I’ll see to—”
Something very peculiar happened then, and it happened very fast:
Fie heard the clatter of a spear dropping, saw a blur of leather armor and dark hair, stumbled as it passed between her and Tavin. Then the next thing she knew, Khoda was trying to wrench the steward’s arms behind his back.
Burzo twisted swift as an adder, slashing out with a dagger Fie hadn’t seen on him before. Khoda whipped away with ease, then swept the steward’s feet out from beneath him. In a trice he had a knee on Burzo’s back, holding the man facedown in the flatway dust.
“Look.” Khoda forced Burzo’s hand open. Fie crouched beside them, peering down.
On his palm lay a single strand of dark hair—Fie’s, plucked from Jasimir’s sleeve.
Fie sucked in a breath. If delivered to Rhusana, that hair was all it would take for the Swan Queen to bend Fie to her will.
“This man isn’t working for the Hawks,” Khoda said, flicking the hair out of Burzo’s reach.
There was a ring, and the second peculiar thing happened then and there: Tavin had drawn one of his short swords, the point leveled at Khoda’s throat.
“No, he isn’t,” Tavin said, “and neither are you.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE CROWN
“They’re called the Black Swans.” Master-General Draga’s voice was calm enough, but she paced about the tent like a tiger pestered by a persistent bloodfly. “Always thought the name was a touch melodramatic. They’re spies.”
Fie would not put good odds on that bloodfly; nor did she put good odds on Khoda or Steward Burzo, both bound hand and foot. They knelt on plain, sturdy woven mats in the master-general’s tent before Tavin, Fie, Jasimir, and Draga herself. They’d offered surprisingly little resistance to being hustled straight to Draga; Khoda had just seemed resigned, and the steward utterly baffled.
Khoda straightened up now, looking almost indignant as he jerked his chin at the steward. “He’s not one of ours. And we prefer to be calledspecialists.”
“Specialists in infiltrating other castes, gathering key intelligence, and reporting back to their spymaster, the monarch, and myself.” Draga folded her arms, coming to a halt beside a rack of spears. “Spies.I understand you’re trained in identifying potential threats. What do you call a Swan agent embedded with one of Rhusana’s prime targets?”
“An asset,” Khoda said shortly. “I can assure you, the Black Swans have absolutely no desire to see Rhusana on the throne. If I were on her side, she’d already have Fie’s hair.”
“That’s a fair point,” Jasimir allowed.
Fie wasn’t sure any of it was a fair point. A whole moon, awhole moonKhoda had been spying on her and her band. The notion made her skin crawl. Aye, he’d run off Oleanders, he’d kept watch, he’d played the part of a Hawk all too well. None of it meant a damn if he’d done it to buy his way into her graces.
Tavin shook his head as he moved about the tent, lighting lamps with a fingertip against the waning daylight. “We can’t trust anything he says until it’s verified by a Crane witch.”
“No need to wait.” Fie pushed a witch-tooth free from her string with perhaps more enthusiasm than was appropriate. Any Crane tooth could spot lies from him; a witch-tooth could force him to speak plain truth.
Fie rolled the molar between her palms and looked to the master-general. “Who first?”
As Khoda opened his mouth to protest, Draga tapped the crown of his head. He slumped over in a healer’s sleep. “Steward Burzo.”
The tooth-spark snapped to attention at Fie’s call, a stringent old magistrate with little patience for criminals and even less for liars. “How long have you been working for the queen?”
Burzo blinked up at her, and the truth slipped out of him far more easily than she expected: “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know how long or you didn’t know you were working for her?” Jasimir asked.
“I didn’t know I was working for her,” Burzo answered.
Tavin seized his shirt and yanked him close. “You tried to take Fie’s hair. You tried to kill her guard. Who do youthinkyou were working for?”
“I don’t know,” Burzo sputtered.
