“I told her I wouldn’t go if you couldn’t.”
“And that was supposed to get you out of it.” She dropped the circlet on his head. It landed askew, slipping over one ear.
Tavin gave a rueful grin and pulled the circlet off. “Guilty. Mother called my bluff. I shouldn’t have said wehaveto go; I don’t know if you need to stay with your band. Would youliketo join me for dinner with the lord of the manor tomorrow?” He dropped the circlet on Fie’s head, where it sat even worse, sliding to rest just over her brows. Still, he pulled a polished-brass mirror from a nearby crate and handed it to her. “There. Much better.”
Fie tried not to stare at her reflection, at the bar of bright gold striping her forehead.
She tried not to admit how some ancient ache in her bones stirred at the sight. How somewhere deep down, eons away, lives and lives and lives past… some part of her felt whole for wearing a crown.
She tossed her head swift and hard, and the circlet popped off with a mellow ring, rolling to lay in the grass like a snake eating its own tail.
“Too big for me,” Fie said, and she didn’t know that for a truth or a lie. “But likely I can manage dinner.”
Tavin reached up to twist a lock of her hair in his fingers. Then his smile splintered a bit. He ducked his head, patting down the blankets of his bed as he searched for something, and a moment later he surfaced with a pair of sewing shears. “I… have another favor to ask.”
Fie continued unwinding her sandal straps. “If it’s to cut the lawn, you’ll need bigger shears.”
He shook his head. “Will you cut my hair?”
She stopped, letting the leather sandal strap fall to the grass, and cocked her head. “I like your hair.” That was the truth: it had grown out a bit since she’d left Trikovoi, curling about his ears long enough to bury her hands in when she felt like it.
Tavin gave a half shrug, staring at the shears. “Fie… Burzo has been in my mother’s service before I was born. If all it took was a hair for Rhusana to turn him, I don’t want to—Ican’ttake any chances.”
He’d held up a steady front all evening, teasing Lakima and jesting with Varlet, but the scratch in his voice said this wasn’t just about Burzo.
Fie reached out, turned his chin until he met her eyes. “You’re not the king.”
He swallowed. “That’s not enough.”
And in her bones, Fie knew he was right. She took up the shears. “I’ll need rags and water.”
Once Tavin’s hair lay in damp waves against his skull, she got to work. She’d watched Wretch trim hair short often enough, and usuallywith no more than the chief’s blade or a shard of broken pottery. Shears made for much quicker work, and it wasn’t long before the rags covering Tavin’s shoulders had darkened with shorn hair.
Something about the silence felt too grim for Fie to abide. “How did you know Khoda for a Swan?”
“When he pushed me aside, I… felt it,” Tavin explained. “The Hawk witch-finders trained me to read caste in the blood, in case any assassins tried disguising themselves.” He blew out a breath. “Not that it was good for much. He’s been spying on you since before I arrived, and I didn’t notice a thing until today.”
Fie raised an eyebrow he couldn’t see. There was something both tiresome and delicious about what sounded like jealousy from Tavin. “Reckon that’s all that bothered you?” she prodded, tugging another lock between her fingers.
To her surprise, he answered swift and blunt: “The guard on the road. I don’t care that he was a… How did you put it?”
“Dung-sucking dog-lover?”
He gave an exaggerated dreamy sigh. “You have such a way with words. I’m used to people like him. But I can’t stop wondering, how many of them are Hawks?”
“Plenty. But you saw it yourself—he backed down when Jas showed up. They care about the lad at the top, and if he fancies Crows, they’ll learn to do it, too.”
Whatever Tavin had to say to that, he kept to himself, and Fie was more than willing to distract herself with running her fingers through his hair. She’d cut near all of it down no higher than a knuckle-width when he asked, “Do you feel safe here?”
Fie fumbled the shears.
She had the protection of a prince and a master-general, two swords, a bag of teeth. Yet not a dozen paces away, even in the middleof scores of the kingdom’s finest warriors, Corporal Lakima still kept watch over Fie’s band.
“Safe enough,” she lied.
The last curl fell to Tavin’s shoulder with a decisive snip. She bundled the rags off his shoulders, taking care not to let any hair fall loose. “There. Done. We’ll throw this in the river tomorrow.”
Tavin twisted about on his knees, and when she looked up, she wasn’t quite sure who she saw. It wasn’t just that his hair no longer softened the harsher lines of his jaw; it was his face. Even when things had been at their most dire on the road, even when she’d nigh killed herself burning too many teeth or he’d good as killed himself letting the Vultures take him, he’d kept the faintest embers of a grin or a jest, like letting them go cold meant some kind of surrender.
