Fie nodded, her throat nigh too tight to force out aught but a ragged “Thank you.”
She didn’t have to whistle the marching order for the Crows to know it was time to go.
When they reached the flatway bend, Fie looked back and found Lakima and her spear waiting in the thin moonlight, alone in the empty road.
PART TWO
LOVERSANDFOES
CHAPTER TEN
THE MESSENGER
They ran first, for as long as they could with clanking packs and an unhappy tabby clutched in Madcap’s arms.
When Fie’s band could run no more, they walked as swift as possible, still heaving for breath, still wordless. Fie kept two Sparrow teeth burning, tossing spent teeth into the brush by the side of the road. Each time the orange glow of a campfire blossomed ahead, she lit a third and felt it ring in her bones like a hammer. No camp sentries looked her band’s way as they passed.
She’d learned two moons ago that burning three teeth for too long left her a hollowed wreck, but letting her third Sparrow tooth go each time felt like letting safety slip through her fingers.
By every dead god, she wanted to feel safe again.
They marched on through the bitter dawn, quiet and hurried, andstopped only when hooves thundered up the road. Then they took to the trees, and Fie burned three teeth until the patrol of Hawks passed.
Once the hoofbeats faded, Fie said, “Eat, drink, piss if you need to. Then we get back on the road.”
“Where are we going, chief?” Madcap asked.
Fie opened her mouth to answer—then thought of Lakima and closed it. A moment later she said, “North, and that’s all I’ll say. If any of us are taken by Rhusana…”
Murmurs rippled through her band. Madcap swore softly, then set Barf on their shoulders for the climb down. “Cunning, our chief.”
Long ago, Wretch had told her history would give her a name:Fie Oath-cutter. Fie the Cunning. Fie, the Crow Who Feared No Crown.
Mammoth blood still fouled her tongue. She didn’t deserve any of that.
She couldn’t fail them again.
They stopped once more before the sun set, to let another Hawk patrol pass. This time, Fie knew none of their weary legs could carry them into the trees in time. Instead, she had them shelter in the brush and called a third tooth, trying to ignore the sting as copper burned in her nose.
Her band pushed on through a second night as Fie kept her Sparrow teeth alight. No one spoke to her but to offer a water skin, a blanket round her shoulders, a strip of dried pork. She didn’t like to think of giving off hurt like a stink, but she’d spent too much of the day scrubbing tears from her face to convince herself otherwise.
The trees began to run together for her, and the stars, and the moon, and the sky, until she marched through an endless dimming gloom—but this was the chief’s way, wasn’t it? Forever caught on the road, only drifting from beacon to beacon, never finding peace, never finding home.
She’d been a fool to think any other road could wait for her.
Near midnight, Fie stumbled and fell to the dust, and found her legs would not push her back up.
The next thing she knew, she was being hoisted into a cloak turned makeshift sling. “You keep those teeth alight, chief,” she heard Varlet say. “It’s our turn to carry you.”
“You don’t know where we’re going,” she slurred, trying to climb out.
Wretch pushed her back, gentle but firm. “We do, girl. Tend to your teeth. We’re almost there.”
Fie didn’t have it in her to scrap with Wretch, and when Barf leapt up and curled on her chest, the fight was good as over. Instead she slid into a fog, rolling Sparrow teeth in her fingers, letting them slip into the sling when they burned out, focusing on staying awake even if she couldn’t walk.
She reckoned no one in her band knew how Tavin had carried her when she’d burned herself out in the Marovar.
Near dawn, they turned off the road. Fie only barely registered the change, wavering in and out of her haze—then, beyond the tang of blood still in her mouth, she caught the fresh, sweet perfume of magnolias.
