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“It’s a precise weapon.” He fumbled the smooth turn he’d intended.

“Because you’re using it wrong.” Revni stepped in, too close. Her breath was against his chest, but he found he couldn’t move. She pushed on the pommel. “Bash.” The guard. “Bash.” The flat, with enough force Eavus had to brace himself from stumbling backwards. “Bash. Your sword has lots of useful parts besides the pointy bits.”

“I’m well aware.” It came out a murmur. What was wrong with him? Revni had that same smug expression, like she was daring him to argue further. His eyes skimmed hers—gray and enigmatic—and all sorts of possible ways to continue the conversation suddenly raced through his brain. Eavus cleared his throat and stepped back. “This isn’t up for discussion. You are my prisoner. You keep the ax.”

Wait, no. A prisoner shouldn’t have a weapon at all. But Revni shrugged acquiescence and turned to sheath her weapon, and Eavus found himself returning the sword to its loop. He was lucky he didn’t accidentally cut his own leg.

“How did you convince them to let me keep my sword?”

She adjusted the blanket around her shoulders. The ax head poked out like a baby wrapped in a carrier, an odd juxtaposition.

“I told him you were only one of Aleteria. And that if they took it, there would be a hundred like you that would come to take it back.”

A feathering traveled up his limbs and into the bridge of his nose. “Thank you.”

“If we are going to travel together, I need you able to fight,” she said matter-of-factly.

“We’re not travel companions—” he protested automatically, but Revni stopped him with a small smile.

“Sa. As you say.” She nodded towards the growing darkness. “Do prisoners walk in front or behind?”

“In front,” Eavus said awkwardly, and the twinkle in her eyes made him realize she noticed.

“Sa,” she said again. Eavus gestured with his sword, the last piece of Aleteria he still had with him, and Revni took the lead.

FIFTEEN

“If we follow this until the bend, then turn south, we should reach the road to Colcium.”

They had reached the Braided River. Eavus had paused with a dumb smile on his face, as if he invented water, and Revni squatted and pressed her hand into the moss on a rock, trying to suppress her annoyance. As if the roar had not been impossible to miss. Compared to the one they’d crossed before the Blue Men, this was practically a stream.

The squish of the cool moss reminded her too much of the unstable fens. She peeled the growth in a long swath, revealing a dark stripe on the gray stone. That was how she felt—as if the gods kept asking her to peel parts of herself away.

A thunderous rumble interrupted her thoughts. Revni dragged a slow, incredulous glance Eavus’ direction. He was squinting pensively at the sky, his neck flushed, pretending they hadn’t both just heard his stomach.

“We should take time to find food, too,” he said, as if only musing.

But then he just stood there, looking like a puffin on a cliff, wondering where he’d left his nest. Revni’s mild amusement sharpened to a full-on grin.

“Do you not know how?”

Eavus furrowed his brow and made a sputtering noise that never turned into a word. They had been so eager to distance themselves from the Caerdeneii and the Blue Men that for two days they’d only gathered berries and nuts like they were squirrels.

Revni huffed a laugh, but she squelched it with a furrowed brow and tossed a stick in the water, distracting herself by following its spin.

The gods don’t speak in your ear. Revni had heard it a thousand times, from her mother, her father, the seers. “Listen,” they’d say, standing on a whistling hilltop, an ear cupped to the silence of a darkened room, gleefully poised on the bow while a ship ran whale beneath them.

But here in Faen, there were so many new birds and loud trees, the thump, thump, thump of their own feet, the scritch of Eavus shaving sticks into points at night. Was it only practical, to poke the fire, or a habit he couldn’t break? On their second night, he had suggested they sharpen whole saplings—Aleteria, he told her, created barricades every night. This kept them safe. She had rolled her eyes, and told him that Isfolj simply slept with a weapon in their hand, and this kept them safe enough.

He had snorted, and given up. It was a strange sound—like something real—and had given her a strange feeling. As if she was before a fire with Niall and Sulvi, keeping each other company before they played Stone Water Shield to see which of them had to wrangle the goats. To be honest, she was surprised at his…gentleness was the wrong word. The Dinaeii had called him kind, but they hadn’t been on the receiving end of his punching and dragging. Agreeableness, maybe. He was not kind, but he wasn’t cruel either. Just grumpy. An Isfolj captor would never have treated his charge so well. She wasn’t ashamed, thinking of her people, but Why haven’t you beaten or raped me? certainly wasn’t the kind of question you asked.

But then every time she woke, the chill of her parents’ going hit her again, as if they’d only just gotten up from the camp. They slipped into the morning fog and Revni was left alone, cold iron pressed to her cheek, trying to swallow the lump of grief in her throat.

He had done that. Or his people.

What was an oath if only one person understood it?

The stick slowed as it came to low ripples, where wide stones lurked in hidden shallows, and Revni hopped across. The water broke and reformed at every stone, and Revni paused in the center, closing her eyes and breathing in the cool.