“Then I’ll make it again, to as many Hawks as it takes, as many times as it takes,” Jasimir said. “I swore an oath.”
How long would the Crows have to wait?
The prince’s own words echoed from the ravine, more than a week past. How much more will you let them take from you?
She’d get her kin back. She’d get Tavin back. She’d stop the queen. And someday—someday she might fall asleep feeling safe again.
For tonight, it had to be enough.
Twin Hawks stared down at her from their portraits, imperious. Fie wished someone had bothered to paint her mother before the Oleanders tore her to pieces. The peculiar itch wormed about the back of her head once more.
Somewhere in the hall, a muffled hum of a watch-hymn threaded the quiet. Fie knew that, wander as she might, she’d never outrun it. There was no way out of Trikovoi for her until the Hawks let her go.
“Thank you for saving my cat,” Fie said, stiff. “I should try to sleep.”
* * *
Four knocks came at noon, ringing through the prince’s room.
Fie set down her practice slate as Jasimir answered the door. Corporal Lakima stood outside, stony-faced and tight-lipped, gaze shifting from the prince to Fie and her wobbling letters. “The master-general calls for you.” Jasimir and Fie traded looks. Lakima coughed. “There’s a message.”
Lakima scarce had time to clear the way before Jasimir and Fie flew out, half running down the hall.
When they burst into the commander’s study, Draga didn’t even glance up from the sole parchment on the now-cleared desk, her face gray and hard as Fie’s slate.
“Close the door.”
Lakima pushed it shut.
“They’re in the Fallow Vale, an hour’s ride north from here,” Draga said. “Tatterhelm walked out to meet my scouts himself.”
“Did they attack?” Jasimir asked.
“No. He … he brought Taverin with him. With a knife to his throat. And then he handed the scouts this.” Draga began to read aloud. “‘To Master-General Draga Vastali szo Markahn: I, Greggur Tatterhelm, acting in the name of Her Majesty the queen, order you to surrender the traitor Jasimir Surimas sza Lahadar.’” She licked her lips. “‘Should you fail to comply, you will share his charges of high treason, conspiracy, fraud, and criminal blasphemy. Moreover…’”
Draga trailed off. The parchment rattled beneath her fingers, and suddenly Fie saw red-brown flecks on the sheet. Something cold hooked into her belly and dragged down.
The master-general cleared her throat and continued. “‘Moreover, we have custody of the prince’s accomplices, including ten Crows and the Hawk Taverin sza Markahn. If you wish to recover them alive, you will send the prince and no more than one escort, unarmed and on foot, to the Fallow Vale at dawn. Any sign of additional reinforcements or attempts to free the hostages will result in their immediate execution.’”
The cold hook dragged harder.
Draga sucked in a breath. “‘Finally, for every day you delay, we will consider it an insult to the justice of Her Majesty and will submit an accomplice to the appropriate punishment. You will find the queen’s justice’”—Draga leaned back and twitched the parchment—“‘attached.’ I … I don’t know who…”
A crooked, brown-gray worm rolled onto the desk, trailing a smear of red.
For a moment, Fie saw not a desk in a stone room but a dusty dawn road of years ago. That time, she’d been too young to know the bloody-tipped twigs for aught but a curiosity.
Now, near a dozen years later, she knew a little finger when she saw one.
Sometimes the drag of horror hit a low so deep in Fie that she couldn’t even begin to reckon with it, only wait for the rest of her head to catch up.
She blinked. Inhaled. Took stock of the buzzing in her ears, the words of the letter, the gray of Draga’s face, the silence of the prince, the sluggish thunder of her own heart.
There wasn’t much time before the sickness would hit. Before wrath choked every drop of reason from her thoughts.
Before Tatterhelm sent another finger to point at her.
She hadn’t much time.
Fie forced herself to step forward, reach out, and touch the spur of bone jutting from the flesh.
The spark stung when she called it out.
“Pa,” she gasped.
And then the sickness caught up.
Jasimir hurried her to a wash basin just in time. When she finished retching, he handed her a goblet of water, looking back to Draga. “We can ambush them. I’ll go in with one Hawk—”