Draga shook her head. “Did I stutter? This is a trap.” Her eyes had gone cold and dark. “They’re going to kill all the hostages, no matter what.”
“The letter says—” Jasimir started.
“The letter is bait. All he wants is for you to walk into the Fallow Vale unprotected, thinking you can save them.”
“I have to try.”
Draga gripped the desk chair. “No. Rhusana wins the moment you walk into his camp. If you care for the Crows, all of them, you can’t give yourself up. Not without forsaking the whole caste. You have to cut your losses.”
Fie’s belly-sick passed, wrath flaring in its wake. “Easier said when it’s not your loss to cut.”
“Don’t tell me about my losses,” Draga snapped.
“Don’t pretend you give a damn about my caste,” Fie hissed back. “If Tatterhelm had a dozen Hawks—”
“Tatterhelm has—” Draga cut herself off, running a hand over her hair. “This is why he takes hostages: he wants us shaken, he wants us making mistakes. If we give him the prince, it’s all over. I could follow him all the way back to the royal palace with a mammoth army, but as long as he keeps that knife on—on Jasimir, there won’t be a single damned thing any of us can do.”
“Your song’ll change when he starts sending pieces of a Hawk,” Fie spat.
Draga stared at her. Jasimir inhaled sharp at Fie’s side but said naught.
“It will not,” said the master-general in a voice that sliced high and razor-thin.
“Aye? Maybe the first day it won’t, when it’s just Tavin’s little finger.” Fie’s own voice rattled with fury. “If Tatterhelm gets impatient, maybe he’ll just send the whole hand.”
“Tavin’s your blood,” Jasimir added, voice rising. “What about the Hawk code? What about ‘I will not forsake—’”
“I know the code!”
Draga’s shout shattered over the stone walls. In the stunned quiet, she strode to the window, staring out through the crossed iron bars. Steel shuddered and clinked in her hair.
“Taverin has always known his duty. We serve the nation first.” A crack in her voice filled in with granite. “When you act in anger, you’ve already lost. Jasimir, being a king means sometimes you choose who to sacrifice. Today the choice is ten Crows and a Hawk, or the Crow caste and Sabor. Do you understand?”
Jasimir didn’t answer.
Draga didn’t turn from the window, but her spine pulled stiff as Pa’s little finger on the desk. “Do you understand?” she repeated, harder than before.
Silence stretched thin as spider silk, then snapped when the prince whispered, “Yes.”
Fie felt the sucker punch in her bones. He wouldn’t look at her.
“Consider yourself lucky, because today I’m going to make this choice for you,” Draga said, facing them once more. “Corporal Lakima, return these two to their own rooms. I want a watch posted to make sure they stay there.”
As before, Draga should have looked to the prince. Instead her eyes burned on Fie.
“Yes, master-general.” An iron grip settled on Fie’s shoulder.
“You can’t—” Fie protested.
“Shut the door,” Draga muttered, dropping into the commander’s chair. “And tell someone to bring me some gods-damned wine.”
* * *
At first, Fie screamed.
She cried out with fury: fury with Draga for sentencing her family to a wretched death, fury with Jasimir for letting her, fury with Pa for sending her to safety in Cheparok, fury with Tavin for stealing into her heart and tearing it asunder, and, most of all, fury with Sabor, with the Covenant, with the dead gods.
Then she crumpled with shame: shame for giving up her own, shame for failing to keep her one rule as a chief, shame for not scratching and clawing her way out of Trikovoi.
Then, at last, she wept with grief, and when she did, she grieved for more things than she could count, than she could name, but most of all, she grieved for the brief thread of hope that had sparked when she saw Tavin’s beacon burning in the gate of Trikovoi.
When she was done weeping, she slept without dreams.
And when she woke, it was by the light of the Crow Moon.
For a while, she lay in the dark on her foul, soft bed in her foul, safe room, her thoughts winding up and spinning out like a spindle. Would Tatterhelm send a piece of someone else in the morning? Or would he cut off more of Pa?
Would she let him?
Every heartbeat in her ears was an accusation.
Draga was right: the whole Crow caste hung on Jasimir reaching the throne.