scant moment before bolting to her feet. Annoyance set in a moment later. She ought to have stripped out of her clothes first, even if she’d dry off quick enough keeping watch by the campfire. But her head was in a twisted way tonight, and it didn’t seem she could think straight for the life of her. She turned to slog back.
A shadow waited on the bank.
“You reckon that bastard’s shining to you?” Hangdog’s sneer slid across the water.
Something in his voice said she was better off staying in the creek. Fie didn’t answer. When Hangdog got himself in a temper like this, she knew better than to try aught but look for a way out.
“You reckon he’ll take you away and polish you up so much that the gentry forget what you came from?” he continued. “Don’t fool yourself. That oath’s trash. You’re only good to his kind on your knees.”
The angry simmer flared fierce. “Oh aye, and I was never that to you? Us fooling about moons ago doesn’t give you a spit-weight of say in who I talk to.”
“I didn’t know you were just practicing until you found a lordling to lie with,” Hangdog shot back. “You think he wants aught more from you than an easy—”
Footsteps crunched toward them. Most of Fie prayed it was a Crow. A treacherous part of her wanted someone else.
Wretch stepped into a patch of moonlight, hefting an armful of empty water skins. “You fall in that creek, girl?”
Relief tumbled down Fie’s spine. She wrung out her shirt’s hem. “Something like that.”
“Help me fill these, will you?” Wretch tossed a water skin to her.
Hangdog looked from her to Fie, then stomped back toward the camp.
Wretch didn’t speak until his footfalls faded. “He corners you again, you call for me, all right?”
“I can handle him on my own,” Fie mumbled, surprised when her eyes burned. The anger had boiled down to mortified spite. “I just … All I did was play a damn game.”
Wretch dropped the water skins on the bank and waded out to Fie, shaking her gray-streaked head. “Aye, all you did was play a game. And with a pretty boy. And if it were fair, that’s all there’d be to it.”
Wretch wasn’t much for sentiment, but she gripped Fie’s shoulder anyhow. “I would have left you to handle Hangdog. We all know you could trounce him twice with your eyes shut. But when he followed you? The only reason that pretty boy didn’t come haring after was because I beat him to it. And we both know where that road would have led.”
Fie did. And she hated it. All this mess over a stupid game.
“We’re two more days off Cheparok. Then you’re clear of all this nonsense, and we’ll have a Covenant oath to cash out and no more fretting over Oleander rides. That’s a mighty thing, Fie.”
“Aye,” Fie said softly. Two days and it would all be over.
“They’ll come up with a fancy name for you,” Wretch teased. “Tell stories for centuries. Fie Oath-cutter. Fie the Cunning. Fie, the Crow Who Feared No Crown.”
“I’ll settle for Fie, Who Never Saw an Oleander Again.” Fie rubbed her eyes.
There was less jest than truth when Wretch said, “So would we all.”
* * *
That night passed, and two more, without Fie looking at Hangdog or the lordlings if she didn’t have to. Instead she huddled in the wagon, practicing her toothcraft as the road turned from sand to rocky clay, and bristling pines shifted to copses of stout palms. Each field they passed seemed lusher than the last, a distant thin ribbon of green broadening into the Fan River, which gave the region its name. That ribbon pointed straight to a hard, jagged line against the coin-bright sea: Cheparok.
And that river marked their way, flashing coy as Fie fought to strike harmony with pair after pair of teeth. As Cheparok neared, Pa looked over his shoulder less, but a telltale creak of the wagon seat still gave him away each time. At least the Pigeon witch-tooth had kept any plague beacons at bay until after they’d passed.
By the time they drew within half a league of the city’s western gates, Fie’s shirt clung horribly to her skin, half from the choking air and half from the murderous sun overhead. Cheparok’s towering walls didn’t even have the decency to cast a long enough noontime shadow to offer respite.
Pa whistled a stop and guided the oxen to the side of the road, then