burned with salt in a hundred tiny scrapes, and yet she kept scrubbing.
The sun had long slunk below the horizon before they’d stopped for the night. They’d pushed up in thick silence through the bristling hills, up into rockier ground, onto thinner game trails, always searching the growing dark for skinwitches closing in. When they’d staggered to a halt by a pond in the crook of a steep hillside, she’d waited for the boys to refill the water skins, then burned the remains of her arm-rags on the campfire and took the salt and soap-shells to the pond.
She couldn’t wash up proper here, not a few paces from the campfire. Even though Tavin had been badgered into sleeping while dinner cooked and the prince didn’t shine to girls at all, stripping down in front of lordlings didn’t sit right.
But scrub as she might, she couldn’t shake the memory of Pa’s sword sliding through flesh. By firelight, the salt and suds on her arms might as well have been blood. Even a string of bubbles on the pond’s surface reminded her of the gash across the sinner’s throat.
“Was that your first time killing someone?”
Fie started. The prince had perched by the campfire, stirring a mash of maize and salt pork, one eye on Tavin’s sleeping back.
“Aye,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
Jasimir frowned at the mash. “You … your family should have been here to help.”
Near a week had passed since she’d left them in Cheparok, yet a hot lump still rose in Fie’s throat. She splashed cold water on her arms. “Have you ever killed someone?”
He shook his head. “Tavin has. Before today, I mean. One of Rhusana’s assassins went down fighting, and another fell on her own poisoned dagger, so Tavin put her out of her misery.”
“That’s … nice of him?”
“It’s how we were raised. The Hawk code requires you to treat an enemy with dignity, even in death.” Jasimir let the campfire roll around his fingers.
Fie straightened and scoured the hillsides, calling up two Sparrow teeth she’d kept simmering, then working in a third for just a moment. The only Vulture signs the triad showed were those gauzy webs still near Gerbanyar.
She let the third tooth go and returned to the fire, stretching her arms out to help them dry. “Pa never said if it got easier.”
“It shouldn’t.” Tavin sat up, rubbing his eyes. “It does.”
“Go back to sleep,” the prince said at once. “You need to recover. I’ll take your watch.”
“I’m fine. Besides, how could I sleep through a feast like this?” He flashed a smile Fie didn’t buy for a second. Neither did she miss how his eyes swept the dark.
She salted their paltry dinner anyhow, trying not to fret over their dwindling rations. Four days without viatik made for thin fare, and she wasn’t about to march back into Gerbanyar to collect pay.
She wasn’t alone in her worries. “We’re not going to make it to the Marovar like this,” Jasimir said around a mouthful of maize. “Even if we had enough food, we’d freeze on the first mountain.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Tavin said.
“No, we need to come up with a plan.” Jasimir pushed a strip of dried panbread about his bowl. “We’re farther north now. Maybe—”
Tavin shook his head. “Not again, Jas.”
“The Hawks could escort us there faster.”
“Or they could hand us over to Tatterhelm for an early solstice present.” Tavin tried to make it sound like a joke. The strain in his voice hamstrung any levity. “The Gerbanyar Hawks weren’t exactly throwing themselves between us and the Vultures.”
“Then we find other Hawks.”
“No, Jas.”
“They’re Hawks, they have a code—”
“I said no.” Tavin’s voice flattened from amiable to unmovable. “It’s my job to keep you in one piece. Let me do it.”
Fie knew an order when she heard one. Even if it was aimed at a prince.
A faint howl silenced them, rising and falling with the breeze. Wind on rocks, that was all, yet Fie waited to be sure before she took up her dinner again.
She chewed her maize, glancing between Tavin, who stirred the fire, and the prince, who stared at the coals. “You can have my watch, cousin,” she offered, half-jesting.
Tavin wasn’t taking any chances. “No he can’t.”
Jasimir’s fists tightened to knots on his knees. He picked up his empty bowl and the cooking pot and stalked off to wash them at the far side of the pond.
“Fie, when you’re done…” Tavin tossed a burned-out Peacock tooth into the grass. “The