tightened. He looked at the canyon and at the bridge, and then he looked at the prince.
“Yes,” Tavin said, “you can.”
He pulled Fie to him and pressed a swift, soft kiss to her mouth.
“It’ll be all right,” he whispered.
And then he shoved her back.
Fie crashed into the prince. The two of them fell not onto rickety plank but steady ground, over the gorge at last.
Steel clattered and flashed. Fie scrambled to her knees. Something dropped from her arms onto the ground beside her—Tavin’s pack, and something cold and heavy—
A scabbard. A short sword. Unbroken.
Tavin knelt on a plank, wrapping one hand around a cord, the other holding his remaining blade aloft.
His voice rang hard as iron. “Keep the oath.”
And in one terminal sweep, he cut the ropes of the bridge.
It happened faster than Fie thought possible:
In one heartbeat his eyes held hers.
I can do something better with my life than die.
In the next, he was gone.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
LITTLE WITNESS
Where horns and hooves and howling wind had raged, now reigned silence.
Fie did not hear Tavin hit the ground. She did not hear the prince cry out beside her. She did not hear the triumphant yips of skinwitches scenting their victory at hand.
She heard naught a thing but the horrified roar in her skull.
Jasimir crawled over to the edge of the canyon, his mouth moving in the fading sunlight. Shouting? Was he calling down to the Hawk? To the Vultures?
Keep the oath.
Tavin’s last words sent the cogs in her head grating into a mad spin. The gates opened; noise and fear and wrath flooded back in.
Gone, he was gone—
You have to keep—you have to—
She had a screaming prince and a broken bridge and a pack of Vultures coming for her head. And she had an awful cold part of her that knew no matter what, getting caught by Tatterhelm could bring naught but hell on their heads.
With a ragged sob, she drew Pa’s broken sword. Then she hurled herself at the prince.
He didn’t see her coming. She slammed into his back, knocking him flat to the ground. Something crunched in his pack.
“What in the twelve hells are you doing?” he gasped.
“Stay down,” she growled through her tears. “You’ll give us away.”
Jasimir thrashed, trying to toss her off his back. “No, we have to help him—he can’t—we can’t just—”
The hoofbeats slowed below. If the prince kept yelling, they’d all be rutted.
Fie flipped the broken sword and leveled its jagged, trembling point to Jasimir’s right eye.
“Stay down and shut up, or else,” she said, ice in her voice, ice in her spine, ice in her gut. “You can still be a king with one eye.”
Jasimir went still. For once, he’d taken her at her word.
“… don’t understand!”
Tavin’s voice drifted up from the ravine.
“I’m not—you—you’re after the prince, right?” he whined. “He abandoned me, him and that Crow girl—they cut the bridge—”
“Shut him up.” A gravelly bass rolled off the stones. Fie had heard it before: Business of the queen.
Fie heard a crack and a brief yelp. If she strained, she could peer just over the edge.…
The Vultures surrounded Tavin, trapping him against the far rock wall, their backs to her. Tavin had yanked his sleeves around his hands and wrists, hiding his burn. His left shoulder sagged in a way that made Fie queasy, and blood painted his mouth and chin bright in the dying light.
“No, you’ve got it wrong,” Tavin said, piteous as Barf begging for scraps. “I’m the double. The prince took off with that girl. They tricked me, they cut the bridge while I was crossing. I’m just a decoy to slow you all down.”
Jasimir squirmed beneath her. Fie twitched the sword’s jag closer. Tavin always had some scheme up his sleeve, she had to believe in him—
And if that scheme meant dying for the prince?
Her fingers slipped a little on the hilt.
She inhaled through her nose, imagining cold iron running down her backbone, keeping her steady.
“If he’s right, we’re losing time.” A third skinwitch twisted about to scan the canyon. Fie ducked from sight.
“It’s a bare-assed lie.” Viimo’s drawl echoed up. “Princeling doesn’t fancy girls. He ain’t running off with one. The double’s the one with a shine for the Crow.”
“No,” Tavin pleaded, “they left me, they left me—”
Fie knew it for a ruse. She kenned his game now: let them chew over the half-baked lie and never know they’d swallowed another whole.
The words still tore at her heart without mercy.
She’d abandoned him just like she’d abandoned her kin in Cheparok,