still had a few strands of Fie’s hair clenched in a fist. Enough to make a new puppet for Rhusana, once they’d finished with her.
“Now can you spare a Phoenix tooth?”
Trust Jasimir to get petty at a moment like this. Fie shot him a glare and scrabbled for her string.
The Oleanders had drawn their steel, the other skin-ghasts lurching toward them with a faint whistle. Still too many to fight.
Not too many to outrun.
The Phoenix tooth answered Fie’s call.
A dead witch-king roared in her bones, and golden fire bloomed in a shrieking arc. The Oleanders’ horses crashed into one another as their riders swore. Yet they didn’t flee, as if they doubted her.
As if they doubted the wrath of a Crow.
Fie fed the fire her fear and her fury; the ghost of the Phoenix led the charge. Flames turned into a wall, into a wave, into the jaws of a terrible beast crashing down around them.
The Oleanders fled then.
“Grab what you can,” she wheezed. Jasimir pulled her to her feet and lunged for their packs.
Fie tossed the Phoenix tooth at the dead Oleander, burning every last strand of her hair in his hand. A golden wall stretched along the road, keeping the Oleanders at bay. The tooth wouldn’t last but a few heartbeats more, but Fie prayed that’d give them enough of a start.
She and Jasimir fled into the trees.
She didn’t know how long they ran, only that golden fire waned to more mundane orange that shrank behind them. Hoofbeats drummed through the forest, chased by shouts, taunts, torchlight. More than once she and Jasimir huddled in the brush until a pale rider or a slithering skin-ghast passed and the quiet dark returned.
Eventually they cleared the woods. A sickle midnight moon gleamed above, its weak light catching on the mellow slopes of a pasture studded with goats and cattle.
Fie pointed. A few dozen paces away, a crude wooden structure sheltered great heaps of hay. “There.”
Jasimir nodded. They hopped the pasture fence, then the one around the hay, and crawled into a discreet hollow.
For a long moment, neither of them stirred. Fie simply blinked at the sky, breathing in the dust-honey smell of the hay, trying to think of anything but the horror of what hunted them now. From the pounding of her heart and the shivers still rattling her ribs, that was a lost battle.
“Bronze,” Jasimir croaked. “The man I killed. He had a bronze-tipped spear. For Hawks at village outposts.”
“Aye,” Fie said.
Another creaking pause. Then: “I killed someone.”
“Tavin said…” Fie’s voice broke. “He said it gets easier.” Jasimir didn’t answer. She forced herself to sit up and dig in her pack. “Also said he barfed on the body the first time, too, so you’ve that to bond over later.”
Jasimir made an odd sound that turned into a wavering, desperate laugh. He covered his eyes. “What in all twelve hells did we just … What was that? What were those?”
Fie gulped. She could reckon with skin-ghasts the way she reckoned with sinners: distant enough to blunt the horror. Or at least she could try.
“Never heard of a Swan witch as could do that.” Fie pulled out strips of dried fruit and jerky and passed half to him, ignoring her trembling hands. “Looked like just … skins. But I never heard of a skinwitch as could do that, either.” The memory of clammy, empty skin clung too tight. She made herself bite off a chunk of meat and chewed awhile, too belly-sick to swallow but a little at a time. “Likely that’s what ran through our camp before Gerbanyar. You saw one close-up, aye? When the Vultures tried to jump us.”
“We thought it was a trick of the dark.”
“But half the group ran off once the others went down,” she mulled. “The fleshy ones. And the skin-ghasts only ran through our camp before, naught else. So they won’t attack on their own; they need people to follow. That’s good for us.”
Jasimir choked on his dried fruit. “How is any part of this good for us?”
“Oleanders don’t ride by day, not yet, and the Vultures are off our trail for now. We stick to the roads until nigh sundown, hole up somewhere off the track for the night, and likely we can skip their ken.” Fie uncorked a water skin and took a swig. “We can still make it to Trikovoi before the end of Peacock Moon.”
Jasimir let out a long breath and drew a new one. “How … After everything I’ve