make him spend time tracking us down,” Fie said, scratching her chin. “Where do you reckon he’s at by now?”
“The last report had the prince’s procession moving down the flatway by the Vine, clearing Lumilar two days ago. If we make haste, we should be able to head due south and intercept them before week’s end.”
Fie mulled it over. Little Witness had said she wouldn’t find the Birthright until her oath was kept. But what would it take to keep it, if not handing the prince to his own aunt? She’d lost her own kin once to keep the oath; what more would it take from her?
What would be enough?
“We get Pa to his shrine,” Fie said. “Then we make for the procession, and if I ask nice, maybe Draga saves me some of the queen’s teeth.”
* * *
They reached Gen-Mara’s temple two mornings later, though Fie didn’t know it.
When Pa was chief, he’d never had a call to take the band to a dormant shrine, and in her short time as chief, neither had Fie. Every shrine she’d been to had buzzed and sang in her bones the moment she drew near, but all of them had had a keeper living on the grounds, keeping the teeth awake.
It wasn’t halfway to noon when Pa slowed, caught at Fie’s shoulder, and squinted up at a hill. From the flatway, all Fie could see were the crests of trees all but sagging with heavy deep-green leaves.
“There ought to be a roughway around here,” he said. Something had shifted in his weathered face, as if he weren’t wholly in this world. It reminded her too much of Little Witness.
Fie whistled a halt order. She didn’t see the entrance to a roughway, but that didn’t mean one wasn’t there. Like the watchtower, Gen-Mara’s shrine was too dear to risk just any old scummer stumbling in. “Bawd, Madcap, help us look.”
She could have saved them the trouble of poking about; Pa was the one to find it a few minutes later. He’d paused at a dense thicket of parasol ferns, brow furrowed, then set a hand on a gnarled magnolia tree. A moment later Fie felt the sparks of Peacock teeth shift and shiver. Enough of the parasol ferns vanished to expose a smooth, worn dirt road. Another magnolia tree marked the other side of the path, and now Fie saw a clay jar clinging to each, held tight against the trunk by knots of vines. Both hummed with the song of Peacock glamours.
Corporal Lakima motioned for her soldiers and said, “If anyone asks, we’re taking a … How long will you be?”
Pa shrugged. “I’ve been here once, years ago. I’d say an hour, two to be generous.”
“… A late breakfast, then.” Lakima started toward the road. She stopped to look back at Pa. “This is the last I’ll see you, isn’t it?”
“Most likely,” he said, and tapped his right fist to his mouth and held it out. It was a gesture for greeting colleagues, but also for the parting of friends.
When Lakima’s Hawks had first fallen in with Fie’s band, it took a full week for them to share the same supply wagon with the Crows. She’d kenned why; on its face, it was fear of the plague only Crows survived, but deeper still, it was fear of something else. She’d seen this dance before, in all the ways Tavin and Jasimir had blundered two moons ago, but still, it had stung.
Now, on the fourth day of Phoenix moon, Corporal Lakima kissed her knuckles and clasped Pa’s hand without hesitation.
“Fortune’s favor to you, Cur,” Lakima said. “Enjoy your rest.”
“I’ll try.” Pa let go. “Keep my girl safe, aye?”
Lakima gave him a nod weighted with meaning. “Yes, chief.”
Pa led them down the roughway for, as Fie tried not to dwell on, the final time. The road wound deeper into the forest, sloping just so slightly upward. Fie felt no hum other than the jars of teeth they’d left behind, but the farther they went, the thicker the tree trunks grew and the broader the leaves, until nearly all she saw was green. A faint, clean, lemony perfume began threading the air—and soon she felt a peculiar sort of shudder with every one of Pa’s footfalls, like a note struck on a distant bell. She knew the simmer of a haven shrine, but this—this was different.
Then, finally, they reached the groves.
Towering magnolias spread as far as Fie could see, near tall as the watchtower, waxy