flight to the trees had, but scolding them would do naught to calm their nerves. Instead she found a patch of ground to sit, worked her chief’s string free, and drew out her tooth bag. It was time for a restock.
Drudge himself didn’t share his band’s misgivings, or if he did, he’d overcome them. He dropped into the empty dust across from Fie. “Those fire teeth … how many do you have?”
Fie glanced up from stowing the teeth she’d just half burned. “Enough,” she said cautiously.
“Enough to spare?”
Fie’s hands went still.
“The roads won’t get better,” Drudge continued. “You and I both know it, girl. Whatever you’ve started with the queen won’t dry up for moons. I need to look after my own.”
She’d known it was only a matter of time, and yet …
The teeth kept her safe. They kept her band safe. She’d won them from Rhusana herself. All Drudge had done was eat her band’s food and cast doubt at her at every turn, and now he asked for teeth he’d done naught to earn—
When is it enough?
She was back in the tower, a dead god smiling at her and saying that, in life after life after life, she’d failed.
Fie forced her fingers to unbutton the compartment for her Phoenix teeth. “I left a few score at Gen-Mara’s groves. This ought to hold you until you reach them.” She counted six and held them out. “Try to burn just one at a time. If you do two, they fight.”
His eyes lingered on her palm, then flicked up to her. “Reckon that’s enough?”
“Aye. The groves are less than a day’s walk north.”
Drudge looked long and hard at the Hawks, and then at Tavin’s gleaming short sword strapped at Fie’s side. Then he looked back at the six teeth in Fie’s hand.
“There’s more at the groves,” she repeated.
Drudge took the teeth. “Aye.”
Something in his voice told Fie she’d be better waiting to tie new Phoenix teeth on her string until after Drudge’s band departed. She buttoned up the tooth compartment, closed her bag, and feigned a hearty yawn. “I’d best get some shut-eye, especially if any of those scummers were from Karostei.”
“Aye,” Drudge said again, toneless.
Fie fetched a sleeping mat from their supply wagon and rolled it out so she could sleep facing the road. She didn’t reckon the Oleander Gentry would return after such a scare, but they hadn’t the luxury of rolling shells on those odds.
And when she tucked her tooth bag under her head, she told herself it was only to be ready for Oleanders as well.
* * *
She dreamed of Tavin, as she usually did.
A poet would say she missed poetic things about him, nonsense like how sunlight caught on his eyelashes or how his smile was bright as a constellation, but the heart of it was that she missed more than eyelashes. She missed falling asleep feeling safer for him at her back. She missed how he’d first sorted out how to tell she was upset, then when to say naught about it, then finally when to say square what she needed to hear. She missed not missing him.
And in the dream, it seemed he missed her, too, calling her name from the other side of a courtyard she did and didn’t know: Fie. Fie. Where are you?
The sun-warmed tiles stuck to her bare soles as she padded across the courtyard. Here, she tried to say, but no sound came out.
Fie.
She caught at his elbow and he shook her off, gaze skipping over her like a stone on water. It’s me, she shouted noiselessly. I’m right here.
Fie! He walked away, scanning the arching corridors about the yard, the latticed gallery above.
She followed—and caught her own reflection in a pane of Peacock-green glass.
Red stained her plain linen shift, pouring from a gash across her throat.
Her face belonged to the Peacock girl she’d killed not five days ago.
Fie!
It’s me, she tried to say, choking on blood. It’s me—
“FIE!”
She jolted awake with a sucking gasp.
Wretch’s and Lakima’s faces swam above her. Lakima sat back and let out a long breath, eyes closing. “Thank the Mender.”
“You were out cold.” Wretch helped Fie sit up. The camp tilted and blurred, all much brighter than it ought to be. “Thought you slept through pack-up on account of burning all those teeth last night, then none of us could wake you.”
“It’s a healer’s sleep,” Lakima said. “We put patients in them for serious wounds, but … I’m the only other witch here.”