after every beacon, with a change of clothes, rags for drying off, and its own pouches of salt and soap-shells.
Khoda paused, to Fie’s surprise, looking from her to Tavin. “If it’s just the two of you, is that … er … safe?”
Fie buried her burning face in her hands.
“I think we’ve established everyone’s going to be safe,” Tavin said, short. “Repeatedly.”
Khoda looked annoyed. “I meant—with the skin-ghasts—”
“I can assure you of my personal commitment to Fie’s safety, and I suspect she’ll be ensuring mine as well, and really I’d like to leave it at that before we ruin the word safe any more than we already have.” Tavin started toward the riverbank, then stopped, mouth twisting. “Where are we going again?”
“Somewhere safe,” Fie mumbled into her palms, then straightened up and set off across the crunching, dry riverbed pebbles. “Come on. The rest of you stay close to camp.”
Summer had withered the Sprout enough to leave wide borders of sunbaked mud and long-dead river grass, but the water still ran deep and swift enough in the middle. Fie couldn’t make herself look back at Tavin, only trusting his footsteps and the hair prickling on the back of her neck to say he was following her.
Fie didn’t stop until they’d rounded a crook in the river far enough from the camp to give them some quiet. “This’ll do.”
She set her satchel down on the bank and fished out her salt and soap-shells. Tavin’s shadow fell over the open bag, and she glanced up on instinct. He was staring down at her, and she could have sworn something troubled flickered out behind his eyes like a snuffed lamp.
He gestured awkwardly at his shirt. “Should I be, er, not wearing clothes for this?”
“I’d rather you weren’t,” Fie blurted out, then wondered if she could knock Tavin out with a handy rock and insist he’d imagined everything when he woke up.
He just laughed and crouched in place. “That makes two of us,” he admitted.
“Wash them or burn them, you choose. Hold out your hands.” Fie shook a few soap-shells into his palms. “These first, then the salt.”
Despite her candor, she found herself averting her eyes as he pulled off his shirt and waded into the Sprout. It was nonsense; they’d seen each other without so much as a stitch on plenty of times a moon ago, albeit not out in the open like this. Yet whether it was the time apart or something more, something felt unsettled between them.
Fie made herself splash into the water downstream of him, still in her own shirt and leggings, stopping when it reached her belly. “I didn’t ask before,” she called back as she cracked the soap-shell hulls, “but … how do you feel about … the king?”
She heard Tavin go still, and when he answered, it was with a stiff, surprising sort of anger. “The only bad thing about my father’s death was that Jas wasn’t ready for it. And that it gave Rhusana an opening. Apart from that…” He let out a breath. “We’ve lost nothing worth mourning.”
“You don’t think Jas could have gotten through to him?” Fie asked, cautious. The king had left more scars on Tavin than just the burn on his wrist; only Tavin could say how well they’d healed.
“No, I don’t.” Tavin’s voice tightened. “Surimir spent his entire life doing only what served him. He knew people were suffering, dying from problems he could fix, and he just didn’t care. People are still dying because of him.”
Fie sank into the river up to her nose, chewing over her next question and finding no good way to ask it. She ducked her head under, then popped back up in a fizzing cloud of suds and made herself look Tavin’s way. “You were born before Jasimir.”
He shook his head, back still to her. “I was, but—I was never trained to rule. I have no business sitting on that throne. You might as well put a horse up there.” He coughed a laugh. “Twelve hells, you’d do better leading the country than me.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” Fie splashed back toward the bank to fetch her salt. Life after life, you’ve failed. “You’d do better with the horse. Come get your salt.”
She’d already dusted herself down by the time he reached the water’s edge, so she just carried the rest of the bag to him. “Arms out,” she said, and rained sparkling flakes over his outstretched wrists.