give up my crown and join you on your roads, as one of your own.”
“In flesh and blood do I make this oath.” The speaker stepped forward. It was the woman Fie had seen in a dream before, with her lined face and black silk robe. This time Fie saw a curious, well-made necklace wrought about her neck in silver and steel and bone, like a row of spikes—no—teeth.
It was a chief’s string.
They were Crows.
But their robes were silk, their hands gloved instead of wrapped in rags, the chief had wielded a proper knife—
She missed the chief’s side of the oath, drowned in coughing. “To the Covenant I swear it,” she gasped. “Now do it, damn you.”
“To the Covenant I swear it,” the chief echoed. “May my oath be kept in this life and, if I fail, the next.”
The chief waited, giving her a pointed look.
She relented, choking out the last few words. “May my oath be kept, in this life or the next.”
* * *
She drifted on her back in the cold, dark water of her favorite pond in the private royal garden, staring up at the sky.
“You can’t stay in there forever,” the chief called from nearby, black robe wafting on the mild breeze.
She knew what the Crow chief was here to collect. But she was not ready to leave all this. She was not ready to pay.
“Watch me,” Fie heard herself answer.
This time, as she sank into the water, she heard the chief’s muffled cry: “You swore to the Covenant, Ambra!”
Dark water closed over her head, and all was still.
* * *
Fie was back in Little Witness’s tower, the sea roaring around them, held back only by the stone walls. The dead god was smiling at her.
“Aye, we Crows had a Birthright. It was stolen. And if you want to take it back, you’ll need to keep your oath.”
* * *
Fie was only dimly aware of Tavin shaking her, of the blood running from her nose, of him carrying her from the Tomb of Monarchs. She only barely heard the chanting of the bones around her, singing what almost sounded now like Welcome, welcome, welcome.
Her mind was little but fog and dust devils of thought, spinning threads that snapped before she could pull them taut. But one kept winding round her skull, again and again, and that thought was not a dust devil nor a spindle, it was a hurricane, too immense to see it all from the shore.
It had never been Pa’s Covenant oath unkept, but one she’d sworn lives and lives ago.
It had been Ambra’s to keep.
And now, in this life, it was Fie’s.
PART THREE
CONQUERORS AND THIEVES
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE HEIR
Something cool and damp brushed over Fie’s mouth. Her eyes flew open.
She saw mahogany and teak and linen and red; then everything blurred again.
“Easy,” Tavin said somewhere above her. “Don’t push yourself.”
“Where am I?” She blinked until her vision cleared again.
“A spare room. We’re in the royal quarters.”
The room about her was—strange, she thought. Small for a royal bedroom and worn in a way the palace usually painted over. The walls were soft golden teak, the bedposts lacquered Hawk red, a familiar thick-woven blanket covering the mattress—
The last time she’d seen that blanket, she’d been sharing it with Tavin in Draga’s camp. This was his room, his real room.
She saw a modest collection of weapons neatly racked on the wall, light streaming in from a screened window facing a mossy cliff. Across from her sat a small shelf of scrolls, along with a washbasin and brass mirror beside a dish of what had once been rings, necklaces, and other jewelry before they’d conspired to knot into a solid ball the size of her fist. On the table beside the bed stood a simple brass lamp, a mammoth carved of ebony, an amulet of mammoth ivory with the master-general’s personal seal.
It was like a window into a part of Tavin she couldn’t bear to look at.
It was a room Niemi wasn’t meant to know.
“Sorry,” Tavin said after a moment. He was sitting at the foot of the bed, wringing a rag stained with blood. “Other than the nosebleed, you didn’t have any injuries that I … saw, and I didn’t know where else to take you.”
“This is fine.” She pushed herself up, and he handed her a mug of water. “Thanks. I … don’t know what happened.”
It was half a truth.
Tavin passed her the bloody rag and tapped his chin. “You’ve still got some, er. Would you like