Anji bit her lip, humiliation boiling up in her gut. How could she have been so stupid? The Hawk wouldn’t have taken the risk of poisoning Anji. She could have run out of antidote, or lost it on the journey, or Anji could have succumbed to the draught as soon as she drank it. Anji should have known one of the Menagerie wouldn’t take such reckless measures, not out in the middle of nowhere.

She picked up the greasy bit of fish. The skin had gone cold, but she wedged it open and took a bite from the white meat under the scales. It mushed against her teeth, salty and scalding as it passed down her throat. No matter how much fish her father had tried to get her to eat, Anji had always hated it. But her hunger won out. She peeled another piece from the skin and slipped it into her mouth, chewing mechanically, working her tongue around the bones, a stray scale lodging in her molars.

“Hawk did all the cooking,” said the Goat. “Only reason to miss her. Enjoy it anyway. Not many more meals for you, I imagine.”

“Enough with your taunts, Goat,” said the Ox. “Agreements, verse eleven.”

“‘Over the wicked’ and all that, yes,” muttered the Goat.

Mollified, the Ox stalked to the Goat, her words oddly soft as she stood over him, her hand held out.

“Could you?”

The Goat looked up, then grabbed the Ox’s wrist, said a string of unintelligible words. A blue-green glow erupted from the Ox’s wound. She shook it as though she’d touched something sharp, but backed away with an audible sigh, saying a quick thanks that the Goat ignored, now engrossed in the cloth in front of him. He picked up the hammer and held it loose in his curled fingers. Anji inched forward for a better look.

Chief among her aunt’s numerous interests had been her love for maps. Anji remembered nights after sword practice, lying in the cot Belle had set up in her little apartment over the classroom. It had been a drafty, sparse room, but better than her parents’ musty basement in the dead of winter. Belle had tacked up many maps of Makona, her own pen marks denoting various places she’d been on this and that campaign, far-off cities she’d dreamed of visiting. Over the few years they’d had together, Anji had learned more about the outlying areas around Yem than she ever had under other teachers, underfunded and overworked as they were in Linura’s poorer districts. Belle’s maps were a thing of art, to be sure, but Anji had never seen anything like the canvas unrolled at the Goat’s feet.