“This is fucking delicious,” she said, sucking the last of the broth off her finger. “You eat this good on the road?”

The Hawk’s mask revealed nothing, but the woman behind it said, “I see no point degrading my meals for a degrading task.”

Something in that smelled of an insult, but Anji didn’t care right then. The Hawk was right: new energy sparked at the edge of her dulled senses. The aches in her limbs seemed a far-off thing now, the spot where the Hawk had struck her still throbbing, but less so. She was about to ask for more when the woman sat straight and flipped her mask off.

Anji blinked. The Hawk was ancient. Not a day younger than sixty. Specks of gold flecked her leaf-green eyes, the skin around them wrinkled. A thin, shiny scar ran in a curving line from her bushy left brow to the center of a sallow cheek. Anji wouldn’t have called her beautiful, but there was something about the face—something alluring, as if time couldn’t quite fully harden what edges had once been soft. Her long, liver-spotted face shone in the firelight, gray wisps of hair whipping in the wind.

Anji frowned, self-conscious of staring. She picked up a pebble and rolled it between her fingers. “I thought the Menagerie never removed their masks?” And then, though she felt childish for asking, “Are they really maxial? What does yours do?”

The Hawk sipped at her cup. “Mostly it itches,” she said. “Besides, no use standing on ceremony.”

Anji’s eyes narrowed. “And why is that?”

Something whistled through the air to Anji’s left, and before she had a chance to register what it really was, the woman across the fire held up a long, glass-tipped arrow. Anji flinched back, mouth open, as the Hawk rose soundlessly to her feet. She pointed the arrow’s tip toward its origin.

“Lynx!”

A scuffling sound came from behind a massive boulder lying on a rise toward the horizon. Anji strained her eyes and watched a figure slide out from behind the rock, a small, curved bow held in one gloved hand. The figure wore a mask much like the Hawk’s, but made of worked green stone. It covered his entire face, but where the Hawk’s mask was all curves, this one was boxy and angular. The face of a snarling cat, with squat points for ears.

The figure traipsed across the rock-strewn ground, stowing the black bow on a clip at his waist. He wore black leathers like the Hawk’s, though his seemed to be in better repair.