The Hawk coughed hard into her fist once, twice. She gathered her mask from the ground, set the pots in a neat stack, and laid the spoon inside. Without looking at Anji, she opened the entrance to her tent and said, “There’s a blanket on the horse. Use it if you like, but you sleep outside.”

Chapter 3

3

Anji stared at the tent flap.

Granted, she knew next to nothing about bounty hunting, but leaving your captive to their own devices while you slept seemed ten kinds of stupid. Something chirped overhead, drawing Anji’s gaze to a brown and white bird beating its wings on a northerly tack. Anji flexed her freezing fingers. If the Hawk wanted to make the mistake of underestimating her, that was her business. Anji wouldn’t just sit and wait to be taken to her own execution.

She counted a hundred seconds, then bent to untangle the rope digging into her ankles. Her fingers ached as she fought with the unyielding knot. A frustrated hiss burst through her clenched teeth and she gave it up. If her father had known this knot he’d never shown it to her. She cast about for something, anything she could use to cut through rope. Hope had nearly fled when her eyes landed on the pot near the smoldering fire. She shuffled around the pit and snatched up the Hawk’s spoon, careful not to let it clank against the other metal. The spoon was old and cheap, its edges rough.

Anji set to work.

The sun had cleared the distant mountain peaks to the east by the time she’d sawed herself free. She massaged blood back into her tingling ankles, then began working at the manacles. Twice she checked the tent flap for an angry, masked woman brandishing a knife, more than willing to deliver Anji to Linura with her throat slashed, but if the Hawk heard her, she didn’t stir. A trickle of blood ran down her right wrist as she tried forcing her numb hands out of the iron loops. Holding back a scream, she slammed the cuffs against her thighs. She’d have to find a way to get them off eventually—for now she needed to get as far from the Hawk as she could.

She sprinted away from the camp, flitting amongst the heather like a rabbit fresh out of its hole. A cramp tightened in her thigh, but she pushed on. She’d run for the day, find a spot to hide out somewhere in the far-off hills. There wasn’t much to eat out here, but she could manage a few days of eating moss and move on to a city farther north than—