“Oh, shut up,” Anji hissed. She snatched up the rusted spoon, hoping its rough edge would cut a neck easier than it had the ropes. She edged toward the tent flap.

Surprise her, she thought, cut her throat and grab your things. Quick. Quick. Quick. She slipped inside and stole on silent feet over the canvas floor, eyes adjusting to the dark.

For an old woman, the Hawk didn’t keep many luxuries. She slept on a cot in the far corner—no blanket, not even a pillow. In the near dark, her face was serene, its harsher lines smoothed, her chest rising and falling in the rhythm of deep sleep. She’d bundled the blue-dyed silken satchel between her legs, one thin hand clutched around the strap. A pair of swords, one long and one short, lay nestled alongside her body in their black sheaths. Anji pictured herself slipping one of the blades into the Hawk’s chest, but dismissed the idea. She’d wake up before the sword was even free.

Beside the cot, a diminutive oil lamp sat extinguished next to a long burlap bag lined on each side with bulging pockets, and next to the lamp—her mother’s coin.

All thought fled from her, and she padded across the space, holding a shaky breath. Right there for the taking. Her world, the life stolen from her, was contained in that glint of bronze. Anji hunched over and had barely gathered the burnished metal into her palm when the Hawk’s gloved hand shot out, grip iron-tight on Anji’s wrist. Pain flared through the bones in her arm as the rest of the woman’s wiry body slid off the cot and to her still-booted feet, eyes hard. The Hawk brought the point of a small dirk to the hollow of Anji’s throat.

“You’re bleeding.”

Anji tried wrenching out of that grip, but it remained firm, the knife’s wicked tip sticking at her exposed skin. She didn’t acknowledge the blood caked to her face, but took another shaky look around the tent, a last desperate hunt for her father’s knife. Her skin throbbed where the coin’s edge dug into the meat of her palm.

“I’d have thought it was obvious,” said the Hawk, hauling Anji toward the tent’s open flap, “but I’ve taken steps to ensure you can’t escape. You’re poisoned, and I have the only antidote. I’m better trained than you—much better trained.” Her mouth was a thin line, her eyes bored. “And, as you’ve now noticed, you are tethered to my person by a maxial link. Is this all clear to you now?”