Fie held fast to the tooth-spark of Phoenix Birthright, reminding the flames who had called them forth, and breaking them round her and Tavin as best she could. Bright yolk-gold plumes of Phoenix fire roared from the sinner’s charring corpse as Fie’s eyes watered again. A poorer pyre than the sinner deserved, but if it burned hot enough, it would do.

They only had a few moments before the flashburn ran out and Tatterhelm blocked their way once more. “The gate,” she cried to Jasimir, who stood unbothered by the fire. “Go!”

He grabbed her pack and leapt up the steps as she pulled Tavin up and followed. More hoofbeats rumbled a tattoo down the road.

They scuttled over the uneven ground, rounding the edge of the stone pit. Two Hawk guards planted themselves between them and the gateway, arrows trained on them.

Fie didn’t think, just called two Gull witch-teeth in her string and whipped them into harmony. A vicious wind howled down the road, picking up the guards and slamming them into the stack-stone walls. She almost laughed at how easy it was.

Aye, and now you’re down two witch-teeth, her colder voice reminded her. But hadn’t Pa said to burn as many teeth as she needed?

She glanced back and saw the flashburn-white fading away, though the gold Phoenix fire had swallowed the sinner whole.

“Welcome to our roads, cousin,” she whispered, and kept running.

Hoofbeats clattered off the rock at their back.

The road was too clean, too easy for riders. She called after Tavin and Jasimir and veered off the flatway, into sparse trees and yellowing grass, aiming for a rocky hillside thick with trees.

The nails in her soles scraped and slid on more and more stone as the ground climbed and dirt thinned. The thunder in her ears could have been hoofbeats, could have been the boys behind her, could have been her own heartbeat; she didn’t dare stop to find out. Branches whipped at her face, withered vines catching at her feet. Her lungs burned. She couldn’t suck in air fast enough to drown their fire.

The rumble in her ears could only be hoofbeats now.

Up. Up. She scrambled up and onward, tracing the worst path for riders to fight through. The trees gave way to a sharp crest capped in a slide of broken slate. Only a few thumbs of basalt boulders kept it moored to the hillside.

The dead gods had at last granted her a kindness.

Fie shot straight into the slate. Shards rattled free, slipping beneath her sandals.

Good. She needed that.

“Are you mad?” Jasimir demanded behind her, hoarse. “There’s no cover.”