Tavin’s shoulders stiffened. “It also says, ‘I will serve my nation and the throne above all,’” he said, sounding tired. “And that one comes first.”

On the first day after Gerbanyar, they changed the watch.

Fie lit three Sparrow teeth once they set off, and tried to shake the singing from her bones. With three teeth she could weave the refuge round herself and the lordlings, slipping them from the Vulture’s notice but letting them yet see one another. Then she kept three alight all through the day and through a cold, starless first watch, until Tavin shook her from her red-eyed fog.

She let the Sparrow teeth go and slept a fitful few hours, knowing every breath left them all exposed to the Vultures on their trail.

On the second day, a headache roosted in Fie’s skull. She kept her three teeth burning anyhow and practiced swords again with Tavin and wiped his face into the prince’s once more. When she slept, Tatterhelm stalked her dreams, and he cut oath after oath into her palms until they were as useless as Viimo’s.

On the third day, she found she missed waking to Tavin’s humming. She didn’t tell him.

On the fourth day, her every bone ached as they picked their way across a vast field of black rock bubbled like foam, hard and sharp as hunger. Thin, curling grass sprouted between stone, and halfway through, they found a pool of steaming water as vivid blue as a peacock plume’s eye with no bottom in sight.

Prince Jasimir reached for it, and Fie wondered for a terrible moment how easy it would be to let him go, give the Vultures what they wanted, and bring it all to an end.

Instead she yanked him back and threw a rock into the pool. It dissolved almost immediately.

Jasimir spent the rest of the day clenching and unclenching the fist he’d near lost.

She took Tavin’s face again that night. He pretended he didn’t see how her hands shook, and she pretended not to see how he ground his teeth, and after, they kept their distance to practice swords. She kept her watch beneath a dead Vulture’s elk pelt, watching a storm drum thunder across the plain, three teeth burning, burning, burning still, her bones singing so loud it felt like screaming.

Late in the night, copper stung her nose. When she touched her fingers to her upper lip, they came away red.

The skinwitches had drawn near enough that she could sense their spidery hunting veils on a far horizon. They wouldn’t catch up while she slept, but they would gain ground all the same.

The storm moved on, and the bleeding stopped before Tavin woke for his watch. She didn’t tell him about that, either. In the morning, for the fifth straight day, she lit the teeth.

On the sixth day, she fell.