“We found it.” Fie didn’t feel like concocting a tale when the Oleanders didn’t care for the truth either way. All she needed was a distraction. She caught Jasimir’s eye, then sent a pointed look to the forest.

“Oh, they found it,” the Oleander man laughed, dropping Tavin’s sword in the dirt. He leaned so close, the rawhide drape of his mask brushed her nose. “Where’d you find it, dirty little thief?”

Silently she called two Sparrow teeth to life on her string, anchoring them to her weary bones. By now, finding balance was easy as a whistle.

A subtle shift rippled through the Oleanders: heads tilted and eyes shifted until they were all decidedly not looking at the prince. Jasimir’s face dropped as he caught on. Fie flicked her eyes to the forest again, then stared the ringleader down.

“Found it up your ass,” she announced, voice carrying clear over the road. Hisses swept about the Oleanders. They’d expected her to beg. Now they’d make her pay.

Fie shut her eyes. Whatever came next—it had to be enough to cover Jasimir’s escape. It had to.

But nothing came.

When she opened her eyes, the ringleader still stood before her, chuckling. Worse, Jasimir hadn’t moved, his face clouded with uncertainty.

“Two bone thieves,” the Oleander mused. “So peculiar. Not the only peculiar thing this moon, either. A friend, a very kind lady, sent along a message this way, you see. Look for bone thieves, traveling in three, maybe two. And she sent us … oh, some help.”

Fie caught a horrid slippery whisper, like a sinner’s last wet breath.

Two men appeared behind Jasimir and seized his arms, forcing him to his knees.

No, not—not quite men. The torchlight made ghouls of all the Oleanders in their masks and scarves, but something about the figures seemed … wrong.

“Let—go—” Jasimir thrashed.

Then she saw it. The men’s arms coiled about Jasimir’s elbows like asps, like rope, boneless and wrenched tight. Their clothing—Vulture make—slipped in odd places, slumping below shoulders and hips.

An arm slithered about Fie’s throat, a weight pressing against her back like a cold sweat. She gasped and jammed Pa’s broken sword into the place where a gut ought to be.

It sank to the hilt without a sound, but the flesh round her throat stayed iron-solid. She twisted until her captor swam into view.

She knew his face.

The skinwitch who’d ambushed them a week and a half ago. The one they’d left for the wolves.

His slack face had turned a sick gray. His mouth gaped in a silent, toothless hole; limp skin flapped like a flag where a nose belonged.

He had no eyes. Instead, torchlight slicked off a dark maroon paste where a skull ought to be.