Still alive. Fie froze. Tavin was still alive. They’d bound his wrists before him. A lattice of dried blood streaked the side of his face, and bruises darkened his jaw, his arms, nigh everywhere she looked. Why hadn’t he healed himself? Had they simply beat him until he couldn’t keep up?

But he walked yet, breathed yet. He was there.

She hadn’t really believed she’d see him alive again. Not since he’d cut the bridge.

A heavy ring tolled with Tavin’s every step. It took Fie a moment to find the culprit.

Tatterhelm had knotted an iron slaughter bell round Tavin’s neck.

Tatterhelm stopped. The tolling didn’t. More shadows split from the blackened bones of the ruins: ten Vultures, ten Crows, ten more slaughter bells ringing dull at ten more throats.

Tatterhelm’s meaning cut all too clear. But this was the way of one who’d been a hunter all his life; he wanted her rattled and scattered.

Instead, Fie spat in the ashes. Her anger was a curious thing, sometimes jagged and broken as Pa’s sword, sometimes heavy and storied as the bag of teeth. She’d left them both behind to reckon with Tatterhelm. He would not shake anger from her here.

She counted each Crow’s face, every one her home. Madcap, their chin stuck out. Pa, rag bound about the knuckles of his right hand. Wretch, her lips moving frantic as Viimo kept a dagger at her throat.

She did not see Swain.

Tears boiled into her vision before she could wrest them away. Swain, with his scrolls and figures, his dry jests, the trench that dug in his brow when he pored over maps or coin. No matter where they were in Sabor, he’d managed to find posies for his wife’s birthday, year after year, even after the roads had claimed her.

Tatterhelm had taken him from Fie in Cheparok.

He would take no one else. Not one Crow more. She was a chief. She would look after her own.

“Fie, get out—” Pa started. His Vulture captor seized Pa’s right hand and squeezed. Pa choked off a sharp cry. New bright red stained the bandage.

Give them fire, whispered the Phoenix teeth on Fie’s string.

Fie fouled up when she looked Tavin’s way. He didn’t speak, eyes burning through her. Of course he’d known she would take the deal. Maybe, for a moment, he’d believed that she’d choose another road. But they both knew better; Fie only hoped he hadn’t fooled himself for too long.

Once more, his face said a thousand things, full of fury and desperation and guilt and, worst of all, betrayal.

Maybe one day he would forgive her for this. But she’d always known it wouldn’t be easy.