“I was thinking…” Jasimir rubbed the back of his neck. “There are scribes in the fort. I could arrange for one to sit with the Crows and keep recording as long as you’re in Trikovoi. And if you’ll allow it, we could make a copy of this scroll … for the royal library.”

Fie looked up at him and found her smile to be well-watered. “Aye. Swain would have liked that.”

Jasimir returned her smile. “That wasn’t the only thing we found.”

Fie followed his gaze to the door, where Wretch had just walked in.

In her arms squirmed a very dirty, very grumpy gray tabby.

“Little beast trailed the caravan all the way from Cheparok,” Wretch groused. “You’ve Madcap and your Hawk lad to thank for sneaking her scraps and keeping her out of sight.”

Barf squirmed free and trotted over to Fie, sniffing at her sandals. After a moment the cat rolled on Fie’s feet, squalling a reprimand. She only yowled louder when Fie picked her up and buried her face in Barf’s dusty fur.

“Reckon she missed the cat most,” Wretch said.

“Reckon she missed her pretty Hawk boy most,” Madcap called from across the room.

Barf mewled in indignation when tears dampened her fur, and wriggled loose once more. Fie tried her best to scowl through leaky eyes.

“I miss silence,” she declared, then relented, scrubbing at her face. “And I suppose I missed you lot, too.”

Fie slipped away after dinner while her kin sang a rowdy camp song and danced about a fire burning in the courtyard’s great brazier. A few of the morning’s mammoth riders hung about, comparing scars and trading tales.

She just needed a fresh breath, that was all. She’d go back to the barrack and sleep with her kin, as she had every night of her life until Peacock Moon.

Or she could go back to her room. Her own room, quiet and private, where no one would ask aught of her, where she could wash off the ashes, curl up in a bed, and work at the knots in her head and her heart over the road that stretched before her now.

A treacherous part of her had loved the silence of the mornings, keeping watch over her tiny band of false Crows, the solitude and peace.

Perhaps Pa had understood that when he said no chief wanted their duty.

Perhaps she wouldn’t have that kind of peace much longer.

Fie went looking for her room.

That turned out to be a feat easier intended than accomplished. Trikovoi’s winding corridors swallowed her whole, sending her up stairways and down them again, round and round training yards and mess halls, circling like a hound settling to bed. At last a doorway spat her out onto a walkway between towers just as the last edge of sunlight sank into the mountains.