Likely the Hawk soldiers couldn’t fathom why some of their own would accompany Crows. Fie failed to stuff down a smirk at that. She’d won her Hawks fair and square from Master-General Draga, and more importantly, she’d won Hawks to guard the whole Crow caste once Prince Jasimir took the throne. Those soldiers just might be escorting their own band of Crows soon enough.
Rumors had already floated past Fie, rumors of Crown Prince Jasimir, who’d survived the Sinner’s Plague like his legendary ancestor Ambra, and tales of Master-General Draga’s showy procession to return Jasimir to the capital city of Dumosa. Nobody spoke of Queen Rhusana, but Jasimir had always sworn the queen’s first move in a takeover would be to remove King Surimir from power, and so far it seemed the king breathed yet.
Considering the leader of Surimir’s armies was personally ushering the crown prince—the one Rhusana had repeatedly tried to assassinate—back to his home, Fie reckoned the queen might be keeping a low profile.
“Why did you take the scroll?” Corporal Lakima asked.
Fie had a score of answers to that: Because it made her feel better about cutting the throat of a girl her own age. Because that scroll told the nobility they were always good, and told Fie she would always be a monster. Because no one in the fine Peacock manor behind them knew that in Crow story and song, the monsters usually wore silk.
“They would have burned it anyway,” Fie said instead. “This way I get to watch.”
Lakima coughed again. “Ah. Must be The Thousand Conquests.”
* * *
Fie shed her mask once the roughway led into the trees, but she kept her eyes nailed to the road, only glancing back every so often to be sure no spiteful mourner tailed them. Five years might be enough for the woods to reclaim the campsite where Hangdog’s kin had died, but Crows were raised with an eye to spot potential sleeping grounds, and Fie didn’t feel like laying hers on that sad clearing.
She didn’t feel like thinking much on Hangdog at all.
Fear had spurred him to turn traitor, that she knew. Fear of what lay down his road as a Crow chief, fear that it would end as the rest of his kin’s had. She couldn’t fault him for that.
But she could fault him for thinking treachery was his only way out.
Fie felt the flatway before she saw it. The air savored hotter and dustier, the roughway began to even out, and full sunlight stabbed more frequently through the green canopy overhead. Finally they emerged onto the broad, smooth dirt road. Pa and their two other Hawks were sheltering with the supply wagon on the other side of the flatway, in the shade of an ivy-choked hemlock.
Fie’s heart gave a familiar sort of pang when she saw Pa, as it had done many a time since he’d asked her to lead them to the Jawbone. Then she kenned the look on his face, and that pang wormed into a deeper worry.
It was a rare look. Fie remembered the last time she’d seen it, all too close, all too clear: when Pa had handed her the sword, the teeth, and the prince, and sent her and the lordlings over the bridge in Cheparok.
It said something had fouled up, and in a way they might not be able to outrun now.
“What is it?” Fie called, striding across the dirt road—but the moment she broke into the sun, she saw.
To her left, a black string of smoke frayed the horizon, half a league away. To her right, another black thread unspooled. Beyond them, even more black trails rose until they’d striped the noon sky like teeth in a giant’s comb.
Fie had seen such a sight only twice before, but she knew square what black beacons for leagues and leagues meant.
Even with Prince Jasimir’s armies nigh at her door, Rhusana had made her move.
The king was dead.
CHAPTER TWO
STOLEN
“Welcome to our roads, cousin.”
Fie cast a palmful of salt onto the pyre, then took a step back from the flames licking up the dead Peacock’s shroud and thought a quick prayer to the dead Crow goddess who claimed the plague-dead, the Eater of Bones. Most of Sabor believed the sinner girl would be born as a Crow in the next life, to atone for whatever she did that made the Covenant snatch her so swift from this one.
Fie didn’t know if that were true, but if it were, she sore hoped the girl would learn to be less of a hateful hag.
“Didn’t sound like you meant that welcome,” Pa said by her side.
The Thousand Conquests twisted in Fie’s other hand. She’d washed up with soap-shells and salt, yet firelight still painted her fingers red against the pale, crumpled parchment. “I don’t.”
“She’ll be a babe when she comes to us as a Crow,” Pa said.
“Better come to someone else’s band.”
“Fie.” Pa set a hand on her shoulder. “It changes naught.”
He didn’t mean the girl on the pyre.
“It’s the last day of Crow Moon and the king dies? They’ll put us at fault for it, Pa.”
Pa ran a hand over his beard. “And it’s been two moons since we were there. Anyone who faults us for it is just looking for something new to blame on Crows. Likely they’re already riding with the Oleanders.”
“But it doesn’t add up, either.” Fie shook her head. “We’ve still two weeks until the solstice, when a proper Phoenix would be crowned. Jas is sure to make it to the royal palace before then to stake out the throne, and he’s the one bringing the armies. And now half the nation thinks he’s Ambra reborn, sent here to lead us into a new bright age … so since when does Rhusana’s kind pick a fight they know they’ll lose?”
The firelight caught on the knob of scar tissue where Pa’s little finger had once been. He’d lost it in just such a fight. “Aye,” he said. “It doesn’t add up for the queen. But what are you to do about it?”
“What?”
“You’re a Crow chief, leagues and leagues away from Dumosa. What are you to do?”
Fie wrung the parchment in her hands. She knew the words all too well, yet they felt like shackles tonight. “Look after my own.”
Pa squeezed her shoulder and let go. “Let the royals roll their fortune-bones. We’ve no part in their games now, and however their bones land, we’re still chiefs. You’ve your own to look after. And I’ve a shrine to keep.”
Fie flinched. Most of her wanted to hare dead south to Dumosa, to burn as many of her teeth as it took to send Rhusana to the next life, to settle Jas on his throne and set off on her roads with Tavin at her side. And doing just that would mean keeping Pa with her that much longer.
But Pa was right. Crows needed every haven shrine they could get, and no band needed two chiefs. In the Jawbone Gulf waited the watchtower of the dead god Little Witness. The keeper there kept track of every shrine to a dead Crow god, and would know which ones sat empty and unused.
When old Crows could no longer travel the roads, they lived out their days in a haven shrine built on the grave of one of their dead gods. That close to a dead god, any Crow could keep the shrine’s stores of teeth alight, hiding it from other castes. A witch like Pa, though, could make a shrine nigh invincible. No doubt he’d be assigned to one they sore needed.
Fie would deliver him there herself, and then leave him behind her for good.
And from the sound of it, she’d do it while Rhusana seemed certain of her victory. Rhusana, who’d promised the Oleander Gentry they could hunt Crows as they pleased once she reigned. Rhusana, whose mere promise of permission had brought more Oleanders down on Fie’s head in the last three moons than Fie had seen in years. Even after she’d delivered the prince to safety.
“What if it gets worse?” she whispered. “What if I’m not enough to look after them?”
“You’ve six Hawks, Fie,” Pa said pointedly. “Two swords. Thousands of Phoenix teeth to burn your way clear. If aught can get through all that, it won’t be a fight meant for a mortal to win.”
That was the heart of her vexation, Fie reckoned. No Crow band in memory had ever had such protection, and still she didn’t feel her Crows were sa
fe. A storm squatted on their horizon. All she could do was try to keep them out of it.
Two moons ago, she’d stood in front of two empty pyres, Hangdog at her side, fresh off cutting an oath with the crown prince. Jasimir had tried to tell her then that the Crows’ only hope of survival was saving him, and Hangdog had sworn it was all a wash.
Now here she was in front of a pyre yet again, but here Hangdog wasn’t after all. The beacons were telling her the last man between the throne and the Oleanders’ queen had died. But there was naught she could do about it now.
The smell of burning flesh began to drift from the pyre. Fie stepped back again, mouth twisting. A warning yowl made her jump. She turned and found Barf, the gray tabby she’d plucked from the royal palace, sprawled on the ground behind her.
If the cat kenned the dire tidings of dead kings and grim roads, she didn’t show it. Instead she chirped and rolled onto her back, paws tucked neat beneath her chin.
Fie knew that trick too well. Pa, however, crouched to rub Barf’s white belly. The tabby promptly latched onto his arm like a snare. He yanked his hand back as Wretch cackled behind them.
“Ought to know better, Cur,” Wretch called. Pa’s name sounded yet strange to Fie’s ear, now that her band called only Fie “chief.” “That beast doesn’t show her belly unless it’s a trap.”
“I do know better,” Pa grumbled. “Just hoped it’d be different this time.”
There was a crinkle as Fie’s fist tightened on The Thousand Conquests. The parchment had turned gummy with sweat. She tossed it onto the pyre, just as she’d promised.
It smoked and caught almost immediately. Fie knew the value of scrolls, the time and effort that Owl scribes put into copying out a work like The Thousand Conquests, how each one was to be prized and protected. Scholar Sharivi had claimed, in a wholly unnecessary foreword, that the tales he’d scrawled within were the unblemished truth. That they captured the history of Sabor, the might of rulers, the wickedness of traitors, the foundations of the nation itself.
Fie doubted with all her heart that Sharivi had captured the foundations of aught but a cowpat, from what she’d read. But in the end, she found he’d given her one scrap of joy: the way The Thousand Conquests was there one moment and naught but smoke in the next.
* * *
The Oleanders came that night after all.
It went as it had the last few weeks: first, Barf sounded the alarm. The cat had no love of Oleander Gentry, not after they’d nearly burned her alive, and since then, she’d yowl and bush her tail out when she caught the rumblings of a dozen or more riders galloping down the road. Even better, she picked up those rumbles at least a full minute ahead of when Fie could.
First the cat howled, then came hoofbeats pounding down the road in the dark, the Crows gathering a bit tighter about the campfire but making no move to flee. The three Hawks on watch would plant themselves between the camp and the road and wait, while the three at rest would sit up, spears within reach.
After that was where Fie had seen the most variation. Once, the baffled gang of Oleanders had offered to assist the Hawks in arresting the Crows. Another time, they had tried to argue with Lakima, then to threaten her, until one rider took a swing at the corporal. Fie had collected the teeth Lakima knocked out of him with particular glee.
Tonight, the Oleanders slowed as they neared the camp, clearly flummoxed by the sight of spears at the ready. Their leader took in the scene from behind a rough rag mask and evidently decided to find some other amusement.
Near two dozen riders trotted past in an awkward, uneasy parade, muttering among themselves and gawking at the guards.
Once, their undyed robes and white powders had frightened Fie. Now she had fire. Now she had steel. Now she had Hawks. The Oleander Gentry looked like children playing dress-up to her, downright silly as they rode away.
She’d always known their kind only picked fights they’d win. She just hadn’t known how it felt when they turned tail and ran.
“Do you think they’re lost?” Khoda jested, leaning on his spear. “Should I offer them directions?”
“Off a cliff, maybe,” Fie muttered, and went back to sleep.
* * *
It took them another day and a half to reach the Jawbone Gulf.
On a clear day, word was you could see all the way out to the tiny island at the most northwestern corner of Sabor, just past Rhunadei. But clear days were rare, even in the summer, and as they crested the hill overlooking the city of Domarem, the noon sun made scarce more than a coin-shaped dent in the overcast sky. Heavy fog blanketed the coast as far as the eye could see—which was barely past the water’s edge before the mist swallowed the gulf whole. All that could be seen were the shadows of crumbling spires jabbing from the waves.
Legend said that some long-dead regional governor had gotten ambitious and tried to pry the gulf open for proper trade before the waters were known as the Jawbone. Gulls, with their Birthright of reading the winds, could navigate the fog and shoals in nimble sailboats; and smugglers, with their time-honored knowledge of the maze of rocks, could slip by like minnows through a shark’s teeth.
However, only a Gull witch could command the winds to steer a heavy merchant barge safely through. With less than a hundred of those Gull witches alive in Sabor, that safe passage came at a steep price, one merchants balked at paying simply to deliver to a backwater fishing town, where half the locals were like to strip the ship apart overnight.
Domarem, the governor believed, ought to have been a jewel of Sabor, as great a trading hub in the north as Cheparok was to the south. He also believed he could manage it without paying the Gulls. Instead he’d ordered dozens of watchtowers be built atop those shoals and fitted with beacons so captains knew where to steer clear.
He’d made one fatal error, though. The beacons worked fairly well at night, glowing through the heavy fog to mark safe passage.
They weren’t worth a damn during the day.
And since the governor had vexed the Gulls, their witches took his coin no more. So the governor never got his trading hub, and so the towers eroded into ruined fangs, and so the governor’s dream starved away, leaving only the mocking name of the Jawbone Gulf behind. Or so the legend said.
Fie reckoned Domarem involved far too many cliffs to make a practical trading port anyhow, though she knew that’d never stop a Peacock convinced of his own genius. Half the city seemed carved straight into the bluffs, and the other half looked as if it had just slid off the rock and piled up closer to the shore. The docks teemed with dinghies, coracles, and sails dyed the vivid, cheery blue that Gulls favored. The sails of southern Gulls tended to fade with sun and seawater, but the mussels they used for pigment grew so abundant here that the silver sands rippled with indigo streaks of crushed shell.
As they drew near the gates, Corporal Lakima asked delicately, “Will we be walking you in?”
It was a dance they’d near-perfected in the last few weeks, though it had taken time. The entire point of haven shrines was to have secret places where Crows, and only Crows, could seek refuge. It was one thing to sneak a prince and his bodyguard through two or three as Fie had done. It was an entirely different matter to lead six Hawk soldiers straight into every Crow shrine they encountered.
Yet Lakima’s charge was to keep the band safe, and when asked to turn her back while the Crows vanished, unguarded, down secret alleyways and hidden ravines, Lakima had proved … reluctant. She’d been more than willing to pick up where Tavin had left off with tutoring Fie in sword combat, but she hadn’t believed that a sword and a half would be enough to protect the band.
Then one night they’d encountered more of Rhusana’s skin-ghasts, hideous empty puppets made from the skins of the dead. The Hawks’ steel left only holes in their still-wriggling hides, but all Fie had to do was call the Birthright of fire from one Phoenix-caste tooth on her string and the ghasts were done for in a trice.
Since then, Lakima had been will
ing to let Fie protect the band when they went where Hawks couldn’t follow.
Fie hadn’t been to Little Witness’s watchtower, though; only Pa and Wretch had. She looked to them.
Pa shook his head and pointed to a fork in the road ahead. A thinner dirt road branched up toward the cliffs. “We’ll be taking a stroll.”
“It’ll be easier without the cart,” Fie said. “Pa, Varlet, and Bawd, we’ll go to the shrine. Everyone else, stay here and watch the goods. Wretch, you’re in charge.”
“Pelen, Khoda, and I can restock the supply wagon from the command post in town.” Corporal Lakima gave Fie a significant look. “I’ll let you know what they’re reporting.”
She meant what news they had of the king’s death. No rumors of the official cause had reached the roads, which both Fie and Lakima had found troubling.
“Aye. We’ll meet back at the fork no later than sundown.” Fie fished two packs out of the supply wagon. She’d made them up this morning, stuffed near to bursting with spare pots, dried salt pork, and any other goods they weren’t likely to use soon. It would be rude to show up at Little Witness’s grave empty-handed. One pack went to Pa, and the other Fie shouldered herself. She swept an arm to the dirt road. “Pa, lead on.”
“Lovely day for a walk,” Bawd said merrily, hooking her arm through Varlet’s. Varlet’s grin spread wide as his twin sister’s. The two of them had spent near all of their twenty-some-odd years laboring to make it so precious few could tell them apart—cutting their hair the same, mimicking each other’s turns of phrase, even dressing as close to identical as they could manage. So far they’d managed to fool Lakima thrice and the rest of the Hawks no fewer than seven times.
Varlet twirled a curl round a finger. “Must say, chief, I’m flattered you picked us to come along. Downright optimistic of you, even.”
The Faithless Hawk Page 2
