“Aye,” Drudge said again, toneless.
Fie fetched a sleeping mat from their supply wagon and rolled it out so she could sleep facing the road. She didn’t reckon the Oleander Gentry would return after such a scare, but they hadn’t the luxury of rolling shells on those odds.
And when she tucked her tooth bag under her head, she told herself it was only to be ready for Oleanders as well.
* * *
She dreamed of Tavin, as she usually did.
A poet would say she missed poetic things about him, nonsense like how sunlight caught on his eyelashes or how his smile was bright as a constellation, but the heart of it was that she missed more than eyelashes. She missed falling asleep feeling safer for him at her back. She missed how he’d first sorted out how to tell she was upset, then when to say naught about it, then finally when to say square what she needed to hear. She missed not missing him.
And in the dream, it seemed he missed her, too, calling her name from the other side of a courtyard she did and didn’t know: Fie. Fie. Where are you?
The sun-warmed tiles stuck to her bare soles as she padded across the courtyard. Here, she tried to say, but no sound came out.
Fie.
She caught at his elbow and he shook her off, gaze skipping over her like a stone on water. It’s me, she shouted noiselessly. I’m right here.
Fie! He walked away, scanning the arching corridors about the yard, the latticed gallery above.
She followed—and caught her own reflection in a pane of Peacock-green glass.
Red stained her plain linen shift, pouring from a gash across her throat.
Her face belonged to the Peacock girl she’d killed not five days ago.
Fie!
It’s me, she tried to say, choking on blood. It’s me—
“FIE!”
She jolted awake with a sucking gasp.
Wretch’s and Lakima’s faces swam above her. Lakima sat back and let out a long breath, eyes closing. “Thank the Mender.”
“You were out cold.” Wretch helped Fie sit up. The camp tilted and blurred, all much brighter than it ought to be. “Thought you slept through pack-up on account of burning all those teeth last night, then none of us could wake you.”
“It’s a healer’s sleep,” Lakima said. “We put patients in them for serious wounds, but … I’m the only other witch here.”
“Could Rhusana have obtained one of your hairs?” Khoda asked, rubbing his chin. All a Swan-caste witch needed was a strand of someone’s hair in order to twist their desires to terrible ends.
Fie shook her head. “I’d already be dead.” She peered about the camp, which seemed curiously empty.
And that was when the answer, horrid and gutting, came to her.
Lakima wasn’t the only witch who could use the Birthright of blood.
She twisted about, staring at the sleeping mat, and saw naught. Her throat closed. Her voice came out as a squeak. “Was I moved at all?”
“No,” Wretch answered.
“When did Drudge and his band leave?”
“Before dawn.”
Fie pushed herself to her feet, heart beginning to pound. “Which way did they go?”
“What’s wrong, Fie?” Wretch asked.
Fie’s breath came faster and faster. She scanned the grass about her sleeping mat—naught. The ground where Lakima and Wretch knelt—naught.
“What’s wrong?”
The head of her sleeping mat—naught.
“He took my teeth,” Fie answered, hollow. “The bag. They’re all gone.”
Quiet gasps swept through the camp.
“I need a moment,” Fie croaked. Then she put a good dozen wobbling paces between herself and everyone else, turned to the forest, and screamed every foul word she knew.
Wretch gave her a minute or so before crunching over the dry grass to lay a gnarled hand on her shoulder.
“It’s all my fault!” Fie raged, running her hands through her hair. “I brought this on us! I should have just given him the damned teeth!”
Wretch smoothed Fie’s hair back down, businesslike. “He wanted teeth?”
“Phoenix teeth. I gave him half a dozen and told him he could get more from Pa.”
“And that wasn’t enough for him.” Wretch sighed. “Aye. One way or another…”
We feed the Crows. Fie knew that proverb all too well. “I should have given him more.”
“Aye, probably.”
Fie winced. She’d half hoped Wretch would tell her she’d done right after all.
Instead Wretch said, “You owe your teeth to no one, and your pa raised no thief. But fear? Fear’ll make a monster of anyone that lets it. And that man was afraid for his own.”
“Pa never would have let them stay with us.”
“Oh, he would have,” Wretch said with a shrug. “Cur’s soft for anyone who puts their hand out for help, and that’s no shame. That’s how we got the prince’s oath, aye? And doubtless that’ll save many a Crow to come. But that’s also how Cur lost his finger and how Swain lost his life. There’s always a cost to helping folk. Cur knew there’s a cost to not helping, too. All you can do is decide which you want to pay.”
Gen-Mara hasn’t failed his duty for hundreds of years. I can’t say the same for you.
Fie’s eyes burned and watered. “I’m not ready for this, Wretch. Pa hasn’t been gone a day and I’ve already lost our teeth. How do I protect you all now?”
“With the Hawks you won us already. And with those.” Wretch pointed to the string still knotted round Fie’s neck. “We’ll make them last until the next shrine, and we’ll carry on just as we did before we had Phoenix teeth.”
Before Fie could run off Oleander Gentry with naught but a fistful of fire. Her throat tightened once again. Now getting her Crows to Jasimir’s procession wasn’t just about the oath. She had to get them to safety before they crossed another band of Oleanders who wouldn’t back down from Hawks.
“We’ll carry on, Fie.” Wretch gripped her shoulder again. “They’ve been at us for hundreds of years, and still the roads are ours.”
Shame and fury yet pounded down Fie’s bones, but the band didn’t have time for her misery. She scuffed a fist over her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to stand straighter. “Aye. We need to go.”
She walked back to the camp with Wretch, where most of the Crows and all of the Hawks pretended they hadn’t been eavesdropping.
“Drudge’s band went south,” Khoda offered. “Just—if that helps at all.”
Fie’s mouth twisted. If they’d gone north, there was a chance they’d have sheltered in Pa’s shrine, and no chance Pa would let them leave with her tooth bag. But south … “They’ve, what, an hour’s head start? Two? We could try to catch them, but we’d have to abandon Karostei.” She shook her head. “If Karostei’s had an unanswered beacon since yesterday, they don’t have much longer before it spreads to the whole town. I’ve enough teeth on my string to get us through that call, then we’ll get to Jas’s procession fast as we can. Aye?”
“Aye,” her Crows echoed.
“Yes, chief,” added Lakima.
A curl of purple smoke rose and drifted away—another beacon from Karostei choked out. Fie frowned deeper. “Then let’s get to the road.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE ASH HARVEST
There were a great many things Fie noticed when they emerged from the roughway and took in the sight of Karostei, yet there was only one conclusion to draw.
It would not be saved.
The main town had been carved from the stubble of thinner forests along the northwest edge of the Hassura Plains, and beyond the rooftops, Fie could see rolling fields of ripening maize, buckwheat, even green beads of gourds. The nearest fields’ crops, however, were much less traditional: their dirt was covered in scores of rows of tents, sleeping mats, and wagons full of furniture and goods, as if most of Karostei had just moved a quarter league east. Iron kettles smoked over cooki
ng fires, and chickens pecked at the dirt in makeshift pens. Goats and cattle lowed from a pasture Fie couldn’t see but absolutely could, and did, smell. Children chased one another up and down the dusty lanes, shrieking, as adults watched from tense knots and muttered among themselves.
The town itself sat too still behind a timber wall, one that looked as if they’d been halfway through replacing its older gray wood with newer, still-pale planks. And that was where Fie saw the ugly omen of Karostei’s fate: a deep, sickly gray rot spread across the clean lumber in the same stark, veiny rings as the Sinner’s Brand.
That was when she knew Karostei could not be saved.
Another puff of black smoke went up from the town’s signal post, and Fie spied clusters of black cloaks gathered a dozen paces from the barred gates. Half a dozen Hawk guards stood in an uneasy line between the Crows and the only way in, as two cloaked figures argued with a man in Crane yellow.
Lakima cleared her throat. “Chief … how close can we get to those walls?”
“Treat it the same as a corpse,” Fie said. “Keep a few paces off. Looks like we’ll need you to clear the way, but you’ll be safest outside. I doubt there’s aught in there but dying sinners now.”
“Understood. Shall we take the lead?”
“Aye.” Fie let the Hawks form up ahead of her. Better to let Karostei’s arbiter negotiate with them first. Besides, she had a single Phoenix tooth left on her string now. She couldn’t afford to waste it on cowing an arbiter.
That proved to be the right choice. The Crows on the road ahead parted to let them pass, trading baffled looks when they saw Fie’s band in the Hawks’ wake. Lakima marched them right up to the arbiter and the two Crows he was arguing with. This close, Fie could see the strings of teeth about their necks that marked them for chiefs like her.
“Corporal Lakima Geli szo Jasko of the Trikovoi fortress,” Lakima barked. “Who’s the ranking officer here?”
“I am,” the arbiter said.
Fie couldn’t see the look Lakima gave him, but she had a wonderful view of how he seemed to almost wilt beneath it.
“That’s … doubtful,” the corporal said. She wasn’t wrong; though an arbiter was meant to serve as a town’s leader, it didn’t mean a Crane could give orders to Hawk soldiers.
“The sergeant died two days ago.” The voice came from the signal post above, where a fresh string of black smoke had begun coiling into the sky. “We’re all guard rank, so until a new officer arrives—”
“I’m in command,” finished the Crane arbiter. Their arrival had drawn the notice of some idling citizens, who were edging nearer, and that seemed to make the arbiter even more nervy. “Put that out at once. We don’t need their help.”
Fie ignored him, staring up at the guard by the beacon. “Tell me your sergeant didn’t die of the plague two days ago.”
“Oh, it’s much worse than that,” one of the other chiefs answered. Lakima stepped aside, and the woman spoke direct to Fie, anger and weariness in her lined face. “The first sinner died four days ago. This scummer”—she flicked her hand at the arbiter—“decided he could deal with the body like the dead king and just had a couple Sparrows burn it. They were dead of the plague by the next morning, then the sergeant’s house came down with it, and next thing you know most the town’s run to the fields with what they could carry.”
“I’m telling you, it’ll blow over,” the arbiter insisted. “We burned the quarantine hut, same as they did with the king. Wouldn’t we have heard if the palace were rotting from the inside out?”
“Imagine that, it’s almost as if the king didn’t actually die of the plague at all and the queen is just exploiting an opportunity to further vilify the Crows and consolidate power,” Khoda muttered under his breath.
The arbiter blinked at him. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” Khoda said. “Though perhaps I’m wrong, but … a corporal qualifies as a ranking officer, correct?”
“Correct,” Corporal Lakima said, and yet again, the arbiter shrank. Lakima’s voice rose. “Guards, stand down and let the Crows in.”
The six Hawks on the road didn’t need further prompting. Fie couldn’t help noting that they took the opportunity to distance themselves from both the arbiter and the decaying wall.
“You can’t—these bone thieves just want money! It’ll pass!” The arbiter threw himself in front of Lakima. “All they’ll do is burn the town to the ground!”
The other chief, a man near Wretch’s age, spat into the road with disgust. “Don’t blame us because you called too late,” he said. “You know damn well how it runs with the plague. If we don’t stop it here, it’ll take your fields next, and your livestock, and your people, and then the only mercy you’ll get is death before the famine.”
“We won’t pay for you to destroy our homes,” the arbiter insisted. “Go cheat someone else.”
“Viatik fits the means,” the first chief said. She pointed to the ragtag camp. “Your means aren’t much right now. Nor are our expectations.”
“Let them in!” a woman shouted from the gathering crowd. “If the plague takes the fields, we’ll all starve!”
“My father’s suffering in there right now! Give him mercy!”
“I SAID IT WILL PASS!” roared the arbiter, nigh purple in the face.
Something about that caught Fie’s notice. She took a step closer to the arbiter, eyes narrowed. “How many did you leave in town?”
“It doesn’t matter—”
“Five score,” the first chief said.
The other chief added, “Nigh a quarter of the town.”
“It’s on his head!” someone shouted from the crowd. “All hundred on his head!”
“He told us we were safe!”
“He said he’d take care of it!”
“And you believed him?” Khoda asked, incredulous. No one in the crowd had an answer for that. Or at least not one they’d shout to a Hawk standing with Crows.
“It’ll pass,” the Crane arbiter repeated, sweat glistening on his brow.
Now it was clear enough for all on the road to see: a dark curl of the Sinner’s Brand had begun blooming just below his eye.
“Oh, cousin.” Fie tapped her cheek in the same spot. This was the Peacock girl all over again. “Not for you.”
He lifted a hand to his face, only to find the rash stippling his fingers. Some believed the Covenant sent the plague to hustle sinners into the next life. Fie suspected that, if they were right, the Covenant certainly wasn’t dragging its feet with a man who’d doomed nigh a hundred of his townsfolk with his own spite. Not with how swift the Sinner’s Brand was now etching purple-gray vines up his wrists.
“This is a mistake, it can’t—”
“You’ve not long,” the first chief said, not unkindly. “We need to get you inside the walls.”
“But—why?”
The second chief motioned for his Crows. He had considerably less patience with the arbiter. “Because you’ll spread it if you die out here. Shrew, Gall, make sure he gets to the gates.” Two of his Crows steered the arbiter down the road as their chief turned to Fie and tapped his knuckles to his teeth. “I’m Ruffian. Don’t know how you wound up with Hawks for friends, but you have my thanks for them.”
“Aye, and mine, too. I’m Jade.” The first chief nodded to Fie. “New band, or new chief?”
“Took over for my pa,” Fie answered. “I’m Fie. Either of you cross roads with Cur?”
Ruffian bowed his head. “He was a good one. Sorry to hear he’s gone.”
“No, just lost a finger and couldn’t deal mercy. Little Witness sent him to Gen-Mara’s shrine.”
“That’s a blessing, then. We’ll be better for having the groves under a chief’s watch.” Jade tipped her brow at the Hawks. “Looks like he taught you well, if you’ve already made high friends. Is this your first ash harvest?”
Fie did her best not to fidget. An ash harvest was the Crow name for a hard day
like this, dealing with a town beyond saving. “Aye. Saw one from a distance when I was a whelp, but that’s it.”
“Not much to it, so fear not. With three bands, this ought to be sorted before noon. We’ll need firewood, flashburn, and chalk.” At Jade’s signal, her own Crows began carrying loads of firewood to the gate, and Fie signaled for her Crows to follow suit. “We’ll split all our Crows into pairs to check every house,” Jade continued. “They mark a cross on the door for any still living, a ring if everyone’s dead or the house is empty. We’ll be following them to deal mercy, then leave the door open to show we’ve passed. Once we’re sure there’re none alive, the town burns, but we start with mercy. How’s your stock of teeth?”
Fie’s face ran hotter under the climbing sun. She tried not to let her shame show as she pinched at her string. “This is all. My bag was stolen this morning.”
Ruffian let out a laugh of disbelief. “Dena’s wrath, and you still answered the beacon? Aye, you’re Cur’s kin to be sure.”
“No doubt,” Jade said. “Do you know who took them?”
Fie gave an awkward shrug. “We found a band catching trouble last night for leaving Karostei. Their chief saw me run off Oleanders with Phoenix teeth and asked for some. I gave him six and told him I left more at Gen-Mara’s groves, but…”
I wasn’t enough.
Jade and Ruffian traded looks, and Jade’s lip curled. “Drudge.”
Ruffian shook his head. “He’d cut our throats to look after his band. Can’t fault him for it, but two-second clever doesn’t last. Here.” He started digging in his own bag. “We can spare enough to get you to a shrine.”
Jade slung a leather knapsack round to her front to rummage through as well, but she peered up at Fie through a curtain of gray-shot hair. “I have to ask. You’ve Hawks, and you had enough Phoenix teeth to be loose with them. Are you the one who’s got the queen so riled up?”
Fie’s mouth twisted. She stared at the dirt. “Aye—but—the queen’s got the Oleanders at her back. If she reaches the throne, they ride as they please. My band got the prince away from her, and I got him to his aunt, in trade for his Covenant oath that when he takes the throne … we all get Hawks.”
The Faithless Hawk Page 6
