But unlike the queen’s room, this one was occupied. A figure lay in an achingly familiar sprawl on the gold-draped bed.
The king had slept just fine in this temple to his own divinity, and now it seemed Tavin would too.
There was something awful about his sleeping face, something that froze her feet to the cool, moon-washed tiles. She’d loved it once, waking up first so she could see the heart of him beneath all his flash and charm, perfect peace without guile.
Somewhere in Sabor, Oleander Gentry were riding down Crows this very night. Somewhere, another child was dying of plague as their village argued over beacons. And in Pa’s shrine, their rations were dwindling, and they were one more day closer to starvation.
Fie hated the peace in Tavin’s face now, near as much as she hated the part of her that didn’t. The part of her that still lit up at his touch and his smile and his laugh, the part that yet starved for him—the part of her that had mercy for a bastard boy.
She hated it, hated him, hated herself so much, the dreadful garish room swam with tears. She could remind herself of how he’d betrayed her, the death he’d signed her people to, and still part of her would do anything to lie in that foul golden bed with him.
She wanted to cut that part of her out, let it burn with the dead queen’s room, just to end the agony she craved.
And since she couldn’t cut herself free, she would cut out the next best thing.
Fie drew the Hawk sword.
Her slippers skimmed the tiles without a sound. She took care not to let her shadow fall over his face as she ghosted closer to the bed, moonlight dripping along the glistening steel.
Return it.
Was Lakima even still alive? Or had he signed her death warrant, too? Tears spilled down her face, hot and furious and horrified with the weight of the blade in her hand.
Stop, that soft, broken part of her wept as she raised the Hawk sword, don’t—you can still love him, you can leave him be—
And the coldest part of her whispered back: Not if I want to live.
Once, she’d thought she could be like the girls she saw in the sparks of teeth. Fie wanted to be like them, beaming at the attention of a lover, laughing at their follies, making space in even the hardest of hearts for ballads and sweet poetry and the unspoken oath in the touch of a hand.
Now she knew the bitter truth: that softness came at a price she would not pay. And she would not forgive Tavin for trying to make her pay it.
He’d made her feel safe; he’d made only her feel safe. He’d been willing to give up all the Crows for it.
And that was not enough.
He didn’t stir as the shadow of the blade fell under his chin.
Fie supposed she ought to say something clever and vicious, but there was nothing clever about cutting a boy’s throat in his sleep, and her viciousness had no words. His Peacock glamour had been called off for the night, so it wasn’t even Jasimir’s face below her but Tavin’s own, every scar and bump and mark that she knew by heart, no Owl tooth required.
Pa would tell her not to drag it out.
She couldn’t make herself lay the edge to skin. The blade hovered less than a finger over his throat. The sight horrified her.
Fie whipped fury through her veins, but grief answered instead. She’d wanted to walk the rest of her roads with him. She’d wanted more. And Little Witness had told her she was right for wanting it, but how could she be, when this was where it led?
End it, her frost-cold self said. He dies now, or he dies by Rhusana’s hand. What you want is already dead.
It was never going to get easier to deal mercy. She didn’t know why she’d hoped it would. All she could do was make it swift.
Fie lifted the sword, braced herself over Tavin, let the point of the blade hang over his throat. All she had to do was fall, by every dead god she could fall—
Too late, she felt a tear roll off her nose. It landed on Tavin’s throat.
His eyes flew open.
Fie yanked the sword away as he bolted upright. She slapped a hand over her mouth before she could gasp aloud. The Sparrow witch-tooth kept her out of his sight. It would not keep her out of his earshot.
Tavin touched a hand to his collarbone, where her teardrop had slid to rest. His gaze swept the room, passing right through her.
His breath tangled in her hair. She didn’t dare stir, heart thundering in her ears like an alarm.
So close she could taste him.
So close she could feed him his own blade.
Tavin scoured the shadows of the king’s room again, wide-eyed, his own chest heaving.
Then he whispered into the night: “Fie?”
Just then, a storm of footfalls boiled up from just beyond a doorway Fie hadn’t noticed, the trill of chimes like rainfall in its wake. “Get out,” a familiar voice spat behind the closed doors.
“Yes, Your Majesty.” The stamp of Hawk boots was impossible to miss. Once it faded, the doors were thrown open with a bang, lantern-light spilling into the bedroom. Tavin flinched back, blinking, and opened his mouth.
Rhusana didn’t wait, little better than a knife of a silhouette in the doorway. “Jasimir’s gone.”
“What?” Tavin squinted at her.
“Don’t play the fool with me.” The queen swiped a lamp from the wall and stalked in, slamming the doors shut behind her. She had changed from the linen shift of the coronation ceremony into a simple, sleeveless silk gown, her pale hair in three heavy braids that swayed like asps. In a swift motion, she’d seized Tavin by the neck, her jeweled claws digging into skin. “What do you know?”
Fie decided she could take a step back now. She did so slowly, keeping her Hawk sword close.
“N-nothing,” Tavin ground out. Then he fouled up: he glanced at the wavering flame of her lamp.
Rhusana jammed it closer, the oil sloshing in its reservoir, and Tavin couldn’t help a wince. “Surimir made certain you weren’t fond of fire, didn’t he?”
“I don’t have to like it,” Tavin said coldly. “It still won’t harm me.”
“How sure are you?” Rhusana gave the lamp another swirl, and oil splashed up near to the brim. “What if it’s not just the flame? What if it’s oil boiling on your skin? Will you burn then?”
Without the Peacock glamour to hide behind, the burn scars of Tavin’s hand caught the lamplight all too clear.
“I told you I don’t know anything,” Tavin growled. “What do you mean, Jas is gone?”
Rhusana glowered down at him. Slowly, she let him go, leaving five dark divots on his neck. “The servant who was supposed to bring him dinner was found unconscious in a storeroom. The Divine Gallery guards swear they saw him enter on time anyway, but don’t remember him leaving. The coronation fiasco was just a diversion. The cell is empty.”
Tavin glared back up at the queen for a long moment. Then he asked, “Where is Fie?”
That took the queen by surprise. She frowned, setting the lamp on a bedside table, and folded her arms. Chimes on her bangles gave a fidgety tinkle. “Geramir was careless,” Rhusana said carefully. “She escaped after we left. Doubtless she’s long gone now.”
Tavin narrowed his eyes. Fie knew that face. He was summing up figures in his head. This time the numbers were plain enough: How Rhusana had stormed into his room, rabid with paranoia over the chance Tavin might have betrayed her. How casually the queen dismissed Fie’s absence now, like she was little more than a runaway pet. Like something she wanted him to forget.
“What did you do to her?” he snarled. “My one condition was that no harm—”
Rhusana burst into melodious laughter. “And what does it matter? What will you do now, tell everyone you’ve committed an act of treason? Are you so thirsty for execution?”
Tavin’s whole face seemed to fracture before Fie’s eyes. You damned fool, she thought wretchedly. You thought she wouldn’t drag you down with her.
“You should work on finding a suitable consort,”
Rhusana told him. “Something a little less embarrassing, perhaps.”
He didn’t answer.
Fie couldn’t stand to watch anymore. She hated them both so much, she didn’t know if she could do as Khoda wanted and let them tear each other apart. But it was easy to cut a boy’s throat while he slept. She might die trying to take them both on now, alone.
Instead Fie fed her wrath to the tooth still burning in the dead queen’s bed. It didn’t need to balance against the Sparrow witch-tooth, instead snapping up her fury like meat thrown to a tiger.
The blaze had already crept across the floors and crawled up the walls, but now it roared with new hunger. Fie would leave naught there for Rhusana, not one strand of hair, not one scrap of skin, naught but a message unwritten and still crystal clear:
When she came for them, there would be nothing left but ash.
“Do you smell—” Tavin started.
Rhusana had already straightened up, staring at the ripe golden glow now pushing through the screen. Then she let out a scream and charged for the hall in a swirl of silk, near crashing into Fie. A breath later, two Hawk soldiers burst into the room. “Your Majesty, what—”
Rhusana had torn the screen aside. The fire didn’t need Fie’s help anymore, slinking down the hall toward the queen’s silhouette.
“PUT IT OUT!” she roared.
The Hawks ran out, mumbling something about water, as Tavin got to his feet. He stared at the blaze, at the undeniably Phoenix-gold tongues of flame. What Fie could see of the chamber was burning like the sun. There was no chance that any of Rhusana’s collection would survive.
“I said put it out!” Rhusana howled, and Fie realized she meant for Tavin to bring the fire to heel.
But he only eyed the inferno, grim, and shook his head. “It’s too much,” he said. “I can’t stop it now.”
Fie couldn’t say if he glanced around the room behind him once more, or if it was only a trick of the dancing firelight.
Fie backed through the door with her steel and her teeth and a soft part of her heart that refused to die. The queen’s screams of rage followed her all the way down the hall, down the stairs, and out into the night.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE BLOODLESS WAR
“Welcome back,” Khoda said stiffly, tacking parchment to a wall as Fie let herself into the servants’ sick room. “Would you like to tell me why the royal quarters are burning?”
She didn’t have to ask how he knew; alarms had sounded all over the palace, summoning servants and priests from their beds to help douse the blaze. The funny thing, she’d realized, was that the palace was meant for an abundance of royalty who could snuff out fire with a whim. No one had ever worried about the royal quarters being little better than a tinderbox.
“Someone must have knocked over a lamp.” Fie dropped the bag of teeth on the floor. “And look what fell out.”
But the Black Swan was not impressed. “You were supposed to meet us back here. Instead you did what, exactly? Arson with a side of improvisational dentistry?”
“She got her Phoenix teeth back.” Jasimir stood from the pallet he’d been tucking into a corner of the room. He offered her a weary smile. “You had me worried, though.”
Already there was something about his company that made the whole dreadful endeavor feel less like staring down a hurricane. Barf had immediately claimed the middle of Jasimir’s blankets, and the room felt more whole with him there. It was no longer an uneasy alliance between her and Khoda but … something closer to a band.
“Nice to see you out of a prison,” Fie returned. “And I got more than teeth. Rhusana had…” She wavered a moment, the old queen’s name sticking in her mouth. “She’d turned Queen Jasindra’s room into her, well, workroom, I reckon.”
A muscle jumped in Jasimir’s jaw. “My mother’s room?”
Fie grimaced in sympathy. “Aye. She was keeping all her stolen hair there, like a collection. There were all these long strands about the room, too, and papers with names and hairs on them, and some were just wads of hair of everyone in a town, and it was one of the foulest things I’ve ever seen, and I burn plague-dead for a living. So I’ll give you two guesses what part of the royal quarters is burning right now.”
Jasimir closed his eyes, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank her,” Khoda snapped. “Are you serious? You found evidence the queen is a witch, that she’s manipulating people, and you just—you set it on fire?”
“She had Jas’s name on one of those papers!” Fie fired back.
Jasimir planted his hands on his hips. “Fie reclaimed one of her most valuable resources and cut Rhusana off from most, if not all, of hers. Any general will tell you that’s how you win a war.”
Khoda stared at them both. Then he stalked over to his own pallet and dropped onto his back, hiding his face in his hands. “Brightest Eye preserve me, I’m going to strangle them both.”
Jasimir drew himself up, mouth tightening. “I was under the impression that the entire point of this endeavor is to overthrow Rhusana as quickly as possible so I can start fixing this mess. Fie just put us a lot closer to that, so what, precisely, is your problem?”
“My problem is that this isn’t a war.” Khoda sat up again, scowling. “Winning a war requires an army that you don’t have. You have spies and you have servants, and if you treat them like soldiers, you’re just going to get them killed.”
“I burned the hair Rhusana took from Draga,” Fie objected.
Khoda shook his head. “You burned one of them, I’m guessing. We don’t know if the queen was carrying more hair on her, if that room was her only stash, anything. And by taking the teeth, you all but wrote your name in the ashes. Until we learn more, the only good thing we can safely assume is that you’ve dealt her supply a serious blow, and now she’ll be preoccupied with restoring it.”
Jasimir narrowed his eyes. “If we’re not making war with her, then what are we doing?”
“Making an argument.” Khoda pushed himself back to his feet and turned to one of the empty walls, producing a piece of chalk. “A bloodless war, more or less. We need to prove that Tavin and Rhusana are unfit to lead. That’s not going to be hard, because it’s the truth.” He wrote both names on the wall, with two branches under each: WEAKNESSES and ASSETS. “Rhusana is an unregistered witch, a murderer, and legally has no claim to the throne, even through her son.”
“Father officially recognized Rhusomir as his own,” Jasimir pointed out.
Khoda wrinkled his nose. “You nobles and your names. Rhusomir? Really?”
“What did you think the ‘Jasi’ part came from?” Fie returned. “Jasifur, the king’s pet dog?”
Jasimir cleared his throat. “The point is, as far as the nobility know, her claim is legitimate.”
“Not if we prove that she’s still a witch.” Khoda wrote witch under both Rhusana’s WEAKNESSES and ASSETS. “The marriage ceremony takes away even a witch’s Birthright, and it should have given her at least the ability to withstand fire in return. Preferably, we could goad her into using her own powers in public, but really”—he added fire to WEAKNESSES—“she still burns like anyone else. If that happens in front of the right witnesses, it’s evidence that she sabotaged the marriage ceremony, which means she was never officially married to Surimir. That nullifies her claim to the throne and makes Rhusomir’s claim only as good as Tavin’s.”
“Then maybe it’s a good thing we have a bag of Phoenix teeth after all,” Jasimir said frostily.
Fie shot him a grin. “I knew springing you from jail was a good call.”
Khoda threw dirty looks at each of them before turning to Tavin’s name on the wall. “This is trickier. The fact is that, as far as the public knows, he’s … well. You.” He gave a semi-apologetic head tilt to Jasimir as he scribbled passes for Phoenix under ASSETS. “And unlike Rhusana, he’s fireproof.”
“Hawk witches can read caste in the bloo
d,” Jasimir said. “Could one of them expose him?”
“Draga could, if she’s truly out of Rhusana’s control now. She’s likely the only one powerful enough to make a difference. But we’d be asking her to send her own son to die as a traitor.”
Fie remembered the look on Draga’s face the last time she thought she’d condemned Tavin to a terrible end. It had been hard enough for her to leave him to die by someone else’s hand. To ask her to do it herself … Fie shook her head. “I don’t like those odds.”
“Neither do I,” Khoda said. “We could try to figure out who’s doing his glamour work, but you could throw a rock in the Hall of the Dawn and it’d hit a Peacock witch and bounce off four more. And there are only so many terrifying but specific omens Fie can manufacture around Tavin before it looks less like the work of angry gods and more like an angry lov—” He caught himself. “Lady.”
“Subtle,” Fie said, stony. “They teach you that in the Black Swans?”
“You know what they did teach me? How to keep my feelings out of a mission. And it would help if you did the same.” Khoda jabbed the chalk at the distinct lack of entries in WEAKNESSES. “Our biggest opening with Tavin right now should be that he’s currently interested in ‘Lady Sakar.’ Especially because I’ve heard Rhusana is pushing him to marry off fast.”
Fie’s gut twisted. She could still hear the queen’s coo: A suitable consort. Something less embarrassing.
“Do you know how many nobles he slighted, pulling you up to the front like he did?” Khoda continued. “Almost every single one of my informants was talking about how he was showing off for some backwater Peacock girl. For a prince who’s never been interested in women, that’s a pretty big giveaway, don’t you think? But I can’t trust you to stick to the plan, so—”
“That’s enough.” The last time Jasimir had taken that tone, it was when Hangdog had heckled Tavin about his parents. “Tavin signed a death warrant for Fie’s people, and you want her to seduce him? You have no right asking that of her. We’ll find another way.”
The Faithless Hawk Page 20
