But he’d never once stopped believing.
She wanted to sing. She wanted to howl. She wanted to weep and laugh and tear the garden down. She wanted to strangle Tavin and kiss his wretched fool face until her lips fell off.
She needed to—
Stick to the plan. That’s what Khoda would tell her. She had every intention of booting him off the nearest suitable cliff for putting her and Tavin and Jasimir through this, but it would have to wait.
Rhusana still needed Tavin. He would play the fool and get away from the queen when he could, and—and he would find her, and—
The hour-bell began to toll.
Fie set the teeth down on the bench and ran her hands over her face, over her hair, until the thunder in her skull retreated enough for her to think. She needed a new face, a new gown, a steady heart. The Peacock glamour shifted, the fabric bleeding from delicate teal to the same crimson as the lantern-lilies, the illusion of Niemi’s long braid weaving instead into one that sat over her head like a crown. When Fie stood and caught her reflection in the glassblack window, she realized the face she wore now was none other than Ambra’s.
The one upshot of this all, Fie thought grimly to herself, was that, being dead for so long, the artists never got Ambra’s face right.
She heard the commotion of Peacocks gratefully fleeing the swamp of the Tower of Memories and slipped back inside, falling in with the crowd. They shuffled out and into the late-afternoon haze, then up the steps to the Hall of the Dawn. Hawk war-witches were at the doors, testing caste.
Fie got in line for the one from Draga’s office, who had recognized Jasimir. Draga had said they would be stationed at the door to make certain Fie made it in, and as the war-witch’s hand clasped Fie’s wrist, she saw their eyes sharpen.
“You may enter,” they said, and then added under their breath: “Fortune’s favor to you, Lady Crow.”
It was a small thing, a scrap of faith, and once it had felt like a burden. Now it felt like another tooth in her arsenal.
Fie gave them the same slight smile they’d given Jasimir, and headed into the Hall of the Dawn.
It was not the same place it had been on the solstice. Layers of whitewash had been slapped over the once-vivid walls, the rich tapestries replaced with filmy gauze of silver, gold, white. The lanterns within the great iron columns had not been rekindled. Instead, fresh white oleander blossoms had been stuffed into the gaps, making each towering Phoenix’s portrait look almost as if it had gone rotten and molded over. White petals carpeted the marble floor, the dais, even the thrones, though Fie dearly hoped Rhusana had had the sense to order flowers less poisonous than oleanders for that.
Even the wreckage of the golden sunrise behind the thrones had been twisted and threaded through with garlands of more white blossoms. If Fie squinted, she thought it could be a swan now, but a sickly one for certain.
Servants were picking their way across the flowers with trays of wine and sweets, but there were markedly fewer than at the coronation. All of their sleeves were buttoned above the elbow, displaying arms free of the Sinner’s Brand. They all looked worn to near bone—doubtless the work of making over the Hall of the Dawn had fallen on them, too, for no one else could.
It was no secret that Sparrows were fleeing the palace rather than wait to see what would kill them first, Rhusana or the plague. It was a trap Fie knew too well.
Fie wove her way around the knots of uneasy Peacocks, who looked unsteady and garish in their bright garb against the bleak whites and blacks of the hall. Even the music sounded timid, strained, the few musicians clustered on the ground floor.
It felt like when she’d walked the empty halls of the royal quarters at night—too still, too lifeless. It felt like crawling through a glittering corpse.
Fie marked Draga near the head of the hall, looking more than ever like a tiger ready to make a kill. If the master-general had not had a reputation for loathing parties, it would have been perhaps a bit too obvious, but her scowl was perfectly typical.
Jasimir was not out among the servants yet. They couldn’t risk him being dispatched on an errand and missing his cue. Khoda, however, was winding through the crowds, his glamoured face the picture of servile serenity.
A swell of simmering fury boiled in Fie’s backbone at the sight. Some even-headed part of her knew he’d done what he’d done for her sake, for Jasimir’s, for Sabor’s.
The rest of her was ready to tear his throat out.
Not yet, her Chief voice ordered. Not here.
Fie wandered until she was close enough to the head of the hall to have a clean view. It would be just like the coronation: wait for the right moment, conjure another firebird, throw in a sign that the Covenant favored Jasimir once he was revealed.
She just had to wait for the right moment.
Her heart drummed, drummed, drummed in her ears.
Minutes ticked by. The musicians played on. The sun crept toward the horizon. The queen was late.
Fie saw no sign of Tavin.
He was fine, she told herself, and ran her fingers over his tooth to feel his spark leap for her. Tavin was her clever, brave, wretched fool, and he was not allowed to leave her before she could call him that to his face.
His spark still burned. She didn’t know what she would do if it went out.
The Peacocks murmured and whispered as the queen did not show her face. Even Khoda’s calm mask was beginning to peel as he held a tray of tarts out to Lord Urasa.
Then a low blast rolled through the hall as two servants blew into the matching hollowed mammoth tusks on either side of the thrones. Mutters of confusion rippled through the crowd: the tusks were to announce the entrance of the monarchs. They were meant to stay silent for another week.
Rhusana glided out onto the dais, alone but for her white tiger still on its leash. On her head sat a familiar golden crown. It took Fie a moment to place—then she realized the last time she’d seen it, it had been fused to Ambra’s skull.
“Friends,” Rhusana called into the hall, her smile a little too bright, a little too sharp. “A great day is upon us. Prince Jasimir has done me the great honor of entrusting Sabor to my leadership. He has abdicated the throne, and we will make you wait for your monarch no longer. The Phoenix Priesthood has declared me your new—”
“TRAITOR.” Draga’s voice thundered across the stunned hall.
Rhusana stared at her. One hand twitched toward the black embroidery of her bodice—then fell.
Hair. She’d stitched her fine gown with hair. Fie near spewed.
But Draga’s hair had burned with the rest of Queen Jasindra’s room, and now the master-general took a spear from a nearby Hawk and strode to the middle of the hall, facing the thrones dead on. “What did you do with him?” she demanded.
Fie felt for Tavin’s spark again. It burned yet—but suddenly that felt all the more tenuous.
“It’s a crime to raise a blade against your queen,” Rhusana said in answer.
Draga deliberately pointed the spear her way. “I’ll remember that when I see one. Where is he?”
Gasps swept through the hall.
“You are clearly unfit for your rank,” Rhusana said swiftly. “I hereby remove you as master-general and—”
Draga took a step forward. “You killed Surimir. You killed Jasindra. You tried to pass off an imposter for Prince Jasimir to give yourself the barest whiff of legitimacy. You let this palace be overrun by the Sinner’s Plague because your only master is the Oleander Gentry. You are a coward and a traitor and you cannot command me.”
“Arrest her,” Rhusana ordered the Hawks at the walls.
No one moved.
“I order you!” she repeated, voice climbing, choking at the edges. “I’ll have you all hanged for treason, and you can feed the damned crows! Arrest her!”
The Hawks traded glances, as uneasy as the Peacocks backing away from the dais.
Fie felt it, the reign of Rhusana balanced on a knife
’s edge. This was not what they’d planned; this was not how it was supposed to go.
But she could wait no longer. A conjured phoenix was not enough.
She pressed Tavin’s tooth to one palm, the Owl clerk’s tooth to another. This time she knew square what memory to ask for. Then the Peacock song joined the dance, shifting her glamour once again into something terrible and new.
Fie hoped against hope that Jasimir was not watching. Then she began to push through the crowds.
Peacocks twisted, saw what Fie had woven, stumbled away with ashen faces. Servants dropped their trays, splashing broken crystal and wine into the white petals. Even Draga gaped in open horror.
The crowd split until she could see straight to Rhusana. She knew what Rhusana saw, what they all saw: the specter of Queen Jasindra as Tavin had last seen her, staring down the thrones.
Fie had, of course, taken a few liberties. Jasindra’s eyes burned, stark finger-shaped bruises barred her neck, and her hair and robes floated on an unseen phantasmal tide.
Fie drew a breath, pointed at Rhusana, and, in her deepest Chief voice, she called: “MURDERER.”
She could see it on Rhusana’s face: fear, yes, but wrath, too, and desperation. The Swan Queen knew it was naught but a glamour, because she knew the power of an illusion.
Rhusana knew there were no omens, no ghosts, no Lady Sakar—only a Crow girl with a grudge and a bag of teeth. One who was about to cost her a crown.
Rhusana twitched her hand with a hiss. The white tiger shuddered, then leapt for Fie.
“NO—!” Draga threw herself in its path. Fie heard a terrible crack as Draga hit the ground, pinned beneath the great beast. Red splattered across the white petals.
Lord Urasa started toward the dais, bellowing, “Protect the queen!”
The room erupted in chaos. Hawks rushed in from the walls, some flocking to Draga, others to guard Rhusana. Most Peacocks rushed to nowhere and nothing but the exits. If any noticed that the specter of Jasindra was bizarrely solid when they crashed into it, they paid no heed.
Fie let the glamour go anyway. It felt oddly exposed, to wear her own face, let her teeth show plain, but there was precious little point in subterfuge now.
A hand locked around Fie’s elbow: Khoda. “We need to get out,” he shouted.
“But Draga—” Fie twisted to try to see through the pandemonium. She heard the tiger snarling, clashes of blades, shrieks and shouts of guards. Someone had the master-general’s arm around their shoulders—the war-witch. Their bloody hand was laid on Draga’s head. Fie saw gaps of pink in the crimson and realized the master-general’s gashes went to the bone.
“She can manage,” Khoda said, shoving them onward. “We need to find Jasimir and get to safety.”
“We need to find Tavin,” Fie spat. “How long did you think it would take me to find out?”
Khoda made a face. “Honestly? I was hoping for one more week. I know you’re angry with me, but we need to focus—hold on.” He yanked her and they popped through a side exit, stumbling into the south wing of the Divine Galleries.
Jasimir was waiting by one of the statues, wide-eyed. “What happened?”
“It’s all rutted,” Fie said, “and Tavin has been on our side the entire time, and Khoda’s been hiding it from us, and I’m pretty sure Rhusana just figured it out.”
“What?” Jasimir’s jaw dropped.
Khoda looked pointedly over his shoulder at the Peacocks flooding past. “Can we do this somewhere else?”
“No. Not a one of them gives a damn.” Fie bent down and started tearing away the bottom half of her gown. “Rhusana’s done something to Tavin. I’m going after him.”
“Why … why would you…?” Jasimir was staring at Khoda like he’d drawn a dagger on them.
Khoda’s face almost seemed to break open, furious and guilty all at once. “Because this is exactly what I was afraid of! Hells, you didn’t even have to know he was working with us before you started trying to save him! But this is what ruling is about, it’s about sacrifice. Someone always has to pay the price. Rhusana was going to make it the Crows. I gave Tavin the option to choose himself.”
Fie kept tearing the gown. The open air was welcome on her knees. “Funny,” she said, frosty, “the ones who always say there’s a price never seem to be the ones paying it. You know what my pa says?” She ripped the last of her skirt away. “He says even Phoenixes need ashes to rise. But I reckon you know that, aye. Because it’s your job to make sure they’re never the ones who burn.”
She pulled Tavin’s sword free, scabbard and all, and handed it to Jasimir. “The master-general’s hurt, and it’s a mess in the hall. They need your help. I’ll be back with Tavin.”
“You can’t put yourself at risk.” Khoda put a hand on the prince’s elbow—
—and the prince threw it off. “I’ll decide that.”
“Jasimir, please.” The note of desperation in Khoda’s voice sang so clear, it shook Fie. It wasn’t duty, it wasn’t agenda, it wasn’t born of long-laid schemes.
She wondered when, precisely, the Black Swan had realized his devotion to the crown prince’s welfare ran deeper than a throne.
But if Jasimir heard it, too, he had no time for it.
“We can’t do nothing, so make yourself useful or make yourself scarce.” The prince thrust the scabbard through his sash. “Fortune’s favor to you, Fie.”
“Fortune’s favor,” she echoed. Then she dove back into the fray, let it carry her out of the Divine Gallery, calling first a Vulture witch-tooth, then a Pigeon witch-tooth. Wishing for fortune was one thing. She needed more than wishes now.
Tavin’s own tooth stayed clenched in her fist, an anchor for the Vulture Birthright as it traced his trail. It wove north, dead west, straight down through the gardens—
Dread shot through Fie’s gut.
Her Hawk’s trail ended in the catacombs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE SETTING SUN
Fie made it perhaps a third of a way into the garden before she saw the first skin-ghasts.
A Phoenix tooth joined the song in her bones, clearing the ghasts from her path with great sweeps of flame before she realized they were leaving her be. Ghast after slinking ghast slithered by, some loping, some on their bellies like snakes. All of them bore a gash over their throat and the muted pattern of the Sinner’s Brand over their arms, and not a one so much as swiveled its eyeless face toward her.
Instead they all rushed past, headed toward the Hall of the Dawn.
Fie reckoned she’d found what Rhusana had done with the plague victims after all.
But there was no sense troubling herself with them if they did not stand in her way. Whether that was intent or the Pigeon witch’s tooth, she could not say. Fie called off the Phoenix fire and kept running.
She passed the Midnight Pavilion, the Sunset Pavilion, found the stone arch with its phoenix perched on skulls. The Well of Grace hummed its dirge somewhere above. The doors of the catacombs were open, ghasts dribbling out of the long tunnel like spittle from a poppy-sniffer. Fie steeled herself, lit her Phoenix tooth again, and plunged into the dark.
She tried not to mind the ghasts slipping past, tried not to start at the dead master-generals watching her stumble down the long stone road, tried not to let the song of so many Phoenix bones rattle her again. Fie heard it more clearly this time: Welcome, Ambra. Welcome.
“That’s not who I am,” she hissed through her teeth, and kept going.
Finally the dissonance grew too great for her to bear. She weighed the Vulture tooth and the Pigeon tooth, then let the Vulture tooth grow cold. There were only so many places to lock up Tavin in the catacombs. Judging from its residents, there was a dire shortage of luck.
Columns loomed out of the dark as she reached the main chamber. She cranked the wheel, lit the brazier, scoured the room for any signs of Tavin. All the blooming fire-lines revealed were more skin-ghasts crawling from every crypt, save for
the Tomb of Monarchs dead ahead.
“Tavin?” Fie called. No answer.
The currents of fortune surged. One of the double doors of the Tomb of Monarchs creaked open.
She took the hint.
But when she burst through the doors, the fire-lines only showed the Tomb of Monarchs, just as she’d last seen it—or almost. Ambra’s casket still had its skull, but it was short a crown, an uneven ring of gold rimming her brow where it had been chiseled off. The wheels of caskets still towered above Fie, all those skulls glaring down at her, and four empty caskets waited on the ground level to be fed—
No, three. One had a lid. But it bore no skull.
“Tavin?” His name came out in a half breath. How long could he last in there? If he heard, he wasn’t answering—she had to get him out—
Breathe, her Chief voice said. Panic and you’ll foul it up.
She had good luck, if she knew how to use it. The Pigeon witch-tooth was all but begging her to let it help.
Fie closed her eyes, let fortune guide her steps, move her hands. Her fingers found a lever. She pulled it, tried not to think about the scrape of stone. The tooth guided her to a wheel and turned it. The scraping turned to a roar.
There, she could have sworn the Pigeon witch told her. Was that so hard?
Fie opened her eyes. The wheel was turning. The lid lifted. She rushed to the casket as a hand gripped the edge.
Tavin dragged himself up, wincing at the firelight, and it was him, not Jasimir’s face but him, all his scars and scuffs and marks.
“Fie?” he asked in disbelief.
“Aye.” She seized his forearms, helped him climb out. His knees wouldn’t hold him, and Fie discovered neither could she as his sudden weight sent them both to the floor. “Are you—”
“Fine,” he gasped, propping himself against the foot of his casket, “relatively speaking. A little light poisoning.”
“Poisoning?”
He cracked a faltering grin. “I didn’t exactly climb in there looking for treasure. Don’t worry, it’ll burn off in a bit. Healing and all. Rhusana just wanted to make sure I stayed put.” He reached for her, hesitated. “Fie, I’m—I’m so sorry—I know you have to be furious with me, just let me explain—”
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