By thirty-three, the gates creaked open.
Beyond them stood more Crows than Fie had seen in her entire life, more than she could dream of. She saw chiefs and masks and teeth waiting for her call. At the front stood Jade, mask in one hand, chief’s blade in the other.
Beside her stood Lakima.
Fie’s throat closed, but she had no time for sentiment now. She took a deep breath and whistled the marching order.
Crows flooded the courtyard until it was a sea of black crowsilk. They split around her, the lordlings, and the king, pushing the mob back as gently as they could. Then Fie saw Crows stationing themselves about her like a guard, Wretch, Madcap, Bawd, Varlet, all of her kin. Jade, Lakima, Ruffian’s band—they ringed her too, giving her shelter.
It felt as if a cord about her heart had cut open, like shedding a too-warm cloak. At some point she’d grown too used to the lonely weight of being the only Crow, bearing the demands of the Covenant on her head. Now her own were here to help carry it for her.
Tavin helped Jasimir stand from where he’d knelt at his father’s side, then looked to Fie. “We’re ready,” he said, low, and stepped back.
Fie crouched by Surimir’s ear. For Tavin and Jasimir’s sake, she hoped he had heard them, somehow, from the maze of his own delirium. For her own, she hoped he heard her now.
“There’s a lot on your head,” she whispered. “Maybe you didn’t favor the Oleander Gentry like Rhusana. Maybe you told yourself that if you looked the other way, the Covenant wouldn’t hold you at fault for all they did. Maybe it just suited you, knowing we Crows would answer your beacons and keep your country whole because it’d kill us not to.”
She pulled a Phoenix tooth free, called the spark out, and set it over his heart.
“Pa says the Covenant will bring you to the Crows in your next life, so you can live like us and know what you did awry. I hate that, I do, because it’s people like you that make our lives punishment, not the Covenant. You better hope that ends tonight, because here’s what I’m supposed to tell you.”
Fie laid the chief’s blade against King Surimir’s throat and leaned in.
“Welcome to our roads, cousin,” she hissed. “Remember what sent you.”
The tiles of the courtyard ran red with a dead king’s blood. Fie stood and let the tooth burn free.
And from every rooftop, every tree, every spire, every dome, crows took to the sky in a jeering, billowing black cloud.
Fie heard a groan, followed by a tremendous crack.
Spirals of gray rot wheeled up the sides of the Tower of Memories, in the same pattern as the Sinner’s Brand. More lanced between the tiles of the courtyard, raced over the walls of the Hall of the Dawn, climbed the Hawk barracks, spreading over every surface like dye through water.
Three weeks, Fie realized. Three weeks of plague rot spreading like roots from a dying man’s body, waiting for him to draw his last breath and let it bloom. She’d told Jasimir the plague had had to run deep. But now it was growing strong.
She stood and howled, “ALL CHIEFS TO ME!”
Jade spun on a heel and strode over. “Twelve hells,” she said. “We’ve an ash harvest on our hands, aye?”
“Aye,” Fie said, and only waited for a dozen or so chiefs to push their way forward. “You all pass this to the rest: there have to be hundreds of people in here who are dropping from the plague right now, but these buildings won’t hold, either. We can’t let the palace come down on the victims, dead or alive, or we’ll never be able to burn it clean. Jade, split the bands into north, south, and west. Send the healthy out through this gate and bring the sick into the gardens. Clearing them out comes first, then we’ll give them mercy, once it’s safe.”
One of the lordlings cleared his throat behind her but said naught.
“Sabor will never forgive us for it, you know,” Jade said. “Burning their beloved palace to the ground. Are you willing to pay the price?”
The question struck a chord in Fie’s memory. She couldn’t place it.
More coughing behind her. The sky above shivered and fractured with black wings.
“We were always going to pay,” Fie answered. “One way or another.”
“Fie—” Jasimir’s voice rose. “Fie!”
There was a quiet thud.
When she whirled about, Tavin had dropped to his knees, coughing.
Dark whorls of the Sinner’s Brand were tracing up his arms.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE WELL
By the time she seized his arms—why, part of her thought, you can’t stop this—a sweat had already broken out over him. “No,” Fie breathed, crashing to the ground before Tavin, “no, no, no, no, no,” and it became a chant, a scream.
“It’ll be all right,” Tavin started to say. The words drowned in a choking cough.
No no no no no no—Fie lifted his face, only to find the Sinner’s Brand carving lattices beneath his eyes. “Don’t,” she begged, as if he could do anything about it. “Don’t, we can—we can—”
Nothing. There was nothing she could do.
She let out a sob like a howl of rage. Overhead, the crows wheeled and wept with her.
Someone was always going to pay a price.
A hand gripped her shoulder. “I can do it for you,” Jade said quietly, broken sword in hand.
The thought of Tavin’s blood on the tiles made Fie want to vomit.
Crow-song wailed in her ears. She shook Jade’s hand off, pulled Tavin to her. His head rested on her shoulder; his shivers rattled them both, terrible and dissonant in the sweltering midsummer heat. She’d spent nigh seventeen years with the plague. She knew damn well what it did, and she knew now: the Covenant was not tarrying with him.
The sky above warped like glassblack with her tears.
“I DID EVERYTHING YOU ASKED,” she screamed to the Covenant. If it could speak to her with its crows and its plague and its teeth that never died, she could speak back, she could demand answers. “I GAVE HIM MERCY. I CALLED FOR CROWS.”
If the Covenant had an answer for her, it did not give it.
Little Witness had said she’d failed, life after life. If this was success, she didn’t want it. She’d let the plague take all Sabor, she’d head merrily into the twelve hells if it could stop this. But that had been her sin all along. Little Witness had said as much: she’d wanted more than a Crow was meant to have.
Jade set her hand on Fie’s shoulder once more. “Don’t drag it out.”
She twisted, hissing, ready to bite the hand off.
Then a flash of blood-red gold jabbed into her sight. The last gasps of sunset were tracing over the cliffs behind the royal quarters, through the hands of the Mother of the Dawn, through the Hall of the Dawn itself. Just as the monarchs could watch the sun rise from their thrones, she could watch it set from where she knelt in their miserable courtyard.
It was all one straight line, the line of the sun: The Hall of the Dawn. The false grave for the Mother of the Dawn. The royal quarters.
The Well of Grace.
The Well of Grace, where she’d felt the hymn in her bones, like standing on Little Witness’s grave.
The Well of Grace, where, every time she’d gone near it, teeth she’d burned cold had burst back to life.
You know the price. Will you pay it?
They were the words of the chief of centuries past, holding a hand out to Ambra as she lay dying in her bed.
Ambra, so beloved by the dead gods, it was said, that not even the plague could claim her, no matter how it tried.
You think wanting more makes you less, Little Witness had said, when you just want what was stolen.
Fie’s hands shook as she cut her satchel of Phoenix teeth loose, then handed it whole to Jade.
“Make sure every chief gets some,” she said swiftly, and yanked Tavin’s arm around her shoulders. “I’ve enough to last on my string if need be. Don’t call more than one at a time—they’ll eat you alive. And tr
y to save them for the skin-ghasts.” She braced herself on the tiles. “Bring out the sick, fast as you can, get them to the gardens and deal no mercy.”
“No mercy?” Jade gaped at her.
Fie pushed her way to her feet, staggering under Tavin’s weight. He let out a startled cough.
“Aye,” she gritted, “no mercy, not until I find you. We can’t keep feeding Rhusana ghast-fodder. And if I’m wrong, they wait a few minutes to face the Covenant. If I’m right…” She shook her head. “It’ll be a new day, cousin.”
She tried to take a step forward. Her knees wobbled dangerously.
Then the weight eased. Madcap had slipped Tavin’s other arm over their shoulders.
“Where to, chief?” they asked.
“The Hall.” Fie pointed. They didn’t have time to run around it; better to break through the windows behind the thrones and charge right through.
Varlet tapped Fie’s elbow. “Let us do the heavy lifting, aye? You just lead on.”
Fie let Varlet take Tavin’s other side, but couldn’t make herself let go of his hand. The Sinner’s Brand had near turned his fingers a deep, angry purple, too much like Surimir’s for her not to look at them and cry.
Jasimir clasped her free hand, tears welling in his eyes. “I don’t know what … what ridiculous thing you’re about to try, but gods, I hope I see both of you again.”
“I hope we do, too,” she returned, throat burning. “Can you … make sure Barf’s not in a bad way?”
He squeezed her hand. “What else is a cat-master for?”
They had spent enough time with each other; they knew when they were out of words. So they let go, and Fie tried not to fear for him as he headed to the guest quarters, not looking back.
It was slower going than she could stomach, the sky fading too swift as Fie and her band crossed the courtyard, even though they walked due west as fast as they could.
When they crossed the threshold of the Hall of the Dawn, the stench of rotting flowers near made her retch. Wilted, gooey oleanders oozed down the cut-iron faces of dead Phoenixes in their cold lantern-columns, and great swaths of the carpet of white petals had soured to gray. Others had turned crimson. Fie saw bodies, their skins not yet claimed by the queen: a few Sparrow servants in their cloth-of-gold sashes, heaps of red-stained brocade or shining armor marking fallen Peacocks and Hawks. Lord Urasa had collapsed against the thrones, a spear in his gut pinning him like an insect.
“Keep clear of the oleanders,” Fie warned.
“We know,” Wretch said wryly. A tense, broken laugh ruffled through them all.
The sun had nearly fallen by the time they reached the head of the hall. The garlands Rhusana had strung over the warped sun had wilted, the gold tarnished so bad Fie could barely tell it had ever been more than tin. The Mother of the Dawn cast a long shadow nigh all the way to the hall’s entrance, dwindling light dancing across the wall of luminous glassblack between the statue and the thrones.
Fie looked about for something to break the panes—then stopped as a horrid wet slap squalled against the windows.
A skin-ghast had flattened itself to the glassblack. Horribly, the sunlight still shone through it, glowing a sick, deep red. Another ghast plastered itself to the window, staring at them, its empty mouth smeared in a silent scream. Then another, and another, fresh enough to still leave trails of blood striping the panes, until the gardens were gone and the last of the dying light sluggishly pushed through wriggling skin.
Fie breathed hard, trying to shake anything out of her thoughts, any last bit of cleverness, any last bit of desperation-soaked grit. If she broke the glass, they’d get in, and she’d have to fight them all off before they could pass. If she went round, through a Divine Gallery to the north or south, they’d lose time, and Tavin—
“Fie,” he choked out, and they both knew he didn’t have the time.
She looked at him, tears boiling over, and couldn’t find the words. He gave a tug to the hand still anchored in hers. “Down … please,” he gasped.
The Crows lowered him to the ground, where the petals had not yet been touched by rot. Fie sank to her knees beside him.
“I can’t,” she sobbed. “Tavin, I can’t.”
“It’s enough,” he rasped.
“No—”
He unwound his hand from hers, buried his fingers in her hair. A smile tried to chisel its way out only for a trickle of blood to spill from his lips. “It’s enough, Fie,” he repeated. “You have to let me go.”
Fury roared in her heart. It was wrong, it was all wrong, she was so tired of it, burning for a Phoenix’s mistakes, burning so they could rise.
She kissed his bloody mouth and hissed, “Never.”
Then she got to her feet. “You lot. I’m about to take a fool’s road, and you can’t walk it with me. Head out that way, aye?” She pointed toward the southern wing of the Divine Galleries. “I’ll find you soon.”
Her band traded looks.
“No time to argue,” Wretch said swift, and Fie had never loved her more than in that moment. “Don’t do aught too foolish. Come on, let’s move.” She hurried the band out as Fie walked over to Lord Urasa and yanked the spear from his belly, lip curling.
Then she stepped down to the glassblack panes, only a thin, clear wall between her and the yawning face of ghast upon ghast. She lifted the spear and swung it as hard as she could.
Fie heard the shatter of glassblack, the creak and squeal as cracks spread over the wall. It buckled in a flood of dead skin. Ghasts plastered over her, wrapped about her, slick and lukewarm. She heard Tavin cry out.
Then the great mass of skin-ghasts yanked them through, swept them through the gardens, swift as a wind from the sea, the horrid whistles peeling from every hole in their hides. Twisting, flaccid arms bound around her wrists, gagged her on dirty skin, shoved her and Tavin up past all the pavilions, up past the Well of Grace, up the stairs of the royal residence itself.
They carried her and Tavin out onto the main veranda overlooking all of Dumosa, the palace spread out below, and spat them onto the beautiful inlaid floor.
A hand seized Fie’s hair and yanked.
“You should have died days ago.” Rhusana sounded tired, resigned. “You should have died weeks ago. It would have been so much better that way. I would have already ended the Phoenixes if you weren’t breaking your back to save them.”
Fie scrambled to her feet. Tavin was trying to push himself up, but his every breath scraped louder, harsher.
Rhusana slid out onto the veranda. She hadn’t changed from the ball, still in her elegant, hair-embroidered gown, still wearing Ambra’s crown on her head like a trophy. The chaos had barely ruffled her.
Fie glanced over her own shoulder: the railing was ten paces behind her. That was all that lay between her and a dead drop into the Well of Grace.
“Spare me the ‘better’ dung,” Fie snarled, and darted to Tavin, hooking her arms under his. “You talk about ending Phoenixes like you weren’t calling yourself the White Phoenix. You only want to change the caste system so you’re on top of it.”
Rhusana’s eyes flashed. She laid a hand on her bangle of wrought oleanders. “You have no idea what I want.” A low growl curled from the shadows; her white tiger stepped, jerking and twitching, onto the veranda. It tossed its head in a silent hiss, then shook itself.
Rhusana’s hand slipped from the bangle, and the tiger let out a low whimper.
Of course. Fie almost laughed. The queen had done what Fie herself had done—conceal the tools of her craft in her jewelry, only with hair instead of teeth. She’d never truly commanded the beast; she’d just commanded it by its hungers and yanked it about by its hide for everything else.
Rhusana held up a finger. Around it she’d wrapped a few strands of black hair.
“I think you want to get away from my pet,” she said.
Fie wanted to get away from the tiger. Her own mind filled in the blanks: fear of those bared t
eeth, the lightning in her veins that came with terror, the way it gave her strength to scuttle across the beautiful floor, dragging Tavin with her.
“I really did want it to be better,” Rhusana said, gliding alongside her tiger. “For everyone.”
Fie felt her own legs pushing them back, closer to the railing, closer to the edge. She had to, had to get away from those jaws—and yet—
“Where’s Rhusomir?” she ground out.
Rhusana tilted her head, as if Fie had asked about earrings she’d worn the week before. “What do you care for my son?”
“I don’t,” Fie said, “and neither do you. But only one of us is pretending they deserve to be queen.”
“And only one of us is afraid right now.” Rhusana took another step forward, brow furrowing. She clenched Fie’s hair so tight it dug into her finger. Fie hoped it drew blood.
A fresh surge of panic sent Fie back again, arms locked around Tavin. The tiger loomed closer as fear clawed at her every thought. She wanted to get back, she wanted to get away—
She felt her spine slam into the marble railing. Even that wasn’t far enough. Adrenaline drove her to her feet, Tavin slumped in her arms.
Good. She’d never have carried him all this way without panic pouring strength into her bones.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” Rhusana said. “You have no idea how it feels to never belong anywhere, to have no home, to know that your very existence could get you killed. You have no idea—”
The rasp of Tavin’s labored breath went quiet.
“I don’t have time for this,” Fie said, and dragged herself and Tavin over the railing.
The last thing she saw was a sudden blue hush as the sun finally slipped behind the cliffs.
Then all she knew was black water and salt and the weight of Tavin in her arms as the Well of Grace swallowed them whole.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
MERCY
They called her the Eater of Bones, and she was the last of her kind to die.
One by one, she had seen her siblings to their graves: Gen-Mara in his beloved magnolias, Brightest Eye in her cove, the Mender in their field beneath the open sky. Dena went gnashing into her grave, delighted and furious; Rhensa went dancing, lovely as ever. And when they were laid to rest, she took them to the Covenant, to see the life that came next.
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