She glanced to Pa. He was beating down a smile once more. He’d made his point loud and plain: the prince had his steel and his pet Hawk, but the Crows still had his teeth.
Fie tossed the tooth to the pyre. It would burn as long as she willed it, until its spark burned out. The flashburn caught with a crack, white flames chasing out a swarm of sparks. Fie dusted her hands off, took a few steps back, and shot a sideways look at the lordlings. Perhaps now they would bury their high-and-mighty nonsense.
But Tavin was peering into the beak of the mask. “Why is there mint in here?”
Pa just whistled the marching signal in answer.
“We’re moving out,” Wretch translated for the lordlings. The cart creaked an affirmation.
Fie turned back to the pyre and kept her eyes there. Soon enough, the footfalls and wooden groans faded down the road, into the night beyond the fire.
Her palm itched with the memory of tickling flame. The tooth had been so old, the spark so small—its owner had been dead for decades, maybe centuries. And yet for that brief moment, it had burned fierce enough to light Sabor ablaze from mountain to coast if she’d let it.
Part of her wanted to.
That was false. The thought rolled round her head like a tooth in her hand. It wasn’t that she wanted to burn the world down, no. She just wanted the world to know that she could.
“It’s a bad deal.”
Hangdog’s voice broke above the hiss of flashburn.
Fie shook her head, stuffing down thoughts of blazing tyranny. “It’s always a bad deal.”
“Not like this it isn’t.”
With neither Pa nor lordlings to puff up for, the ache of the long, long day clipped her temper even shorter. She might have softened her tongue for Hangdog long ago, when the two of them still slipped away to more private groves. They’d had an understanding of their own: Crow bands only had one chief in the end, so for their time together, they shared little more than short-lived need. But moons and moons had passed since they last reached for each other, and her patience had worn threadbare in more places than one.
“What would you have done?” Fie snapped.
Hangdog’s face turned harsh as the flashburn began to fade out, yielding to the bloody orange of wood-flame. One hand grazed his jaw. “I would’ve cut their throats back in their ugly palace.”
“And let the Oleanders run loose?”
He spat on the fire. “Does it matter? That piss-baby prince can’t keep that oath.” His eyes turned hollow. “If they knew a damn thing about the Oleanders, they’d know better than to try scaring us with them.”
Fie bit her tongue. For all his talk of cutting throats, she saw the way Hangdog pinched his ragged sleeve between a thumb and forefinger. The question was which was stronger: his fear of the Oleander Gentry, or his hate of the actual gentry.
“They should know better,” he said again, and his voice pulled distant and furious all at once.
She held out her hand. He took it, holding tight enough for his pulse to drum against her fingers where Phoenix fire had burned moments ago.
The false pyre raged and roared before them, devouring its empty shrouds. If they’d been full, Pa would have tossed salt into the fire and welcomed them to the Crow roads in the next life. The lordlings hadn’t even had to die to start walking Crow ways.
Fear crept up Fie’s spine, whispering that they would be caught, whispering that Pa would be bound to the oath forever, whispering the worst of all: that Hangdog was right.
She held his hand, minded the pyre, and tried not to think of Phoenix teeth.
* * *
Morning came too soon and found Fie too quick. She hid her face from the slashes of sun through reed screens as long as she could, curling deeper into her thin blanket. In the end, it was the smell that pried her up from the sleeping mat: fresh panbread sizzling on a griddle. She sniffed again and caught fried soft cheese and honey, her favorite.
Only Pa cooked panbread that way, and when he did, it meant one of two things: either she’d earned a treat, or he needed a favor.
Curiosity and hunger rolled her to her feet, and she stretched in the empty haven shrine. It had been halfway to dawn before she and Hangdog had finally made it to the camp. The handful of hours she’d slept weren’t near enough, but they’d have to do.
Fie peered about the small room, trying to remember which god had been buried here. Urns of teeth huddled about a central idol’s base, but those sat in every shrine to a Crow god. Fie’s bones hummed with the drone of hundreds of teeth at work: lowly Sparrow to keep the shrine unnoticed, lordly Peacock to weave an illusion of trees in its place.
No Oleanders would find them here, nor in any other haven shrine. Pa said nigh two hundred of them were stashed about Sabor; he also said the Crows would be lost without them. Only shrines gave them a safe place to raise tots until they were old enough to walk the roads, or to tend the sick and wounded, or to leave spare goods for another band short on luck.
Crude, flaking murals stained the clay walls with dead gods everywhere she looked, scrawling out the crafting of the world. In one corner, the first gods made their thousand god-children; in another, the thousand gods struck the Covenant, bringing death, judgment, and rebirth into the world. Until that moment, humans had been naught but the gods’ playthings, with no will of their own.
Fie wasn’t sure they’d improved much since.
A few Crow gods loomed in the murals: Loyal Star Hama guarding sleeping Crows, Crossroads-Eyes leading them away from treacherous roads, Dena Wrathful and her hundred-hundred teeth. Pa had left Fie and her ma in Dena Wrathful’s own ruined temple for Fie’s early moons; Ma had told her that they’d known Fie for a witch when, soon as she could crawl, they’d found her giggling among the shrine’s bones night after night.
This shrine’s idol splayed six worn hands, clasping a compass, hammer, staff, blanket, basket, and crow. A cart wheel made her crown.
Maykala. Patroness of weary travelers. Proper to be sure. Fie bowed to her ancestor and pushed through the doorway’s faded crowsilk curtain, scooping up her sandals from the threshold.
Hangdog slept yet in a heap beneath the shrine’s eaves. The other Crows shuffled about the clearing, rolling up sleeping mats and shaking out cloaks. They gave a strange wide berth to the fire, where Pa tended to a smoking griddle and a growing stack of panbread.
A rasp-rasp-rasp drew Fie’s eye to the culprit: the lordlings sat across the fire from Pa. One of them dragged a whetstone along an unsheathed blade; the other stared, grim, into the flames. They’d changed to mismatched crowsilk shirts and trousers from the shrine’s viatik stash. Both wore the castoffs like ill-fitting costumes.
Beside them sat Besom, the shrine’s keeper and maybe the oldest Crow Fie had ever known, with Barf the tabby curled in her lap. Not many Crows lived long enough to feel the ache of old bones. Those who did spent their elder years keeping the teeth-spells of a haven shrine alight, passing rumors and warnings from band to band, and pointing them down different roads so no one region wound up glutted with Crows. Besom’s hair had grayed long before they’d met, her brown hands stained night-purple from picking and weaving the crowsilk lichen that bearded the tree boughs. Though her fingers were gnarled as old vines, they worked a web of thread nimbly enough as she mumbled to Pa.
“Three?”
“Three, aye. We’ll stretch them as long as we can.”
Fie headed over as Besom fished in a bag lying in the sun-yellowed grass. No doubt the old keeper was knotting Phoenix teeth into a chief’s string for Pa. Neither lordling glanced up from fire or sword-whetting. It was a blessing in disguise, for even by daylight Fie couldn’t mark which of the two was the prince.
As soon as Fie sat, Pa plucked the puff of panbread from the griddle, dropped it into a clean rag, drizzled it with honey and a pinch of salt, and handed it to her. “Here.”
One lordling paused the scrape of stone on steel. “Oh, are we eating now?”
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That amiable act could only be the Hawk boy. Both lordlings eyed the stack of panbread like tax owed to the crown; Fie recalled them saying they hadn’t much to eat for three days.
She looked the Hawk boy square in the eye and bit off a chunk of panbread.
“Aye, we can eat now.” Pa twisted about to call to the rest of the Crows, and likely also to hide his grin. His voice carried across the clearing. “Breakfast time, you lot.”
Tavin flicked his hand at her. “Pass a couple for me and Jas, will you?”
“Can’t. Hands’re full.” Fie took another monstrous bite.
The Hawk muttered a curse and scrambled to reach the panbread heap before the others. Pa scarce had time to dash salt over two rounds before Tavin snatched them away. Prince Jasimir shot Fie a dirty look over the campfire, waiting while Tavin bit off a scrap of each, chewed them over, then tore off the untouched halves and handed them to the prince.
There was a moment’s peace as Pa salted panbread and passed it to Crows. Then Prince Jasimir spoke up. “Your glamour’s wearing off.”
Tavin swallowed with a grimace. “We can leave it for a few days.”
“Don’t they have Peacock teeth? They can fix it.” The prince jerked his head at Pa.
Pa raised his eyebrows. “You’ve a Peacock glamour, then?”
Tavin nodded. “For my face. I mean, I’m Jas’s double for a reason, but you can still tell us apart without one.”
Fie pursed her lips. So far, the only difference she’d spotted betwixt the lordlings was which one mummed at liking the Crows.
“Sorry, lads. We don’t have enough spare Peacock teeth to glamour you all the way to Cheparok. And on that notion…” Pa dropped a wheel of dough onto the hot griddle, then pointed his tongs at the lordlings’ fraying topknots. “Those? They have to go.”
He was right. Both lordlings had inherited a gold cast to their brown skin from the northern Hawks, but it’d take a close study to pick them out from Crows, and their dark hair and eyes only helped. The topknots, though … those would mark them for royals on sight.
“Absolutely not.” Prince Jasimir recoiled. “I’ll just keep my hood up. I’m sure you have long-haired Crows.”
“Only ones that fancy lice,” Wretch chipped in as she nabbed a piece of panbread and held it out for Pa’s salt.
Behind her, Swain let out an unvarnished laugh. “Madcap bet me two naka these boys would blow their own cover by the end of the day. I bet we wouldn’t make it to a league marker. At this rate I’m bound for fortunes.”
“Because I won’t cut my hair?” the prince asked, stiff.
Fie prayed the boys wouldn’t be this tedious the whole way. “Because you’d fuss the chief over it.”
“I’m sure you don’t follow his every little suggestion to the letter,” Tavin said with the slick assurance of an unscathed blade.
Pa scratched at his gray-flecked beard, but his face stayed mild. “Aye, Swain. You’re bound for fortunes.”
“Be serious.” Prince Jasimir’s lip curled as Swain and Wretch retreated. “You can’t truly expect us to obey your every command until we reach the Fan.”
Pa flipped the panbread. “You’re smart lads. I expect you’ll do what’s needed.”
Tavin stood and cracked his knuckles. “How much longer until we leave?”
“The Fan’s a province, not a debtor,” Pa answered, watching the dough. “It won’t be running out on us anytime soon.”
“If Rhusana takes the throne, she’ll want to do it on the solstice, two moons from now.” The prince’s face had frosted over. “My father could be dead before the end of Peacock Moon.”
“Chief swore to find people who like you,” Hangdog sneered over Fie’s shoulder. He’d risen at last. “No surprise that’ll take a while.”
Tavin’s expression stayed sharp but polite. “How much longer?” he asked again.
“An hour, if that, ’til we’re on the road.” Pa scratched a rough map in the dirt with one finger, tracing the route to come. “The walk from here to Cheparok … I say it’ll take a week, if we’re lucky.”
“‘Lucky’?” Tavin picked up his sword. “A crone could walk there in four days.”
Besom swatted him on the shin.
Fie froze. Tavin had been beastly clear about not being touched by Crows.
But he just laughed and sheathed his blade. By Fie’s eye, it hadn’t needed sharpening in the slightest. “Apologies.”
Pa flipped more dough as Barf the cat stretched and climbed from Besom’s lap. “Lucky means we only have to answer one plague beacon, and it’s close to the road. Unlucky means that beacon’s a day’s walk out, and there’s a day’s work there and a day’s walk back.”
“That’s unacceptable.” Tavin was more sharp than polite now.
Fie had had enough of the Hawk’s paper threats. She got to her feet. “Take it up with the Covenant.”
“Don’t speak to him like that,” Prince Jasimir snapped.
“Don’t speak to Pa like that,” she spat back.
Tavin turned his glass-hard stare on her, and a warning glinted in his tone. “You’re addressing the crown prince of Sabor.”
“Funny,” Fie hissed, “could’ve sworn that prince is dead.”
The Hawk opened his mouth—then looked down. Barf had rolled onto his sandals, purring.
“Fie.” The tongs scraped on iron as Pa flipped the panbread. Like it or not, she knew her chief’s signal when she heard it. She sat.
“Crows go where we’re called,” Pa said. “A beacon’s a beacon. Hawks run those stations, and they don’t take kind to Crows ignoring their calls.”
“I’ll deal with the Hawks,” Tavin said.
Pa didn’t look at him. “That’s only the half of it. We answer every beacon we see, or we answer to the Covenant later with scores of dead on our account. If we don’t take a sinner in time, plague takes the whole town—every animal, every seed, every babe. Can’t do aught but burn it all to the ground before it spreads. You ever listen to a child die by fire?”
Prince Jasimir swallowed and shook his head.
“Then let’s keep it that way, aye?” Pa drew wavering branches on the dirt map. “Direct, it’s two days southeast to reach the Fan region, and another two days to Cheparok. Count on at least one detour. But we’ll have His Highness to safety by week’s end, well before Peacock Moon is up.”
Prince Jasimir shifted, uneasy. “For all we know, Rhusana’s already set Vultures on our trail.”
Fie flinched, one palm sliding over the black curves of her own witch-sign. A Vulture-caste skinwitch had put it there years ago, when Fie had registered as a witch as required by Sabor law. The woman had been a northerner like most Vultures, sour and pale as bad milk, and her clammy fingers had glued so tight to Fie’s wrist that it stung when she let go.
The best skinwitches could track flesh like a hound. Fie had felt the tracking magic when she’d practiced at Vulture teeth: the long-dead skinwitch saw every footstep, every thumbprint, everything her prey had touched, all spinning a trail plain as thread. If skinwitches like that came looking …
Pa patted the nubby string of teeth around his neck. “I’ll know when they come, lads. You’re with three Crow witches now. We’ll keep the Vultures busy.”
Fie slipped her hand from her witch-sign and tried not to think on how Pa had said when, not if.
“Hm.” Tavin pried his foot from under the tabby and scuffed Pa’s map out of the dirt.
“Wee over-fearful, boy?” Besom asked.
“No.” Tavin didn’t elaborate, just held his hand out to the prince. “Jas, give me your knife.”
Prince Jasimir passed his dagger over, jeweled hilt twinkling in the sunlight. Tavin stuck it through his sash, then started to undo his topknot.
“You can’t.” The prince straightened. “How are you supposed to pass for me?”
“I already won’t pass for you once the glamour wears off. If Rhusana is looking for
us, two needlessly hooded Crows is a little conspicuous. Besides, if there’s an emergency, they can spare a tooth to fix it.”
Fie tilted her head and donned her most cloying smile. “Who’s ‘they’ now, Hawk boy?”
Tavin rolled his eyes, twisted his dark hair about his knuckles, and began to saw. “You know what I mean.”
A tense quiet fell over the clearing as he hacked through all but a few wayward strands. Whether he kenned it or not, the Hawk boy had just chopped off his rank. And he’d done it because a Crow chief had asked him to.
Tavin caught the stares and gave a sheepish grin, hair falling in an uneven black curtain. “That bad?”
“I’ll tidy it for you,” Wretch offered, and that was when Fie knew Tavin had won the old Crow over. Her belly sank. Was it naught but one more ploy to charm the Crows?
“Thank you.” Tavin started to toss the hair in the fire, then thought better of it, wrinkling his nose. “Is there a place to wash up?”
“Hangdog.” To Fie’s shock, Pa lifted a string of teeth from the grass and handed it to him. “Anyone who wants to wash, follow Hangdog to the creek.”
Strings were for proper chiefs. Fie hoped Hangdog was closer to a chief than she wagered.
Tavin stuck the dagger back in his sash. “Creek it is. Jas? Coming with?”
“Once I’m done eating.” Prince Jasimir picked at his remaining panbread and didn’t look up until Tavin was out of earshot. Then he mumbled to Fie, “Was my father upset?”
“What?”
Jasimir ducked his head. “When you took us through the Hall of the Dawn. Could you see if my father was all right?” Fie shook her head. “He wasn’t all right?”
“He…” She didn’t know why it felt so sour to say. “King Surimir wasn’t there.”
Jasimir stopped tearing at his panbread.
“The thrones were empty,” Fie said. “Rhusana paid us at the gate.”
Jasimir went still. Then he stood, dropped his panbread in the fire, and stalked off after Tavin without another word.
The Merciful Crow Page 5