“Hmph.” Besom raised her eyebrows. “Waste of good bread.”
Fie supposed she ought to feel sorry for the prince. She might have if the king’s throne hadn’t been good as empty for every Crow, long as she could remember.
And she had other matters on her head. Apart from her, Pa, and Besom, only Swain lingered, tallying inventory by the cart.
She could talk plain. “Hangdog gets a string?”
“So do you.” Besom wiggled her string-netted fingers.
“I’m no chief.” For that matter, neither was Hangdog, but Fie kept that to herself.
“It’s time you carry your own. Things are a-shift.” Pa prodded another wheel of panbread with a pair of tongs, testing whether the puff of dough was ready to flip. “We’re rolling fortune-bones, Fie. They land right? We’re rid of the Oleanders, and by my ken, that more than earns you a chief’s string. But if the bones land wrong…” He paused to pry the panbread off the hot iron. It was still too raw in the middle, splitting in twain. One half landed in the coals as Pa cursed.
“That’ll be us,” he grumbled, turning the remaining half. “Either way, I want you wearing a string.”
Fie watched the burnt half shrivel, thinking. Most chiefs-in-training had to wait until the ceremonies in Crow Moon to take up a chief’s string. Carrying one was an honor, naught she needed a bribe for.
Unless—
She stared at Pa, aghast. “I’m to inherit the oath.”
Besom cackled as her fingers danced around thread and tooth. “Clever, clever. Told you she’d sniff it out.”
“No call for a fuss,” Pa said, firm, but his eyes were fixed on the fire, not her. “It’s only if the deal goes bad. You’ve got the steadiest head of any of us. If something happens and I can’t keep the oath … well, I won’t be looking to Hangdog to finish it for me.”
Fie’s pulse rattled in her ears. It shouldn’t have shaken her so; she trusted Pa. And though they’d never spoken of it, she and Pa both knew who would lead their band when his time came. But if aught happened to him now … the prince, the oath, the weight of every Crow alive—they’d fall to her alone.
Fie checked over her shoulder, then asked, “Did Hangdog get Phoenix teeth?”
Besom shook her head. “Sparrow, Owl, Pigeon, a few Crane.”
Refuge, memory, fortune, and honesty. Birthrights that couldn’t hurt anyone. That wasn’t happenstance. “You think he’d try to jump the lordlings?”
“I think he’d jump the king himself if he had a chance,” Pa said, grim. “We need this deal.” He plucked the puff of panbread from the griddle. “That’s why I’m trusting you to see it through if need be.”
Fie’s belly knotted up like the string in Besom’s hands. Pa was right. No matter how the prince called her a bone thief, no matter how his pet Hawk rattled his steel, they needed the oath. They’d needed the oath for generations.
Fie’s ma had needed the oath.
Fie’d just never thought she’d be the chief to barter it. And there was no running from the chief’s bloody road for her now. Not anymore.
“Done.” Besom passed the string to Fie. It was heavier than she expected. Teeth of all twelve castes dangled in dull clusters, more than Fie could count. Familiar sparks flickered in each one, a promise and a burden.
Once she tied it on, she’d be duty-bound to bear a chief’s string until the day her road ended.
She’d asked for this, back at the palace. Demanded it. And she had danced Pa into this mess. By every measure, by every dead god, she was bound to help him make it out.
* * *
True to Pa’s word, he whistled the marching order to send them to the roads before the hour was up. Madcap launched into a loud and lewd walking song once they reached the flatway, a wider, busier road that the kingdom’s Pigeon and Sparrow laborers kept smooth and even. Barf resumed her post inside the cart, though Fie reckoned that would last only as long as they stayed to the flatway. Besom had claimed she’d miss the cat more than the lot of them combined.
Then, halfway to the next league marker, the demands of the Covenant called.
Madcap’s song dried up. The cart drew to a halt.
“Why are we stopped?” Prince Jasimir demanded, sweating beneath his hood.
Wretch spat in the road and pointed to a string of deep-blue smoke rising over the treetops.
“I say let ’em rot,” Hangdog grumbled.
“Aye, and then the farmers rot, and their fields rot, and our pay rots, lackwit,” Fie shot back. She’d watched Swain tally up their supplies. Duty to the Covenant was the pretty side of it. The hard truth was that they also had two more mouths to feed.
“But what is that?” the prince asked.
“Really?” Hangdog gave him a look of disgust. “When was the last time your powdered ass set foot off palace grounds?”
“Enough.” Pa cleared his throat, scowling at the sky. “It’s a plague beacon.”
CHAPTER FIVE
FEED THE CROWS
The sun hung at an hour past the noon mark when they reached the village. They had followed the beacons down a twisting eastbound roughway, passing first the blue smoke beacon, then the violet. Both beacons snuffed out in their wake. Pa, Hangdog, and Fie all used the walk to wrap their hands and forearms in clean rags, the better to keep blood off their sleeves.
Now Pa rang the bell at the base of the village’s signal post, where black smoke smeared a charcoaled thumb into the clear sky. A Hawk guard peered over the edge of the platform, found fifteen Crows in fifteen masks and cloaks (and one grumpy gray tabby), and nodded before vanishing again. The smoke began to choke out.
Barf had fled the wagon once they’d turned down the narrower, bumpier roughway, but Fie stowed her back inside the hold now. “You’ll thank me later,” she muttered over outraged mewls. There was no telling how the village would receive them, but Fie had an educated notion. She couldn’t chance they’d take their spite out on the Crows’ pet, too.
Pa looked over Fie’s head and picked out the prince and his Hawk. “We’ll handle the heavy lifting, lads,” he muttered. “You keep clear of the body.”
Behind Fie, Tavin grumbled into his mask, “How do you people even tell one another apart like this?”
The answer was the way Swain rolled up his sleeves so neat in the damp warmth. Or Wretch’s habit of swaying in place, never wholly still. Or how Hangdog’s fingers dug into his palms every time the lordlings spoke.
But all Fie said was “You two are the only ones who walk like we should get out of your way.”
And then she followed Pa into the village common.
The locals clustered near the communal oven, huddled like their round-shouldered thatch houses. Most doors bore the mark of Common Castes; the one beside the town’s god-grave brandished a Hunting Caste crest and the painted border of a Crane arbiter.
The silver-haired Crane stepped forward as Pa approached. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her faded orange smock marbled with faint bloodstains that soap-shells couldn’t break. As the village arbiter, she served as their judge, doctor, and teacher. Likely she’d known the sinners since birth.
She pointed a shaking oak-brown finger to a nearby thatch house. “They’re in there.”
“More than one?” Pa asked.
The woman’s lined face crumpled a moment before steadying. “Two—two adults. A husband and wife.”
“Naden and Mesli,” a man spat. “They have names.”
Had, Fie thought, grim, studying the onlookers. No crying moppets, no wailing family. Anger still simmered below the surface. They hated the Crows for being here. And they hated themselves for calling them.
But if the corpses didn’t burn by their second sunset, plague would spread faster than rumors through a Swan pavilion. Fie knew too well what happened after that: By week’s end, no one in the village would be left untouched. Two weeks in, the dead would be piled up, the crops blackening in the fields. By moon’s end, only rotten timber, ru
ined earth, and bitter ghosts would remain.
Pa led the cart as far down the path to the thatch house as it could go, stopping before mud could glut the wheels. The nearby field stretched half-tilled, its mossy sod a green island in the sea of dark earth. Pigeon Moon was for sowing; Peacock Moon would be for waiting.
That field wouldn’t be touched again until the thatch house had been burned down and built anew. This time, as they walked up to the door, Fie caught the true, familiar stench of plague and death.
“Hangdog. Watch the cart.” Pa crooked a finger at Fie. “You come with me, girl.”
Fie swallowed. Pa had cut throats in front of her before, but only when he couldn’t shield her from the sight. It felt like one more final handoff, another chief’s string, another oath to carry; the teeth hung heavy round her neck.
When, not if.
The door swung open into stinking dim, and she followed Pa inside.
Two bodies coiled together on a pallet at the far end of the single room. One rash-mottled hand sagged atop the wooden water pail. A blanket had been tossed aside in the throes of fever still lingering in the room’s clingy warmth.
To Fie’s surprise, Pa unstrapped his mask and set it on the low table beside a clay plate of molding panbread. “Gets in the way,” he explained, rubbing his nose.
The whispered question bubbled up before she could gulp it back: “Why didn’t you bring Hangdog?”
Pa glanced over his shoulder as Fie shed her own mask. His voice lowered. “That boy doesn’t need practice cutting throats.”
A whimper pierced the small quiet before Fie could scrub at that answer.
Pa strode over to the pallet, Fie in his shadow. He knelt in the dirt and hooked a careful hand round the nape of the woman’s neck. Sweat plastered her dark hair to her skull, her face and arms purpled with the unmistakable Sinner’s Brand. A yellow rind around her eyes crumbled as they cracked open.
“Hurts” rattled out from dry, bloody lips.
Pa had fair many voices. He had a Chief voice for steering their family of Crows as best he could. He had his Cur voice for needling Wretch or playing a jest on Swain. He had a Pa voice for teaching Fie how to use teeth, how to deal fair in a dispute, how to treat with Peacock gentry and gutter-born Pigeons alike.
But he had another voice, the one he’d used when he’d first adopted Fie as his own. When nightmares of her mother still made her cry herself sick. When she cowered at every flicker of white fabric in the markets. When hoofbeats sent her scuttling into the roadside hedges for fear of Oleanders.
He’d used the Safe voice to quiet her sobs, steady her nerve, coax her from the thorns before she scratched herself worse.
And at that moment, Fie learned that he used it to cut throats.
“Shhh,” Pa said, gentle, reaching for the half blade at his side. “We’re here.”
A drop of blood welled and trembled on the woman’s mouth. “Please,” she gasped, “… burns…”
“Fie.” That was his Pa voice. It was time to study.
“Aye.” She knelt beside him.
“Hold her head.”
Sticky hair crackled under Fie’s palms. Her eyes squeezed shut at the glint of Pa’s sword.
“You have to keep your eyes open.” Pa’s voice landed somewhere between reprimand and apology. Fie ground her teeth together and obeyed.
“Crows,” the sinner mumbled. The red bead spilled as her lips waxed to a shallow smile of relief. “Mercy. No more…”
“No more.” Pa leveled the blade across her throat. “Sleep, cousin.”
There was a savage jerk. The sinner died smiling.
When the body had stilled, Pa handed Fie the broken sword, hilt-first. “For the husband.”
She tried not to stare. The blade slipped a little in her hands. Watching had been hard enough, but this—
When, not if.
Mercy was a chief’s gift. Inflicting it was their duty.
She reached for the other body—then pressed two fingers to where neck met shoulder. The flesh was cooler, salt flaking from a long-dry sweat trail.
No pulse.
She pried his mouth open and touched a tooth. If he yet lived, the bone-spark would’ve sung for her, double as loud as any on her string. Instead, it sighed and hummed.
“He’s dead.” A reprieve. The knot in her gut loosened.
Pa reached for her shoulder, then caught himself. His hands were yet a gory mess. He plunged them into the water pail, then dried them on the cast-off blanket and stood.
Whatever he’d wanted to say had gone stale. Instead, he donned his mask and said, “Pack ’em up.”
With Hangdog’s help, the bodies were bundled and loaded on the cart within a quarter hour. The rest of the village waited for them in the commons, shifting with unease and muttering among themselves.
No viatik in sight. Fie bristled.
The Crane arbiter stepped forward once they were in earshot. “Thank you for your … services,” she said, brittle. “We’ve left two pyres’ worth of firewood at the gate in payment.”
“And?” Pa turned his head toward a fenced pasture crowded with goats and cattle.
“That’s all we can spare.”
Cranes commanded the Birthright of honesty, but just because they could catch lies didn’t mean they never told them. Fie counted at least three iron bells collaring livestock in the pasture—three beasts marked for slaughter. For Common Castes, the villagers looked well enough, no one skimping on meals or garments. They could spare a bolt of cloth or the smallest cow for proper viatik, or even just a bag of salt, easy.
Fie caught a mumble of “feed the Crows” from the cluster of townsfolk. The Crane’s jaw stiffened.
“That’s all,” she repeated.
The full proverb was less charitable: One way or another, we feed the Crows. The Covenant did not look kind on skinflints. Shorting the Crows now only made it likelier they’d have sinners to collect later.
Pa waited, giving the Crane one final chance to put it to rights. No one stirred. Only the clank of an iron slaughter bell punctuated a long silence.
Pa went to a compartment in the wagon’s sideboard and removed a pair of pincers as the lordlings fidgeted. He passed them to Hangdog. “Take the teeth.”
Tavin’s hands curled to fists.
“Aye, chief.” Hangdog reached for the first shrouded corpse. Fie hoped it wasn’t the woman whose throat they’d just cut.
She turned her mask back to the villagers before she could find out. Most of them had gone gray. Families like theirs stashed milk teeth for viatik, having neither the desperation nor the belly to pull teeth from their dead. Their buzz of anger wound even tighter with every rustle of the shroud.
“Here?”
Of course the prince would get squeamish.
The villagers glanced his way. Prince Jasimir coughed and lowered his voice. “Do we have to do this here … chief?” He dropped the title like a redjay rolling its rival’s eggs out of the nest.
“Aye.” That was Pa’s Chief voice.
Behind her, metal scraped on bone as Hangdog went to work.
The Crane arbiter flinched with the steady click, click, click of every tooth hitting the wagon boards. Behind her, villagers traded darkening looks that boded ill to Fie. The sooner they got out and on the road, the better.
At last the clicking stopped. A moment later, Hangdog handed a knotted rag to Pa, little red sunbursts blooming in the cotton.
“Are you done?” the arbiter demanded.
Pa weighed the rag in his hand. “Aye, cousin, this’ll do.” He whistled the marching order. “We’ll be back when you call.”
When, not if.
The wagon creaked into motion. They rolled to the gate, only to find the signal post’s Hawks had descended to hurry them along, waving at stacks of firewood beside the trough for their mammoth mounts. To Fie’s surprise, Tavin followed Swain to the wood. Maybe he was ready to be back on the flatway as swift as possi
ble. For once, they were of the same mind.
Tavin loaded up an armful of firewood, but as he straightened, one of the Hawks let his bronze-tipped spear slip, just enough of a twitch to make Tavin jolt back. A log fell from his arms and landed on the guard’s foot. The guard swore.
“I think you owe my friend an apology.” The other Hawk guard laughed.
Tavin stiffened with indignation, an indulgence no Crow could afford. The only thing saving them all was his mask.
Swain looped his arm through Tavin’s and bobbed a hasty bow. “No disrespect, guards, none. The boy doesn’t speak. Nasty accident. Terrible sorry about that.” He steered Tavin back to the cart as Pa signaled for the others to collect the firewood. Soon enough, the Crows rolled on their way.
For a while, only their footfalls and rattling wheels broke the forest’s birdsong-speckled hush; not even Madcap dared a walking song this far off the flatway. Then Pa stripped off his mask and tossed it into the cart. Fie followed suit, dragging fresh air through her teeth. Soon a pile of masks rested atop the shrouds and firewood.
The Hawk kept both his mask and his prince’s, one slung over each shoulder, as over-fearful as he’d been with Pa’s dirt map.
“Was that really necessary?” The prince’s chin was set proper mulish beneath his hood.
“How do you mean, Highness?” Pa asked, not looking back.
“They left you payment. And you ripped their friends’ teeth out in front of them.”
“Firewood isn’t a real payment.” If Tavin noticed heads turning his way, it didn’t show. “You can’t hire a smith to make a sword, then pay her only enough steel to forge it. There’s no compensation for the labor, let alone walking three leagues for the job.”
Jasimir’s cheeks darkened. “That’s no excuse for mutilating bodies. The dead should be treated with honor.”
“Honor?” Fie asked, heat creeping up her own neck. “That village wanted to spit in our faces. And they wanted that more than they wanted their dead friends to leave with dignity. They got what they wanted. Why shouldn’t we?”
“And who decides if you want too much?” Clearly Prince Jasimir was still sore from cutting the oath. “What if you demanded half their cattle? Or a year’s wages? Or the rest of the bones, while they’re still warm?”
The Merciful Crow Page 6