The Merciful Crow

by Margaret Owen

  Fie glared. “The Oleanders would gut us all before sundown—”

  “Perhaps if you didn’t give them a reason—”

  “Jas.” Tavin cut him off. “Taking the teeth was a message. A harsh message, yes, but that village will think twice before trying to cheat Crows again. It’s no different from our court games.”

  Either the Hawk was starting to ken their trade, or now that half the Crows liked him well enough, he was working double-time to woo the other half. Fie snuck a look out of the corner of her eye, wondering if a Crane would smell a falsehood from him. All Fie saw was a lordling with a haircut and a new scar—

  She blinked. It was a tiny thing, a thin line through the Hawk’s right brow, but it was a mark the prince didn’t carry.

  The Peacock glamour would keep breaking with her every blink. With his hair shorn to his ears and a face almost his own, soon no one would mistake him for the prince.

  The Hawk boy had cut his hair for Pa, he’d had the sense to not push the guards, and he’d reined in the prince. Fie didn’t trust him as far as she could shove him, but perhaps he’d earned the benefit of the doubt.

  Tavin flashed a broad, too-pretty grin at her. “Besides, taking whole bones, that’s just impractical. Or do I have it wrong? You strike me as someone who would tear a man’s spine out if she fancied it for a new necklace.”

  Fie’s newfound goodwill withered.

  She narrowed her eyes at the road ahead. “You got one part awry,” she said. “I don’t truck with jewelry.”

  “What do you truck with, then?” Tavin’s grin hadn’t faded one bit; if anything, it curled wider. “Flowers? Poetry? I know I can rule out patchouli.”

  The prince pulled a face like he’d found a hair ball in his sandals. It was plain he’d seen this dance before, and that told Fie all she needed to know.

  “Silence,” Fie answered. “I truck with silence.”

  “And punching corpses,” Tavin added. “I’ll concede I have that effect on people. So you’ve a shine for silence and violence. What else?”

  “People who can take a hint,” Hangdog gritted.

  Tavin remained undaunted. “And?”

  “And I think I’m starting to fancy a new necklace,” Fie said, cold.

  “So you do truck with jewelry.”

  Behind him, Madcap made a crude gesture that suggested exactly what they thought Fie trucked with. Swain snorted and waggled his eyebrows at her.

  Fie’s temper ran thin. His charm was a ruse; the Hawk had no intent of courting her. He just aimed to see what could knock her off-balance. Two could play that game.

  “I truck with people I can trust,” she returned, direct as a warning shot.

  It did the trick. Wretch and Swain traded looks, and Tavin straightened, donning mock-innocence.

  “Now that’s hardly reasonable,” he jested, “when all we did was use you to help fake our deaths and commit blasphemous fraud on the entire nation of Sabor for personal gain.”

  That got a round of chuckles. He’d wanted them to laugh it down. Fie mummed along, cracked a humorless grin herself, but her voice stayed sharp. “Aye, but that’s not why I don’t trust you.”

  The laughter dried up.

  Tavin gave her the same look as when she’d kindled Phoenix fire last night—measuring.

  Now who’s off-balance?

  “Is there just the one reason, or did you draw up a list?” A good parry. He meant to paint her as shrewish, petty.

  And Fie meant to remind her Crows who he really was. “We don’t even know who you are. Or who might be looking for you. You never told us your whole name.”

  He shrugged. “Is that all?”

  The look the prince gave her could have kindled her own funeral pyre. “Tav, you don’t have to—”

  “It’s fine,” Tavin said, but that warning line in his brow was back. Fie had hit the nerve she’d dug for. “My full name is Taverin sza Markahn. Does that answer your question?”

  It did. Sza meant “son of.” A clan like the Markahns, high enough to whelp the crown prince, should have flaunted Tavin’s own parental pedigree in the name that followed. Instead, he only had the broad clan name.

  Or, as Hangdog summed up: “So your pappy was good enough to rut a Markahn, but not good enough to give his name?”

  “That’s no business of yours,” Jasimir snapped.

  Tavin shrugged again. “No, that’s about right, and I’ll give my father your opinion if I find out who he is. But all things considered, my bastardry is probably the least of our problems.” He tried another patronizing smile on Fie. “Got anything else?”

  Fie wondered how many times the lordlings would just wander direct into her traps. At this rate she could dance her way onto the throne herself.

  “Oh, I was just curious about your name, Hawk boy.” Fie mimicked his shrug, then went for the throat. “I mainly don’t trust you because you like flashing your steel.”

  “What?”

  “You saw the only blade we have is broken. You didn’t need to pull your sword on Hangdog last night and you knew it. You just did it because you could.”

  That rustled up hums of assent. He could cut his hair and mum at diplomacy, but when it mattered, he still acted the Hawk.

  “So I’m not allowed to defend myself.”

  “Pray, cousin,” Fie crooned, “when was the last time you pulled steel on the Splendid Castes?”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” the prince broke in. “Drawing a blade on the wrong noble could start a civil war.”

  “Right. Best stick to Crows, then.”

  Prince Jasimir scowled. “When they attack us—”

  “She has a point.”

  The prince’s head snapped around to stare at his guard.

  Tavin’s mouth opened, then closed. He sighed. “So do you, Jas. Everyone’s right. Gods, I’m tired of talking about this.”

  “Oh aye, you’re tired,” Fie scoffed.

  Tavin tipped his head back. “Yes. I’d much rather address the fact that we’ve been followed for the last quarter league.”

  “Aye.” Pa didn’t turn about, but one hand rested on his string of teeth.

  Fie swore a silent oath. She ought to have been minding her roads, not dancing about with the Hawk. She snuck a glance down the trail. Sure enough, three distant figures hovered at the road’s bend, just far back enough to haunt them unheard. Weak sunlight glinted off their hand-scythes.

  “They won’t trouble us long as we still have the bodies,” Pa said. “And they’ll leave off once we hit the flatway, it’s too open.”

  That was half the truth. Fie swallowed a sigh. Followers could be an omen of Oleanders. That meant the Crows had to drag the bodies double as far before making camp tonight, and hope the distance put off any Gentry.

  “So you’ll allow them to trail us as long as they please?” Prince Jasimir asked.

  “What’d you have us do, Highness?” Wretch scowled. “This is squarely why scummers like them don’t let Crows carry whole blades. They don’t chase fights they won’t win.”

  Jasimir only rolled his eyes.

  In that moment, Fie knew that for all his talk of murderous plots and ruthless assassins, the prince had never once known the true fear of a stranger in the dark.

  You need this deal, part of her whispered.

  But another ugly voice hissed back: Only if the prince is good to keep it.

  * * *

  Barf posted herself atop the pile of masks, but leapt off to catch her dinner once they pulled over for the night a couple leagues down the road. Fie let her go. The lurkers had vanished after they’d reached the wide-open flatway road an hour ago, and the cat seemed able to look after herself.

  Unlike the eve before, the Crows had true sinners to burn. Pa, Hangdog, and Fie left their arm-rags in the budding pyre, then took turns washing up in a nearby stream, first with soap-shells for any lingering blood, then with salt for any lingering sin. Fie retur
ned to the pyre in time to hear Pa send the sinners on with a fistful of salt in the fire and a rumbled, “Welcome to our roads, cousins.”

  The Hawk kept one eye on the proceedings as he aided Swain with the cooking fire, staying out of the Crows’ way for once. The prince exiled himself to the far side of the clearing, sneaking looks Fie couldn’t trace until they landed on Hangdog changing his shirt. She couldn’t begrudge Jasimir that, at least: Hangdog had problems aplenty, but looks weren’t one.

  When Swain set out a pot of boiled soap-shells, both lordlings all but lunged for it, anxious to wash up before the Crows soiled the water. That Fie could begrudge. And if the lordlings caught stares when they ate before Pa salted the food, they still didn’t so much as slow a single bite.

  Barf returned after dinner, smugly sauntering into their roadside camp with tail aloft as Fie unrolled her woven-grass sleeping mat a safe distance from the fire. It was early yet, but Fie’d needed the rest ever since waking up in Maykala’s shrine. The others rolled gambling shells, mended masks, pounded fresh nails through their sandals’ soles; all of them kept one eye on the flatway as dark fell. Barf herself just jumped back into the wagon hold and curled up among their sacks of millet and rice.

  The prince hunched by the campfire, curling flame round his fingers, until Swain sat to his side. “Would His Highness like to see the rarest scroll in the kingdom? You’ll not find its like anywhere, not even in His Majesty’s own library.”

  Jasimir’s brows rose.

  Fie settled down on her mat. Swain had worked at his scroll long as she could remember, setting down all the songs and tales Crows carried in their heads. She’d never been able to read a single letter, but she supposed it mattered to him.

  When Fie’s eyes at last drifted shut, Swain’s and Jasimir’s heads still bowed over the scroll, intently conversing by the fire.

  Then Fie’s dreams dragged her from the dark of empty sleep, fast and vicious and red.

  She held Hangdog’s hand in front of a pyre in broad day.

  It was no pyre; it was the village they’d left behind, and it burned with phoenix-gold fire.

  She’d wanted to burn it to the ground. No, she’d wanted them to know that she could.

  Teeth spilled from her open palm, bloody and new, bursting into flame as they fell.

  We need this deal, Pa said, nowhere to be seen.

  The village changed: Now she saw a vale far to the north, burning end-to-end, all a massive black plague beacon. Screams for mercy filled the air.

  No one answered, Pa said, shaking his head, much too close to the fire. And now we all will.

  It was not Hangdog at her side; it was Tavin’s hand in hers, and he took her measure once again.

  She yanked free—

  “Fie.”

  She woke to a sea of flames.

  The campfire. It was naught but the campfire. Fie tried to catch her breath.

  “Fie, get up.”

  That was the Chief voice.

  “Pa?” She sat up, rubbing her eyes. It was too dark yet to pack out.

  The prince rolled to his knees, drowsy and scowling. Hangdog stood frozen nearby.

  Then the answer came with the faint rumble in the earth beneath her thin pallet. Her own gut frosted over.

  They never should have taken the sinners’ teeth.

  “Get the prince and grab what you can.” Pa was a blur in the night, rushing from one Crow to the next, then dragging the prince to his feet. The rumble only grew. “Up, Highness. The Oleander Gentry are coming.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE CAT AND THE KING

  The prince was barefoot.

  In her sixteen years, Fie had learned many a hard lesson when it hit her right in the teeth: Always watch the crowd. Always know your way out. Never go into town alone.

  And on the nights you burn sinners, sleep with your sandals on.

  Jasimir’s toes slipped on a mossy tree trunk as Fie struggled to hoist him to the nearest branch, choking down a frustrated scream. Thunderous hoofbeats welled in the ground beneath them; Crows darted about camp, scrambling to cover their tracks. Though the prince’s heel was braced on Fie’s shoulder, his hands shook too bad to find purchase on vine or bark. But Pa had said to get the prince out of sight—she had to get them clear—

  Tavin pulled the prince from the trunk. “Fie, you go first—pull him up—”

  Up. The word was a shackle breaking.

  Nails in her sandal soles chewed through bark and moss as up she went, easy as walking a stair. The strap of her loose mask cut into the flesh at her throat, the heavy beak banging against her spine. From the corner of her eye she saw other Crows scaling the trees as well. Wretch had strapped the rolled-up pallets to her back. Swain bore their meager stash of maps and scrolls, the cooking pot bouncing at his side.

  She didn’t see Hangdog at all.

  Up. If she lost the prince, she lost the oath.

  Fie crawled onto the first branch. She whipped her robe over her head, twisted it into a rope, then looped it where branch married trunk. The prince seized a handful of crowsilk and began to climb.

  “Fie!” Pa stood below. He threw a tooth up to her, then dashed away once she’d caught it.

  The tooth sang in her fist, so loud and clear that she near dropped it when she kenned what she held.

  Orange torchlight pinpoints glittered far, far down the road.

  Up. Fie knotted the priceless tooth into her waist-sash, then yanked the cloak to hurry the prince.

  But this bough wouldn’t hold her, Prince Jasimir, and Tavin as well. Once the prince sat steady, she scuttled up to a sturdier branch.

  “You can’t leave me!” Jasimir hissed, wide-eyed.

  He was panicky, he was learning a new kin of fear. She had to remember that. But some Crows were more merciful than others.

  “Bring up your Hawk boy, lackwit,” she shot back, “then you pass me the cloak—”

  Tavin’s forearm curled into view. He’d climbed up on his own. A moment later he straddled the same branch as the prince. It shook and creaked under his weight, as she’d feared.

  Up.

  Hoofbeats whispered through the leaves.

  Below, she spied Pa handing Hangdog a fistful of hemp ropes, each leashed to a spiky, weighted block of wood carved like a crude foot. Hangdog took the ropes in both hands and ran into the dark, away from the Oleanders, blocks tumbling behind him to cut up the road with Crow tracks.

  Pa didn’t send out a runner unless things were dire. They’d near lost Madcap to a run last year, and Swain’s wife had vanished into the night two years before, no trace of her or the wooden feet ever found. But if anyone was guaranteed to run far and hard from the Oleander Gentry, it would be Hangdog.

  Fie’s robe-rope slapped up to her. She winched it about the bough as first the prince, then his Hawk, climbed to either side of her. Tavin stayed on his feet, toes curling around the thick branch, one hand catching another bough for balance. Jasimir pulled the robe up behind him.

  Individual hoofbeats rattled the air now. She knew what came next.

  But this time, Pa had given her a witch’s tooth.

  Like all the Common Castes, Sparrows birthed scant few witches. Their teeth were good as gold but sore harder to come by. The refuge Birthright let any Sparrow turn unwanted gazes away as they pleased, softened their footfalls, let them slip away from a threat unnoticed. For Oleander raids, Pa burned two teeth at a time, sometimes three, a trick Fie had yet to learn.

  But the sole Sparrow witch-tooth he’d handed her—that would wipe her and the lordlings clear out of sight.

  “Get steady and keep your mouths shut, cousins,” she warned under her breath, working the tooth free from her sash. “I’m hiding us.”

  It warmed against her fingers as she called its spark, eyes closed, searching for a song. Instead, the world went silent. Flickers of the Sparrow witch’s life slipped through her: The Hawk who’d found the witchery in his blood as a boy, ye
ars bound to serve the Splendid Castes, solace in a loving husband. A thousand-thousand times he faded from the notice of a Peacock lord, a Dove craft-master, or a Swan courtesan, occasionally to gather secrets, but more often so they didn’t have to think on who served their tea. The thousand-thousand times they forgot he was there. The thousand-thousand times he couldn’t forget.

  And at last: the noblewoman who paid the Sparrow witch for his secrets and service, and then one year, paid Fie’s pa with his teeth.

  The Sparrow witch’s life passed in the beat of Fie’s heart. Then his Birthright woke in the hum of her bones.

  When she opened her eyes again, the boys’ weight still pressed the branch, but they were nowhere to be seen. Her own hands looked solid enough, but she’d be as good as a ghost to the others.

  Across the clearing, two more Sparrow sparks kindled in her senses. Pa had gone to work. Fie blinked, and her gaze skidded off the other Crow-laden trees. It’d take a fight to look at them head-on while those Sparrow teeth burned.

  “Put out the fire,” Tavin said under his breath.

  “And how do I do that from a tree, pray?” she demanded.

  “Use a Phoenix tooth.”

  Her grip tightened on the branch. So far she’d only called a fire, not banished one. But it was worth the risk. Maybe if the Oleanders thought the camp was abandoned, they’d pass by.

  The boys reappeared as Fie let the Sparrow witch-tooth stagnate. One of her three Phoenix teeth lit up, searing against the hollow of her throat. She found the spark of the owner—an old princess from centuries past—and tried to bend it to her will.

  The bark under her fingers began to smoke.

  No. Fie bit her lip. Take the fire. Take it away.

  She tried to sense the campfire. It was wild and wicked, dancing from her mind’s grasp. Go, she willed. Go away.

  The fire leaned and cowered—

  “It’s not working,” said the prince. Her focus splintered.

  The campfire spat a fountain of sparks, crackling higher than before, calling to the torches now strung along the road like a garland.