Pa whistled and flicked the reins. To other castes, it’d sound like a marching order. Fie knew better. In the Money Dance, that whistle meant “pair up.”
“Keep quiet,” she told the lordlings, “keep close, and move when I say.”
Harmony, she told herself, and kindled the second tooth.
The two Sparrow teeth grated against each other a moment, then settled into grudging cooperation. As with the Pigeon teeth before, her senses shifted, drawing new trails in her mind. Before, she’d kenned the prickle of eyes trained on her; now each person nearby cast a beacon of a gaze. And with two teeth in hand, any time that gaze turned near Fie and the boys, it rolled away like water off a greased cloak.
The first skinwitch leaned to look behind Pa, scanning the rest of the Crows. Fie held her breath, held the teeth, held off that gaze. After a moment, the skinwitch leaned back. “I count two bone thieves,” she called. “Treggor?”
“I got two, Inge,” the other Vulture confirmed, pressing farther into the shade.
Fie let her breath out.
“Witches to me,” Inge said. Pa climbed down from the driver’s seat and walked over, rolling up his sleeve, Hangdog a step behind. Two Hawk guards twitched their spears at the other Crows to step away from the wagon.
“Move with them,” Fie whispered, and slid along at the back of the band.
The Hawks strolled over, lips curling. “What’s your business in Cheparok?” one asked.
Pa’s eyes darted back. “Restocking,” he answered, loud enough to bounce off the walls and echo back to the guard. “We’re out of flashburn and low on soap-shells—”
“Don’t need a list,” the guard snapped. “Those’re pricey goods for a Crow. How are you planning on paying for those? You bring any coin?”
Pa flinched. “Aye. Last job gave us ten naka for viatik.”
The guard rounded the back of the wagon while his partner planted herself between it and the Crows. “Ten naka,” he mused, prodding the crates and sacks with a spear tip. The blade sank too far into one bag. Rice spilled across the wagon bed as Barf climbed out from behind the ruined burlap, yowled in disdain, and stretched. She seemed wholly untroubled by the spear point now inches away.
One of the lordlings shifted behind Fie. “Don’t,” she hissed under her breath.
“Hey Kanna, you remember how much the fee is to pass the fifth gate?” the guard asked, spear point following Barf.
His partner turned to laugh at him. “Eight naka.”
“Eight naka,” he echoed.
Both Hawks faced away now, and both Vultures were fixed on Pa and Hangdog. “Follow me,” Fie whispered, and slipped away from the rest of the band, slinking toward the gate.
Pa’s shoulders slumped a little. “As you like,” he said, and pulled back his over-robe.
The guard loped around the side of the wagon, suddenly close. Fie yanked the boys to crouch behind the oxen as the Hawk swung his spear to point dead at Pa. “You carrying a sword?”
“It’s broken.”
“Drop it.”
Pa nodded and made a show of reaching for his other hip, where the buckle sat. The half sword hit the mud, sending a cloud of bloodflies into the air.
The skinwitch called Inge chortled behind Pa. “All that’s good for is mercy, to be sure.”
“The purse.” The guard jerked his spear at Pa.
Pa untied his purse and tossed it to the Hawk. The Hawk dumped it onto the wagon’s driver’s seat and slid coins around until he was satisfied. “Your change is on the seat,” he laughed, and nodded to the skinwitches. “Go ahead, Inge.”
The skinwitches seized Pa and Hangdog, fish-flesh fingers pale against their bare arms. Inge’s and Treggor’s eyes squeezed shut a moment.
“Move,” Fie whispered, and crawled for the gate.
Inge’s gray eyes cracked open. She let go of Pa and spat to the side. Her spittle landed on Fie’s sleeveless arm.
Fie gagged in disgust, and the Sparrow teeth slid out of tune for a terrible instant. She yanked them back into harmony, swearing a silent litany, and froze in place.
Inge straightened up, her beacon-like gaze drifting in Fie’s wake. “Treggor?”
The other Vulture blinked. “Aye?”
Harmony, Fie prayed into the reeking muck, wringing the twin Sparrow teeth for everything they were worth. Harmony.
Inge squinted around, then slumped back. “Nothing.”
When she turned to Pa, Fie whispered, “Move.”
She reckoned that when the prince had thought to come to Crows for help, he hadn’t banked on crawling through the lowest gate of Cheparok on his hands and knees.
“Their witch-signs are good,” Inge croaked behind them, tweaking a fold of her yellow robe. “Ken me, you two. You’re marked men. Any spells you use now can and will be traced to you. We take the tag off when you leave the city.”
“So don’t make trouble,” the female Hawk sneered. “And don’t stay long.”
She jabbed her spear toward the gate just as Fie and the boys ducked round the corner.
Pa retrieved his blade, climbed back into the wagon, and smacked the reins without a word. The oxen lurched forward. Fie and the lordlings fell in with the Crows once they passed the gate, not chancing a look behind them. Nor did Fie chance dropping her stranglehold on the Sparrow teeth.
The wagon creaked into the lowest ring of Cheparok. The city rose above them in circular tiers, each smaller and higher than the last. Buildings lining the mud street down here were little better than walls of lumpy baked plaster and woven palm screens, most clustered near a dirty canal that curved down the road until it bent out of view. Pa followed that canal, then turned a corner, then another, until they’d slipped into a narrow alley away from the busy street.
“You’re clear, Fie. Well done.”
Fie let the teeth go. Wretch took in their coats of muck and covered a snort, but the lordlings had other concerns.
“They just took most of your money,” Tavin said, angry. “I can’t—we’ll—I’ll report them once we reach the fortress—”
Pa waved a hand and reached into his robe. “Fret you not, lad. Aye, they took most of the coin I had”—he drew a long, slim leather pouch from behind his back—“in that purse. Tell them you only have ten naka, and eight is what they’ll take.”
“They shouldn’t take anything at all,” Jasimir said. “I won’t forget.”
The other Crows traded looks. All Pa said was “Let’s get you to your cousin first.”
Tavin nodded to the city’s higher tiers. “There’s a Markahn in Second Market waiting to hear from me. He’ll pass the signal to the Floating Fortress once we find him, and then Governor Kuvimir will light the plague beacon.”
“Second Market? Good luck.” Swain pointed at the plaster wall over the wagon, marked with soot-darkened curls and slashes. Easy to mistake for the work of a lazy vandal, but the two crossed black thumbprints made a sign Fie would know anywhere.
The lordlings looked baffled. Fie tapped the thumbprints. “This is a Crow mark. And this”—she waved at the wall—“is a map. Here.” She indicated a square capped by a curve on the eastern side of the city. “That’s the Crow shrine. And these”—she traced a series of spikes—“are the markets. Second Market is…” Fie counted the patches of market in each ring and pursed her lips at what she saw. “… bad. Bad for Crows.”
“We’ve got ‘No one sells to Crows.’” Swain ticked off his fingers, reading down the symbols by the market. “Let’s see … both ‘hostile guard’ and ‘bribe the guard,’ so be open to a fair number of options there … And ‘no masks.’”
“I’ll deal with the guards,” Tavin said. “But why no masks?”
Fie sighed. “Draws notice. Just keep your hood up instead.”
“Fie…” Pa started.
“Aye, Pa.” Fie unstrapped her own mask from where it hung around her neck and tossed it into the wagon. She should have known her work was far fro
m over. “I’ll bring the boys back to the shrine after.”
“I’ll go with,” Hangdog said, abrupt. Pa started and stared at him. “At least to Fourth Market. Buy the flashburn and the soap-shells.”
Pa traded a look with Fie. She gave a tiny shrug. She’d already be reckoning with a prince and his fussy pet Hawk. If Hangdog wanted to fuss, too, at least one of them would be useful about it.
The string of naka clinked as Pa slid coins free and passed them over. “Here. Be safe. I’ll see you four at the shrine.”
* * *
“The sign says water-lifts are that way.”
Fie scowled, already sweltering under the heat of her black over-robe. But since he’d kept his topknot, Jasimir had to stay covered, so Tavin had to stay covered, and so she had to stay covered lest she draw notice. Still, she envied the airy wraps and shaved heads of the Cheparok women around them. They were dressed for the muggy heat.
“I don’t know what the sign says, cousin,” she said. “And I don’t care. That mark there? That means Crows aren’t allowed. We need to take the stairs. And the stairs are this way.”
Tavin blinked at her. “You can’t read?”
Something in her shrank at his surprise. “I … I know Crow signs,” she mumbled. “Swain does the reading for us.”
“And the Crow signs say we won’t be allowed on the water-lifts,” Hangdog chipped in. Perhaps two and a half days of Fie’s silence had taught him to keep a cooler head, for no resentment smoldered in his voice, only stiff resignation.
“Well, those signs look old. Let’s make sure.” The prince set off down the muddy road.
Fie gritted her teeth and followed. She couldn’t blame him, not truly. The idea of slogging up stair after limestone stair, all the way up to Second Market, made her want to vomit. The water-lifts used the force of the reservoir’s water channels to move cargo and citizens between Cheparok’s tiers with considerable less effort.
The lift attendant looked up from a cotton-heaped cart only long enough to snap, “No.”
For a moment Fie wanted to stand there anyway and relish the faint relief of mist and water splashing down from Fourth Market. Then she remembered that same water had traveled from the Fan, into the city reservoir, and down four tiers of canals and bathing steps, carrying whatever those tiers’ citizens felt like throwing in it. Likely it was as clean as the grime on her arms.
“Come on,” she said, wincing, and headed back toward the stairs. This time Jasimir kept his mouth shut.
Hangdog split off once they’d climbed the three-score steps to Fourth Market. “Luck, cousin,” he muttered to Fie, and gave her a half grin. She briefly debated pushing him back down those three-score steps, but it seemed like an awful lot of work in this dreadful sun.
Instead she looked for a Crow mark for the stairs. One was carved into a signpost nearby, pointing to the opposite end of Fourth Market.
“Do they even know how hot it is?” gasped Tavin, staring at the crowds packing the market. Fie could scarce hear him over the lowing of disgruntled cattle, shouts of vendors, wailing children, and high-pitched warbling from some unholy horn busker.
Holy texts said the Covenant disposed of irredeemable souls in one of twelve hells. Fie wasn’t sure what she’d done to deserve this one.
A mother shoved past, dragging a child on each arm. It gave Fie a notion equal parts distasteful and effective. She snatched one hand from each of the lordlings. “Hold fast.”
Then she plunged into the crowd. It was chaos and cacophony, a crush of sweat and flesh and salt-stiff cotton. She lost count of how many people trod on her feet, but she was dead sure that the nails in her sandals repaid that in triple.
At last they reached the end of Fourth Market. Fie staggered to a quiet place between stalls, and the prince yanked free of her, shaking his hand out. She let go of Tavin and swayed in place, catching her breath.
“Let’s never do that again,” Tavin said, tone dark.
Fie shook her head, wheezing. “The way … back.”
“I’d rather throw myself down the water-lift.” Jasimir started to pull his hood back, then thought better of it. “What now?”
Fie looked at the next hundred stairs and winced. “Third Market.”
This stairway led past a set of bathing steps, where one of the green-tiled reservoir channels spilled out over limestone blocks larger than those Fie climbed. People of the fourth tier splashed in the milky water, rinsing laundry or stripping down and bathing as they pleased. Fie and the boys stopped a moment to scrub down their arms; it took more will than she’d admit to not wash up head to toe.
Third Market was mercifully less crowded than Fourth, giving them a moment to catch their breath in the shade of a cool stone wall. An uneven brick street wound between stalls and tents, where merchants dubiously promised the coolest palm screens, the fattest lambs, the brightest lamp oil in Cheparok. Crews of Gulls poled their cargo barges down the canal at market’s edge, shouting for buyers in the spice-laden air as they wiped sweat from deep brown faces. A distant smear of orange roof tiles marked a Magistrate’s Row, where Crane witches called truths out of witnesses and petitioners alike.
Fie’s eyes landed on a pair of Hawks lounging near a water-lift. One squinted back at her and mumbled to his partner. The other Hawk turned to look as well.
“We need to keep moving,” Fie said, and stepped back into the sun.
“We’re being followed?” Tavin asked, falling in beside her.
“Maybe. Point at the stall on your right.”
He did, gesturing to an altogether spiteful-looking sow. A bemused farmer raised his eyebrows. Fie feigned a moment’s consideration, then shook her head and moved on.
“Don’t look back,” she hissed, winding toward a glassblack vendor. The woman’s tent glittered with samples of her work, strings of discs fluttering in the breeze. Glassblack only showed through on one side, reflecting the other in nigh every hue imaginable. Fie had seen whole panes of the stuff in the windows of the wealthy. Crows just dealt with the plainest kind, black, to cover the eyeholes in their masks.
The discs spun lazy on their wires as Fie neared, flashing fragments of the marketplace: a reflected tapestry, a slip of an Owl scholar, a brass lamp perched on a windowsill. A blue disc twirled and showed her the two guards, still watching from the water-lift. She stopped, reaching for a disc of black.
“Keep your filthy little hands off,” the vendor spat.
Fie flashed her empty palms and stepped back. “Just looking.”
The black disc spun to show her the guards again. They’d been distracted by the water-lift’s wheels churning into motion.
“Come on.” Fie jerked her head toward a signpost. To her annoyance, once they reached it, she found that any Crow signs had long since worn away, if they’d been there at all. Her ears burned. “Can … does it say where—”
“This way.” Tavin set off across the market.
This time, the steps rose past grand mosaics, their vivid tiles painting the deeds of dead gods and heroes. In one, Lovely Rhensa danced above a field of vanquished foes; in another, Ambra, Queen of Day and Night, stood astride the sun, wreathed in gold Phoenix fire. Jasimir grimaced at that one for a breath before moving on. Most of Cheparok fell below them once they reached the top of the stairs, dropping tier by tier until the last plateau bled into docks and canals. Smaller barges flocked in the shallow bay like litters of puppies, their mothers the great trade ships moored at a crest of islands between Cheparok and the sea.
Fie didn’t realize she’d stopped until Tavin tugged at her shoulder. “The view’s even better from the fortress.”
Second Market was quieter than Third. Fie hesitated to even tread on the flat sandstone slabs, the nails in her sandals grinding in protest. A few stalls flapped banners for imported rarities and the crests of renowned Crane merchant houses, but for the most part actual storefronts made up the tranquil street. Posh silk-gauze billowed everywhere in the br
eeze, from layered wraps sported by Cranes and Peacocks to drapes tacked over windows and tent frames. Swan courtesans of every shade and gender drifted by in head-to-toe white, trailing filmy veils of their own from wide-brimmed hats meant to hide their faces from the jealous sun. Heads swiveled as they passed. Swans commanded the Birthright of desire, and even the plainest could gather attention like folds of silk, wielding charisma sure as Hawk steel.
One Swan man glanced sidelong at Fie and wrinkled his nose. She wrinkled hers back, reminded too much of Queen Rhusana.
“Well,” she said, wiping her brow, “your Markahn lout shouldn’t have much trouble spotting us.”
“He said he’s stationed by an apothecary.” Even Tavin seemed reluctant to venture into the market.
Fie peered down the street and saw a banner with a mortar and pestle. “There’s one.”
“So there is.” He took the lead again, sliding seamless into the meandering traffic. Jasimir followed, leaving Fie to bring up the rear.
They wove through the crowd, nail-studded soles rasping on the stone in a way that pricked goose bumps down Fie’s arms. She couldn’t help but scowl at the boys’ saunter. After near a week with the Crows, they still walked like the Peacocks ought to move for them.
No helping the way they’d been raised, she supposed. And it wouldn’t be her problem much longer.
A hand locked around her wrist. “What’s this?”
Fie’s hood fell back as she was yanked around. A Hawk guard had her in an iron grip, his mouth twisting.
“What’s a Crow runt doing in Second Market? Didn’t anyone tell you there’s no bones to steal here?” He jerked his arm up, dragging her to the tips of her toes. “Or are you after something else, little Crow?”
Fie’s thoughts whirled about her head in a panic. The guard had picked her on purpose—the boys wouldn’t notice her gone—she was walking the city with an untagged witch-sign—
The Hawk must have read the dismay in her face, for he cracked an unsettling smile and stepped back, dragging her away from the street. “That’s right, you’re in trouble now. So let’s talk about how you’re going to get out of it.”
The Merciful Crow Page 11