The Merciful Crow

by Margaret Owen

  Pa.

  “How many of your Crow hostages are still alive?” she demanded, suddenly horrified that it hadn’t been her first question.

  The man convulsed, choking.

  “How many?” she demanded. It was no use. In moments, the Vulture had gone still.

  Tavin crouched by her side. “The scouts that ran will bring Tatterhelm as fast as he can ride. We need to get away.”

  “There’s at least a week’s worth of food here.” Jasimir had pried a pack from a dead Vulture. “Tatterhelm must have sent them to search ahead of the main party.”

  Fie stood. “Take anything of use from the dead—provisions, gloves, furs. We need cold gear and food more than they do. Then we move out.”

  Jasimir looked up from the pack. “We have to give them final rites.”

  “That better be a royal ‘we,’ cousin.” Fie set about dragging the bodies together. “If these scummers were dying of thirst in the desert, I wouldn’t give them a single drop of my piss.”

  “If we leave them like animals, we’re just as bad as they are,” Jasimir insisted. “You’ll give sinners final rites, but not them? Is that what you call mercy?”

  “No,” Fie answered, looking pointedly at the distant hill, where a bloody goat carcass painted a red smear in the grass. Three dead Vultures. Easy prey. “This is what I call wolf country.”

  “Tav.” The prince gave his Hawk a look. “The code says, ‘I will not dishonor my dead.’”

  Tavin’s shoulders stiffened. “It also says, ‘I will serve my nation and the throne above all,’” he said, sounding tired. “And that one comes first.”

  * * *

  On the first day after Gerbanyar, they changed the watch.

  Fie lit three Sparrow teeth once they set off, and tried to shake the singing from her bones. With three teeth she could weave the refuge round herself and the lordlings, slipping them from the Vulture’s notice but letting them yet see one another. Then she kept three alight all through the day and through a cold, starless first watch, until Tavin shook her from her red-eyed fog.

  She let the Sparrow teeth go and slept a fitful few hours, knowing every breath left them all exposed to the Vultures on their trail.

  On the second day, a headache roosted in Fie’s skull. She kept her three teeth burning anyhow and practiced swords again with Tavin and wiped his face into the prince’s once more. When she slept, Tatterhelm stalked her dreams, and he cut oath after oath into her palms until they were as useless as Viimo’s.

  On the third day, she found she missed waking to Tavin’s humming. She didn’t tell him.

  On the fourth day, her every bone ached as they picked their way across a vast field of black rock bubbled like foam, hard and sharp as hunger. Thin, curling grass sprouted between stone, and halfway through, they found a pool of steaming water as vivid blue as a peacock plume’s eye with no bottom in sight.

  Prince Jasimir reached for it, and Fie wondered for a terrible moment how easy it would be to let him go, give the Vultures what they wanted, and bring it all to an end.

  Instead she yanked him back and threw a rock into the pool. It dissolved almost immediately.

  Jasimir spent the rest of the day clenching and unclenching the fist he’d near lost.

  She took Tavin’s face again that night. He pretended he didn’t see how her hands shook, and she pretended not to see how he ground his teeth, and after, they kept their distance to practice swords. She kept her watch beneath a dead Vulture’s elk pelt, watching a storm drum thunder across the plain, three teeth burning, burning, burning still, her bones singing so loud it felt like screaming.

  Late in the night, copper stung her nose. When she touched her fingers to her upper lip, they came away red.

  The skinwitches had drawn near enough that she could sense their spidery hunting veils on a far horizon. They wouldn’t catch up while she slept, but they would gain ground all the same.

  The storm moved on, and the bleeding stopped before Tavin woke for his watch. She didn’t tell him about that, either. In the morning, for the fifth straight day, she lit the teeth.

  On the sixth day, she fell.

  Gray patches had drifted through her vision all morning. She’d wanted to believe it was only from Vultures scavenging at her sleep, but she knew better. Her bones sang no more, ached no more, only shuddered and howled. Still she kept the three teeth burning.

  The skinwitches had drawn too close. A day behind them, maybe less.

  And every time she slept, she let them close in.

  They’d made it across the plain, into the kind of country where crags and cliffs jutted up from dark forests like teeth of a beast bent on devouring the sky. By Fie’s guess, the summer solstice was only a moon and a half off, yet snow still lingered in the shade of impossibly tall pines. Every so often, when the boys’ backs were turned, Fie would scrub a fistful of slush over her face to sting herself awake.

  It didn’t work. Midway through the afternoon, gray choked her vision off. Fie stopped, bones screeching in protest as she fought to keep upright. They had to keep moving. The Sparrow tooth triad showed her Vulture webs prowling at the horizon, waiting for her to foul up. Keep moving. Keep your eyes open. Keep the oath—

  Her knees buckled. Someone called her name, once, twice—then nothing.

  She’d no notion of how much time passed before Tavin’s face swam into view. His voice followed a slow heartbeat later.

  “… too much. We need to get somewhere safe so she can rest.”

  “You managed in Gerbanyar,” the prince argued. “What if she just walks—”

  “No.” Tavin cut him off. “It’s not the same. I lost control. She’s been burning herself out for days.”

  “Have not,” she tried to grumble. Instead what she said was “Hrmmgh.”

  The world tipped. Tavin had shifted her in his arms. “Easy now,” he said in something uncomfortably close to a Safe voice, dabbing at her nose with one sleeve. Red spotted the cloth. “You’ll be fine, you just need to sleep it off.”

  She didn’t want to sleep it off. The Vultures were coming.

  “Hngh,” she protested before gray clouded her sight again.

  Everything spun as Tavin stood, gathering her to him. “We need to get to shelter.”

  No, she tried to say, but couldn’t manage even that. You have to keep moving, you have to keep your eyes open—

  “Are you sure?”

  “She’s the only reason the Vultures haven’t rounded us up already,” Tavin said tightly. “Yes, Jas. I’m sure.”

  Gray faded to black and took Fie with it.

  * * *

  She woke to the scratch of stone.

  “Let me.” That was Tavin.

  Scratch. Scratch. “I can do it.”

  “Jas—”

  “Just—just let me…” Scratch-scratch-scratch. “… give me a moment. It just has to catch—”

  “Go wash up, Jas,” Tavin sighed. “We probably won’t have another chance before we reach Trikovoi.”

  “If we don’t get captured by Vultures first,” Jasimir muttered amid a scuffle of sandal-nails.

  “We won’t.” Tavin went unanswered. Footsteps echoed and dwindled. Fie caught the rattle of flint, then a hiss and crack before orange light bloomed beyond her eyelids.

  She forced her eyes open. The blur of color and shadow sifted into jagged stone walls, a meager fire clambering up dried brush, a kneeling shadow with his back to her. The rest of the world filled in slow: air warmer than it had any right to be this far into the mountains, ground harder than dirt, furs heaped heavy and soft over her, copper in the back of her throat.

  Tavin had found them shelter after all. Groggy, she watched him add kindling to the fire and wondered if she could reach him from where she lay, what would happen if she ran her fingertips down his spine.

  Then Tavin turned to check on her, his face for once raw and open with worry. It softened into a smile when he saw she was awake. She
couldn’t help but smile back, too tired, too far off the roads to hate herself for it.

  “How long was I out?” Fie asked.

  Scratch-scratch-scratch. This time the scrape came from the prince’s return.

  “Not nearly long enough.” Tavin fumbled for the pot, dumped a few fistfuls of rice and dried peas and salt pork inside, then poured water over the mess and set it by the fire. “My turn to wash up. If I’m not back in an hour, assume cave ghosts got me and make a run for it. But eat dinner first.”

  Jasimir took Tavin’s place, frowning, as the Hawk strode away. Fie sat up, every muscle fighting back, and took a second look at their home for the night. Her pack had been repurposed as her pillow; the other packs sat nearby. She saw neither beginning nor end to the cave, only walls bending out of sight. A cooler draft wafted from the passage opposite of where Tavin had gone off to, yet their camp stayed balmier than the fire alone ought to have managed.

  She cleared her throat. “How’s it so warm in here?”

  The prince glanced at her, brief as a static shock. “There’s a hot spring farther in.”

  That explained it. The notion of washing up in a proper spring near made Fie weep. The notion of Tavin washing up in a hot spring had an entirely different effect on her.

  “You should leave him be.”

  Fie stared at the prince, heat rushing up her neck. “What?”

  “I’m not utterly oblivious.” Jasimir almost looked shamefaced. “But you’re only going to get hurt.”

  The fire in Fie’s skull had little to do with her notions of Tavin now. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re just distracting him,” Jasimir said, flat. “And I’m trying to help. Maybe it seems like he’s serious now, but he’s never been with someone for more than a moon.”

  “Keep your own damn business,” Fie snapped. “I’m not here to warm my bed. I’m busy keeping you both alive.”

  “Why?” She’d set Jasimir off good and true this time. “You’re not bound to anything. You could go any time, collect your kin, and leave us be. But you’re not doing this for the oath anymore, are you?”

  Fie’s fist knotted in the stolen fur. Her voice shook. “If I didn’t care about the oath, cousin, I’d have gladly handed you to Tatterhelm myself.”

  “Your friend Hangdog certainly seemed to care about keeping the—”

  “Enough.” Tavin emerged from the shadows behind them, startling Fie and the prince both. “You should be ashamed of that oath, Jas. It means both our castes are failing to protect our own people.”

  Prince Jasimir’s mouth opened and closed. He looked as mortified as Fie felt.

  She yanked a change of clothes and the bag of soap-shells free from her pack. “I’ll wash up,” she mumbled, tottering to her feet. Tavin reached to steady her, and she didn’t know if she wanted to veer away or stumble to him.

  She settled for neither, slipping past and into the dim passage, head a-whirl. Sure enough, the air thickened with steam the farther she went, soon yawning into a broad, clear pool. Waning daylight curled in the air, streaming from a gap far above.

  Fie took a moment to try her three Sparrow teeth. They only lasted a breath, just long enough to show wisps of Vulture tracking spells sloughing off. They must have latched on the moment she fell.

  She made a Vulture tooth last longer, searching for Tatterhelm’s supply master with one hand on a belt she’d taken from the dead skinwitches. The trail stretched far beyond the cave, distant enough to buy them at least a night.

  The thought of the oath perched on her shoulder while she stripped out of her clothes and brought them with her to wash in the stinging-hot water, cracking a handful of soap-shells with relish.

  What sort of Crow turned her back on the roads the Covenant bound her to walk? What sort of Crow practiced at swords? What Crow would cross a skinwitch, threaten a prince, and think folly over a bastard Hawk?

  A traitor like Hangdog, part of her said.

  A chief like Pa, another pushed back.

  And a third whispered, One too hungry to remember fear.

  She hadn’t any answer by the time she climbed out of the pool, scrubbed near-sore and happier for it. She didn’t know if she’d have an answer before she reached the Marovar, or even after.

  They were close. They would beat Tatterhelm to Trikovoi, and Pa would be her chief again, and the prince would be someone else’s problem, and Tavin … she couldn’t dwell on Tavin.

  She wrung out the sodden clothes and pulled on her dry spares, then padded back, sandals in hand. A bowl of dinner sat by the campfire; Prince Jasimir brushed past her, wordlessly bearing an armful of dishes and dirty clothes to the spring. Tavin was nowhere to be seen. She scowled. That meant he’d taken her watch.

  The glamour still needed to be pasted on again, no matter how tired she was. Fie laid her wet clothes out to dry by the fire, then plucked the bowl from the ground and went in search of the Hawk.

  She found him near the mouth of the cave, a handful of pelts at his side to ward off the frosty night ahead. Indigo pines carpeted the valley below them; threads of lightning stitched a sky plush with storm clouds.

  Tavin glanced back at her, and something like the lightning flickered through his eyes. Then that old, practiced paper-screen look walled it off once more.

  Fie decided the glamour could wait until after she’d eaten. She sat beside him, shoveling rice and pork into her mouth with dried panbread. The air’s chill slid down her waterlogged hair, clinging to her scalp. “This is my watch.”

  “How far off are they?” he asked quietly.

  Fie put one hand on a stolen fur, then called the Vulture tooth back to life. It showed her a clear path through the trees this time, somewhere beyond the storm. Less than a day off now. Creeping closer.

  She pointed to the ridge. “Out there. They won’t reach us tonight, but…”

  Tavin nodded. She waited for some new foolery: a jest about cave ghosts, a jibe about his cooking, anything. It didn’t come.

  “I can hide us again,” she offered.

  “They already know we’ve stopped here. Save your strength.”

  “Then let me take watch.” A cold wind buffeted her, chased by a soft rumble of thunder.

  Tavin winced. “It’s fine. You deserve a—”

  “Talk plain,” Fie interrupted, chewing over another mouthful of dinner. “You don’t want to deal with the prince. What’s got you so riled up? None of what he said was a surprise.”

  Tavin studied the horizon a long while before he spoke. “You remember the game I showed you? Twelve Shells?”

  “Aye.”

  “Remember how I said the palace plays its own versions?”

  “Aye. What’s it to do with the prince?”

  “How many castes are there in Sabor, Fie?”

  Twelve. Twelve castes, all told. She began to see where he was going. “How does it work?”

  “Each shell has a caste, and a value.”

  “Let me guess,” she said. “The Crow shell is worthless.”

  “And if there’s a draw … whoever has the Crow shell loses the game.”

  Fie shrugged and set her empty bowl aside. “I got rough news for you: they act even worse about Crows outside Twelve Shells.”

  “But that’s just it.” His face stayed steady; his hands couldn’t stay still, running over stone, picking at a loose thread, knotting together until his knuckles paled. “It’s everywhere. It’s everywhere. The Oleanders, the markets in Cheparok, everything. You’re right, you’ve been right the whole time, I know it, and Jas knows it, and the reason I don’t want to look at him is because we both told you we’d fix it and … and I don’t think we can.”

  Fie watched the storm, thunder rolling about her head as the wind picked up.

  “You can’t,” she said finally.

  “We said we would.”

  “You said you would help me after this,” she corrected. “And the prince swo
re to grant us Hawk guards, because that’s what I asked for.”

  He gave a short, bitter laugh. “We both know Hawks can’t be trusted.”

  “Aye, I’d fancy it if they’d treat us like people,” Fie said. “I’ll settle for them following royal commands, like it or not. It won’t change your Twelve Shells, it won’t stop towns shorting viatik. But it’ll say we’re part of Sabor, that the boy below the crown thinks we have worth. And royal opinions tend to catch on.” She settled back. “So why didn’t you say aught sooner?”

  His throat moved; the screen slipped back. “I … I never know what to say to you,” he admitted. “It’s usually wrong.”

  She couldn’t help a thin smile. “You’ve got a few things right.”

  “Not enough. I want…” He trailed off, then cleared his throat. “You’re here for the glamour, right?”

  “Now?” She reached for a Peacock tooth.

  He ducked his head, resigned. “It’s not like Tatterhelm’s turned around and gone home.”

  A tooth had never felt so heavy in Fie’s hand. She let it go. “He’s not at our door, either. It can wait.”

  “No,” he sighed. “Please. Let’s get it over with.” Tavin closed his eyes, like he awaited a magistrate’s sentencing. One she would hand down.

  She reached for him—then, for the first time, let her fingers brush his jaw, turning his face to her. The words fell before she could catch them. “What do you want?”

  He wore the thousand-sided look once more, but this time, in a thousand different ways, it said only one thing:

  You.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said instead, voice cracking.

  Thunder shook the sky.

  She’d known, she’d known, she’d known all along. Every look, every touch, every stray unpracticed smile, it had all said as much and more. And her own head had been dancing round it, insisting no Hawk could want her, searching for angles and motives, spinning lie after lie to cocoon the fearful truth.

  Heartbeat after heartbeat rattled in Fie’s ears, the seed of another fearful truth unfurling, working its way to the surface of her thoughts. It didn’t matter what they wanted. She knew that too well. She was a Crow chief, he was the prince’s Hawk; until this nightmare passed, they had to look after their own. The oath, the prince, they came first and naught else.