Fie blinked at him, hackles rising again at his imperious tone, but she kept silent and yanked open her own pack, pulling out the cooking pot.
He snapped the larger branches in twain and set about stacking them with methodical precision into the tidiest pyramid of firewood Fie had ever seen, a feat double impressive considering she burned bodies for a living. Jasimir rocked back on his heels and looked at her, impatient.
He’d built the green branches into the stack. Amateur. “That wood won’t light with just a flint,” Fie said.
“You’re the one who can start fires out here, remember?” the prince snapped. “Not me.”
“I don’t have Phoenix teeth to waste on every little thing,” Fie said. “I won’t squander one on a campfire. Find better firewood, or we don’t get dinner.”
“You go find it. You’re the one who won’t burn a tooth.”
Sparks caught on a different kind of tinder. Fie threw down the cooking pot. “Apologies if I won’t give up more on your account—”
“Apologies if extorting me had consequences,” Jasimir retorted. “You knew I was vulnerable, and you took advantage of that to drag me into an oath that could very well tear this kingdom apart.”
Fresh fire spiked up Fie’s backbone. “Don’t act like you didn’t invite this. If your scum-hearted father had done his job—”
“Don’t talk about my father like that.” Jasimir glowered. “You have no idea what it’s like.”
“I see it every time I use one of your miserable teeth!” Fie’s empty belly rumbled. “Aye, I’ve seen how you Phoenixes live. All the food you want, all the clothing, the wisest scholars to tutor you, the strongest Hawks to watch your walls, and the prettiest gentry to kiss your asses.”
Jasimir got to his feet, livid. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I can’t just force the nobility to do what I want. They’re already going to try to beggar their towns with new taxes and claim that it’s to pay for your Hawk escorts. I can’t fail my people like that.”
By every dead damned god, Fie was sick of bartering for her right to exist. She stood to face him down. “And who in the twelve hells do you think Crows are? Someone else’s people? Someone else’s problem? Because you already made my oath with the rest of Sabor: you protect your people and set our laws, and we pay for your crown. That’s your oath as king. You just don’t want to keep it with Crows.”
He took a step back, shaken. “It’s—it’s not that simple—”
“I don’t get to look away from the throats I have to cut. Why should you?” Wrath roared in her ears. “You can’t even admit—”
Fie cut herself off. The ground trembled beneath her soles.
The shaking was more than wrath, more than hunger. When she whipped about, she found torchlight closing in on them from both sides of the road.
“Oleanders,” she whispered. Jasimir cursed and snatched up his pack, then froze. The torchlight was too near for Sparrow teeth to save them.
Wrath turned to sick panic. How had she missed it? How long had she been off the roads, running from being a Crow, that she’d foul up this bad?
Fie’s head scrambled for a plan. Pa would have known what to do—a Peacock illusion—no, no time—Phoenix teeth?
Flame couldn’t stop steel, though. Moreover, she carried every Phoenix tooth in Sabor. If she called on them now and even one Oleander made it out to report back to Rhusana … if they saw Jasimir unscathed by fire …
Her time ran dry.
Within heartbeats, the Oleander Gentry had them surrounded. A dozen or so riders, all armed, all on horseback, clogging both sides of the road.
She’d have to scrap another way out.
“Now this is odd, eh?” A man dismounted, the oleander blossom shivering on his breast as he angled a bronze-tipped spear at Jasimir. He wore a crude mask: just two eyes gouged in a pale leather rag. “Two bone thieves. Made enough noise that we thought you were a proper mess of the rats.”
Fie sucked in a breath, eyes darting about the road. Most of these Oleanders had cloaked themselves in undyed cotton and linen. No fine lords this time. Behind the riders lurked another half-dozen people on foot. Too many to take on herself.
“Look at this.” The ringleader strolled over to Fie and drew Tavin’s short sword from its scabbard at her side. “Little one’s gone and stole steel teeth.”
She had to get them out.
No, her Chief voice said. Just the prince.
If she bought the prince a chance to get away … she could sort herself out after.
“We found it.” Fie didn’t feel like concocting a tale when the Oleanders didn’t care for the truth either way. All she needed was a distraction. She caught Jasimir’s eye, then sent a pointed look to the forest.
“Oh, they found it,” the Oleander man laughed, dropping Tavin’s sword in the dirt. He leaned so close, the rawhide drape of his mask brushed her nose. “Where’d you find it, dirty little thief?”
Silently she called two Sparrow teeth to life on her string, anchoring them to her weary bones. By now, finding balance was easy as a whistle.
A subtle shift rippled through the Oleanders: heads tilted and eyes shifted until they were all decidedly not looking at the prince. Jasimir’s face dropped as he caught on. Fie flicked her eyes to the forest again, then stared the ringleader down.
“Found it up your ass,” she announced, voice carrying clear over the road. Hisses swept about the Oleanders. They’d expected her to beg. Now they’d make her pay.
Fie shut her eyes. Whatever came next—it had to be enough to cover Jasimir’s escape. It had to.
But nothing came.
When she opened her eyes, the ringleader still stood before her, chuckling. Worse, Jasimir hadn’t moved, his face clouded with uncertainty.
“Two bone thieves,” the Oleander mused. “So peculiar. Not the only peculiar thing this moon, either. A friend, a very kind lady, sent along a message this way, you see. Look for bone thieves, traveling in three, maybe two. And she sent us … oh, some help.”
Fie caught a horrid slippery whisper, like a sinner’s last wet breath.
Two men appeared behind Jasimir and seized his arms, forcing him to his knees.
No, not—not quite men. The torchlight made ghouls of all the Oleanders in their masks and scarves, but something about the figures seemed … wrong.
“Let—go—” Jasimir thrashed.
Then she saw it. The men’s arms coiled about Jasimir’s elbows like asps, like rope, boneless and wrenched tight. Their clothing—Vulture make—slipped in odd places, slumping below shoulders and hips.
An arm slithered about Fie’s throat, a weight pressing against her back like a cold sweat. She gasped and jammed Pa’s broken sword into the place where a gut ought to be.
It sank to the hilt without a sound, but the flesh round her throat stayed iron-solid. She twisted until her captor swam into view.
She knew his face.
The skinwitch who’d ambushed them a week and a half ago. The one they’d left for the wolves.
His slack face had turned a sick gray. His mouth gaped in a silent, toothless hole; limp skin flapped like a flag where a nose belonged.
He had no eyes. Instead, torchlight slicked off a dark maroon paste where a skull ought to be.
If she’d had the breath to scream, she would have. All she could do was claw at the arm about her throat. The skin bent and stretched about her fingers, like it was filled with naught but air, yet the grip on her stayed crushing as stone.
“Skin-ghasts got no bones for you, little thief.” The Oleander man ruffled Fie’s hair hard enough to rip strands out, then whirled to face Jasimir. “Special present from the White Phoenix herself, since her pet Vulture’s taking too long. Wanted us to find someone very important to her and help him come home.”
Jasimir went still.
“The White Phoenix said if we find him, tell him he can come back, that they’ll sort it out with his father,
and it’ll all be fine.” The ringleader came to a halt one pace from Jasimir. “Of course, this important person, he’s a prince. Not a Crow, just mumming as one. Risky business to be sure, since we’ve our own way of dealing with Crows here. But all that prince would have to do is come forward, and we’d get him back to Dumosa, safe and sound. Easy as that. It’s just been one big misunderstanding, hasn’t it?”
The skin-ghast’s arm tightened, crushing the last of Fie’s breath.
Jasimir looked from Fie to the ringleader. Then he bowed his head. “What about … the Crows?”
Fie almost started laughing.
Hangdog had been right. She’d dragged the prince this far, she’d given everything she had and more, all for an oath he’d never meant to keep.
“Don’t you fret.” The Oleander flicked his hand. “We’ll handle them, Highness.”
Fie’s sight dimmed.
“Let’s get you back to Dumosa.” The Oleander waved off the skin-ghasts holding Jasimir, then reached out to help him up. “Your father’s waiting.”
Fie took some wretched comfort in the fact that even if she died here and now, the Covenant would not forget the oath. The prince could run from her, from Pa, from every Crow in Sabor, but he’d carry that oath to the grave and beyond.
It would have to be good enough.
Jasimir straightened. He took the Oleander’s hand.
Then he yanked the man closer. Steel flashed, a thorn darting through torchlight.
The Oleander man gaped, dumbfounded, at the dagger in his belly.
“There’s been a misunderstanding.” Jasimir jerked the dagger free. “I’d have sworn that prince is dead.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE CROW AND THE HEIR
Of all the sights Fie expected to see before she choked to death, Prince Jasimir vomiting on the corpse of an Oleander hadn’t made the list.
The world went dark, shouts fading from her ears—then the weight at her back abruptly slackened. She staggered forward, the skin-ghast’s arm still locked about her throat. Someone grabbed her, and then with a jerk, the arm fell away. She gasped and coughed, eyes watering.
The prince knelt beside her, pinning the skin-ghast’s arm to the ground with Tavin’s sword. Scraps of gray skin littered the ground around them, wriggling and unfurling still. The skin-ghast’s head flattened out like raw dough, then swelled again. Just beyond it lay the dead Oleander.
He still had a few strands of Fie’s hair clenched in a fist. Enough to make a new puppet for Rhusana, once they’d finished with her.
“Now can you spare a Phoenix tooth?”
Trust Jasimir to get petty at a moment like this. Fie shot him a glare and scrabbled for her string.
The Oleanders had drawn their steel, the other skin-ghasts lurching toward them with a faint whistle. Still too many to fight.
Not too many to outrun.
The Phoenix tooth answered Fie’s call.
A dead witch-king roared in her bones, and golden fire bloomed in a shrieking arc. The Oleanders’ horses crashed into one another as their riders swore. Yet they didn’t flee, as if they doubted her.
As if they doubted the wrath of a Crow.
Fie fed the fire her fear and her fury; the ghost of the Phoenix led the charge. Flames turned into a wall, into a wave, into the jaws of a terrible beast crashing down around them.
The Oleanders fled then.
“Grab what you can,” she wheezed. Jasimir pulled her to her feet and lunged for their packs.
Fie tossed the Phoenix tooth at the dead Oleander, burning every last strand of her hair in his hand. A golden wall stretched along the road, keeping the Oleanders at bay. The tooth wouldn’t last but a few heartbeats more, but Fie prayed that’d give them enough of a start.
She and Jasimir fled into the trees.
She didn’t know how long they ran, only that golden fire waned to more mundane orange that shrank behind them. Hoofbeats drummed through the forest, chased by shouts, taunts, torchlight. More than once she and Jasimir huddled in the brush until a pale rider or a slithering skin-ghast passed and the quiet dark returned.
Eventually they cleared the woods. A sickle midnight moon gleamed above, its weak light catching on the mellow slopes of a pasture studded with goats and cattle.
Fie pointed. A few dozen paces away, a crude wooden structure sheltered great heaps of hay. “There.”
Jasimir nodded. They hopped the pasture fence, then the one around the hay, and crawled into a discreet hollow.
For a long moment, neither of them stirred. Fie simply blinked at the sky, breathing in the dust-honey smell of the hay, trying to think of anything but the horror of what hunted them now. From the pounding of her heart and the shivers still rattling her ribs, that was a lost battle.
“Bronze,” Jasimir croaked. “The man I killed. He had a bronze-tipped spear. For Hawks at village outposts.”
“Aye,” Fie said.
Another creaking pause. Then: “I killed someone.”
“Tavin said…” Fie’s voice broke. “He said it gets easier.” Jasimir didn’t answer. She forced herself to sit up and dig in her pack. “Also said he barfed on the body the first time, too, so you’ve that to bond over later.”
Jasimir made an odd sound that turned into a wavering, desperate laugh. He covered his eyes. “What in all twelve hells did we just … What was that? What were those?”
Fie gulped. She could reckon with skin-ghasts the way she reckoned with sinners: distant enough to blunt the horror. Or at least she could try.
“Never heard of a Swan witch as could do that.” Fie pulled out strips of dried fruit and jerky and passed half to him, ignoring her trembling hands. “Looked like just … skins. But I never heard of a skinwitch as could do that, either.” The memory of clammy, empty skin clung too tight. She made herself bite off a chunk of meat and chewed awhile, too belly-sick to swallow but a little at a time. “Likely that’s what ran through our camp before Gerbanyar. You saw one close-up, aye? When the Vultures tried to jump us.”
“We thought it was a trick of the dark.”
“But half the group ran off once the others went down,” she mulled. “The fleshy ones. And the skin-ghasts only ran through our camp before, naught else. So they won’t attack on their own; they need people to follow. That’s good for us.”
Jasimir choked on his dried fruit. “How is any part of this good for us?”
“Oleanders don’t ride by day, not yet, and the Vultures are off our trail for now. We stick to the roads until nigh sundown, hole up somewhere off the track for the night, and likely we can skip their ken.” Fie uncorked a water skin and took a swig. “We can still make it to Trikovoi before the end of Peacock Moon.”
Jasimir let out a long breath and drew a new one. “How … After everything I’ve done, everything you said about my father … why do you still care about saving him?”
“I don’t.” She tilted her head back, letting her eyes close just a moment. If ever Fie had felt like mincing her words, it wasn’t now. “He’s been a bad king to me, and he doesn’t sound like all that good of a father to you. But it gets worse if Rhusana takes his place. And I can’t save any of them alone. Not Tavin, not my kin, not even the king. Not without the master-general’s help.”
“Aunt Draga will get your family back,” Jasimir said. “She already has to rescue Tavin, since they’re blood relatives. The master-general will follow the Hawk code.”
Part of her dared to hope he was right. The rest of her called it foolishness. She couldn’t think on which one hurt more. Instead she said, “I’ll take watch.”
“We should split it.” Jasimir sat upright.
She shook her head. “If the Oleanders come round, I’ll need to set off Sparrow teeth soon as I can.”
Jasimir rubbed his face. “Then I’ll help you stay awake. We can take turns sleeping around dawn.”
If Fie was too tired to argue with that, then she needed the help. “Do what you li
ke,” she sighed.
The night returned to quiet, broken only by muffled lowing of cattle and the iron toll of slaughter bells.
One of Fie’s untamable questions broke loose: “Why didn’t you go with the Oleanders?”
Jasimir didn’t answer for so long, she wondered if he’d fallen asleep anyhow. “I had a tutor,” he said at last. “A scholar on the ethics of ruling—everything I need to weigh when I make decisions for the good of the kingdom. She’s written dozens of scrolls on political power and rulers who succeeded and rulers who failed. There’s a wing in the royal library named for her. She was one of my mother’s best friends before … before.”
He blinked, as if searching the stars for answers to a question he couldn’t ask aloud yet.
“She said exactly what you did. That people pay me, in loyalty and in blood and in coin, because if enough people do, then I can repay them by making their lives better as their king. But…” He shook his head. “She didn’t say anything about the Crows. Not that the nation would collapse without you. Not how the other castes prey on you anyway. Her life’s work is the architecture of countries. She—she has to know. But she didn’t even talk about it once.” He swallowed. “There’s … no real reason for me not to know, is there?”
“No,” Fie said quiet. “There isn’t.”
He buried his face in his hands again. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. “The most powerful people in the kingdom can’t even say the problem is real.”
“They know it is,” Fie said grimly, scanning the dark for torches. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be so hell-bent on pretending it isn’t.”
“I don’t know how to fix it.”
And I don’t think we can.
Fie’s eyes burned. “Tavin said that, too,” she said, hoarse. “You can’t fix it, not everywhere and not all at once. But you can begin by keeping the oath. By telling the Splendid Castes and Hunting Castes that we’re part of Sabor.”
“I hate it,” Jasimir admitted. “I hate being the heir. Nothing can ever be simple or easy. Most of the time it just feels like … like choosing which finger to cut off that day.” He glanced over at her and sighed. “And here I am whining about hard choices to the girl whose family is being held hostage by my enemies.”
The Merciful Crow Page 25