Now those same servants swarmed thick as bees about the tent, which had been set up just for this dinner as far as Fie could tell. It wasn’t near big enough for all the attendants darting about with trays, bowls, platters, pitchers, and more; it was made all the worse as they tried to give Fie a wide berth, turning her corner of the table into an oasis in a storm. Fie had been sure to scrub herself even cleaner than the prince, but the servants had apparently caught word that a Crow would be in attendance.
“Lord Geramir,” Jas said, “are you aware some towns are attempting to burn their own plague-dead?”
The Peacock lord coughed into his wine goblet. A plate landed before Fie with a thud. The server scuttled away near as abrupt as they’d appeared.
Lord Geramir dabbed at his mouth with a fine silk hand towel, then flicked it away for a server to pluck from the ground. “I’m sure they’re just following the queen’s example.”
Fie snuck a look at Draga to see how she’d gone about managing the slab of beef. It seemed to involve the delicate forked tongs beside her plate. She didn’t miss Geramir’s uneasy glance when she picked up a silver knife.
“I would appreciate it if you made it clear to your arbiters that the Crows must handle any outbreaks.” Jasimir’s own knife scraped against the plate as he sliced through the beef. “It’s not safe for anyone else to dispose of the bodies.”
Lord Geramir bobbed his head. “This will all pass soon enough.”
“Geramir.” Draga set her forked tongs down. “The words you’re looking for are ‘Yes, Your Highness.’”
He squirmed, tugging at his collar. “It would be unseemly to directly contradict Her Majesty … There are those who would think I am showing favoritism to, er, to the…” Geramir’s gaze skimmed over Fie and Tavin a moment before darting back to his plate. “You know what I mean.”
“Do I?” Tavin asked, artificially pleasant. The lamplight gleamed off the circlet sitting in his short-cropped hair as he tilted his head.
Draga cleared her throat, but Prince Jasimir blinked at the governor, slow and deliberate. “I’m afraid we don’t know what you mean, Lord Geramir.” He let the Peacock fidget a moment. “If you’re saying your only two options are to let the Crows continue to keep the Sinner’s Plague in check as they’ve done for centuries, or to let your land rot because this week’s queen told you to, the choice seems fairly obvious to me.”
“No, of course…” Geramir looked about for another hand towel, then settled for dabbing his brow with a sleeve. “I’m just saying, you can issue your own orders after you’re crowned a week from now, and it makes no sense for me to burn bridges when we could just wait it out—”
“‘Wait it out’?”
The tent fell silent as everyone looked at Fie. She was staring at the Peacock lord, cheeks burning.
“I’m not particularly concerned,” Geramir said, waving a hand. “The arbiters know what’s best for their towns, and—”
“The arbiter of Karostei was the one turning away Crows,” Fie snapped, anger spiking up her gut. “He died wearing the Sinner’s Brand, along with a quarter of Karostei. We left that town in ashes. Can a quarter of your population wait it out?”
Lord Geramir’s face darkened. “This is absurd,” he said. “Did you ever consider you might be biased because it’s your job to take the dead? You’re wading around in it all day, but—”
“You aren’t concerned that the plague will reach your home.” This time, it was Jasimir who cut him off. Lord Geramir shrank a bit but gave a noncommittal shrug. “Do you think my father died of the plague?”
“Her … Her Majesty says so,” Geramir stammered.
Fie made herself put her knife down. “But you don’t think you could catch it. You think the gentry are above the plague.”
“It’s called the Sinner’s Plague for a reason,” he returned. He picked up his goblet, found it empty, and set it back down with a scowl. “Forgive my indelicacy, Your Highness, but your father was not … known for his temperance. Besides, surely the Covenant would not have sent someone unfit to the Peacock caste—”
“Last week I cut the throat of the Sakar girl,” Fie said. “You know the family? Nice estate up north. Beautiful cedars. No more children. Their only heir showed the Brand at sunrise, and I burned her corpse by sundown. Not four days ago I watched the plague take the Karostei arbiter where he stood for damning a hundred souls rather than call for Crows. You can tell yourself what you please about the Covenant, and you can tell yourself the plague’s no concern of yours. One way or another, you’ll still feed me and mine.”
For the first time, fear flashed through the Peacock lord’s eyes. But something about it struck her as wrong—and then she placed it.
Peacocks got a certain look when the plague took one of their own: rattled, as they could no longer deny that, for all their fine ways and sturdy walls, their house was vulnerable as any other.
But Geramir didn’t look like a man invaded by doubt. His fear was that of the gambler who’d wagered the whole of his fortune only to realize that the bones had landed bad.
The hush over the table stretched unnaturally long.
It took Fie a moment to ken why: the only people in the tent were seated at the table.
“Where are the servants?” she asked, and the weight of the quiet seemed to push back. The camp ought to have been ringing with noise as they prepared to march at dawn. Her stool tipped as she bolted to her feet, heart pounding.
No—not just her heart. A rumble shook the earth, then another and another, turning the table into a clattering mess. Strange, low cries echoed through the walls of the tent.
For all its soldiers, the camp was no safer than any other house. And from the flicker in Master-General Draga’s eyes, that realization was dawning.
Fie started for the tent flap. Tavin caught her shoulder. “Wait, we don’t know what’s—”
“No—” She twisted free and stumbled out of his reach. “My band—I need to—”
Fie yanked the tent flap aside and found—nothing.
Twilight had drenched the camp in dark, dusty shades of blue, but not so much as a breeze stirred the canvas, stillness lying like a fog over the rows and rows of tents. Then Fie picked out darker, stunted shapes along the lanes: Hawk soldiers staring into the oncoming night, faces blank.
Every single one was on their knees.
Something monstrous and impossible swelled near the banks of the river, then a second, then a score. Fie heard Tavin’s sharp breath at her back but couldn’t tear her eyes away; her head couldn’t quite process what she saw until it was too clear to deny.
Not a hundred paces off, bleeding, empty mammoth skins swayed in an unyielding march toward them, trampling an unswerving path through tent and frozen Hawk alike.
And above the muffled screams and the crunch of tentpoles, clear, musical chimes pierced the air, needle-sharp.
More empty-faced Hawks stamped up the path in inhumanly even time, bearing a glittering covered sedan on their shoulders. Gauzy white silk curtains fluttered demurely with each step, dusk catching on the silver and pearl wrought into its supports.
“Fie,” Tavin said, “please, get behind me.”
Jasimir’s voice rose behind them before she could argue. “Tav—”
Fie’s belly dropped further. She knew that tone. She finally tore her eyes away to look back.
Lord Geramir had drawn a dagger on Jasimir. That wasn’t what had stopped the prince in his tracks, though, one hand frozen halfway to a knife up a sleeve.
What had stopped Jasimir was the blade Draga now held at his throat.
There was no way out.
There was no way out for any of them.
The footsteps of the sedan-bearers stopped with a flourish of chimes; the thunder of mammoth footfalls persisted like a dwindling pulse.
In a whisper of satin and a cascade of silvery-white hair, Queen Rhusana glided out from the curtains of the sedan, drawing herself
up to her full height. The shadows of mammoths rose behind her like a tide.
A shallow smile sliced across her face like the birth of a waxing moon.
“I’m here to make a deal,” she said.
CHAPTER NINE
NEVER
The last time Fie had been in Draga’s tent, Khoda and Steward Burzo had knelt before them.
Now she was the one on her knees, a knifepoint pressed between her shoulder blades to keep her there. Jasimir stood at her side between her and Tavin. Both lordlings had been allowed to stay on their feet, but their hands were bound behind their backs like hers, with a half dozen Hawks just waiting for either of them to make a move. Lanterns pressed muted light against the canvas walls, the daylight long fled.
“I have to admit, I’m proud of this one,” Rhusana allowed as she slipped through the tent flap. The master-general herself stood at guard outside, face rigid and blank. “Your aunt wants so much, Jasimir, and yet hurting you … not an option.” She shook her head, drifting to a halt before the three of them. Chimes in her headdress tinkled, swaying with thick snow-white braids that hung in intricate loops along the sides of her skull, crowning a long, sleek fall of unadorned hair. “She doesn’t even want her own son on the throne. It took some real creativity to find a way in.”
Sweat was beading along the queen’s upper lip. Rhusana might be a witch like her, but they were both still human. A display like this had to be pushing her limits.
“You can’t hold the whole camp like this much longer,” Fie spat.
Rhusana locked eyes with someone behind Fie and inclined her head. The tip of the knife sank, just a hair, into her back. Fie yelped and jerked forward.
“When I want a parasite’s opinion, I’ll ask the Peacocks,” the queen said, smooth as silk, and nodded again. The tip of the knife dug into Fie’s back once, twice, less than a knuckle deep but far enough to draw blood.
“STOP—” Tavin jolted forward only for a Hawk to lodge their spear between his knees. He stumbled to the ground. The Hawk pressed the spearhead to his throat.
“She’s right,” Tavin snarled into the grass. “You can’t keep Mother in check forever. She’s fighting you, isn’t she?”
Rhusana glowered down at him. “You always did underestimate me. She may not want to hurt Jasimir, but killing him would hurt the king’s legacy. Believe me, her desire for that runs deeper than a god’s grave. And once I feel like letting her go…” She flicked a hand and the spear lifted from Tavin’s neck. “I have hostages. So if we’re done with the pleasantries, we have business to discuss. Believe it or not, I’m not just here to show off.”
“Which of you killed my mother?” Jasimir rasped, the first time he’d spoken since they’d been captured. “You? Or Father?”
Rhusana rolled her shoulders. “I didn’t ask him to do anything he didn’t want. But that’s in the past. It’s time to think of Sabor’s future.”
“What do you care about Sabor?” Tavin pushed himself back up onto his knees, eyes burning.
“It’s my home,” Rhusana answered, “whether it wants me or not. Something I think you of all people would be familiar with, as the king’s toy bastard. Regardless, this”—she waved a glittering, gem-armored hand at the walls of the tent—“isn’t good for the country. Asking them to pick sides, asking them to choose a new queen over a worn-out dynasty. No one wants a civil war; they just want to go about their lives like always. They want stability.”
“And how does fouling up plague outbreaks help stability?” Fie spat.
She heard the knife shift in the grip of the Hawk behind her and braced for Rhusana’s wrath. Then Tavin barked, “Touch her again and I will die stopping you. Try keeping your hold on Mother then.”
The Hawk behind her went still as the queen’s silver-clawed fingers curled into a fist.
“The outbreaks,” Rhusana said slowly, “are a reminder that every caste fears the same thing. I want to unite the country as it has never been united before, beyond our outdated divisions, by uniting us against a common threat. We will no longer be twelve castes but one nation.”
A chill ran down Fie’s spine.
“I’m not following. You’ll unite Sabor against the plague?” Tavin asked.
“Against the Crows.” Fie wanted to laugh; she wanted to scream.
“Both, really,” the queen admitted. “Most of the country can’t tell the difference. They’re already on my side, whether they know it or not. Everything they lose to the plague, they’ll blame it on the Crows, and nothing brings people together like a common foe. In the meantime, they’ll adapt to handling plague-dead on their own, and any Crow with an ounce of sense will find some other nation to pollute.”
Jasimir stared at the queen a long moment. Then he said, “I don’t know what you’re going to offer us, and I don’t care. I don’t want any part of it.”
Some part of Fie eased at that, even if she didn’t want to own to it. It didn’t change that they were prisoners with enemies at every side, but if she’d lost Jas, she’d lose all hope.
She just had to let Rhusana gloat and preen and burn out her strength on the camp. Then Jas and Tavin could do something clever to buy Fie time, and she’d get her teeth, and they’d save her band, and—and—
There was still a way out.
There had to be.
Rhusana was laughing. “We don’t have to do things my way. I told you I was here to make a deal. I want to arrive in Dumosa tomorrow with Prince Jasimir at my side, and I want us to be coronated together as King and Queen of Sabor, to give the traditionalists the descendant of Ambra they want. Rhusomir will be our heir, and your brother will be kept as a very comfortable hostage, to guarantee the master-general’s obedience. You’ll be of your own independent mind, free of my influence. We’ll rule a united Sabor.” She extended a hand to Jasimir, then realized his hands were still bound and brushed a lock of hair from his temple. “You’ll be able to come home.”
Jasimir spat in her face.
“You may be willing to sell the Crows for your throne,” he said, cold and dark and sharp as obsidian. “I won’t fail my people. I’d rather die than rule with you.”
Something serpentine flickered in Rhusana’s pale, silvery eyes. She carefully, gracefully wiped the spittle off her face with a silken sleeve, but Fie saw how her hands shook.
A horribly serene smile flexed across her face. “When I said ‘Prince Jasimir,’ I didn’t mean just you.”
She slipped a hand under Tavin’s chin and tilted it up.
“Tell me,” she murmured, “haven’t you wanted to be a king?”
“Tavin, you can’t.” Jasimir’s voice rose. Tavin tried to twist out of her grip, but she tightened her fingers on his jaw.
“You’re the eldest. You’re the son of a Hawk and a Phoenix, just like your brother. So why does he get the crown and you get to pay for it?” She looked pointedly at the burn scar tangled around Tavin’s hand, the mark King Surimir had left on him. “Why should you suffer for the king’s choices?”
Fie ground her teeth, scouring the tent for any scrap of an opportunity she could use while Rhusana’s focus was on Tavin. The queen could offer Tavin a hundred thrones, and he’d spurn them all.
Sure enough, Tavin gritted out, “You have nothing to offer me.”
“Don’t I?” Rhusana tilted her head. “You’ve already spent so much of your life pretending.” Tavin swallowed. “Pretending you had the power to do what you want … the power to protect what you care for. Don’t you want the real thing?”
The prince’s voice shook. “Don’t—don’t give up on me, Tav.”
Rhusana leaned down to whisper in Tavin’s ear. The only word Fie caught was crown. Then the queen straightened, flicking her hair over her shoulder with a shattered screech of chimes. Tavin looked nauseous.
Beyond that, though—a flicker of hunger.
A thick, sickening hush curdled over the tent.
Tavin’s eyes landed on Fie, an
d for the second time that night, her blood ran cold.
She knew that look. She’d seen it on a bridge over a dust-choked canyon, screams all around them, moons ago.
I will never let anything happen to you.
Tavin turned from her.
“No—” His voice broke, and her heart leapt with a terrible, vain hope that he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t do this to her, not for any price, not even for a crown.
That hope crumpled when he continued, “No … harm comes to Fie.”
It felt like the moment he’d cut the ropes of the bridge, stone cold and irreparable. But this time, only Tavin stood on solid ground. This time, she and Jasimir were falling into the jaws of their foes.
“You can’t!” she shrieked as Jasimir thundered, “She will damn Sabor!”
“That’s quite enough of that.” Rhusana snapped her fingers. The butt of a spear slammed into the side of Jasimir’s jaw. He dropped, eyes shuttering.
“She’ll get us all killed,” Fie screamed. “Me, Wretch, Madcap, Pa. You can’t—you can’t—”
“I’m saving what I can.” Tavin stared at the ground. “And putting a better king on the throne.”
“Twelve hells you are—”
“I’m doing this for you,” he whispered.
“Remove her,” Rhusana ordered.
At that Tavin looked up. “No harm comes to Fie. Swear it.”
“I swear,” Rhusana said. “She’ll be kept in Lord Geramir’s mansion for her own safety, and you can”—her lip curled—“visit her as you please once things settle down.”
Arms stiff as iron yanked Fie to her feet, though she thrashed and clawed and howled like a furious cat.
“You come to me again and I’ll tear you apart,” she hissed, humiliated to feel hot tracks of tears burning down her cheeks. “You’ve killed us all, you bastard, you’ve killed us all. I’ll cut your throat before you lay so much as one of your traitor hands on me.”
The Faithless Hawk Page 12