By the time they found a Crow shrine, Fie had gnawed through the better part of three mint plants. Like Maykala’s shrine, this one lurked in the safety of trees and teeth, shrouded by both fat-leaved shrubs and Sparrow magic.
At first, Tavin and Jasimir just gaped when Fie plucked a vine from the trunk of a massive red flaybark tree and began climbing. Not that she blamed them; their hair wouldn’t stand on end like hers did here, on the burial grounds of a Crow god. To most of Sabor, this would appear as one more stretch of forest.
“We’re dead men, Jas,” Tavin said. “She’s abandoning us after all.”
Fie briefly contemplated whether scalping a member of her band would make her a bad chief.
“If you’re just going to laze about, then aye, I’m abandoning you.” She hoisted herself up to a branch thicker around than she. “Shrine’s this way.”
There was a pause, then she caught, “We’re definitely dead men, Jas. She’s completely addled.”
Fie ignored him and kept climbing.
Once she broke through the wards of Sparrow misdirection and a touch of Peacock glamour, the shrine itself showed clear enough. Wooden rafts coasted on swells of smooth red boughs, staggered like a poppy-sniffer’s notion of Cheparok. Palm thatches tented over low walls and woven screens. A wood-carved figure twice Fie’s height perched above the platforms, lashed to the tree by thick vines that wound round its crossed legs and the four wings it had in place of arms. Four faces stared her down with eyes carved like four-pointed stars, each mouth twisted into a mask of fear, wrath, mirth, or sorrow.
“Cousins.” The voice struck from beneath a palm thatch like a viper, thin and swift. “What brings you to the shrine of Crossroads-Eyes?”
It was an innocent question by the ear of any other caste. Fie knew better.
“The dead gods’ Covenant led us here.” She’d learned the words at Pa’s knee. “And the dead gods’ mercy will call us onward.”
A woman emerged from the shadows of the highest thatch. A faded crowsilk tunic hung loose from her wiry frame, and a twist of rag looped to cover one eye and knotted in short gray curls. The other iron-hard eye fixed down on Fie as she pulled herself onto the lowest platform.
“You’re young for a chief,” she observed.
Fie got to her feet. “You’re old for a Crow.”
The shrine-keeper’s mouth cracked into a smile more tooth than humor. It skewed toothier when the boys climbed up behind Fie. “And who’re these, then?”
“My band.” Fie jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Mongrel and Pissabed.”
“You leave your packs below?”
“Haven’t got any. We’re here for a restock.”
The woman’s eye narrowed. “What happened?”
“Oleanders,” Fie said. It was enough of the truth to stand. And any Crow knew sore well how much awful possibility could be stuffed into just that one word.
Sure enough, the shrine-keeper waved her up. “I ken that, little chief. Let’s get you lot kitted out.”
Fie scrambled over the broad shallow arch of a branch, following a path chewed by scores of other nail-studded soles. Her breath caught as she scoured for footing. The tree’s meat flashed green in too many patches to be the recent work of one woman.
Vultures. One more trap—
Fie stomped her panic down. The shrine was hidden, the shrine was safe—there was another answer, it couldn’t be another ambush, Crows had one rule—
And Hangdog had tossed that rule over the bridge with her and the lordlings.
“Other Crows been through today?” Fie did her best to sound nonchalant. Crossroads-Eyes snarled and grinned and wept above, the wooden faces uncanny human under dapples of sun.
“You’re the second band this morning,” the keeper answered. “Something got Crows spooked of Cheparok?”
“Wouldn’t know.” That was a barefaced lie this time. Fie’s head steadied anyhow. Lies were more familiar territory.
The shrine-keeper hummed as she retreated into the shade of the platform. Fie stepped up and blinked until her eyes cleared of the roof’s shadows.
“Packs.” The woman pointed to heaps of oiled canvas. “Salt over there. And the barrels got all manner of food that’ll keep. Last band left a bounty. Seemed to think it’d be needed.”
Fie could feel the woman’s eye on her like a fingertip trailing down the back of her neck. She just handed packs to Jasimir and Tavin, who had the sense to keep their mouths shut for once.
“How’s your string?” asked the keeper.
“Full enough.” Fie could knot new teeth into the gaps when they made camp. “I’ve more teeth for the shrine if they’re needed.”
“They’re not.”
“It’s all I have to trade for,” Fie said, blunt.
The shrine-keeper weighed a small, battered cooking pot by hand, then passed it to Fie. “No trades. Take what you need. You know how it goes, little chief. Feed the Crows.”
Fie tried not to wince as she watched the prince and the Hawk pile salt, dried meat, and strips of pounded fruit into their packs, wiping out more of the stash than they ought. “Aye.”
“Sleeping mats.” The woman handed over three straw rolls, then added a fat, clattering sack. “And soap-shells.”
Fie claimed those with particular relish—then froze as a wail rose from another platform. Tavin and Jasimir too went still. The cry turned high and tremulous, murmurs chasing it, and Fie let out a breath. Only a baby, and judging by the lungs, a healthy one at that.
The shrine-keeper waved a gnarled hand as the wail turned to gurgles. “That tot’s bound to scream down the sky itself,” she groused. “Every hour, he tries.”
Fie paused, counting up turns of the last moon. She was about to spend three more weeks dragging the lordlings about the hills. That made for a different sort of challenge. “Can you spare any laceroot seed?”
The keeper’s gray brows rose. She flipped the latches on a worn trunk and dug inside. “You a-feared of getting with child, too?”
Tavin knocked over a pot of sandal-nails and swore under his breath.
Fie tried to ignore the pointed look the keeper gave him. She did not succeed. A flush nipped at her ears and neck. “I’ve no time for bleeding, let alone rutting.”
The keeper sifted a fistful of black seed into a palm-size pouch, enough to keep this moon’s bleeding at bay a few weeks. If Fie ran out before they made it to Trikovoi, she had bigger problems.
“Which way do you head now?” the woman asked, passing the pouch over.
“North.”
“Other band went west, so the north’s clear. You’ll need cold gear past Gerbanyar. I got none of that here.” She handed Fie robes, masks, a map charred into goat-hide, a flint, and a jug of flashburn. “There. Ought to set you until your next viatik.”
“Thank you,” Fie said.
“Thank Crossroads-Eyes,” the shrine-keeper said dryly, jerking her head at the dead god. “Sees all your choices. Seems they wanted you to choose your way here.”
“To be sure.”
“Watch your back out on that road. Other Crows this morning, they said something odd.” The woman’s voice hardened. “Said Hawks ran through their camp last night. Not Oleanders—Hawks. Said they were looking for a girl chief and two false Crows.” Fie froze. “And said there’s a high price on those heads now.”
Somewhere in the shadows of the shrine, the baby’s cry rose again.
Fie heard a faint, deliberate rustle behind her that said Tavin was one wrong word from showing how false a Crow he was.
“Now I figure, we’re Crows, we got one rule. I’m looking after my own, aye? And any chief, well, she’s got to be following that rule, too. You strike me as a chief too sharp to break it.” The keeper’s eye drilled into Fie’s. “Not a girl caught up in two mummers’ troubles. If you see that girl out there, you make sure that trouble doesn’t come down on all our heads. You hear?”
Fie didn’t blink. “Aye.”
“Then Crossroads-Eyes steer you safe. Go deal the dead gods’ mercy.”
They left with nary another word, picking their way down a lattice of vines and chittering tree-rats. Once they were earthbound and far enough from the shrine, Fie swung her pack off and dug for a fistful of dried panbread. Jasimir’s shoulders sank with relief as he and Tavin did the same.
A hand full of panbread thrust into her sight. Fie looked up. Tavin held his breakfast out to her. Jasimir blinked, a strip of his own panbread still outstretched for his Hawk to taste. After a moment, he held the rest out to Fie as well.
Fie’s throat closed. She fished out a pouch of salt and sprinkled it over their food. Her voice cracked as she said, “Go ahead.”
“Thank you, chief,” Tavin said quietly.
They returned to merciful silence, birdsong and rustling breezes washing through the air. Over and over, Fie repeated the shrine-keeper’s words in her head: A girl chief. Two false Crows. Trouble on all our heads.
Look after your own.
This was the road Pa wanted her to take. The road Crossroads-Eyes wanted her to choose. And she couldn’t fuss either of them now.
A question curled up as she chewed. “That skinwitch said the queen raised ghasts. Never heard of witchwork like that. And the queen’s no witch anyhow.”
Tavin and Jasimir traded glances. “I had … a theory,” Jasimir began, hesitant. “You’ve heard of the ceremony to marry into the Phoenix caste, yes?”
Fie nodded. “Seen something like it in Swan teeth. You lose your Birthright, aye?”
“Correct.” Jasimir frowned. “Wait—what do you mean, you’ve seen it in Swan teeth?”
“Swans don’t rut inside the caste,” Fie said around a mouthful of panbread. “At least, not to conceive. They find a willing partner outside the caste, and there’s a ritual, and the partner loses their Birthright until the next new moon. Meanwhile they try real hard to make a baby Swan.”
Tavin let out a long, exasperated sigh. “Of course. All this time we wondered how Rhusana pulled it off, and we could have just asked a Crow.”
“Not the first time, won’t be the last,” Fie muttered. “So what’d she pull off?”
Jasimir ran a hand through his ragged hair. “The Phoenix ceremony is supposed to be permanent. Even witches lose their Birthright, and it never comes back.”
Fie sorted it herself. “You think Rhusana did the Swan ceremony to herself, so her Birthright came back.”
“And I think she’s a Swan witch,” Jasimir finished.
At that, Fie put down her panbread and stared.
“She has no witch-sign,” Tavin added hastily. “And the odds of a Swan witch being born are—”
“I know what they are.” Fie’s voice had gone frigid. The Swan caste had only three dead gods. Three solitary witches in over a thousand-score people.
Any more than that, and they’d rule Sabor.
There was a hard reason why their witches weren’t allowed to leave the Swan island even after coming of age. A hard reason why their Sparrow servants were clothed crown to foot, finger to toe.
In a Swan witch’s hands, the desire Birthright became more than a way to command attention. When they caught hold of even a single strand of another’s hair, they could seize that person’s desire and twist it—and them—as that witch pleased.
All it would take was one stray hair from Fie’s head, delivered to Queen Rhusana, and one scrap of hate the queen could seize on. Then Fie could wake one night to slit the boys’ throats without a flinch.
“You knew,” Fie accused, stacking up every horrid piece. “That’s why you ran.”
Jasimir shook his head, adamant. “It didn’t sound possible until now. All three Swan witches are accounted for, she has no sign, and Tavin and I witnessed the marriage ceremony ourselves. We didn’t know she could lose her Birthright for only a moon. I swear, I came to your band for help because Rhusana allied with the Oleanders, and for that reason alone.”
Fie scowled, baleful, at the dirt. “Aught else you want to tell me? Tatterhelm’s got a meaner cousin? The king’s really two asps in a fancy robe?”
“I still don’t know what Viimo meant about ghasts,” Tavin said.
“Me either.” Fie’s gut twisted. Pa had taught her how to call Swan teeth just on principle, for they had but a largely useless few. Still, in the handful of times she’d blinked through the life in a dead Swan’s spark, she’d heard no whisper of ghasts. And that, like so many things, bode ill.
Grim silence settled over them once more as Fie plaited a whole new set of troubles into the ones on her head.
Then Tavin’s voice broke in. “I really have to know: Which one of us is Pissabed?”
He didn’t want to be a Crow no more.
Fie had rolled Hangdog’s tooth between her thumb and forefinger since they’d made camp by the flatway at sundown, so long that it had pressed trenches into both fingers. She didn’t stop as she stared into the campfire now, a half-eaten heap of dinner cooling in the bowl beside her.
Hangdog had been born to be a chief like Fie. But he’d been willing to give it all up to get what he wanted.
She couldn’t help but wonder what that was like.
“What if…” Jasimir’s voice rattled her from her thoughts. “What if we went to the Hawks? Before Trikovoi, I mean.”
Fie closed her eyes. She knew why the prince would ask; she knew the sense it made in his head. But ten hostage kin and one dead traitor had dragged on her heart all day, and all she wanted was to eat her dinner and not fight until dawn.
Then, to her surprise, Tavin spoke up. “We can’t trust the Hawks.”
Fie blinked at him.
So did Jasimir, his face darkening. “Then why are we even going to the Marovar?”
“Because the Hawks in the Marovar answer to the master-general.”
“They all answer to Aunt Draga. If we find a league marker, I can just put my hand in the fire to show I’m a Phoenix, and—”
“We’ll never get that close,” Tavin said, terse. “We look like Crows. The best-case scenario is that they laugh us away. The worst case … You saw what they did in Cheparok.”
Fie knew he didn’t just mean the bribes. It rattled her, though, to hear him say it.
“Not all Hawks are bad,” Jasimir argued. “For the dead gods’ sake, you’re a Hawk.”
Tavin shook his head. “It doesn’t take all Hawks to get us killed. It just takes one. I’ll sent a message-hawk to the master-general once we reach the Marovar, but out here, I don’t trust—” He cut off, caught his breath, and closed his eyes. “I—I don’t trust other Hawks to protect us.”
A stiff silence fermented over the campfire.
Fie rolled Hangdog’s tooth in her fingers until it hurt. Never have to burn another body, never deal with Oleanders. We’d forget he was a Crow.
“Fine,” the prince said eventually. “Knowing Rhusana, she’ll want to take the throne in about two moons, on the summer solstice like a true Phoenix would. That leaves a moon and a half for her to … to remove Father.” Fie tilted her head at that. “One week for Father’s funeral, one more for the full coronation ceremony. She won’t settle for anything less. So if we don’t make it to the Marovar by the end of Peacock Moon…”
“King Surimir has a hunting accident,” Tavin finished.
Peacock Moon yielded to Crow Moon; then Phoenix Moon began the new year at solstice. Crow Moon meant roadside vendors peddling charms to ward off sin, a month to cast off the year’s follies and misfortunes, shorter viatik, shorter tempers.
Crow Moon was ripe for tragedy, like a king tumbling down a long set of stairs. Fie’s brow furrowed. “Rhusana goes straight to the throne after him? Thought the king had a brother.”
“Hunting accident,” Prince Jasimir said, grim.
“But didn’t your uncle have a daughter?”
“Hunting accident.”
Fie gave the prince a long, narrow look. “How’d the queen first try to off you, again?”
Tavin coughed into his fist. It sounded strangely like “hunting accident.”
“Maybe you lot ought to lay off hunting awhile,” Fie said.
Tavin laughed outright at that. Jasimir, surprisingly, covered a smile with a hand. Fie couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen him smile.
Fie couldn’t help grinning back. Maybe it would be all right, at least for a little while. They weren’t her kin, but the sharp edges of their pomp had worn off enough to abide for now.
Then Jasimir set his empty bowl down. “I’ll take watch.”
“No,” Tavin said, swift as a gate slammed shut. “Leave it to Fie and me.”
The prince frowned. “You know Mother wouldn’t want me to be deadweight.”
“She’d want me to do my job,” Tavin said, stiff. “And that’s keeping you alive.”
“You managed it fine in the palace.”
“We’re not in the palace.”
The prince’s gaze shifted to linger on Fie. His frown deepened. “Suit yourself.” He rolled out his sleeping mat and lay down without another word.
Fie couldn’t fault Tavin’s reasons; it’d be too easy for the Vultures to snatch the prince up if he alone kept watch. She was also dead sure this wasn’t the last time they’d have this quarrel.
She rolled Hangdog’s cold tooth betwixt her fingers again, over and over. Tavin broke the quiet soon enough. “Is there any chance you can sustain a glamour until the Marovar?”
Fie pursed her lips and reached for Pa’s bag of teeth. Peacocks had plenty of witches, but they had an even more abundant desire to pay as cheap as possible. “Pa may have, eh, underestimated our stock,” she allowed. “You want to look like the prince again?”
“We don’t know what we’re up against. And I’m his body double for a reason.”
“That wasn’t an ‘aye,’” Fie noted. Tavin didn’t elaborate. She fished a Peacock witch-tooth out of the bag anyhow, then sat on her knees before him.
The spark tittered as she called it to life, a Peacock gentlewoman who’d spun fanciful illusions for the royal nursery to gain favor with the queen. The older she’d gotten, the more cruelty and ambition had rotted her away, leaving battered servants, cheated merchants, and swelling coffers. When the plague came for her, she wove her own delirium dreams, giggling at the sights right up until Pa’s blade touched her throat.
“What do you see?” Tavin asked.
Fie opened her eyes. “A Hawk full of sauce and nonsense,” she answered, and handed him the tooth. “Keep this on you until the glamour breaks.”
“I meant when you—I don’t know—wake up a tooth? Is that what you do?”
“I see their lives.” Fie squinted at the prince’s sleeping face, tallying up the differences to paint onto Tavin. “Their choices.” A straighter nose; a rounder eye. “How they died.” Ears set a little lower. “What they did to Crows. I’ve seen how every other caste lives. Hold still.”
Though Tavin had tucked the tooth up a sleeve, it hummed yet in Fie’s mind, clear as a bell. She traced a path for the Birthright along Tavin’s face, fingers skimming a breath away from his skin. The nick on his brow vanished; the arch of his nose shallowed; the curl smoothed from his hair at the nape of his neck.
She tried not to think on the heat that grew beneath her fingertips, or whether it came from him or from her.
She also tried not to think on the fact that she’d have to do every bit of it again when the tooth burned out two nights hence.
Tavin watched her hand pass in quiet until she reached for his burn-scarred knuckles. Then he twitched back. “Leave it. Please. I’ll … cover it up.”
Startled, she only nodded.
“Is there anything else?” he asked.
Fie studied Jasimir’s face, then turned back to Tavin. Something was amiss. She frowned, searching for the flaw. “Aye. Hold on.”
Tavin exhaled. “We’ve never thanked you, have we? For any of this.”
“Crows don’t get thanked. We get paid. Sometimes.”
“I’m serious.” He’d stopped watching her weave the glamour, gazing dead-on at her now. “You could have taken Viimo’s deal. You could have had your family back. But you didn’t give us up. Thank you.”
Fie went still.
She scrabbled about her head for a scrap of wrath, anything to carve another line betwixt her and the Hawk. But all she could think of was Pa and Wretch and Swain and Madcap and every Crow she’d lost, and the hateful wisp of hope that she might find them again.
Fie’s own words failed her, and his still raced about her head, and to her dismay the knot in her throat broke open. The camp’s firelight blurred with tears.
“Oh—oh no. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry. Twelve hells, I’m bad at this.” Tavin fumbled his sleeve about his thumb and reached for her, then caught himself. “Er … may I?”
She managed a wordless nod. Hawks didn’t ask. Fie had no notion how to deal with one who did.
Tavin dabbed at her face. “I promise you, when Jas is safe, I’ll help you get them all back. I’d swear to the Covenant, but I suspect you’re getting tired of that.”
Fie gave him a weary look. “Don’t try to sell me pretty words, Hawk boy. We both know you’ll be nailed to the prince until one of you dies.”
He glanced sidelong at Jasimir. His answer did not come as quick or easy as she thought it would, nor as loud. “I have to disappear. After … the Marovar. It’s a divine mandate when a Phoenix prince survives the plague. It’s a cheap hoax when his guard conveniently lives, too. Taverin sza Markahn died a quarter moon ago; I’ll be trapped in the palace’s shadows if I go back. And I will not live as a ghost.”
The words spilled before Fie could catch them: “Not anymore.”
Something sudden and starving flashed through Tavin’s face then, flames tearing through silk. “Not anymore.”
He sounded too alike Pa, only a week ago: We need this deal. Only Tavin didn’t need to cut any oath; he needed to cut himself free.
Fie refused to feel sorry for a Hawk, even a pretty one mopping up her face. Instead she said, “Well, we’ll have to live through this mess first.”
“They’re all short lives.” He bent a shallow smile. “The cleverest girl I’ve ever known told me that, so it must be true.”
“The cleverest girl you’ve ever known got her family captured by a monster.” Her voice hitched. Tavin shook his head and caught another tear, then another, a slow thumb trailing down the side of her cheek.
“The queen did that,” he said. “And the governor. And Tatterhelm.” Then, quiet: “Jas and I did that. I’ll do everything I can to make it right.” His hand dropped to graze her knuckles, still battered from when she’d split them on Viimo. “I can fix that, if you’d like.”
She nodded, her voice failing her.
Tavin gathered her hands in his, brow furrowing. The same needling heat flared about her fingers as new skin swallowed the scabs. She couldn’t help a sharp breath.
His gaze flicked up to her. “Sorry. I’m not all that good at healing.”
Fie saw it, then, the flaw in his façade: the campfire lit his dark eyes closer to gold than Jasimir’s flickers of gray.
How did she know that?
She couldn’t ken why she couldn’t bear to change it. She hated him for trying to give her hope. She hated herself for hoping at all.
And then, with horror and fury, she found she hated her traitor heart, for burning quiet with something that was not hate at all.
A sick frost rolled down her veins. Hawks didn’t fancy Crows, they used them. Tavin had wooed her kin well enough when he needed their help. This was naught more than another round of that dance.
And even if it was more—no. That road wasn’t meant for either of them, not a Hawk, not a Crow—
Didn’t want to be a Crow no more, the memory of a skinwitch hissed.
Hangdog hadn’t wanted it.
Did Fie?
Enough. None of it mattered anyhow, not with the oath still at all their throats. She yanked her hands free and turned away. “You want to help me? Fix your head on your own job.”
“What do you mean?” Tavin asked, but his tone betrayed him: He kenned her clear. And he wanted to be wrong.
All more of his mummery, she told herself. It was a mercy she couldn’t see his face.
“You know what I mean.” Fie unfurled her sleeping mat and lay down, waiting for an answer.
None came. “Wake me for second watch,” she muttered, and closed her eyes.
When Fie took up second watch, the prince waited until Tavin’s breath had evened out and only then eased himself up on an elbow.
She’d expected it: he’d gone to bed far too prickly to stay there. Her voice stayed low, skimming through the campfire sparks. “Aye?”
To her surprise, Jasimir scooted closer, one eye yet on Tavin. “Why can’t you read?”
“Why can’t you keep your own business?” Fie snapped back, ears burning. “You really got up to rub that in my face?”
“No—I—I apologize.” Jasimir grimaced. “That came out wrong. I just don’t understand—couldn’t you have asked Swain to teach you, if it bothers you this much?”
Fie scowled into the dark; she knew square why she hadn’t asked. “Crows use our own marks. We don’t need to read.”
And she hadn’t minded the difference right up until a day ago, when a pretty Hawk boy accidentally carved that line between them.
Jasimir picked up a stick of kindling and wrung it in his hands. “I thought … if you wanted to learn, I could help.” When Fie stared at him, wordless, he stumbled on. “I have to do something to be useful or I’m going to go mad. And you’re going to be a full chief someday, and my mother always said a leader needs to be as skilled as anyone they lead, and…” He jabbed the kindling in the dirt. “And if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that you want to be the best chief you can.”
Fie almost burst into a bitter laugh at that. What she wanted would make her a terrible chief. But the prince was a roundabout sort of right: she wanted to be a capable chief.
And she wanted to not shrink inside each time Tavin carefully read out a flatway sign now, pretending he was thinking aloud and not fooling anyone for a moment.
“When can you teach me?” she mumbled.
Jasimir snatched up the kindling, sitting straighter. “During your watch, while Tav’s asleep. Then he can’t tell me I should be resting instead.”
Fie mulled it over. This wasn’t about her, not really; he wanted to play charity at a Crow, and more likely than not he wanted to do something without his Hawk’s go-ahead for once.
Besides, Fie knew her Crow marks; she knew scores of walking songs; she could recite the histories of their chiefs and their gods. That was good enough for Pa.
Fie studied the trees twisting beyond the firelight, and for a moment, she thought the forest watched back. Patches of night yawned in something like an uncanny face peering from the bushes.
Then a passing breeze ruffled the brush. The face broke into naught more than leaves.
Fie pinched at Pa’s tooth. He hadn’t needed more than Crow marks to be chief, but that was before lordlings and skinwitches and queens had crashed down on all their heads.
Maybe, to keep the oath, she needed to be more.
Fie let the tooth go and looked at the prince. “Where do we start?”