The first time Fie tried to take hold of the broken sword, it slipped free and clattered down the stone steps, resting against the sinner’s side.
The second time, she kept her grip, but daylight shivered along its chipped blade, the rag-bound hilt locked in her shaking fist.
“Think her hands got more use than that under those rags?” a Sparrow man jested at the top of the channel.
She heard the scrape of sandal-nails and whipped round. Tavin had half turned toward the Sparrow, one white-knuckled fist drifting to where his own short swords were belted below the Crow cloak.
If he were a Crow, she could tug at her hood to signal, Don’t make trouble. If he were a Crow, he’d know better than to make trouble here to start with.
She cleared her throat. Thunderously. It served well enough: he turned back to her, arms folding tidy and harmless. For the time being.
The sinner spasmed at her feet.
Fie’s gut was a nest of vipers, ready to betray her at one wrong move.
What had Pa done? The memories shied from her like mice in dark corners. He’d taken off his mask. Twelve hells if she’d take hers off and let her face show plain now.
He’d used his Safe voice. He’d had her for a helper. Here, she had neither.
All she had was mercy in her shuddering grasp. And it was time to deal it.
She knelt by the sinner.
“I’m a Crow,” she told him. Her quiet voice shook as much as the rest of her. “I’m here for you.”
The sinner smiled.
She wanted to run from the road that had trapped her so. She wanted to leave the man to die in the scum. She wanted to cast the chief’s blade behind her and never look back.
You have to keep your eyes open.
Fie laid one hand on a salt-rimed forehead and lowered the blade against the sinner’s throat.
And then she did what Pa had done.
The flesh parted all too easy. Fie choked on her own breath, fumbling the sword as the man jerked. Blood splashed over her hands, over the sinner, over the stone steps—had Pa’s sinners all bled so? Had she done it right?
Blood burned in her mouth—no, no, the salt of tears rolling down to her quivering chin, tears she couldn’t fathom, tears she couldn’t hold off—she’d been merciful, she’d done what Pa would, she’d given the sinner what he wanted—she was a chief, she was a chief, she was a chief—
Far away, the Sparrow butcher said, “You lot’ll be lucky to go that easy with the Oleander Gentry.”
The viper-nest in her gut thrashed. She couldn’t say if it was the threat or the blood that did it. They had to get out of this mess before aught else fouled up.
What came next? Get the dead sinner out. Was he even dead yet? He’d gone still. Flies crawled about his face once more. The grim necklace of red bubbles popped one by one. His eyes were closed, just like in sleep.
Sleep. The sleeping mat. Get him on the mat.
Fie tried to grab a handful of bloody shirt. Crimson greased her slipping hands. The dead man slid a little deeper into the scum.
“Fie—you need help—”
Tavin’s voice rang much too close. She whirled round again and found him halfway down the steps, halfway to the sinner, halfway to her.
This close and he’d catch the plague. This close and she’d watch his mouth crack and bleed, she’d hear him cough up soft bits of his lungs, and if she was a real chief, she’d be the one dealing him mercy before it got bad. Her hands, his throat, his blood, her mercy—
The blade fell to the stone again.
Look after your own.
“Get out,” she hissed around a traitorous sob. Her empty hands rattled at her sides, shaking blood off in shivering droplets. She had no mercy left in her, not for him, not now. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch the sinner, just watch the damn pr—Watch your cousin, aye?”
“Fie—”
“Get out!”
No mercy, only blood on her hands, and fear of the part of her that wanted him to stay.
Another cackle from the crowd. Mostly Common Castes, they’d cozied up to the edge of the channel, too far to hear her, too close for her guts to settle. At the front stood that Sparrow butcher.
Too close. All of them were too close.
“Oleanders won’t snuff you so swift.” The butcher’s voice was flat, matter-of-fact. “We know there’s nowhere to spill that filth blood but the sewers when we’re done with you.”
“Ignore him and get back to your cousin,” Fie rasped. Light sliced across the glassblack eyes of Tavin’s mask. He didn’t move. “They just want to flash their steel because we sure don’t have any, aye, Pissabed?”
All it’d take to go sideways was one glimpse of Tavin’s short swords.
The Sparrow man licked his lips. “The sewers’ll run red for moons. Look at them. They know what’s coming. Aren’t even going to bother running, are you?”
Tavin uncrossed his arms.
“Ignore him,” Fie ordered, desperate. One fly, then another landed on her blood-soaked hands.
“Oh, noisy tongue on that one,” the Sparrow laughed. “How about your lads there? They got mouths worth using, too?”
A Crow would know how this game played out. Let them say what they will. Let them kick and curse and keep moving on, because the cost of cursing back wasn’t yours alone to pay.
But Tavin was a Hawk, not a Crow, and the high castes never bothered with who paid for their folly.
“Best get used to that scum, bone thief,” the courier laughed. “You’ll be drowning in it with the rest of the filth when the White Phoenix gets…”
He trailed off, looking at his hands. Then he let out a short yip as his fingers purpled and curled like pill-beetles.
And that was where Fie had fouled up: she’d forgotten that war-witches needed no steel to kill.
The butcher crumpled, screaming, as blisters boiled over his blackening flesh.
Panicked shrieks ricocheted off the paving stones. In seconds the throng of onlookers had dissolved to a jostling rush shoving away from the sewage channel. Only the Sparrow remained, a twitching heap of limbs and smoking rag.
The air in Fie’s mask savored of mint and pig fat. Like burnt sinner.
Get out. She had to get out.
“Fie—”
Tavin swayed at the edge of her sight. One hand reached for her.
Then he crashed to the stone, and moved no more.
The prince stumbled down the stairs as she froze. Hangdog had fallen just so—the bridge was behind her, the Floating Fortress was behind her, Hangdog was behind her—no, he lay on the steps now, as good as dead—not again—
Jasimir shook Tavin by the shoulders, again and again. He didn’t stir.
Look after your own.
She was their chief.
Some stony part of her broke through the fear and fury. Cold reckoning ratcheted through her head. The Pigeon courier would be back any moment with some ugly surprise. She couldn’t leave the sinner. Or Tavin. The sinner was dead. Tavin was—
Silent.
Jasimir stripped off Tavin’s mask. Blood trailed from the Hawk’s nose and shuttered eyes.
Terror sucked Fie’s cold reckoning under.
“He breathing?” Her own voice rang pitifully high and strangled in her ears.
Jasimir held a trembling hand over Tavin’s mouth, then nodded.
The flood ebbed. Still alive. She had to get them out.
“Flashburn,” she barked, pointing a bloody finger at her pack.
For once, the prince didn’t argue. Maybe he distrusted his voice as much as she’d doubted her own. He passed the jug to her without a word.
Fie gritted her teeth and turned her back on Tavin. She knelt by the dead sinner, forced her fingers into his mouth, and upturned the jug. Clear ooze slid over her knuckles and down the man’s throat, its bitter reek running roughshod through the air.
“Water.” She snatched up her stump of a sword, spun on a heel, and held her arms out to the prince. “Hands and blade.” He emptied a water skin over her palms and sword until the wet rags on her hands ran near clear.
Cloth scuffed over stone behind her—but neither Jasimir nor Tavin had moved. Where had the sound come from?
Another scrape gave her the dreadful answer.
Still alive. The Sparrow butcher was still alive.
His shriveled hand convulsed, the same shiny red-black as a strip of smoked pig. One bloodshot eye wandered to her broken blade.
“Crow,” he whined.
Fie’s throat closed. She knew what came next.
“Mercy.”
Not again, she couldn’t cut another throat again; only sinners could ask for mercy from Crows—that was the way of it, right? But perhaps the Covenant had sent her instead of waiting for the plague, and if she didn’t send them on it’d bring a hell down on their heads—
“Mercy,” the butcher begged.
“I’ll do it.”
Tavin groggily shoved himself up, blood smeared from cheek to jaw where he’d tried to wipe it off. The blood vessels in his eyes had burst, dyeing their whites bright as poppies.
“Don’t push yourself,” Jasimir protested.
Tavin ignored him, staggering to his feet with a spit-weight of his usual grace. For a moment he looked near ready to collapse again. Then he drew one short sword from a hip, and the weight of a hilt in his hand seemed to tip him into focus once more.
“I’ll do it,” he said again. His gaze reeled to the street leading to the sewer. “Oh. That’s a … problem.”
Fie followed his gaze, even as a hollow clatter on paving stone told her what she’d find. Greggur Tatterhelm rode for them, the Pigeon courier pointing the way.
She’d been right about the sinner.
Tavin had been right about the trap.
A bell pealed. No, not a bell—the scraping toll came from Tavin’s blade. The Sparrow gaped at the sky, any last dregs of life emptying from his eyes. The Hawk had dealt mercy for her.
Tatterhelm was nearly upon them.
But she still had a sinner to burn—still had a duty to the Covenant—
She still had an oath to keep. And to keep it, she needed to get them out.
Then Fie saw the flashburn sheen spreading across the sewage. It had leaked from the red split in the dead man’s throat.
She pried a Phoenix tooth from her string. It lit in her hands, burning away the rag in a flash of steam as she bolted for Tavin.
Tatterhelm was only paces away, sword raised.
Fie hurled the tooth toward the dead sinner, feeding the strength of her own bones to that hungry spark, then threw herself at Tavin. He fell beneath her with a startled wheeze.
White flames blasted from the channel with a fluty, ear-shattering howl.
The fires clawed at the sky, rolling past the sewer’s walls to lick at the city’s stones. Tatterhelm’s horse screamed and danced back, and a cry rose from the market as thatch roofs caught sparks.
Fie held fast to the tooth-spark of Phoenix Birthright, reminding the flames who had called them forth, and breaking them round her and Tavin as best she could. Bright yolk-gold plumes of Phoenix fire roared from the sinner’s charring corpse as Fie’s eyes watered again. A poorer pyre than the sinner deserved, but if it burned hot enough, it would do.
They only had a few moments before the flashburn ran out and Tatterhelm blocked their way once more. “The gate,” she cried to Jasimir, who stood unbothered by the fire. “Go!”
He grabbed her pack and leapt up the steps as she pulled Tavin up and followed. More hoofbeats rumbled a tattoo down the road.
They scuttled over the uneven ground, rounding the edge of the stone pit. Two Hawk guards planted themselves between them and the gateway, arrows trained on them.
Fie didn’t think, just called two Gull witch-teeth in her string and whipped them into harmony. A vicious wind howled down the road, picking up the guards and slamming them into the stack-stone walls. She almost laughed at how easy it was.
Aye, and now you’re down two witch-teeth, her colder voice reminded her. But hadn’t Pa said to burn as many teeth as she needed?
She glanced back and saw the flashburn-white fading away, though the gold Phoenix fire had swallowed the sinner whole.
“Welcome to our roads, cousin,” she whispered, and kept running.
Hoofbeats clattered off the rock at their back.
The road was too clean, too easy for riders. She called after Tavin and Jasimir and veered off the flatway, into sparse trees and yellowing grass, aiming for a rocky hillside thick with trees.
The nails in her soles scraped and slid on more and more stone as the ground climbed and dirt thinned. The thunder in her ears could have been hoofbeats, could have been the boys behind her, could have been her own heartbeat; she didn’t dare stop to find out. Branches whipped at her face, withered vines catching at her feet. Her lungs burned. She couldn’t suck in air fast enough to drown their fire.
The rumble in her ears could only be hoofbeats now.
Up. Up. She scrambled up and onward, tracing the worst path for riders to fight through. The trees gave way to a sharp crest capped in a slide of broken slate. Only a few thumbs of basalt boulders kept it moored to the hillside.
The dead gods had at last granted her a kindness.
Fie shot straight into the slate. Shards rattled free, slipping beneath her sandals.
Good. She needed that.
“Are you mad?” Jasimir demanded behind her, hoarse. “There’s no cover.”
“Horses,” she wheezed between breaths, fighting for another foothold, then another. Each step set off a cascade of tumbling slate. She angled for the steepest path and pushed on, taking each step twice, sliding back and hissing a litany of curses through her gasps for air. Broken stone bit into her palms every time she tried to steady herself.
Then one foot scraped on softer earth, sole-nails biting down hard. Every muscle screamed as she shoved herself up, up, up to steady ground, up to the hill’s summit. Her knees wobbled as she turned about.
Sure enough, a handful of Vultures had stalled at the base of the slate slide, their horses tossing their heads. If Fie’s sandals had struggled, hooves had no chance at all. She’d bought them time—
A glint caught her eye, just in time to see the arrow loosed direct at her.
Something knocked her clean off her feet. The arrow whizzed over her head, streaking across the sky in the brief moment before everything went dark.
For a heartbeat she thought she’d fainted—but shouts and sliding slate still rattled in her ears. A hand kept her head tucked down, and arms anchored her to crowsilk and flesh as impact after dizzying impact shuddered through them both. Soon they fetched up against a boulder.
Fie took a moment to ken that they’d stopped, her brains still skittering about. Then the grip on her loosened. She raised her head and found Tavin sprawled under her, gray-faced and wincing. He’d taken the brunt of their fall.
He’d taken it for her. To save her life. To save her.
Fie didn’t know why the notion gutted her so.
Jasimir skidded down to them. “Is he hurt?”
“No,” Tavin grumbled.
Fie rolled to her feet. “Are you lying?”
He shot her a sour look. “Yes.”
“How bad?”
“I’ll live.” He let her help him up, one hand pressed to his side, leaning askew to keep the weight off a leg. Fie winced at an ugly burn over one shoulder. She hadn’t kept all the flames off him after all. “How long do we have?”
“Ten minutes at most. But we’ll never outrun them on foot.” Prince Jasimir peered up at the hill’s summit for any sign of Vultures.
“So we don’t outrun them. We hide.” Fie pointed to the trees below.
The prince pursed his lips. “These are the best skinwitches in Sabor.”
“And I’m the worst Crow they’ll ever cross,” she snapped. “They have my family. They’re lucky all I aim to do is hide.”
She slung Tavin’s arm over her shoulders and set off, not bothering to wait for royal permission.
“We’ll hole up and you can fix yourself,” Fie muttered, as much to Tavin as to herself.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re worried.”
“Worried I’ll have to hide your body.” That was a half-truth.
Tavin forced a crooked smile around clenched teeth. “You’re getting sentimental on me.”
“Aye, and that sentiment is ‘don’t leave a trail of bodies,’” she said, grim.
“That’s”—he sucked in a breath as they slid down a tricky bit of path—“touching.”
Fie waited for him to keep chattering off his sauce and nonsense. He didn’t.
“We’ll hole up,” she mumbled again. “Don’t go leaving a trail.”
“Yes, chief.” His voice scarce rose above the rattle of stone.
She half dragged Tavin past the first few trees sturdy enough for them. “First place they’ll look, likely,” she grunted in answer to the prince’s sprouting question. “Too easy.”
The tree she settled for was a cedar sheathed in bark ragged enough to swallow the marks of nailed soles. This time the prince helped push Tavin up and followed on his own. No sooner had Fie steadied herself on a branch than the slow pound of hooves dripped into the air.
These weren’t night-bold Oleanders looking for a scapegoat. She wasn’t crawling past bribe-fattened gate guards anymore, either. The queen’s own Vultures, the best skinwitches in Sabor, were out for her hide.
Fie drew two Sparrow teeth from her bag, rolled them between sweat-sticky palms, and closed her eyes.