A dead prince lay in their cart like any other sinner, not an arm’s length away. Fie could scarce believe it. A prince. A Phoenix.
Some morbid part of her wondered if Phoenix boys burned like any other sinner. Maybe slower. At least they had the poor bastard beside him to compare.
But Pa didn’t move, still fixed to the spot even as the rest of the band pulled the cart nearer. And then Fie saw why.
The queen at the gate meant to pay them, to be sure; the steward at her side held the viatik in plain view. A viatik’s worth fit the family’s means, that was the rule. A Sparrow farmer might pay them in a sack of salt or dried panbread; a Crane magistrate might offer panes of glassblack. Viatik for royalty, though … Fie didn’t even know what would be proper.
She did know, however, that it wouldn’t be the dirty tabby squirming in the steward’s arms.
The night blistered with sudden, furious tears. A stray cat. Fair pay for a beggar at most. Not for two gold-sucking palace boys they’d marched seven leagues to burn.
Every frayed wisp of Fie’s patience twisted into a taut, angry wire.
The palace had leered at them, drawn steel on them, all but spat on them, and now they’d made a mockery of payment. Queen Rhusana didn’t care about sending her family into the next life with the barest scrap of dignity. All she cared for was flaunting the brutal truth: as queen, she could give Crows naught but contempt, and every time, Crows would have to take it.
No chief would abide this, not even one in training. Not even one facing a queen. Something had to be done.
The Crows were merciful, but they weren’t cheap.
The cart had near caught up to Pa. Fie leaned forward, blinking sweat and tears from her eyes. “Pa,” she whispered. The beak of his mask dipped. “Money Dance?”
For a long moment, he didn’t move. Then the beak dipped again.
For the first time that night, Fie grinned.
She jammed her nail-studded sole into the ground and stuffed every grain of spite into a long, satisfying scratch, the marble screaming for mercy. And then she screamed back.
Around her, the dozen Crows wailed in answer to the call, jolting to a halt. Thirteen torches clattered to the ground.
For the second time that night, the galleries above went silent.
The Crows shrieked again, Fie loudest of all, her pitch climbing at the end. The others took her signal and waited, stock-still. She counted out the quiet in her head: Four. Three. Two. One.
Another bloodcurdling cry tore through the hall from thirteen throats, its unmistakable anger echoing off distant archways. Another silence crashed in its wake.
On the third round of screams, the noble sneers were gone. All eyes hung on the motionless cart.
On the fifth round, half the gallery looked ready to cry.
Most fine lords and ladies had never been this close to Crows or plague-dead. To them, the plague was a poor man’s problem.
They didn’t understand that there were rules. That the plague cared naught for silks or jewels. That it left when the Crows said it could.
But by the thousand dead gods of Sabor, Fie wagered they were starting to catch on now.
She decided they’d stewed enough, and trilled the marching order.
Stamp. The thirteen Crows stepped forward as one, but the cart stayed in its place, its drag-ropes coiling on the marble like asps. Stamp. Hunting Castes, Splendid Castes, Common Castes—it didn’t matter. The Crows would teach every Saborian in this hall to remember. Stamp. Before, their threadbare black rags and long-beaked masks had made them look a superstitious joke. Stamp. Now she saw nightmares in the eyes trailing the corpse-cart. This was the fear they’d learned at their father’s knee.
Fie trilled again.
The footfalls picked up pace, ending in a sweep that carved hellish curls into the tiles. Another stamp. Another guttural scream. Another two paces away from the cart. The gallery recoiled.
Stamp-scrape-scream. Fie huffed under her mask. That was for their ugly palace.
Stamp-scrape-stamp. That was for drawing steel on them.
She trilled again, and the Crows stopped just shy of the threshold. A sick tension clung to the gallery, knuckles whitening on gemstones and silk.
The Crows snapped about and spun into a weaving, vicious pattern back to the cart. Nervous relief wound through the galleries, then wavered when the Crows didn’t immediately take up their ropes and torches again. Fie took her place at the cart’s front-right corner and waited until the nearest Peacock looked likely to piss himself.
Fie let out a murderous whistle. The Crows snatched up torch and rope, exploding down the hall and into the last courtyard like a hurricane, howling with the gods’ own wrath.
Courtiers scattered, tripping over satin trains and painted leather slippers. From the corner of her eye, Fie saw Hangdog had got his wish: at least three Peacocks had fainted.
That, she thought, is for trying to pay us with a damn cat.
Pa liked to call it the Money Dance. Fie just liked that it worked.
Their cart slowed near the gate, yet the dance carried on. The queen had not fled like the others of her court, her steward still quaking by her side. From ten paces off, Fie could see all too clear who they intended to shake down.
Queen Rhusana bristled beneath the arch, pale eyes glittering like two hard moons. Under the intricate whorls of white mourning paint, her face was a few shades lighter than Fie’s own terra-cotta, her brown complexion nearer to polished bronze. Everywhere Fie looked she saw wasted coin: a diamond-studded headdress wrought like a phoenix of white gold; ropes of pearls and diamonds dripping from her arms to drag on the ground; a white tiger pelt draped over her shoulders. The black-striped tail coiled about her arm, one hind paw fastened to clutch at her hip, and its stuffed head lolled on the tiles, eyes blank with more white gold. To Fie’s disgust, even the dead thing’s claws were crusted over with diamonds.
The silent demand of tradition had brought Rhusana to pay for her husband’s dead son. But it was clear as day that the queen had her own unspoken demand: every eye would stay nailed to her glory alone.
It had never been about the coin. But by every dead god, Fie hoped Pa would make it about coin now.
Then Pa gestured to Fie, jerking his head at the gate.
He wanted her to deal with Rhusana. To name the viatik price.
Fie froze. Sweat rolled down her backbone. Calling the Money Dance was one thing. Making demands of a queen was another. She wasn’t a chief, not yet—it wasn’t proper—what if she fouled it up and cost them all—
She didn’t even know what to ask for.
Torchlight glinted off steel as Hawks shifted at the wall, a sign their indulgence ran thin. A paper threat with plague bodies heaped in the cart, but a threat all the same. Enough to make a few Crows flinch. Enough to strike lightning through Fie’s gut.
Only a paper threat, yet they made it because they could. Because they liked seeing Crows jump.
Fie’s anger was a curious thing, sometimes tempered and unwavering as cut steel, sometimes raw and unstoppable as a cut vein. Now an old, sharp kind of rage climbed up her spine, forged of every blade pointed at her for a jest.
And it was that old, sharp rage that told Fie her price.
The screams and footfalls of the Money Dance rose in fury as she stepped forth.
Rhusana had deliberately daubed her face over with boredom, clicking her own diamond-cluttered claws a breath faster than the beats of the dance. Fie knew the signs of impatience: the queen still didn’t think she’d answer for this insult. The steward, however, had gone near as gray as the tabby in his arms.
The cat was offered tremulously. Fie didn’t take it. She had a chief’s price in mind.
She wanted to look the Splendid Castes in the eye without fear. She wanted to make the Hunting Castes think twice before flashing their steel for laughs. She wanted her ma back.
But since the queen couldn’t give her any of that, she’d take the next best thing.
“I’ll have the teeth,” Fie said.
Rhusana glared at the steward. He looked ready to vomit, eyes locked on the bloody shrouds in the cart. “Chief, I cannot—it is not your place to ask—”
“The teeth,” Fie repeated, stone-cold. She squashed down the odd little jolt in her chest at being called “chief.” Not yet.
Behind her, the Crows wheeled and roared. Both she and Rhusana knew they could keep terrorizing the court for hours while the dead sinners steeped the palace in plague. The Swan Queen might wear the royal crest, but here and now, Fie ruled the courtyard.
Rhusana did not answer.
Nor did Fie budge. The longer this went, the worse the queen looked for letting Crows drag her about.
Sweat beaded the steward’s face. A pity that Fie needed the queen to crack, not him.
“You have a count of a hundred,” said Fie, turning her beaked mask square on Rhusana and mustering every scrap of old fury. “Then we leave the boys at your gate and come to your city nevermore.”
“But—” the steward sputtered, “the king—”
“One,” said Fie.
“Please—”
“Two,” said Fie.
“Enough,” Rhusana snapped.
Fie waited. A passing breeze plucked at her robe, then settled.
“Fifty naka.” Rhusana’s lip curled, her diamond talons clicking faster. “And we will overlook your insolence.”
The steward wheezed a sigh of deliverance. “Thank you for your immeasurable generosity, Your Ma—”
“Three,” said Fie.
Rhusana’s claws went still, digging into her silk-clad thigh.
At the count of ten, the queen’s servant was sent running. By the count of seventy, he was back, thrusting a heavy brocade bag into Fie’s hands.
If the heft didn’t give the contents away, the quiet, echoing hum of magic in her bones did. Every family in Sabor saved their teeth for the day they might call on Crows empty-handed. Each tooth was near good as gold, if only for the Crows who heard their whispers. Some were worth more, a scrap of Pigeon luck or Sparrow refuge when a Crow called for it.
No royal had paid a viatik in centuries. But tonight, Fie had come to collect.
A rare harvest of teeth clicked and rattled inside that brocade bag, entire Phoenix dynasties of teeth, thousands of milk teeth and even teeth pulled from the dead.
And now her band of Crows owned each and every last, priceless one.
A smile sharper than steel cut beneath Fie’s mask. There was a reason they called it the Money Dance.
Razor-thin lines had appeared at the corners of Rhusana’s perfect, thin-pressed mouth, and Fie took that as a personal victory. She gave a mummer’s grand sweep of a bow, stepped back, and handed the bag to Pa.
He raised his fist. The dance stopped; the courtyard rang with aching silence. Ropes were collected, feet reshuffled into a march, and a sigh swept through the crowd as the cart at last began to roll toward the gate.
Fie paused, then doubled back.
The queen whirled, eyes flashing.
“What more do you want?” Rhusana flicked her hand at the guards. Every Hawk snapped to attention, spears at the ready.
One of the queen’s bangles caught Fie’s eye as it flashed in the torchlight: a clever work of silver and pearl, crafted to look like a string of white oleander blossoms.
For a moment, Fie felt like those diamond claws had wrapped around her throat.
She sucked a breath down and let the mint settle her bones. Anyone could wear oleanders. It didn’t have to mean aught, not on a queen. And if it did … well, the Crows were already on their way out of the palace. Fie’d just make sure they left faster.
She plucked the cat from the steward’s arms. “I’ll have this, too.”
The cat didn’t fight as Fie scurried back to the cart, only burrowed its face into the crook of her elbow with a grumble. By the time they cleared the gates, it had begun to purr.
Fie decided she liked the cat. Anything happy to leave the royal palace had good taste.
It was a long, hushed walk out of the capital city of Dumosa, lit only by their torches and the occasional Dovecraft lantern in a mansion window. Fie wagered the rest of the Crows felt the same tight-throated impatience to make it past the city walls before Hunting Castes rode them down. Every single Crow knew what carrying a bag of Phoenix teeth meant. Every one of them wondered if they’d truly be allowed to carry it out of Dumosa.
Fie felt eyes spying from behind lattice screens or through knotholes every step of the way, past the fine pavilions of the Swan-caste courtesans, through the granite-pillared Magistrate’s Row, even in the Pigeon commons, where dirty faces cowered behind cracks in shanty walls and spat in the Crows’ wake to ward off ill fortune.
She kept a sharp eye on the shadows, and more than once she caught Pa tapping his sternum slow, just below the string of teeth about his neck. If the dead gods were kind tonight, he’d have no call to use them.
But if Fie had learned aught over the years, it was that the dead gods skewed miserly with kindness when it came to Crows.
It was nigh midnight before they set foot on the League-High Bridge over the Hem. The great river thundered only a few hundred paces below, but for murder’s purpose, it worked near good as a league. Fie minded her step during the ten minutes it took to cross.
The moment her nail-studded soles touched gravel instead of cobblestone, Fie held her breath. If the royals meant to claw back their teeth, this was where the Hunting Castes would strike.
All of them strained to catch any hint of company. The long, terrible silence stretched thin and treacherous as young ice while Fie scoured every flicker of leaves for an ambush.
None came.
Maybe—just maybe—they’d done it.
Someone inhaled sharp. Then a deafening cry broke out:
“OH, I ONCE KNEW A LAD FROM ACROSS THE SEA, WITH A MOST PARTICULAR SPECIALTY—”
Madcap’s voice split the night like an axe, swinging into the bawdiest walking song Pa’d let them sing in Fie’s presence. The rest of the band broke into wheezing laughter, near weeping with relief.
“Twelve hells, Fie!” Wretch clung to the cart for dear life, slapping a knee. She had near as many years as Pa and twice as quick a temper, one of the few who’d known Pa when he was still called Cur, not yet Chief. She took the cat from Fie and scratched its brow. “I thought you’d ask the queen to throw in a crown for all that trouble!”
“What good’s a crown?” Swain drawled from behind Wretch. A flash of mirth leavened his perpetually dour voice. “She could have just asked to slap the king. Probably would’ve gone over better with Her Majesty.”
Madcap, a Crow allergic to dignity, snatched up Fie’s hands and wheeled her about the road in a giddy whirl, belting yet another lewd and anatomically improbable verse of “The Lad from Across the Sea.” Fie couldn’t help but throw back her head and laugh. Aye, they still had leagues to walk and bodies to burn, but—but she’d done it.
For once, she’d made the palace pay.
“Stop, stop,” Madcap wheezed, laughing as they clutched their stomach. “I’m like to barf!”
The two of them slowed to a drunken tilt near Pa. By all rights, he ought to be reeling with glee like the rest of the band.
He hadn’t even taken off his mask, staring straight back at Dumosa.
“Come on, chief—” Madcap started, but Pa cut them off.
“It’s not done yet. Save your dance for when the bodies burn.” Pa fired off the whistle-order to march.
Wretch passed the cat back to Fie, shaking her head at Pa’s back. An unease draped over the Crows once more. Madcap still hummed under their breath, and Swain muttered along after a few steps, but otherwise silence clung to the cart as they dragged it on.
The scattering of huts and god-grave shrines by the road eventually yielded to the twist-trunked, lichen-shawled forest. “The Lad from Across the Sea” wound down, another song rising in its wake, louder and steadier. Soon the only marks of Dumosa were glimpses of a gilded crust over dark hills, sometimes sparking through the trees.
“Here.”
Pa’s voice cut through the night, snipping off the walking song’s last verse. He thrust his torch into the soft dirt by the roadside. The cart creaked to a halt as Pa shucked his mask and nodded at Fie and the tabby. “No strays we can’t eat, girl.”
“Not a stray, she’s mine,” Fie returned. “My share of the viatik.”
Pa huffed a short chuckle. “Covenant’s crap she is, Fie, but we’ll talk your share later. What’s her name, then?”
She thought of the steward’s queasy face and Madcap’s dance and grinned. “Barf.”
“That’s proper.” Pa ran a hand over his bald crown. All his hair had migrated south to his short salt-and-pepper beard long years past. “Now let’s see about these boys, eh?”
Fie leaned on the edge of the cart and studied the two shrouds lying among splits of kindling. “Big,” she said. The prince had been near a year her elder, and clearly both boys had been better fed. “Dunno if we have enough firewood for both.”
“Will if we douse ’em in flashburn,” Hangdog suggested, lounging over the cart’s other side.
Fie’s beak was only in the way now. She set Barf down in the cart and pushed back her hood to loosen the mask’s straps, letting it hang about her neck as she ran a hand through her chin-cropped tangle of black hair. It was a blessing to breathe clean night air and not the palace’s incense or her mask’s stale mint.
She had naught to fear of contagion. It was said that every Crow had fouled up something grand in their past lives, bad enough for the Covenant to strike them down with plague and boot them directly to a life of atonement in containing the disease. That Crows were born already in debt to the Covenant’s measures of sin. That it would not take them to their next life before that debt was paid.
So it was said, at least. Fie didn’t know how much of that rang true to her ear. But it was truth hard as iron that the Sinner’s Plague left only Crows untouched.
Death-stink hadn’t settled on the boys yet, but she still flinched at the crimson stains on their shrouds. Of all a chief’s duties, cutting throats was the one she dreaded most.
She reached into the cart, prodding what seemed like the nobler of the bloody heaps. “They really royals, Pa?”
“Just the one. Other was his body double.”
Fie tugged back the linen until torchlight landed on a boy’s rust-flecked face, looking for all the world like he was sleeping. Maybe a little afraid. Maybe he’d been awake when Pa’s blade touched his throat.
She pursed her lips. “So that’s what a sinner prince looks like.”
The dead boy sat up.
“Well, no,” he said, “but I’ve been told I’m fairly close.”