Fie had never expected to die quiet.
Young, maybe. On the end of a sword, also likely. And doing what she did best: picking a fight over something easier left alone.
She did not expect to die swallowed whole. But the Fan River had done just that.
The river churned with thrashing limbs and arrows like viper strikes, gurgling through the sides of her mask. Yet beyond her glassblack eyes lay naught but the bottomless dark of the reservoir sucking at her heels.
Then Pa’s bag of teeth floated past.
Something snapped. She fought to catch at the leather—but Pa’s sword slipped free—she couldn’t lose it, she had to get them back to Pa, back to the chief—
The blade bit into her palms and fingers, and red bloomed in the water. She didn’t care. She’d return Pa’s sword or die sinking to the bottom of this damned well.
Someone yanked at her hood, dragging her up until she broke the surface. The silence of the river shattered into howling alarm horns and a roar of falling water.
“Hang on!” someone shouted before a wave slopped over Fie. The river wouldn’t give her up easy, stuffing watery fingers through the mask and into her teeth, into her nose, drowning her in wet mint leaves. The current twisted her round and round until one hip slammed into a rough stone edge.
And there the river changed its mind, flinging her away, down into a slick blur of blue tile and reeling red sky. Some ironclad panic kept her bloody arms locked around the tooth bag and the broken sword, not caring that one wrong twist could gut her like a fish. She couldn’t lose Pa’s teeth, she couldn’t lose the chief’s blade, she couldn’t, she couldn’t—
Fie tumbled into one of the boys’ backs with a solid, wet smack.
Tavin swore and yanked her to her feet on startling steady ground. She gulped for air but only choked on more water trapped in her mask’s beak, doubling over. Hands pushed her hood back and worked about her hair until the mask fell loose.
The world spun tipsy around her as she fought for breath and bearings alike: bright tile, bewildered faces, bare skin. Bathing steps. The current had pushed them into one of the reservoir’s drainage chutes, down to a plateau where the chutes broke across bathing steps. A mosaic of a dead Swan god frowned elegantly down at her from his perch on a mother-of-pearl moon.
Another chorus of alarm horns shrieked to life somewhere above.
“Here.” Tavin tossed her mask aside and reached for the blade and the bag. She jerked back, blood threading her fingers. He winced. “You’re hurting yourself—”
“I don’t care.”
“Please, Fie.” He glanced over his shoulder, and if it weren’t wholly impossible, she’d think he sounded something near desperate. “You don’t have to let go, just let me help you tie them down. It’ll be a lot harder to help your father without fingers.”
Help Pa. She had to help Pa. She managed a stiff nod and let him pull the cloak from her shaking shoulders, then handed the sword and bag over, blood dripping down her wrists.
“I’ll heal you once we’re in the clear,” he muttered, tearing off a strip of crowsilk and wrapping it around the blade, then knotting it at her belt along with the tooth bag. “If we’re lucky, you won’t pick up an infection … and here’s company. Go.”
Shouts and the stamp of Hawk boots rattled the air as Tavin pushed her and Jasimir into the next water chute. Fie plummeted down tile and stone worn smooth beneath years of water, rooftops and brick walls flashing by, alarm horns droning above the crash of water.
The chute spat her out into open air. For a tripe-twisting moment, tile and sea and upturned faces reeled below—then she plunged into the waters of Third Market’s canal. Her head missed the edge of a cargo barge by a finger-span; her breath erupted from her all at once in a bubbled wheeze. One bloody hand grabbed the edge of the barge. It rocked and veered more than it ought to. She broke the surface and squinted up.
Tavin had landed on the barge’s crates. The Gull sailor swung his barge pole up, yelling about bone thieves on his goods. In turn the Hawk tossed his sodden cloak in the Gull’s face, grabbed the other end of the pole, neatly pushed the man into the canal, and slid down to the barge’s deck.
“Where is he?” Tavin asked as he pulled Fie up. He didn’t mean the sailor.
“Here.” Jasimir climbed aboard at the barge’s other end and darted to put the crates between himself and Third Market. “We can’t stay on—”
“I know.” Tavin took Fie’s hands in his own and closed his eyes. A dreadful sharp itch rolled through every gash. She gasped, shuddering, and Tavin let go. “I’m sorry, I can’t do more than stop the bleeding right now. Jas, cloak.” Tavin tore the crowsilk into yet more strips and wound them around Fie’s hands as alarm horns split the air anew. He twisted to look around, frowning. “On my signal, we jump to the street and—”
An arrow cut off the end of his plan, thudding into the crate by his ear.
He stared. “Consider that my signal.”
They scrambled off the barge and into Third Market, Fie’s wet sandals crunching against uneven brick. Alarm horns wailed through the tents. Shoppers halted in place, peering about for the cause. One man found it when Tavin shoved him out of their way and into a plantain stand. Curses and shouts trailed in their wake.
Then sun caught steel again, flitting through bodies at the end of the market ahead. Screams burst in the air like fireworks. Fie looked behind and found more Hawks closing in, barreling through a panicking crowd.
Tavin grabbed her shoulder. “You have to hide us.”
“No,” Jasimir cut in. “If we get separated, we’ll lose one another.”
Fie couldn’t think. Help Pa. She had to help Pa.
Tavin muttered a curse, looking wildy about the market. His gaze lit upon a tent. “Watch Jas,” he barked, and lunged.
A moment later a chorus of shattering ceramic scraped, dissonant, against the alarm horns. Fie caught the acid tang of flashburn and lantern oil.
So did everyone nearby.
The crowd’s brewing panic boiled over into a full-blown stampede, sending a tidal wave of human flesh into the oncoming Hawks. One table tipped, then another. The deadly avalanche smashed and splattered across the street as people fled, as Fie’s eyes ran, as her lungs burned, as she stumbled back.
Then—then, the sparks.
A blue phantom hissed across the oil and flashburn faster than a heartbeat. Forks of blazing white fire exploded from the streets, waves of heat stripping the river from Fie’s face in puffs of steam.
Tavin burst from the flames. “The alley—go, go—”
The three of them bolted into the cramped back street. A moment later Fie heard a sound like breath being sucked through a flute.
The bricks beneath her feet leapt and shuddered as white light and thunder rocked the alleyway.
The tent. The whole tent of flashburn and lamp oil had gone off.
Dead gods be kind.
Tavin towed them farther down the alley, sheltering behind a cold communal oven. His hands were shaking. Adrenaline? Fear? Both, like her? Her blood still streaked his palms. “This is our chance. We can throw them off the trail.”
I have to look after my own.
All of Fie’s own were still in the Floating Fortress.
All of Fie’s own might have died on that bridge—
“Fie.” Jasimir’s voice brought her back. “Could you create a diversion with a Peacock tooth?”
“Blowing a smoking crater in half of Third Market isn’t enough of a diversion?” Tavin asked.
The prince shook his head. “Not like that. An illusion they’ll chase instead. Can you do it?”
Could she? Fie pressed into the cold plaster wall. Peacock witches were a naka a dozen; she had enough of their teeth in her string.
She had more than that.
You’re going to be a chief.
She saw Pa, holding out the sword to cut her first throat. She still wasn’t ready. Pa, holding out the bag of teeth.
Look after your own.
“Fie?”
Tavin’s voice dragged her back again. He looked at her like he had a thousand things to say, things like I’m sorry and I know and Please and, above all, I need you.
But only the strongest survived: “Can you do it?”
In answer, she pushed a Sparrow tooth free from her string with aching fingers. “Stay here.”
Fie ducked into what remained of the street, shrouded in smoke and soot and a Sparrow Birthright for good measure. Mercifully, she saw no bodies, only flames dancing fitful across the broken bricks like Lovely Rhensa and his fallen foes. Had Tavin timed it so? Or had the lack of casualties been a solitary scrap of good fortune?
Hawks had started braving the dying fire, pushing at the edges of the flashburn. Fie swerved away from one particular bold guard, prying a Peacock witch-tooth from her string, then slipped behind a charred tent and let the Sparrow tooth go.
The Peacock witch-tooth kindled as it rolled betwixt her palms, a vivid song of whim and majesty. A grandfather, a storyteller, weaving legends of the ancient heroes to chubby, wide-eyed children by the hearth. The tooth’s echo of him laughed with glee at the tale Fie passed on.
With a flick of her wrist, she tossed the tooth into the canal.
And with a twist of her will, three figures flickered into sight: a prince, a Hawk, and a Crow girl, clambering atop the barrels of a cargo barge. Shouts rose up from the guards. The three ghosts started like frightened deer, leaping from one barge to the next.
Boots and steel rumbled past. The Hawk guards were on the hunt. And thanks to the Peacock tooth leading the illusion down the canal as the current bore it along, they’d follow those ghosts until they learned better.
Once the guards had passed, she slipped back through the smoke. A pillar of fire still clawed at the darkening heavens where the oil tent had stood. A few paces off, a Gull woman watched it burn, tears cutting tracks through the soot on her stricken face.
The lordlings appeared from the hazy alley and motioned for her to follow, then set off for the stairs to Fourth Market. Fie couldn’t say whether they knew the damage they’d done to get away; only that as they left Third Market behind, neither looked back, not even once.
They took a long, halting way through Fourth Market, veering from guards as the afternoon’s pack of bodies scattered into smaller crowds. Fog rose as night swallowed the sun, and a sluggish bay breeze wormed through Fie’s hair, damp and warm as a drunkard’s breath.
Tavin led them down through the market, pausing at each water-lift and drain chute, then finally stopped at a chute behind a shuttered stall. “Wait here.”
He hopped onto an empty barge moored near the stall, then pressed his hand to a tile on the canal’s far wall. It sank into its grout with a deliberate click. As he pulled his hand back, Fie caught the faint outline of a hammer engraved there.
The water cascading down the chute thinned to a trickle, then to a steady drip. Tavin pushed on the tiles below the chute’s spout. A citizen-size panel swung inward with a grinding, sandy grate, revealing pitch-black within. Tavin held up a hand—wait—and climbed inside.
“Maintenance tunnels,” Jasimir said. “Of course.”
Firelight sparked in the dark, and a moment later, Tavin motioned for them to follow. Fie hopped onto the barge and let him pull her into the tunnel, mindful of the sword and tooth bag still knotted secure at her hip. Once Jasimir joined them, Tavin pulled a chain dangling by the entrance. The ceramic panel slid back into place, and with it fell a brutal quiet.
Tavin plucked a burning torch from the wall and lit another that he passed to the prince. Then he led them down a corridor, emerging in a round room where broad terra-cotta banks bracketed a course of slow dark water.
“The reservoir drains into irrigation channels for the Fan,” Prince Jasimir said, swinging his torch about to survey the area. “They’ll look for us to make a break for the gates, not shelter in the city. We should be safe here.”
“That’s the idea.” Tavin dropped his torch into a sconce jutting from rumples of yellow fungi, let out a long, heavy breath, and then sank to the floor. A week ago, the prince might have turned up his nose at the slimy brick and suspicious puddles. Now he joined Fie and Tavin as one more exhausted heap, shoals in a sea of torch-lit gloom.
“May I?”
Fie blinked and found Tavin pointing to her tattered hands. “Aye,” she croaked. He took one and began peeling away the stiff makeshift bandages, murmuring an apology each time she flinched at threads snagging on her wounds.
She’d never been tended to by a Hawk before today. She’d expected healing to be a relief. Instead when Tavin closed his eyes, an awful heat like nettles spread across her broken flesh.
To distract herself, Fie plucked at her string of teeth, over bones of Peacock and Sparrow, Phoenix and Crane. Then her fingers stalled on two milk teeth knotted side by side.
One tooth sat cold, a distant shade where its spark had been an hour before.
That tooth belonged to Hangdog.
The other still simmered with life.
That one belonged to Pa.
How long did he have? How long did any of her kin have?
“Once we’re ready, we can take the tunnels out.”
Tavin’s voice bulled through the quiet. Fie and Jasimir both started.
“What?” Fie asked.
Tavin let her hand go. “Done with this side. Let’s see the other. And the graze on your arm.”
She rolled up her sleeve, wincing at the crackle of blood. “What do you mean, ‘out’?” she asked again.
“The city gates will be buttoned up tight for days,” he said, unwinding the rags from her fingers. “And most of the merchant ships are moored across the bay, so—”
“No. What do you mean, ‘out’?” Fie jabbed her free thumb up. Stinging rolled up her fingers once more. “I’m getting my kin back.”
Tavin’s face stiffened. “Fie … there may not be much to get—”
“Pa.” She pinched his tooth between her thumb and forefinger until it ground against her own knuckle-bone. “He’s … he’s still alive.”
The hush that followed ached near as much as Fie did.
“He swore an oath,” Tavin said at last.
It was Fie’s turn to stiffen. She turned a hard stare on the Hawk. “What,” she hissed, “does that mean?”
“I think you know what it means.”
Fie did. She was a Crow; she knew a Money Dance when she heard one.
Jasimir sat up. “Tav—”
Fie jerked her arm free. It started to bleed again. “If you think I’m going to leave my family with some monster—”
“Your father told me if anything happened to him—” Tavin began.
“You two happened to him.”
“So did your oath.”
Her heels dug into the earthen floor. “We said we’d get you two to Cheparok—”
“Your father swore a Covenant oath to get Jasimir to his allies, in this life or the next.” Frost slivered through Tavin’s voice. He wouldn’t look at her.
That only maddened her more. A Money Dance worked only when you knew your worth. When you knew what you were owed.
But they both knew what she owed him and his prince: nothing.
“We told her we—I had allies in Cheparok.” Jasimir broke his silence. “The Crows kept their end of the deal.”
“Really?” Tavin slashed a still-shaking hand at the moldering walls. “Does this look like the Floating Fortress to you, Jas? Did I miss you somehow mustering an army in the last ten minutes?”
The prince recoiled, cheeks darkening, but his jaw stiffened. “It doesn’t matter. They got us this far. I can’t ask for more.”
“We don’t have a choice.” The wire around Tavin’s words pulled taut. “The Oleander Gentry are about to own the throne. We all know how that ends.”
The prince had no answer for that.
Fie did. “Pull that ‘we’ out of your mouth. My kin got you to the allies you asked for. And your damned allies shot arrows through—” The words turned to gravel on her tongue.
Hangdog’s tooth stayed cold and quiet. Gone.
All of it was gone.
She had to get it back, she had to get them out, she had to get out—
“I’m sorry.” Jasimir’s hands tangled together, eyes scanning the dirt as if searching for words. “We … He said he’d take us in. I don’t know what happened, why … If I just had my fire, I could have—”
He meant it to be an apology. Something to pacify her. Instead, a snarling tiger in Fie roared free.
“I don’t give a damn,” she spat. “Those are my people, and I’m supposed to be their chief. And now I’m supposed to abandon my kin, I’m the one who has to save royals who haven’t lifted a finger to protect me or mine?” She tottered to her feet.
“Get scummed.” The ground swayed beneath her. She staggered toward the corridor anyway. “Both of you can get scummed.”
“Fie—”
“Look after your own,” she snarled. “And I’ll look after mine.”
Her hand closed around the bag of teeth.
Tavin’s hand closed around her good arm. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“I’m going to get my pa,” she shot back. “And I’m getting what’s left of my people. And I’m getting my damn cat. Let go before I make you.”
Tavin did, but only to slide past, planting himself between her and the way back.
“Move,” she snarled.
Tavin had that look on his face again, the one that left a thousand things unsaid. A hard edge cut through his voice. “None of us want this, Fie. Not for you, not for us. But Jas and I don’t have a chance against Rhusana without you. And neither do your people.”
Pain shot through Fie’s bloody hand as she snatched up Pa’s rag-swaddled sword and pointed the broken end at Tavin, loose threads trembling. “Don’t you dare. You brought my people into this. Don’t you dare.”
He didn’t stir, watching her. This time the look on his face said a solitary thing:
What do you want, Fie?
She knew full well how fast he could move. That if he wanted, Pa’s sword would be on the bricks and she’d be next to it. But he knew how many Phoenix teeth were in that bag. And if she wanted, she could light him ablaze, light this city ablaze, light Sabor ablaze from mountain to coast, all before she hit the ground.
Almost all of her wanted to. Wanted out, out of this city, out of the deal, out of the oath she’d danced her way into.
Crows had one rule. Look after your own.
Her own were on that bridge—
Her own were scattered across Sabor.
“Your father said to keep the oath,” Tavin said, staring down the broken end of the sword.
“Damn you,” Fie screamed.
He stepped away from the corridor.
What do you want, Fie?
She wanted to throw Pa’s sword so far, she could forget she’d ever seen it saw at a throat. She wanted to kick Tavin’s teeth out and use them to heal herself of everything Hawks had done to her today. She wanted to teach the lord-governor of the Fan the price for crossing a Crow witch.
Fie lurched forward. Caught herself. The hallway gaped two paces ahead. Her hand burned, bled on the hilt of the sword. She stumbled one more pace.
Give them fire, hissed the Phoenix teeth.
Get out, her gut hissed back.
All of her wanted to.
But it wasn’t her oath to break. It was Pa’s.
It wasn’t just her price to pay. It was every Crow’s.
She could burn it all down and run. But that was the way of dead royals who got what they wanted and didn’t have to give a damn who paid for it.
Fie stood, motionless, for a long moment.
Then she stuck the sword through her sash, slumped against the wall, and stuck out a bloody hand.
And at that moment, Fie found what her Chief voice sounded like.
“Fix my hand. And tell me where in the twelve hells we’re going.”