Skin-ghasts wreathed the royal quarters above, peering out over the gardens as Rhusana’s thousand-eyed sentinel.
Before, they’d not even tilted toward Fie. But now, as she, her lordlings, and the king climbed from the catacombs, one by one, every hollow face turned toward them.
“Don’t look now,” Tavin said slowly, “but I think we have an audience.”
Jasimir shifted his father’s arm over his shoulders with a grunt. “They didn’t bother me at all on my way here. I think they’re protecting Rhusana.”
“The queen who hid her damnedest to make sure this scummer never saw the light of day again?” Fie jerked her thumb at the king as they passed under the stone arch. “That Rhusana?”
Tavin glanced up. “That Rhusana,” he confirmed tightly. “We may want to pick up the pace.”
Fie dug in her satchel of Phoenix teeth. “You two go first, and I’ll cover our backs. We’re going for the main gate.”
“Yes, chief,” the lordlings said in unison. Fie looped back behind the king’s dragging feet—and not a moment too soon, as a skin-ghast leapt toward them from the stairs leading to the Well of Grace above.
It landed in an arc of golden Phoenix fire. “Go,” Fie shouted, teeth blazing in her fists.
Through the gardens they half ran, half stumbled, wheels of fire driving off the ghasts, great sweeps of crackling gold from Fie, from Tavin, from Jasimir, leaving trails of lingering flame and scorch marks. They carried the king past the pavilions he’d once ruled, the halls he’d feasted in, the servants’ quarters where his name had been little better than a curse.
The sky began to blush bloody. By the time they reached the main gates, it had rusted vivid orange. A mob had gathered in the courtyard where Fie had once bargained viatik from the queen; now the gates were barred shut, penning them in like cattle. She caught shouts of “Let us out!” and “Whatever you want, I’ll pay!” and “For the gods’ sake!”
Then she heard cries of alarm, of horror. The skin-ghasts on their trail went still as someone gasped, “Is that the king?”
“It’s over, Rhusana,” Fie told the ghasts. “They see him.”
The ghasts lingered a moment, then retreated like oil slicks.
Fie returned to the front of their gruesome procession. The crowd drew back as Tavin and Jasimir hauled Surimir onward toward the gates proper. Fie saw Peacocks, Owls, Sparrows, Pigeons, Cranes, a few Swans, all crushed together. She almost let out a bitter laugh. Rhusana had united them after all.
“Is that the king?” someone called more forcefully.
In answer, Tavin let golden fire unfurl from his fingers, then lifted Surimir’s limp hand into the air by the wrist. The flames rolled around them both, harmless.
A hush fell over the crowd.
Finally Fie stood before the gates. They were solid lacquered oak, and she saw no bar across the double doors, which meant they’d been sealed from the outside.
“Open the gates,” she called to the Hawks standing behind the stone parapets, a score or so in a line, bristling with spears.
They didn’t answer.
“Open the gates!” Jasimir’s voice soared over her shoulder. In the edges of her sight, she saw him lift a burning hand. “As crown prince, I command you to open them!”
The Hawks only shifted their spears, the sunset flickering along steel.
“There are Crows outside,” someone shouted.
A nearby Sparrow nodded. “We heard you shut them out! Let us go!”
“Let the Crows in, you damned fools!” Fie shouted.
“Fie?” A voice rose from beyond the gates. “Fie, is that you?”
The Hawks did not move.
Fie knew what this was. She’d seen it in more villages than she could number, she’d seen it in the faces of Peacocks and Pigeons alike, she’d seen it in everyone who thought they could yank the Crows about as they pleased because the Crows always, always had to let them. Even on the edge of the plague, they feared the queen more than the Crows beyond the gates.
They should have feared the one within.
Fie lifted her chin, drew the chief’s sword, stared them down. “You have a count of one hundred,” she said, loud enough to carry out across the courtyard. “Then I cut your sinner king’s throat, and you’d best hope you’ve let in the Crows and gotten far enough from here that the plague won’t catch you, because it all goes guts-up from there.”
Then she planted her feet on the tiles of the courtyard and let out a piercing, unmistakable scream.
A silent heartbeat passed.
Then the answer roared back like a hurricane, shrieking from beyond the palace walls, carving from hundreds, maybe a thousand throats.
Fie tried not to let her shock show. When she’d asked Pa to send help, she’d expected her band, maybe Ruffian and Jade’s.
Khoda had said a conqueror without an army was just a thief. But she had no use for armies, and that Pa had known.
Instead, the Messenger had sent her a flood.
She trilled an order: Pass it on. Outside, another chief picked up the commands, wailing sharp as steel. Every stamp shook the ground. Every sweep rolled like thunder.
“One,” Fie said.
Finally, one of the Hawks spoke, only to say, “We—we have orders from the queen—”
Tavin and Jasimir let the king fall to the ground.
“Two,” Fie said.
One of the Hawks broke, then another. They lunged for something behind them, only for their fellow soldiers to swing spears their way. A scuffle broke out as the rumble and howl of the Money Dance swelled to bursting.
“Three,” Fie said. Then she turned to the lordlings and added: “If you’ve aught to say to the king, say it now.”
She did not listen, for the words were not for her. She watched the gates and kept her count.
By thirty, the lacquered oak shuddered like the dying king at Fie’s back.
By thirty-three, the gates creaked open.
Beyond them stood more Crows than Fie had seen in her entire life, more than she could dream of. She saw chiefs and masks and teeth waiting for her call. At the front stood Jade, mask in one hand, chief’s blade in the other.
Beside her stood Lakima.
Fie’s throat closed, but she had no time for sentiment now. She took a deep breath and whistled the marching order.
Crows flooded the courtyard until it was a sea of black crowsilk. They split around her, the lordlings, and the king, pushing the mob back as gently as they could. Then Fie saw Crows stationing themselves about her like a guard, Wretch, Madcap, Bawd, Varlet, all of her kin. Jade, Lakima, Ruffian’s band—they ringed her too, giving her shelter.
It felt as if a cord about her heart had cut open, like shedding a too-warm cloak. At some point she’d grown too used to the lonely weight of being the only Crow, bearing the demands of the Covenant on her head. Now her own were here to help carry it for her.
Tavin helped Jasimir stand from where he’d knelt at his father’s side, then looked to Fie. “We’re ready,” he said, low, and stepped back.
Fie crouched by Surimir’s ear. For Tavin and Jasimir’s sake, she hoped he had heard them, somehow, from the maze of his own delirium. For her own, she hoped he heard her now.
“There’s a lot on your head,” she whispered. “Maybe you didn’t favor the Oleander Gentry like Rhusana. Maybe you told yourself that if you looked the other way, the Covenant wouldn’t hold you at fault for all they did. Maybe it just suited you, knowing we Crows would answer your beacons and keep your country whole because it’d kill us not to.”
She pulled a Phoenix tooth free, called the spark out, and set it over his heart.
“Pa says the Covenant will bring you to the Crows in your next life, so you can live like us and know what you did awry. I hate that, I do, because it’s people like you that make our lives punishment, not the Covenant. You better hope that ends tonight, because here’s what I’m supposed to tell you.”
Fie laid the chief’s blade against King Surimir’s throat and leaned in.
“Welcome to our roads, cousin,” she hissed. “Remember what sent you.”
The tiles of the courtyard ran red with a dead king’s blood. Fie stood and let the tooth burn free.
And from every rooftop, every tree, every spire, every dome, crows took to the sky in a jeering, billowing black cloud.
Fie heard a groan, followed by a tremendous crack.
Spirals of gray rot wheeled up the sides of the Tower of Memories, in the same pattern as the Sinner’s Brand. More lanced between the tiles of the courtyard, raced over the walls of the Hall of the Dawn, climbed the Hawk barracks, spreading over every surface like dye through water.
Three weeks, Fie realized. Three weeks of plague rot spreading like roots from a dying man’s body, waiting for him to draw his last breath and let it bloom. She’d told Jasimir the plague had had to run deep. But now it was growing strong.
She stood and howled, “ALL CHIEFS TO ME!”
Jade spun on a heel and strode over. “Twelve hells,” she said. “We’ve an ash harvest on our hands, aye?”
“Aye,” Fie said, and only waited for a dozen or so chiefs to push their way forward. “You all pass this to the rest: there have to be hundreds of people in here who are dropping from the plague right now, but these buildings won’t hold, either. We can’t let the palace come down on the victims, dead or alive, or we’ll never be able to burn it clean. Jade, split the bands into north, south, and west. Send the healthy out through this gate and bring the sick into the gardens. Clearing them out comes first, then we’ll give them mercy, once it’s safe.”
One of the lordlings cleared his throat behind her but said naught.
“Sabor will never forgive us for it, you know,” Jade said. “Burning their beloved palace to the ground. Are you willing to pay the price?”
The question struck a chord in Fie’s memory. She couldn’t place it.
More coughing behind her. The sky above shivered and fractured with black wings.
“We were always going to pay,” Fie answered. “One way or another.”
“Fie—” Jasimir’s voice rose. “Fie!”
There was a quiet thud.
When she whirled about, Tavin had dropped to his knees, coughing.
Dark whorls of the Sinner’s Brand were tracing up his arms.