It didn’t take much. They never expected a Crow to fight back, nor did they expect their threats to quite literally blow up in their faces. The budding mob scattered before the golden blaze. Even the other Crows looked ready to flee until Fie let the tooth’s spark go, satisfied the others wouldn’t return.
You always like your fire too much, the memory of Little Witness chided. Fie ignored it.
The other chief gaped at her, and Fie stood a little straighter, trying not to preen. If all went as she’d hoped, soon she’d have a Birthright to offer the rest of the castes, and she reckoned that meant hearing “thank you” more often.
Yet gratitude hadn’t quite infected the other chief yet, a man two decades younger than Pa, but just as weathered by the roads, and thrice as mistrustful. “That was a Phoenix tooth, aye?” He bit off each word tough and salty as jerky. “You’re the one the queen’s after.”
“She’s the one who’s made a fool of that queen thrice over,” Wretch said coldly.
“And aren’t we all better for it.” The other chief pointed at the faltering beacon. “You see that? Karostei called us, then their arbiter turned us away. He said that if even the king could die of plague we brought in, then they couldn’t chance it. Whatever feud you’ve started with the queen just cost us viatik.”
“The queen’s cozied up with the Oleander Gentry,” shot back Madcap. “You’ve no notion what Chief went through to keep her off the throne and keep them from running us all down.”
“Would’ve been faster than starving. They’ll just come for us tonight anyway.”
“Aye, noted,” Wretch drawled. “You’d rather we let you die by mob. We’ll remember that next time.”
“Enough.” Fie swallowed. Her itch to fight had fled with the Crane oafs, and the other chief wasn’t wrong. Even if vexing Rhusana was better than the alternative, the rest of their caste would catch trouble for a choice they’d no say in.
Besides, Crows had one rule, and she didn’t get to be picky about it. “That queen won’t be much longer for her throne, and I wager Karostei won’t much longer have an arbiter if he keeps turning Crows away while the town rots. You’re welcome to make camp with us tonight, and we’ll be safe from Oleanders. At the dawn, we’ll head to Karostei. You can come with, or you can head north to shelter in the groves of Gen-Mara until this all settles. Either way, you’ll see viatik again soon. Does that suit you?”
The other chief considered a moment as Fie took in the sight of his band. Thin faces, light packs, clothes worn near to threadbare, and more tellingly, none worn so thin as their chief. No wagon at all, let alone one for supplies alone, and precious little time to waste answering plague beacons that didn’t end in viatik.
“We’ve enough to share dinner,” Fie added.
The other band traded looks at that, and their chief folded his arms. “Aye, suppose that suits us. You’ll deal with Karostei yourselves, though. I’ll have no part of that again.”
“Fair.” Fie tapped her fist to her mouth and held it out. “Fie.”
“Drudge,” answered the other chief. “When do we eat?”
Prince Jasimir had once told Fie the Markahn clan of Hawks thought cats were good luck. When Barf the tabby caught mice in their supplies, or sniffed out wild mint, or sat up and stared down the road a full minute before anyone rode their way, that was true enough.
There was another way the cat was lucky, though: her kills made perfect studies for Fie.
The tabby had learned that laying a dead squirrel at Fie’s toes bought her a bite of salt fish and a lap to curl up in later, when Fie went about mastering the Hawk Birthright. The tricky thing about the Birthright of blood was that it could destroy just as well as heal, if not easier, and as one of the Hawk witches, Corporal Lakima had recommended Fie practice as their novices did—on something beyond suffering.
Now, as late twilight hung over the camp, Lakima examined the remains of Barf’s latest victim: a tree mouse that had been dispatched with one swift bite. The tooth marks had stoppered up with dried blood, thanks to Fie’s work with a Hawk witch-tooth. The corporal held her own hand over the carcass, then nodded her approval. “You’ve got clotting down, and that alone will buy you time to get to a trained healer.”
Fie’s Crows were no stranger to her lessons, whether in swords, letters, or healing. Drudge and his Crows, however, took in the proceedings with an array of bewilderment and suspicion. They’d given the Hawks a wide berth, and now they watched Madcap and Varlet toss shells with Khoda as if they were gambling with an asp.
But Lakima seemed to be ignoring it entirely. “If you want to make sure your patient lives, the next thing you’ll need to master is clearing out any—” She stopped as Barf jerked awake from where she’d been lounging by Fie’s side and stared down the road, yellow eyes wide as saucers. Her striped tail fluffed out, and a warning yowl gurgled up from her throat.
“… disease,” Lakima finished with a sigh. She handed Fie a vinegar-soaked rag to clean her hands after handling the vermin, and wiped her own hands with another before standing and helping Fie to her feet.
“Oleanders coming,” Fie called. Drudge’s band burst into motion, snatching up aught they could carry, and Fie immediately realized her mistake. “Wait—just—everyone get closer together—you don’t need to go to the trees—”
“Mind your own band, cousin,” Drudge snapped. “Up, you lot, fast as you can.”
Some of his Crows hung back a moment, looking at Fie and the Hawks, but they followed their chief and vanished into the trees. Fie’s band just did their best to gather a little closer to the fire, rounding up all the goods about the camp so a spiteful Oleander couldn’t trample aught. Madcap made a show of peeling an apple, casual as could be.
Vexed, Fie sat too. She’d told Drudge she’d keep them safe.
Two moons ago, you’d be in those trees with them, her Chief voice reminded her. She did her best to ignore it as the Hawks assumed their usual post between the camp and the road.
This time something seemed different about the Oleander Gentry as they rounded the corner. When Fie spied it, a peculiar twist wrenched through her gut. It wasn’t the number; nigh twenty riders was high, but naught she and Lakima couldn’t handle. It wasn’t the weapons; she’d faced down steel before.
It was their faces, plain and furious. Not a single one of them had bothered to don a mask. Gloves, aye, and crude smocks of rough undyed cloth, but no masks.
They’d dressed for bloody business, but not one among them believed they’d be punished for it.
Much as they found strength in a pack, the Oleanders still seemed to have unofficially declared a leader in the man at the front, who slowed to a halt in front of Lakima. Fie heard Khoda suck in a breath and saw why at once: the Oleander carried a Hawk spear.
“Stand down,” he ordered Lakima. “We have business with the bone thieves.”
“We decline.” Lakima planted her own spear in the ground before her, point-up in her own kind of threat: an iron fist wrapped in formality.
“They abandoned a beacon,” another Oleander shouted.
“That little bitch burned my arm!”
“They turned their backs when called,” the Hawk rider thundered. “Karostei is dying by the dozen. And she”—he pointed to Fie—“assaulted citizens we’re sworn to guard. We need to make an example.”
“Ah yes,” Khoda said dryly, “that will certainly convince Crows to answer your beacons in the future.”
The stranger Hawk did not look pleased. “As a sergeant in Her Majesty’s army, I order you to stand down.”
Fie’s Hawks traded looks at “Her Majesty’s.”
“Again,” Lakima said, icy calm, “we decline.”
The Oleander’s Hawk drew himself up, nostrils flaring. “On what grounds do you decline a direct order, officer?”
“We have orders to protect every citizen, including Crows,” Lakima answered stonily. “And those orders…” Her brief pause was the most dramatic flair Fie had ever seen the corporal display. “… outrank you.”
“I doubt it,” the rider sneered. “The only one who outranked the queen is dead.”
“The queen can’t give orders to the military until after her official coronation as the ruler of Sabor.” Lakima glanced up at the waxing moon. “Until then, our highest authority is Master-General Draga. Besides, the first line of the Hawk code is I will serve my nation and the throne above all. The nation comes first. Surely a man who’s risen to sergeant in the master-general’s army knows the code.”
Silence stretched tight as a sunburn over the road.
Madcap chose that moment to take a hearty bite out of their apple. The juicy crunch echoed across the road like a thunderclap, their messy chewing the monsoon in its wake. They stared direct at the Oleander’s Hawk the whole time.
He just pointed to Fie. “She needs to answer for wounding good people.”
“Those ‘good people’ were attacking unarmed citizens,” Lakima said.
“It doesn’t matter—”
“Not to your like, aye.” That old anger was climbing back up Fie’s spine. She got to her feet. “Pray, where were you when your louts were going after Crows?”
“You attacked those men unprovoked—”
“Unprovoked?” Fie squeezed between Khoda and Lakima to stand before them, not so far that the Oleander Hawk could snatch her up without risking their spears but close enough to look him dead in the eye. “I asked them to stop hounding the other Crows. Then one of them decided to get in my face, and wouldn’t you know it, he was a big, scary lad…” She pretended to rub the back of her neck in her best daft yokel impression. “On a big, scary horse…” Her fingers caught at two teeth on her string, waking the spark and calling the Birthrights from where they slumbered. “… and I felt, oh, threatened.”
The song of the Phoenix Birthright rang down her bones, almost too swift. Golden fire sparked and spread in a flash to wall off the camp and the Crows whole. The Oleanders’ horses danced and shied away, and the Hawk rider swore as his horse gave a fearful buck before shimmying sideways.
It wasn’t easy to balance two Phoenix teeth, as Fie found the sparks of their dead owners usually too opinionated to get along, but she kept them in ruthless harmony now as she stared down the Hawk.
She took a step forward, and the flames surged with her.
“Look at all these horses, all these big, scary people,” she sighed as flames of brassy Phoenix gold coiled about her hands. “Reckon I still feel awful threatened. And you know, the funny thing is, I asked those lads to ride along and leave us be and they didn’t, and now here we are.” The blaze bowed up and out, closer still to the Oleanders, who shrank down the road another few paces. “So you want my answer? I’ll say it once more before anyone else has to burn: Ride. Along.”
The Hawk sergeant did his best to stare her down, twitching his spear. She near laughed. That was a game Pa had warned her of long before she’d grown to his elbow: scummers like the sergeant would try to startle a jumpy Crow into aught that could be called an attack, then take the excuse to cut them down.
Hawks won the game when it came to steel, mostly. But when it came to fire …
“By moon’s end, you’ll be only a stain on our history,” the Hawk swore, wheeling his horse round. “The White Phoenix will wash her hands of you!”
“The White Phoenix could stand to be more creative with her nicknames,” Fie grumbled as the Oleanders beat a sullen retreat. “She’s had what, five years? And that’s the best she comes up with?”
“We should try to move out before dawn,” Lakima said behind her. “They know you by your Phoenix teeth. If word hasn’t already gotten back to the queen about your location from this afternoon, it certainly will after tonight.”
Fie called off the fire once the Oleanders faded from sight, vexed more than ever. “Aye, and what would you have done? They weren’t going to leave us be without a push.”
Lakima didn’t take the jab. “I agree, but we still have to account for the risk of them reporting to the queen.”
A rush of ire sloshed about Fie’s skull before she tamped it down. She couldn’t help but notice Drudge’s Crows remained in the trees.
She didn’t know why she so badly craved the faith of a band of stranger Crows. Or why that faith from her kin felt more like a stone about her neck.
She did know, at least, that Lakima had no business taking the brunt of her vexation. “Sorry,” Fie mumbled, pocketing the two Phoenix teeth. Not enough spark was left to go back on her string, but there was enough to store for lighting stubborn campfires and the like. “You’re right.”
“Will wonders never cease,” Varlet breathed in jest. “We must be in sore terrible peril.”
Fie shook her fist at him with an exaggerated scowl. “And that’s enough out of you, or I’ll have you fed to Barf.”
The rest of the band chuckled at that, and one of the myriad knots in Fie’s gut loosened. It was a little thing she’d noted, as they’d crossed paths more and more with Oleanders and skin-ghasts in the last moon and her band had still looked to Pa to lead out of habit. Once the danger had passed, he’d crack a joke or fool about and snap the uneasy frost that gripped the band. So long as they could laugh, the fear stayed beyond the reach of their campfire.
“I think we’d better keep a standing watch tonight,” Lakima said. “We can continue your healing lessons tomorrow, if that suits you.”
“Aye.” Fie returned to her circle of Crows as Drudge’s band slowly began to trickle out of the trees. Most gave her the same wide berth they’d given the Hawks. Fie found that bothered her even more than their flight to the trees had, but scolding them would do naught to calm their nerves. Instead she found a patch of ground to sit, worked her chief’s string free, and drew out her tooth bag. It was time for a restock.
Drudge himself didn’t share his band’s misgivings, or if he did, he’d overcome them. He dropped into the empty dust across from Fie. “Those fire teeth … how many do you have?”
Fie glanced up from stowing the teeth she’d just half burned. “Enough,” she said cautiously.
“Enough to spare?”
Fie’s hands went still.
“The roads won’t get better,” Drudge continued. “You and I both know it, girl. Whatever you’ve started with the queen won’t dry up for moons. I need to look after my own.”
She’d known it was only a matter of time, and yet …
The teeth kept her safe. They kept her band safe. She’d won them from Rhusana herself. All Drudge had done was eat her band’s food and cast doubt at her at every turn, and now he asked for teeth he’d done naught to earn—
When is it enough?
She was back in the tower, a dead god smiling at her and saying that, in life after life after life, she’d failed.
Fie forced her fingers to unbutton the compartment for her Phoenix teeth. “I left a few score at Gen-Mara’s groves. This ought to hold you until you reach them.” She counted six and held them out. “Try to burn just one at a time. If you do two, they fight.”
His eyes lingered on her palm, then flicked up to her. “Reckon that’s enough?”
“Aye. The groves are less than a day’s walk north.”
Drudge looked long and hard at the Hawks, and then at Tavin’s gleaming short sword strapped at Fie’s side. Then he looked back at the six teeth in Fie’s hand.
“There’s more at the groves,” she repeated.
Drudge took the teeth. “Aye.”
Something in his voice told Fie she’d be better waiting to tie new Phoenix teeth on her string until after Drudge’s band departed. She buttoned up the tooth compartment, closed her bag, and feigned a hearty yawn. “I’d best get some shut-eye, especially if any of those scummers were from Karostei.”
“Aye,” Drudge said again, toneless.
Fie fetched a sleeping mat from their supply wagon and rolled it out so she could sleep facing the road. She didn’t reckon the Oleander Gentry would return after such a scare, but they hadn’t the luxury of rolling shells on those odds.
And when she tucked her tooth bag under her head, she told herself it was only to be ready for Oleanders as well.
She dreamed of Tavin, as she usually did.
A poet would say she missed poetic things about him, nonsense like how sunlight caught on his eyelashes or how his smile was bright as a constellation, but the heart of it was that she missed more than eyelashes. She missed falling asleep feeling safer for him at her back. She missed how he’d first sorted out how to tell she was upset, then when to say naught about it, then finally when to say square what she needed to hear. She missed not missing him.
And in the dream, it seemed he missed her, too, calling her name from the other side of a courtyard she did and didn’t know: Fie. Fie. Where are you?
The sun-warmed tiles stuck to her bare soles as she padded across the courtyard. Here, she tried to say, but no sound came out.
Fie.
She caught at his elbow and he shook her off, gaze skipping over her like a stone on water. It’s me, she shouted noiselessly. I’m right here.
Fie! He walked away, scanning the arching corridors about the yard, the latticed gallery above.
She followed—and caught her own reflection in a pane of Peacock-green glass.
Red stained her plain linen shift, pouring from a gash across her throat.
Her face belonged to the Peacock girl she’d killed not five days ago.
Fie!
It’s me, she tried to say, choking on blood. It’s me—
“FIE!”
She jolted awake with a sucking gasp.
Wretch’s and Lakima’s faces swam above her. Lakima sat back and let out a long breath, eyes closing. “Thank the Mender.”
“You were out cold.” Wretch helped Fie sit up. The camp tilted and blurred, all much brighter than it ought to be. “Thought you slept through pack-up on account of burning all those teeth last night, then none of us could wake you.”
“It’s a healer’s sleep,” Lakima said. “We put patients in them for serious wounds, but … I’m the only other witch here.”
“Could Rhusana have obtained one of your hairs?” Khoda asked, rubbing his chin. All a Swan-caste witch needed was a strand of someone’s hair in order to twist their desires to terrible ends.
Fie shook her head. “I’d already be dead.” She peered about the camp, which seemed curiously empty.
And that was when the answer, horrid and gutting, came to her.
Lakima wasn’t the only witch who could use the Birthright of blood.
She twisted about, staring at the sleeping mat, and saw naught. Her throat closed. Her voice came out as a squeak. “Was I moved at all?”
“No,” Wretch answered.
“When did Drudge and his band leave?”
“Before dawn.”
Fie pushed herself to her feet, heart beginning to pound. “Which way did they go?”
“What’s wrong, Fie?” Wretch asked.
Fie’s breath came faster and faster. She scanned the grass about her sleeping mat—naught. The ground where Lakima and Wretch knelt—naught.
“What’s wrong?”
The head of her sleeping mat—naught.
“He took my teeth,” Fie answered, hollow. “The bag. They’re all gone.”
Quiet gasps swept through the camp.
“I need a moment,” Fie croaked. Then she put a good dozen wobbling paces between herself and everyone else, turned to the forest, and screamed every foul word she knew.
Wretch gave her a minute or so before crunching over the dry grass to lay a gnarled hand on her shoulder.
“It’s all my fault!” Fie raged, running her hands through her hair. “I brought this on us! I should have just given him the damned teeth!”
Wretch smoothed Fie’s hair back down, businesslike. “He wanted teeth?”
“Phoenix teeth. I gave him half a dozen and told him he could get more from Pa.”
“And that wasn’t enough for him.” Wretch sighed. “Aye. One way or another…”
We feed the Crows. Fie knew that proverb all too well. “I should have given him more.”
“Aye, probably.”
Fie winced. She’d half hoped Wretch would tell her she’d done right after all.
Instead Wretch said, “You owe your teeth to no one, and your pa raised no thief. But fear? Fear’ll make a monster of anyone that lets it. And that man was afraid for his own.”
“Pa never would have let them stay with us.”
“Oh, he would have,” Wretch said with a shrug. “Cur’s soft for anyone who puts their hand out for help, and that’s no shame. That’s how we got the prince’s oath, aye? And doubtless that’ll save many a Crow to come. But that’s also how Cur lost his finger and how Swain lost his life. There’s always a cost to helping folk. Cur knew there’s a cost to not helping, too. All you can do is decide which you want to pay.”
Gen-Mara hasn’t failed his duty for hundreds of years. I can’t say the same for you.
Fie’s eyes burned and watered. “I’m not ready for this, Wretch. Pa hasn’t been gone a day and I’ve already lost our teeth. How do I protect you all now?”
“With the Hawks you won us already. And with those.” Wretch pointed to the string still knotted round Fie’s neck. “We’ll make them last until the next shrine, and we’ll carry on just as we did before we had Phoenix teeth.”
Before Fie could run off Oleander Gentry with naught but a fistful of fire. Her throat tightened once again. Now getting her Crows to Jasimir’s procession wasn’t just about the oath. She had to get them to safety before they crossed another band of Oleanders who wouldn’t back down from Hawks.
“We’ll carry on, Fie.” Wretch gripped her shoulder again. “They’ve been at us for hundreds of years, and still the roads are ours.”
Shame and fury yet pounded down Fie’s bones, but the band didn’t have time for her misery. She scuffed a fist over her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to stand straighter. “Aye. We need to go.”
She walked back to the camp with Wretch, where most of the Crows and all of the Hawks pretended they hadn’t been eavesdropping.
“Drudge’s band went south,” Khoda offered. “Just—if that helps at all.”
Fie’s mouth twisted. If they’d gone north, there was a chance they’d have sheltered in Pa’s shrine, and no chance Pa would let them leave with her tooth bag. But south … “They’ve, what, an hour’s head start? Two? We could try to catch them, but we’d have to abandon Karostei.” She shook her head. “If Karostei’s had an unanswered beacon since yesterday, they don’t have much longer before it spreads to the whole town. I’ve enough teeth on my string to get us through that call, then we’ll get to Jas’s procession fast as we can. Aye?”
“Aye,” her Crows echoed.
“Yes, chief,” added Lakima.
A curl of purple smoke rose and drifted away—another beacon from Karostei choked out. Fie frowned deeper. “Then let’s get to the road.”