There were a great many things Fie noticed when they emerged from the roughway and took in the sight of Karostei, yet there was only one conclusion to draw.
It would not be saved.
The main town had been carved from the stubble of thinner forests along the northwest edge of the Hassura Plains, and beyond the rooftops, Fie could see rolling fields of ripening maize, buckwheat, even green beads of gourds. The nearest fields’ crops, however, were much less traditional: their dirt was covered in scores of rows of tents, sleeping mats, and wagons full of furniture and goods, as if most of Karostei had just moved a quarter league east. Iron kettles smoked over cooking fires, and chickens pecked at the dirt in makeshift pens. Goats and cattle lowed from a pasture Fie couldn’t see but absolutely could, and did, smell. Children chased one another up and down the dusty lanes, shrieking, as adults watched from tense knots and muttered among themselves.
The town itself sat too still behind a timber wall, one that looked as if they’d been halfway through replacing its older gray wood with newer, still-pale planks. And that was where Fie saw the ugly omen of Karostei’s fate: a deep, sickly gray rot spread across the clean lumber in the same stark, veiny rings as the Sinner’s Brand.
That was when she knew Karostei could not be saved.
Another puff of black smoke went up from the town’s signal post, and Fie spied clusters of black cloaks gathered a dozen paces from the barred gates. Half a dozen Hawk guards stood in an uneasy line between the Crows and the only way in, as two cloaked figures argued with a man in Crane yellow.
Lakima cleared her throat. “Chief … how close can we get to those walls?”
“Treat it the same as a corpse,” Fie said. “Keep a few paces off. Looks like we’ll need you to clear the way, but you’ll be safest outside. I doubt there’s aught in there but dying sinners now.”
“Understood. Shall we take the lead?”
“Aye.” Fie let the Hawks form up ahead of her. Better to let Karostei’s arbiter negotiate with them first. Besides, she had a single Phoenix tooth left on her string now. She couldn’t afford to waste it on cowing an arbiter.
That proved to be the right choice. The Crows on the road ahead parted to let them pass, trading baffled looks when they saw Fie’s band in the Hawks’ wake. Lakima marched them right up to the arbiter and the two Crows he was arguing with. This close, Fie could see the strings of teeth about their necks that marked them for chiefs like her.
“Corporal Lakima Geli szo Jasko of the Trikovoi fortress,” Lakima barked. “Who’s the ranking officer here?”
“I am,” the arbiter said.
Fie couldn’t see the look Lakima gave him, but she had a wonderful view of how he seemed to almost wilt beneath it.
“That’s … doubtful,” the corporal said. She wasn’t wrong; though an arbiter was meant to serve as a town’s leader, it didn’t mean a Crane could give orders to Hawk soldiers.
“The sergeant died two days ago.” The voice came from the signal post above, where a fresh string of black smoke had begun coiling into the sky. “We’re all guard rank, so until a new officer arrives—”
“I’m in command,” finished the Crane arbiter. Their arrival had drawn the notice of some idling citizens, who were edging nearer, and that seemed to make the arbiter even more nervy. “Put that out at once. We don’t need their help.”
Fie ignored him, staring up at the guard by the beacon. “Tell me your sergeant didn’t die of the plague two days ago.”
“Oh, it’s much worse than that,” one of the other chiefs answered. Lakima stepped aside, and the woman spoke direct to Fie, anger and weariness in her lined face. “The first sinner died four days ago. This scummer”—she flicked her hand at the arbiter—“decided he could deal with the body like the dead king and just had a couple Sparrows burn it. They were dead of the plague by the next morning, then the sergeant’s house came down with it, and next thing you know most the town’s run to the fields with what they could carry.”
“I’m telling you, it’ll blow over,” the arbiter insisted. “We burned the quarantine hut, same as they did with the king. Wouldn’t we have heard if the palace were rotting from the inside out?”
“Imagine that, it’s almost as if the king didn’t actually die of the plague at all and the queen is just exploiting an opportunity to further vilify the Crows and consolidate power,” Khoda muttered under his breath.
The arbiter blinked at him. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” Khoda said. “Though perhaps I’m wrong, but … a corporal qualifies as a ranking officer, correct?”
“Correct,” Corporal Lakima said, and yet again, the arbiter shrank. Lakima’s voice rose. “Guards, stand down and let the Crows in.”
The six Hawks on the road didn’t need further prompting. Fie couldn’t help noting that they took the opportunity to distance themselves from both the arbiter and the decaying wall.
“You can’t—these bone thieves just want money! It’ll pass!” The arbiter threw himself in front of Lakima. “All they’ll do is burn the town to the ground!”
The other chief, a man near Wretch’s age, spat into the road with disgust. “Don’t blame us because you called too late,” he said. “You know damn well how it runs with the plague. If we don’t stop it here, it’ll take your fields next, and your livestock, and your people, and then the only mercy you’ll get is death before the famine.”
“We won’t pay for you to destroy our homes,” the arbiter insisted. “Go cheat someone else.”
“Viatik fits the means,” the first chief said. She pointed to the ragtag camp. “Your means aren’t much right now. Nor are our expectations.”
“Let them in!” a woman shouted from the gathering crowd. “If the plague takes the fields, we’ll all starve!”
“My father’s suffering in there right now! Give him mercy!”
“I SAID IT WILL PASS!” roared the arbiter, nigh purple in the face.
Something about that caught Fie’s notice. She took a step closer to the arbiter, eyes narrowed. “How many did you leave in town?”
“It doesn’t matter—”
“Five score,” the first chief said.
The other chief added, “Nigh a quarter of the town.”
“It’s on his head!” someone shouted from the crowd. “All hundred on his head!”
“He told us we were safe!”
“He said he’d take care of it!”
“And you believed him?” Khoda asked, incredulous. No one in the crowd had an answer for that. Or at least not one they’d shout to a Hawk standing with Crows.
“It’ll pass,” the Crane arbiter repeated, sweat glistening on his brow.
Now it was clear enough for all on the road to see: a dark curl of the Sinner’s Brand had begun blooming just below his eye.
“Oh, cousin.” Fie tapped her cheek in the same spot. This was the Peacock girl all over again. “Not for you.”
He lifted a hand to his face, only to find the rash stippling his fingers. Some believed the Covenant sent the plague to hustle sinners into the next life. Fie suspected that, if they were right, the Covenant certainly wasn’t dragging its feet with a man who’d doomed nigh a hundred of his townsfolk with his own spite. Not with how swift the Sinner’s Brand was now etching purple-gray vines up his wrists.
“This is a mistake, it can’t—”
“You’ve not long,” the first chief said, not unkindly. “We need to get you inside the walls.”
“But—why?”
The second chief motioned for his Crows. He had considerably less patience with the arbiter. “Because you’ll spread it if you die out here. Shrew, Gall, make sure he gets to the gates.” Two of his Crows steered the arbiter down the road as their chief turned to Fie and tapped his knuckles to his teeth. “I’m Ruffian. Don’t know how you wound up with Hawks for friends, but you have my thanks for them.”
“Aye, and mine, too. I’m Jade.” The first chief nodded to Fie. “New band, or new chief?”
“Took over for my pa,” Fie answered. “I’m Fie. Either of you cross roads with Cur?”
Ruffian bowed his head. “He was a good one. Sorry to hear he’s gone.”
“No, just lost a finger and couldn’t deal mercy. Little Witness sent him to Gen-Mara’s shrine.”
“That’s a blessing, then. We’ll be better for having the groves under a chief’s watch.” Jade tipped her brow at the Hawks. “Looks like he taught you well, if you’ve already made high friends. Is this your first ash harvest?”
Fie did her best not to fidget. An ash harvest was the Crow name for a hard day like this, dealing with a town beyond saving. “Aye. Saw one from a distance when I was a whelp, but that’s it.”
“Not much to it, so fear not. With three bands, this ought to be sorted before noon. We’ll need firewood, flashburn, and chalk.” At Jade’s signal, her own Crows began carrying loads of firewood to the gate, and Fie signaled for her Crows to follow suit. “We’ll split all our Crows into pairs to check every house,” Jade continued. “They mark a cross on the door for any still living, a ring if everyone’s dead or the house is empty. We’ll be following them to deal mercy, then leave the door open to show we’ve passed. Once we’re sure there’re none alive, the town burns, but we start with mercy. How’s your stock of teeth?”
Fie’s face ran hotter under the climbing sun. She tried not to let her shame show as she pinched at her string. “This is all. My bag was stolen this morning.”
Ruffian let out a laugh of disbelief. “Dena’s wrath, and you still answered the beacon? Aye, you’re Cur’s kin to be sure.”
“No doubt,” Jade said. “Do you know who took them?”
Fie gave an awkward shrug. “We found a band catching trouble last night for leaving Karostei. Their chief saw me run off Oleanders with Phoenix teeth and asked for some. I gave him six and told him I left more at Gen-Mara’s groves, but…”
I wasn’t enough.
Jade and Ruffian traded looks, and Jade’s lip curled. “Drudge.”
Ruffian shook his head. “He’d cut our throats to look after his band. Can’t fault him for it, but two-second clever doesn’t last. Here.” He started digging in his own bag. “We can spare enough to get you to a shrine.”
Jade slung a leather knapsack round to her front to rummage through as well, but she peered up at Fie through a curtain of gray-shot hair. “I have to ask. You’ve Hawks, and you had enough Phoenix teeth to be loose with them. Are you the one who’s got the queen so riled up?”
Fie’s mouth twisted. She stared at the dirt. “Aye—but—the queen’s got the Oleanders at her back. If she reaches the throne, they ride as they please. My band got the prince away from her, and I got him to his aunt, in trade for his Covenant oath that when he takes the throne … we all get Hawks.”
Ruffian sucked in a breath. “Truly?”
“Aye.” Fie braced for a scolding like the ones Little Witness and Drudge had handed her.
Instead Jade’s hand thrust into her line of sight, filled with teeth. “Now that’s a grand thing. Can’t say I hate having a prince owe us a favor.”
“No wonder the queen’s proper crossed,” Ruffian chuckled, passing another fistful of teeth to Fie. “Good for you, giving her throne a rattle. Wager it won’t be the last time you do.”
“Thanks.” Fie reached for her own bag to stow the teeth—and remembered where it had gone. There was a small pouch for her flint at her belt. She stuffed the teeth into that, feeling all the more humbled for how readily Ruffian and Jade had handed them off.
Jade wound her hair into a knot with a twist of rag and nodded to Ruffian and Fie. “Ready?” At their ayes, she twisted about to cry to her band, “Masks on!”
“Masks on,” Fie echoed, as did Ruffian. Leather and wooden struts creaked about them in a grim ballad.
“Chief.” Lakima caught her as she fetched their chalk from the wagon. Her voice lowered. “The civilians are bound to ask—can any of it be saved?”
Fie looked to the fields and found townspeople staring, bleak, at their homes about to go up in smoke. She’d seen loss before, loss and guilt and rage in a sinner’s family, but this was different.
This was familiar.
She’d left Pa behind. She’d lost the only teeth to ever make her feel truly dangerous. Even before then, she’d split from her kin, from her roads, from her ways, all for the sake of the oath.
This time, she knew what it was to lose nigh everything that made you safe.
Yet all Fie could do was shake her head. “It’s reached the walls. Everything has to burn.”
“Maybe they’ll remember this when they pick the next arbiter,” Khoda said, bitter.
“More likely one’s assigned.” Wretch’s voice turned muffled as she strapped on her mask. “Town’s under a thousand, aye? The governor of the region picks the arbiters for them when they’re that small.”
So the townspeople had had no say in the arbiter with a hundred deaths on his head.
And so Fie said to the corporal, “If it helps the townsfolk, tell them when they see the smoke, it’s the pyres for their kin. That’s when they ought to pray. And if that doesn’t help … tell them the arbiter burns, too.”
She pulled her own mask on, the world dimming to a welcome relief of darkness and a beak full of wild mint. For the briefest of moments, she shut her eyes.
The weight of teeth round her neck and at her belt, the weight of her swords, the faith of her Crows, the respect of two stranger chiefs—they all meant something, if she let them. They all could steady her, if she let them.
No matter what Little Witness said, no matter how Drudge had treated her, she was one of them.
She was a chief, with a harvest of ash beckoning.
Fie let the mint flood her lungs, then strode toward the gates.
They’d been barred from the outside, but at first, even with the bar lifted, the gates refused to budge no matter how Varlet and Bawd pushed. Then Jade shook her head with rue and said, “Eater of Bones, this’s bound to be a rough day. Try giving it a pull.”
Jade was right. The gates swung open with only a little fight when the twins dragged on them, and Fie saw straight away what the older chief meant.
Three bodies lay beneath a shroud of dead bloodflies on the threshold, where they’d collapsed trying to get out. The gates had jammed on them.
“Steady,” Jade whispered, and patted Fie’s shoulder. “Hand out your chalk.” Her voice rose. “My band, start with the western houses.”
“My band, we go north,” Ruffian called, and shoved the arbiter none too gently over the dead at Karostei’s doorstep. Half the bloodflies rose from the corpses with an irate, sluggish buzz. The others rained off in stiff curls, legs folded up in surrender to the plague. “I’ll follow once I’ve dealt with … this.”
“We’ll take east, then.” Fie passed out the chalk to her band. “Suppose you all did this with Pa before?”
“Pair up, leave a ring for dead or empty, a cross mark for mercy,” Wretch said. The others nodded.
“Then I’ll follow. Once every house is marked, gather by…” Fie took a look around the town commons, trying not to grimace at the sight. Dead goats and dogs lay in misshapen heaps, rats huddled like graying warts on the hide of dusty ground already speckled with more fallen bloodflies. Sickly rot wept from nigh every foundation she saw. The market stalls looked about two days gone, canopy stands tilting or buckled in twain where gray ate through the wood and canvas.
The broad stone ring of a communal well in the middle of the open grounds seemed to be the only thing untouched by plague, though Fie wouldn’t put odds on its water in the next decade. At least it served as a landmark. “… There. That well. Let’s be on with it, then.”
Surprisingly, Varlet and Bawd split up, Bawd hanging back while Varlet linked his arm through Madcap’s and strolled toward a house. “You need company, chief,” Bawd informed her. “Can’t have you getting jumped in one of these houses. The whole thing’d be like to come down. Besides, I’ll not listen to my brother make an ass of himself flirting with Madcap.”
“So it’s mercy of a different kind,” Fie allowed. Normally she dealt mercy alone, as Pa had done, but today … today she reckoned she’d be better for company. “No use waiting until someone marks a door for me. Let’s clear houses until I’m called.”
Bawd followed her down the nearest street, stepping over slicks of gray mire and the remains of barrels that had bloated and burst, spilling apples, salt pork, pickle brine, and aught else into the street. The first house Fie went into reeked even worse of the plague, the humid air seeping through her cloak and gumming the crowsilk against her skin.
A Hawk crest had been carved into the wall, and beneath it several spears listed in a crumbling rack. Cold ashes sat in a small central fire pit, and a long table had sagged and collapsed, shards of broken porcelain strewn among molding beans. A set of steep stairs led up to what looked to be a loft; below them huddled two forms beneath a gray-stained blanket, unmoving.
“Check upstairs, will you?” Fie asked. Bawd loped the steps two at a time, while Fie gingerly pulled back the blanket. If she had to guess, this had been the home of the sergeant, who accounted for one of the bodies before her. She couldn’t tell who had been who, arms twined about each other to the last, only that they looked to be long past breathing. A quick press of her finger to each of their teeth confirmed it. Sparks from a living person’s teeth would nigh roar in her bones, but these teeth barely sighed at her touch.
Something about the dead Hawk coiled with a dead lover made her furious.
Something about it made her think of Tavin.
Fie stood, breath coming quicker in a warm, sickly rush of mint. For a long moment she wished she’d stuck around to watch Ruffian cut the arbiter’s throat.
“Chief.”
Fie looked up to see Bawd floating down the stairs with a fine-woven red robe laid over her crowsilk cloak, twirling an ornate parasol.
“I’m the prettiest girl at the dance,” Bawd cooed as she draped her dainty self against the wall. It didn’t hold, crumbling round her elbow in a small shower of rotting wood. “Oops.”
Fie couldn’t help but snort. “I don’t know that red’s your color.”
“Right you are.” Bawd hung the robe off a tilting spear. “Always did fancy that Gull blue, though.”
Fie marked a ring on the door with her chalk. “Rather think you fancied just the trousers. No one else in the loft?”
“Not a soul.”
“Then let’s be off.” Fie glanced back, then shook her head, glad the mask hid her reluctant grin. “The parasol stays, Bawd.”
“You’re no fun,” Bawd grumbled. She stuck it in the spear rack, which promptly fell apart.
They left the next house with less cheer, fresh blood on Fie’s hands this time. By then, near every house in sight had been marked with rings or cross marks of chalk.
Fie didn’t have to tally many of the cross marks to know she had more mercy to deal today than ever before. She’d known, really, since they’d said five-score people had been left to rot in Karostei. She’d just not let herself think on it too long.
Steady. She was a chief. She was a Crow. This was part of her road.
Fie shook blood off her blade and headed to the next door.
At the third house, Bawd’s jokes dried up when a thin, gurgling voice inside cried, “Mama?”
At the fifth house, Fie handed her mask off to Bawd, too belly-sick for even the mint to help.
By the seventh, she’d stopped cleaning the Hawk sword afterward.
By the thirteenth, she’d no use for a mask anyway; the smell of blood had overrun the stench of the plague.
The rest of her band were waiting for her, passing water skins about, when she finally trudged back to the well. Their masks hung loose, a grudging concession to the cruel noon sun, which had conquered even the dreadful reek of dead and sick. It was an odd comfort to see the three bodies at the gate had been laid out on a proper pyre in the middle of the commons. It was a colder comfort to see the Crane arbiter lying beside them.
Wretch took one look at Fie’s hands, near black with blood now, and hauled up water with one of the few pails still intact. No one spoke to her, only patted her back or squeezed her shoulder, a mercy Fie was all the more grateful to let someone else deal.
Ruffian returned as Fie was scrubbing up. “Smart, that. If the blood dries, your rags turn stiff enough to chafe. Now your mercy’s done, half your band will go through the houses again for aught that’ll serve for kindling, and the other half will pile that and firewood between each house. One or two ought to take flashburn and splash the walls and the heaps, help the fire spread fast when it catches.”
Wretch stood. “Aye, we can manage that, chief. Spell yourself a bit.”
Fie nodded, wordless. She felt like she might be sick.
Ruffian studied her a moment. “Mind if I rinse off, too?”
“Go ahead,” Fie said dully as her band split off. She pulled her arms out of the pail and let them drip pink water on the dirt. This hot out, they’d dry fast enough.
Ruffian sat on the edge of the well, letting his mask fall to the dirt, and splashed his rag-wrapped hands. “Always hard when the Eater of Bones takes her due, but most ash harvests aren’t this big,” he told her. He didn’t have Pa’s way of talking to her, as if she should be at study; instead he sounded like a merchant passing a fellow trader a warning of stormy seas. “Only once have I cut more throats in one go, and that was because most of the village caught the plague in the same day. You don’t want to know why.” Fie did, morbidly enough, but maybe not now. Ruffian continued, “This’s the most mercy you’ve dealt at once, aye?”
“Aye,” Fie said, trying not to think of the ones younger than she. The last thing they should’ve seen was a friendly face. By every damned dead god, she’d done her best to give them one, even with tears in her eyes.
“Most of us get night terrors after our first ash harvest,” Ruffian said. “They pass with time. Let others take your watch shift, try to keep yourself busy. You might get short with your band for no reason, or want to run off by yourself, but that’s…” His brow furrowed as he searched for words. “It’s like an asp bite, this. You don’t let the poison sit until you lose an arm. You bleed it out. If you can’t talk to anyone in your band, find a shrine and talk to the keeper, aye? We have them for a reason.”
Fie’s throat closed. She told herself her eyes were stinging from looking up against the sun.
“From here it’s easy, aye?” Ruffian shook his hands into the bloody water. For better or worse, his tone had tilted closer to Pa’s. “Just like any other pyre. Most of the fuel’s been built into these houses, these walls. All you have to do is make sure the sparks catch.”
A shadow fell over him, shorter for the noon sun—but something about it struck Fie as amiss. She and Ruffian twisted about for a better look.
The first thing Fie saw was red, from blood still bright and slick.
The second was that the daylight filtered through the figure. Mere holes where the eyes, the nose, the teeth belonged, as if it were no more than cut from canvas—
Not canvas. Skin.
And the third thing Fie realized, wholly too late, was that the warped face gaping at them had belonged to the Crane arbiter.
The arbiter’s boneless hands had already slid onto Ruffian, one on his scalp, one at his chin.
“NO—!” Fie reached for him, too late.
The hands wrenched sideways with a crack.
Ruffian didn’t move for a moment, still balanced on the well’s edge. Then he collapsed, toppling into the pail and hitting the commons ground with a thud. Red water spilled into the dirt about him.
The skin-ghast wobbled over Ruffian’s body.
Then its empty face turned toward Fie.