“Get up!” She’d know Tavin’s voice anywhere, even raw and hoarse.
A steel-toed boot thudded into her ribs. She tumbled through ash again, slipping and choking on a mouthful of grit. Pa’s sword slipped from her grip.
“Cute trick,” Tatterhelm grunted. “You oughta’ve run.”
Blistered fingers locked around her throat and hefted her to dangle before the skinwitch. The world reeled in Fie’s eyes, painting a streaking picture: the fire fading, the Vultures and their skin-ghasts circling the Crows, Jasimir slumping against a wall paces away, one ankle bent awful wrong. Tavin kneeling at his side.
Fie saw a fistful of dwindling flame in Jasimir’s palm, the remnants of Fie’s grand plan. Tavin’s mouth moved. Then he reached for Jasimir’s hand.
She squirmed, clawing at Tatterhelm’s fingers. He squeezed tighter, crueler even than the skin-ghasts.
“Coulda just walked away,” he said dully. “Had to go and cause a mess. You thought you couldfight?” He shook her like a ragdoll, voice rising. “You thought you could takeme?”
He slammed her into another wall. The stones shook, a few black chunks falling.
“You forgot what you are,” he snarled.
Fie’s sight fogged, her lungs howling like a skin-ghast for air. Tatterhelm hefted his knife.
Suddenly, Tavin’s arms whipped over Tatterhelm’s head, his bound wrists yanking tight against the Vulture’s windpipe. Fie dropped free.
She ducked under the swing of Tatterhelm’s arm and snatched up the chief’s sword, rolling to her knees in time to block the Vulture’s knife.
“Reckon I know what I am,” Fie answered.
Tatterhelm stumbled from Tavin’s weight. She sprang to her feet in his range, too fast to catch.
The skinwitch had never thought she would take this road.
Fie struck like the Covenant’s own judgment, blade crashing down on Tatterhelm’s forearm. His hand split free with a meatythunk, still clutching his dagger, and landed in the ash.
Tatterhelm stared, stupefied, at the bleeding stump where his hand had been. And then he screamed. Tavin slipped off him and darted to Fie’s side.
“Tatterhelm’s down!” shouted another Vulture, and pointed his sword at Pa. “No prisoners but the prince!”
Tavin shoved teeth into her hand: First, the burning Phoenix tooth he’d taken from Jasimir.
Then—the two she’d yet to light.
Fie closed her eyes.Harmony.One tooth alight.Harmony.She struck a second, and the gold flame piped and howled. The Vultures slowed, fearful.Harmony.
She struck the third.
Phoenix fire blasted through the valley, greedy and ruthless, tearing over ash and ruin and long-cold bone and showing mercy only to the Crows. The golden blaze swelled like a flood, dwarfing the dawn, until the Fallow Vale burned end to blackened end. Tatterhelm stood no chance so close to her; he vanished in roaring flame. The skin-ghasts too crumpled in place, sloughing into smoke or dribbling into boiling puddles.
Every other Vulture shrieked and bolted for shelter. They would find none.
Fie clenched a raised hand into a fist, reaping the fire. It spun into great wheels about the Vultures, caging them in.
Fire-song raged in her bones, in her heart, in her teeth. One dead queen. Three milk teeth. She’d hunted for near an hour to pick out Phoenix teeth that wouldn’t fight one another. Now they balanced as one, burned as one, and answered to her wrath alone.
Tatterhelm had never once believed a Crow could best him.
Pa might be right about witches and dead gods; perhaps she’d been one, and perhaps so had Tatterhelm, once. But right or wrong, it hadn’t taken a god to strike him down. Only a chief and the element of surprise.
She had business to settle before she dealt with the surviving Vultures. She strode to Jasimir through the flames, Tavin trailing behind her.
Jasimir had pushed himself up on one leg, clinging to the wall. His eyes landed on Tavin and the telltale flames nipping harmlessly at his arms. “You’re… you’re a Phoenix.”
