Fie’s breath glued in her lungs, her heart pounding faster. The Phoenix tooth sizzled on its string. Its surly princess lingered yet. And the princess said she should give the Oleander Gentry a taste of fire.
Steady. Steady.Fie was no princess, she was a chief. She’d never have the luxury of a faint heart again.
Their leader slowed and halted his mount, his silvery sandpine mask turning from the campfire ashes to the forlorn wagon. “Is this it?”
“That’s their cart.” Fie thought she recognized the voice of the Crane arbiter from the village they’d just left. There looked to be near two dozen others, one of the largest Oleander parties Fie’d seen yet, with sabers and clubs and hand-scythes strapped at their sides, even a bronze-tipped Hawk spear.
The leader dismounted. Unlike the others’ mismatched cloaks, his pale silk robe looked tailor-made for nights riding after Crows. Only Peacocks had coin and time alike to waste so. He held one immaculate hand over the darkened coals. “Still warm.”
A thousand obscenities galloped through Fie’s head. It seemed the dead gods were not in a kind mood after all.
“So’s the pyre.” Another man jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “But warm means it burned down mayhap hours ago. Wet or sandy means it was put out in a hurry.”
The leader’s sneer carried through his mask. “Thank you,Inspector, we’ve all seen fires before. But there’s no reason they’d simply abandon their cart.”
“They’re damned animals, they don’t need a reason.” No mistaking the Crane arbiter now, even under a layer of white paint and another ofcoarse-woven veil. She swung down from her horse and stalked over to the wagon to peer inside an open panel. After a moment she tore a strip from her veil and reached in.
“Well?” demanded the lordly Oleander.
The Crane held up Pa’s pincers, wrapped in her rag. “It’s them all right.” She spat at the ashes and slammed the panel shut, casting the pincers aside. “The wagon’s still full of their trash. They have to be hiding nearby.”
Fie dug her fingers into the bark.
Give them fire, the dead princess urged.Give them fear.
Fie could burn Sabor down from mountain to coast if she wanted to. Her and that bag of Phoenix teeth.
“That fire’s been dying since sundown,” the other Oleander man protested. “They must’ve set the pyre and run, they knew we’d come—”
“Don’t be absurd.” The genteel Oleander ran an idle finger over his mask, pacing slow about the camp. “These areCrows. They’re as dull as they are lazy.”
Heat simmered in Fie’s throat, in her belly, in her spine.Teach them to burn.
Smoke trickled through her fingers.
Then the Oleander lord snatched a torch from a rider and strode to the edge of camp, staring out into the dark forest.
He stopped dead beneath their tree. Beneath the prince’s trembling dagger.
The spark in the Phoenix tooth fell silent.
“They’refilth,” the lord said loud, thrusting his torch out into the night. He meant to taunt them, shake them from their cover. If Hangdog had stayed, that might have worked. “You hear me?FILTH.”
The plain, hard wooden face turned this way and that, scanning the trees. Torchlight oozed around the blade above.
Light puckered over the dagger’s jeweled hilt as it rocked on the bough. One end dipped. Fie’s eyes darted from the man to the dagger and back.Dead gods be kind.
“They’re the true plague of Sabor!” the man screamed behind his mask. “They extort us for our hard-earned property, then steal our children, our spouses, even our prince!”
The dagger slid a finger-width, then tipped swiftly back the other way. One branch above, the prince sucked in a breath.
“The gods weep for every breath weallowa Crow to take! And there will be no peace, nopurity, until this blight is purged from our land!”
With a flash, the dagger slid off the branch.
Three things happened at once:
The Oleander lord turned on his heel.
