“Good thinking.” Tavin’s voice drifted too close behind her.
Hair stood on the back of Fie’s neck. She ignored it, focusing on the Sparrow tooth in each fist. One burned already, humming steady with her bones. The other waited yet for her call.
Fie picked her way through Wretch’s tracks behind the wagon as they headed for where the flatway split five ways. Each path led to a gate in Cheparok’s sturdy walls, just like those on the eastern side of the Fan River. Blue-green roof tiles flashed just behind the city walls, crowning towers that flew the banner of the Floating Fortress. The lord-governor’s palace had earned its name by squatting direct over the Fan and the reservoir it filled.
At least, that’s what she’d been told. From this side of the walls, all she got was fancy roofs and bright flags. She’d have her chance to see it up close soon enough.
A trio of Hawk guards sat at the root of the branching roads, rolling gambling shells and sweating in the brutal sun. The one with a corporal’s copper armband eyed the Crows, spat, and jerked his thumb over a shoulder. “Fifth gate.”
He didn’t look up from the shells even once as Fie and the lordlings passed.
Each gate before them sat lower than the last, dropping from east to west like a stair. The first gate was meant for Phoenixes, and it stood empty save for its guards. The polish on their armor glittered nigh as bright as the green tassels on their spears, and just as eye-catching even from hundreds of paces off. Less flashy Hawks milled in and out of the second gate, stepping around Splendid Caste palanquins festooned in fringe and bead. That gate yawned the largest, its arch stretched high for visiting mammoth riders, though the heat made no such accommodation for the beasts. The third gate bustled with Hunting Castes, from melon-orange open carriages of Crane magistrates to the tiered lavender wagons of proud Owl scholars.
The fourth gate rambled even more chaotic, strewn with Common Castes. Sparrow farmers waited with strings of goats and cattle; Pigeons had set up shop at the roadside with their goods spread about the ground, peddling anything from clay luck charms to meat that Fie judged extremely untrustworthy. A few Gull sailors wandered from vendor to vendor, some haggling with Sparrows for livestock.
The line for the fourth gate was long, but it crept along with a slow, steady order. The same could not be said for the fifth gate. The muddy road sloped down, down, down, to the lowest point in Cheparok’s walls. There the fifth gate gapped, teeming with beggars, bloodflies, and the brands of Common-Caste convicts. It hadn’t a line so much as a mass thatslid down the hill and pooled at the gate, some trickling through, others turned away to plead sanctuary elsewhere. The mud itself gave off a damp reek, one part ox dung, one part plant decay, and one part a musk Fie didn’t care to speculate on.
Her Sparrow tooth held as they waited their turn, humming patient in her mind. The second one stayed buried in her sweating fist until, bit by bit, they trudged down to the bottom of the hill.
Two Vulture skinwitches hunched together by the gate on rickety wood stools, the yellow of their thin cotton robes clashing against their fish-flesh-pink hides. Meager boastings of valor marks were scattered over their arms. One eyed the creeping shadow of the city wall and scooted his stool a little farther into its shade as a Hawk behind him laughed. The other Vulture rattled off a halfhearted oath and beckoned the Crows’ cart forward.
Pa whistled and flicked the reins. To other castes, it’d sound like a marching order. Fie knew better. In the Money Dance, that whistle meant “pair up.”
“Keep quiet,” she told the lordlings, “keep close, and move when I say.”
Harmony, she told herself, and kindled the second tooth.
The two Sparrow teeth grated against each other a moment, then settled into grudging cooperation. As with the Pigeon teeth before, her senses shifted, drawing new trails in her mind. Before, she’d kenned the prickle of eyes trained on her; now each person nearby cast a beacon of a gaze. And with two teeth in hand, any time that gaze turned near Fie and the boys, it rolled away like water off a greased cloak.
The first skinwitch leaned to look behind Pa, scanning the rest of the Crows. Fie held her breath, held the teeth, held off that gaze. After a moment, the skinwitch leaned back. “I count two bone thieves,” she called. “Treggor?”
“I got two, Inge,” the other Vulture confirmed, pressing farther into the shade.
Fie let her breath out.
“Witches to me,” Inge said. Pa climbed down from the driver’s seat and walked over, rolling up his sleeve, Hangdog a step behind. Two Hawk guards twitched their spears at the other Crows to step away from the wagon.
“Move with them,” Fie whispered, and slid along at the back of the band.
The Hawks strolled over, lips curling. “What’s your business in Cheparok?” one asked.
Pa’s eyes darted back. “Restocking,” he answered, loud enough to bounce off the walls and echo back to the guard. “We’re out of flashburn and low on soap-shells—”
“Don’t need a list,” the guard snapped. “Those’re pricey goods for a Crow. How are you planning on paying for those? You bring any coin?”
Pa flinched. “Aye. Last job gave us ten naka for viatik.”
The guard rounded the back of the wagon while his partner planted herself between it and the Crows. “Ten naka,” he mused, prodding the crates and sacks with a spear tip. The blade sank too far into one bag. Rice spilled across the wagon bed as Barf climbed out from behind the ruined burlap, yowled in disdain, and stretched. She seemed wholly untroubled by the spear point now inches away.
One of the lordlings shifted behind Fie. “Don’t,” she hissed under her breath.
“Hey Kanna, you remember how much the fee is to pass the fifth gate?” the guard asked, spear point following Barf.
His partner turned to laugh at him. “Eight naka.”
“Eight naka,” he echoed.
Both Hawks faced away now, and both Vultures were fixed on Pa and Hangdog. “Follow me,” Fie whispered, and slipped away from the rest of the band, slinking toward the gate.
