Courtiers scattered, tripping over satin trains and painted leather slippers. From the corner of her eye, Fie saw Hangdog had got his wish: at least three Peacocks had fainted.
That, she thought,is for trying to pay us with a damn cat.
Pa liked to call it the Money Dance. Fie just liked that it worked.
Their cart slowed near the gate, yet the dance carried on. The queen had not fled like the others of her court, her steward still quaking by her side. From ten paces off, Fie could see all too clear who they intended to shake down.
Queen Rhusana bristled beneath the arch, pale eyes glittering like two hard moons. Under the intricate whorls of white mourning paint, her face was a few shades lighter than Fie’s own terra-cotta, her brown complexion nearer to polished bronze. Everywhere Fie looked she saw wasted coin: a diamond-studded headdress wrought like a phoenix of white gold; ropes of pearls and diamonds dripping from her arms to drag on the ground; a white tiger pelt draped over her shoulders. The black-striped tail coiled about her arm, one hind paw fastened to clutch at her hip, and its stuffed head lolled on the tiles, eyes blank with more white gold. To Fie’s disgust, even the dead thing’s claws were crusted over with diamonds.
The silent demand of tradition had brought Rhusana to pay for her husband’s dead son. But it was clear as day that the queen had her own unspoken demand: every eye would stay nailed to her glory alone.
It had never been about the coin. But by every dead god, Fie hoped Pa would make it about coin now.
Then Pa gestured to Fie, jerking his head at the gate.
He wantedherto deal with Rhusana. To name the viatik price.
Fie froze. Sweat rolled down her backbone. Calling the Money Dance was one thing. Making demands of a queen was another. She wasn’t a chief, not yet—it wasn’t proper—what if she fouled it up and cost them all—
She didn’t even knowwhatto ask for.
Torchlight glinted off steel as Hawks shifted at the wall, a sign their indulgence ran thin. A paper threat with plague bodies heaped in the cart, but a threat all the same. Enough to make a few Crows flinch. Enough to strike lightning through Fie’s gut.
Only a paper threat, yet they made it because they could. Because they liked seeing Crows jump.
Fie’s anger was a curious thing, sometimes tempered and unwavering as cut steel, sometimes raw and unstoppable as a cut vein. Now an old, sharp kind of rage climbed up her spine, forged of every blade pointed at her for a jest.
And it was that old, sharp rage that told Fie her price.
The screams and footfalls of the Money Dance rose in fury as she stepped forth.
Rhusana had deliberately daubed her face over with boredom, clicking her own diamond-cluttered claws a breath faster than the beats of the dance. Fie knew the signs of impatience: the queen still didn’t think she’d answer for this insult. The steward, however, had gone near as gray as the tabby in his arms.
The cat was offered tremulously. Fie didn’t take it. She had a chief’s price in mind.
She wanted to look the Splendid Castes in the eye without fear. Shewanted to make the Hunting Castes think twice before flashing their steel for laughs. She wanted her ma back.
But since the queen couldn’t give her any of that, she’d take the next best thing.
“I’ll have the teeth,” Fie said.
Rhusana glared at the steward. He looked ready to vomit, eyes locked on the bloody shrouds in the cart. “Chief, I cannot—it is not your place to ask—”
“The teeth,” Fie repeated, stone-cold. She squashed down the odd little jolt in her chest at being called “chief.”Not yet.
Behind her, the Crows wheeled and roared. Both she and Rhusana knew they could keep terrorizing the court for hours while the dead sinners steeped the palace in plague. The Swan Queen might wear the royal crest, but here and now, Fie ruled the courtyard.
Rhusana did not answer.
Nor did Fie budge. The longer this went, the worse the queen looked for letting Crows drag her about.
Sweat beaded the steward’s face. A pity that Fie needed the queen to crack, not him.
“You have a count of a hundred,” said Fie, turning her beaked mask square on Rhusana and mustering every scrap of old fury. “Then we leave the boys at your gate and come to your city nevermore.”
“But—” the steward sputtered, “the king—”
“One,” said Fie.
