What had Pa done? The memories shied from her like mice in dark corners. He’d taken off his mask. Twelve hells if she’d take hers off and let her face show plain now.
He’d used his Safe voice. He’d had her for a helper. Here, she had neither.
All she had was mercy in her shuddering grasp. And it was time to deal it.
She knelt by the sinner.
“I’m a Crow,” she told him. Her quiet voice shook as much as the rest of her. “I’m here for you.”
The sinner smiled.
She wanted to run from the road that had trapped her so. She wanted to leave the man to die in the scum. She wanted to cast the chief’s blade behind her and never look back.
You have to keep your eyes open.
Fie laid one hand on a salt-rimed forehead and lowered the blade against the sinner’s throat.
And then she did what Pa had done.
The flesh parted all too easy. Fie choked on her own breath, fumbling the sword as the man jerked. Blood splashed over her hands, over the sinner, over the stone steps—had Pa’s sinners all bled so? Had she done it right?
Blood burned in her mouth—no, no, the salt of tears rolling down to her quivering chin, tears she couldn’t fathom, tears she couldn’t hold off—she’d been merciful, she’d done what Pa would, she’d given the sinner what he wanted—she was a chief, she was a chief, she was a chief—
Far away, the Sparrow butcher said, “You lot’ll be lucky to go that easy with the Oleander Gentry.”
The viper-nest in her gut thrashed. She couldn’t say if it was the threat or the blood that did it. They had to get out of this mess before aught else fouled up.
What came next? Get the dead sinner out. Was he even dead yet? He’d gone still. Flies crawled about his face once more. The grim necklace of red bubbles popped one by one. His eyes were closed, just like in sleep.
Sleep. The sleeping mat. Get him on the mat.
Fie tried to grab a handful of bloody shirt. Crimson greased her slipping hands. The dead man slid a little deeper into the scum.
“Fie—you need help—”
Tavin’s voice rang much too close. She whirled round again and found him halfway down the steps, halfway to the sinner, halfway to her.
This close and he’d catch the plague. This close and she’d watch his mouth crack and bleed, she’d hear him cough up soft bits of his lungs, and if she was a real chief, she’d be the one dealing him mercy before it got bad. Her hands, his throat, his blood, her mercy—
The blade fell to the stone again.
Look after your own.
“Get out,” she hissed around a traitorous sob. Her empty hands rattled at her sides, shaking blood off in shivering droplets. She had no mercy left in her, not for him, not now. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch the sinner, just watch the damn pr—Watch your cousin, aye?”
“Fie—”
“Get out!”
No mercy, only blood on her hands, and fear of the part of her that wanted him to stay.
Another cackle from the crowd. Mostly Common Castes, they’dcozied up to the edge of the channel, too far to hear her, too close for her guts to settle. At the front stood that Sparrow butcher.
Too close. All of them were too close.
“Oleanders won’t snuff you so swift.” The butcher’s voice was flat, matter-of-fact. “We know there’s nowhere to spill that filth blood but the sewers when we’re done with you.”
“Ignore him and get back to your cousin,” Fie rasped. Light sliced across the glassblack eyes of Tavin’s mask. He didn’t move. “They just want to flash their steel because wesuredon’t have any, aye, Pissabed?”
