She did not listen, for the words were not for her. She watched the gates and kept her count.
By thirty, the lacquered oak shuddered like the dying king at Fie’s back.
By thirty-three, the gates creaked open.
Beyond them stood more Crows than Fie had seen in her entire life, more than she could dream of. She saw chiefs and masks and teeth waiting for her call. At the front stood Jade, mask in one hand, chief’s blade in the other.
Beside her stood Lakima.
Fie’s throat closed, but she had no time for sentiment now. She took a deep breath and whistled the marching order.
Crows flooded the courtyard until it was a sea of black crowsilk. They split around her, the lordlings, and the king, pushing the mob back as gently as they could. Then Fie saw Crows stationing themselves about her like a guard, Wretch, Madcap, Bawd, Varlet, all of her kin. Jade, Lakima, Ruffian’s band—they ringed her too, giving her shelter.
It felt as if a cord about her heart had cut open, like shedding a too-warm cloak. At some point she’d grown too used to the lonely weight of being the only Crow, bearing the demands of the Covenant on her head. Now her own were here to help carry it for her.
Tavin helped Jasimir stand from where he’d knelt at his father’s side, then looked to Fie. “We’re ready,” he said, low, and stepped back.
Fie crouched by Surimir’s ear. For Tavin and Jasimir’s sake, she hoped he had heard them, somehow, from the maze of his own delirium. For her own, she hoped he heard her now.
“There’s a lot on your head,” she whispered. “Maybe you didn’t favor the Oleander Gentry like Rhusana. Maybe you told yourself that if you looked the other way, the Covenant wouldn’t hold you at fault for all they did. Maybe it just suited you, knowing we Crows would answer your beacons and keep your country whole because it’d kill us not to.”
She pulled a Phoenix tooth free, called the spark out, and set it over his heart.
“Pa says the Covenant will bring you to the Crows in your next life, so you can live like us and know what you did awry. I hate that, I do, because it’s people like you that make our lives punishment, not the Covenant. You better hope that ends tonight, because here’s what I’m supposed to tell you.”
Fie laid the chief’s blade against King Surimir’s throat and leaned in.
“Welcome to our roads, cousin,” she hissed. “Remember what sent you.”
The tiles of the courtyard ran red with a dead king’s blood. Fie stood and let the tooth burn free.
And from every rooftop, every tree, every spire, every dome, crows took to the sky in a jeering, billowing black cloud.
Fie heard a groan, followed by a tremendous crack.
Spirals of gray rot wheeled up the sides of the Tower of Memories, in the same pattern as the Sinner’s Brand. More lanced between the tiles of the courtyard, raced over the walls of the Hall of the Dawn, climbed the Hawk barracks, spreading over every surface like dye through water.
Three weeks, Fie realized. Three weeks of plague rot spreading like roots from a dying man’s body, waiting for him to draw his last breath and let it bloom. She’d told Jasimir the plague had had to run deep. But now it was growing strong.
She stood and howled, “ALL CHIEFS TO ME!”
Jade spun on a heel and strode over. “Twelve hells,” she said. “We’ve an ash harvest on our hands, aye?”
“Aye,” Fie said, and only waited for a dozen or so chiefs to push their way forward. “You all pass this to the rest: there have to be hundreds of people in here who are dropping from the plague right now, but these buildings won’t hold, either. Wecan’tlet the palace come down on the victims, dead or alive, or we’ll never be able to burn it clean. Jade, splitthe bands into north, south, and west. Send the healthy out through this gate and bring the sick into the gardens. Clearing them out comes first, then we’ll give them mercy, once it’s safe.”
One of the lordlings cleared his throat behind her but said naught.
“Sabor will never forgive us for it, you know,” Jade said. “Burning their beloved palace to the ground. Are you willing to pay the price?”
The question struck a chord in Fie’s memory. She couldn’t place it.
More coughing behind her. The sky above shivered and fractured with black wings.
“We were always going to pay,” Fie answered. “One way or another.”
“Fie—” Jasimir’s voice rose. “Fie!”
There was a quiet thud.
