And sure enough, as she watched, the smoke went out, leaving a short, baffling blue curl in the sky. She whistled the halt order, watching the treetops. Not five minutes later, it lit back up again.
“Why is it doing that?” Khoda asked, spear twirling slow in his hands.
Fie chewed at the inside of her cheek. Tavin had once suggested the Crows could be lured into a trap using plague beacons; Fie had disputed it, saying any town that did so would roll shells with the Crows forsaking that town’s next beacon. They’d both been right.
She didn’t want to be right this time.
“Something’s fouled up for sure,” Fie said slowly. “I don’t fancy walking us into danger… but I don’t fancy shirking beacons, either.”
Silence crusted over the flatway until Bawd broke it. “Better us than another band, aye? We’ve Hawks, fire teeth, and the most fearsome chief on the roads.”
That got a round of chuckles and ayes. “We’ll go where you lead us, chief,” Varlet added. “You’ve the steadiest head of us all. Besides, can’t be worse than marching with Vultures.”
Half of her steadied at their faith in her.
Half of her wondered if they’d keep that faith, knowing she’d still an oath unkept.
Fie shoved that miserable half down and set her hands on her hips. “Then we keep a sharp eye and be ready to clear out fast if we need to.”
“Or clear outghastsif we need to,” Varlet said under his breath. His sister punched him in the arm.
Yet they didn’t make it to the blue smoke beacon before trouble found them. Fie heard the shouts first, menacing and gleeful and all too familiar. She picked up the pace. As they rounded the road bend, shefound the source: three Crane lads were riding circles about another band of Crows. A small crowd of Sparrow and Pigeon laborers made a loose human fence just clear of the horses’ way.
“They turned us away,” yelled a Crow man not much older than Varlet. As Fie got nearer, she could make out the string of teeth about his neck that marked him a chief, like her. “We tried to answer!”
“Smells like a lie to me,” one of the Crane riders laughed. The Crane caste’s Birthright was the truth, but that didn’t mean they always told it. “You were running away from your job.”
The hair on Fie’s arms raised as wrath pricked up her spine. No Crow abandoned a beacon lightly. And all the teeth, swords, and Hawks in the world might not be enough to make her feel safe, but they could at least put an end to this.
“Crows go where we’re called!” she shouted. Eyes turned to her. “Leave them be.”
“I can handle this if you’d like, chief,” Corporal Lakima said quietly. Fie shook her head.
Another Crane rider spat in the dirt. “Keep your own business, bone thief. This doesn’t concern you.”
“Since we’re answering that beacon, I reckon it does,” she returned, even as alarms sounded in her skull. This wassquarewhy she had asked for Hawks. They outranked Cranes. They could run this gang off in a trice.
But she’d left her pa behind today. She’d had the weight of a dead god’s words on her head most this week. She didn’t feel like letting Hawks fight for her right now.
She felt like looking after her own.
“Last chance,” she warned, reaching for a tooth in the string round her own neck. “Ride along.”
She didn’t really want them to. She wanted to teach someone fear.If they’d grown so bold as to harangue Crows in broad daylight, there was no saying what they’d do by cover of night—unless they had reason to be afraid.
So it was all for the best, Fie supposed, when a Crane lout drew his horse to a halt between her and the other chief and sneered, “Make me.”
She smiled and pushed a Phoenix tooth from her string.
CHAPTER FOUR
ENOUGH
It didn’t take much. They never expected a Crow to fight back, nor did they expect their threats to quite literally blow up in their faces. The budding mob scattered before the golden blaze. Even the other Crows looked ready to flee until Fie let the tooth’s spark go, satisfied the others wouldn’t return.
You always like your fire too much, the memory of Little Witness chided. Fie ignored it.
The other chief gaped at her, and Fie stood a little straighter, trying not to preen. If all went as she’d hoped, soon she’d have a Birthright to offer the rest of the castes, and she reckoned that meant hearing “thank you” more often.
