“I need a moment,” Fie croaked. Then she put a good dozen wobbling paces between herself and everyone else, turned to the forest, and screamed every foul word she knew.
Wretch gave her a minute or so before crunching over the dry grass to lay a gnarled hand on her shoulder.
“It’s all my fault!” Fie raged, running her hands through her hair. “I brought this on us! I should have just given him the damned teeth!”
Wretch smoothed Fie’s hair back down, businesslike. “He wanted teeth?”
“Phoenix teeth. I gave him half a dozen and told him he could get more from Pa.”
“And that wasn’t enough for him.” Wretch sighed. “Aye. One way or another…”
We feed the Crows.Fie knew that proverb all too well. “I should have given him more.”
“Aye, probably.”
Fie winced. She’d half hoped Wretch would tell her she’d done right after all.
Instead Wretch said, “You owe your teeth to no one, and your pa raised no thief. But fear? Fear’ll make a monster of anyone that lets it. And that man was afraid for his own.”
“Pa never would have let them stay with us.”
“Oh, he would have,” Wretch said with a shrug. “Cur’s soft for anyone who puts their hand out for help, and that’s no shame. That’s how we got the prince’s oath, aye? And doubtless that’ll save many a Crow to come. But that’s also how Cur lost his finger and how Swain lost his life. There’s always a cost to helping folk. Cur knew there’s a cost tonothelping, too. All you can do is decide which you want to pay.”
Gen-Mara hasn’t failed his duty for hundreds of years. I can’t say the same for you.
Fie’s eyes burned and watered. “I’m not ready for this, Wretch. Pa hasn’t been gone a day and I’ve already lost our teeth. How do I protect you all now?”
“With the Hawks you won us already. And with those.” Wretch pointed to the string still knotted round Fie’s neck. “We’ll make them last until the next shrine, and we’ll carry on just as we did before we had Phoenix teeth.”
Before Fie could run off Oleander Gentry with naught but a fistful of fire. Her throat tightened once again. Now getting her Crows to Jasimir’s procession wasn’t just about the oath. She had to get them to safety before they crossed another band of Oleanders who wouldn’t back down from Hawks.
“We’ll carry on, Fie.” Wretch gripped her shoulder again. “They’ve been at us for hundreds of years, and still the roads are ours.”
Shame and fury yet pounded down Fie’s bones, but the band didn’t have time for her misery. She scuffed a fist over her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to stand straighter. “Aye. We need to go.”
She walked back to the camp with Wretch, where most of the Crows and all of the Hawks pretended they hadn’t been eavesdropping.
“Drudge’s band went south,” Khoda offered. “Just—if that helps at all.”
Fie’s mouth twisted. If they’d gone north, there was a chance they’d have sheltered in Pa’s shrine, and no chance Pa would let them leave with her tooth bag. But south… “They’ve, what, an hour’s head start? Two? We could try to catch them, but we’d have to abandon Karostei.” She shook her head. “If Karostei’s had an unanswered beacon since yesterday, they don’t have much longer before it spreads to the whole town. I’ve enough teeth on my string to get us through that call, then we’ll get to Jas’s procession fast as we can. Aye?”
“Aye,” her Crows echoed.
“Yes, chief,” added Lakima.
A curl of purple smoke rose and drifted away—another beacon from Karostei choked out. Fie frowned deeper. “Then let’s get to the road.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE ASH HARVEST
There were a great many things Fie noticed when they emerged from the roughway and took in the sight of Karostei, yet there was only one conclusion to draw.
It would not be saved.
The main town had been carved from the stubble of thinner forests along the northwest edge of the Hassura Plains, and beyond the rooftops, Fie could see rolling fields of ripening maize, buckwheat, even green beads of gourds. The nearest fields’ crops, however, were much less traditional: their dirt was covered in scores of rows of tents, sleeping mats, and wagons full of furniture and goods, as if most of Karostei had just moved a quarter league east. Iron kettles smoked over cooking fires, and chickens pecked at the dirt in makeshift pens. Goats and cattle lowed from a pasture Fie couldn’t see but absolutely could, and did, smell. Childrenchased one another up and down the dusty lanes, shrieking, as adults watched from tense knots and muttered among themselves.
The town itself sat too still behind a timber wall, one that looked as if they’d been halfway through replacing its older gray wood with newer, still-pale planks. And that was where Fie saw the ugly omen of Karostei’s fate: a deep, sickly gray rot spread across the clean lumber in the same stark, veiny rings as the Sinner’s Brand.
