The broad stone ring of a communal well in the middle of the open grounds seemed to be the only thing untouched by plague, though Fie wouldn’t put odds on its water in the next decade. At least it served as a landmark. “… There. That well. Let’s be on with it, then.”
Surprisingly, Varlet and Bawd split up, Bawd hanging back while Varlet linked his arm through Madcap’s and strolled toward a house. “You need company, chief,” Bawd informed her. “Can’t have you getting jumped in one of these houses. The whole thing’d be like to come down. Besides, I’ll not listen to my brother make an ass of himself flirting with Madcap.”
“So it’s mercy of a different kind,” Fie allowed. Normally she dealt mercy alone, as Pa had done, but today… today she reckoned she’d be better for company. “No use waiting until someone marks a door for me. Let’s clear houses until I’m called.”
Bawd followed her down the nearest street, stepping over slicks of gray mire and the remains of barrels that had bloated and burst, spilling apples, salt pork, pickle brine, and aught else into the street. The first house Fie went into reeked even worse of the plague, the humid air seeping through her cloak and gumming the crowsilk against her skin.
A Hawk crest had been carved into the wall, and beneath it several spears listed in a crumbling rack. Cold ashes sat in a small central fire pit, and a long table had sagged and collapsed, shards of broken porcelain strewn among molding beans. A set of steep stairs led up to whatlooked to be a loft; below them huddled two forms beneath a gray-stained blanket, unmoving.
“Check upstairs, will you?” Fie asked. Bawd loped the steps two at a time, while Fie gingerly pulled back the blanket. If she had to guess, this had been the home of the sergeant, who accounted for one of the bodies before her. She couldn’t tell who had been who, arms twined about each other to the last, only that they looked to be long past breathing. A quick press of her finger to each of their teeth confirmed it. Sparks from a living person’s teeth would nigh roar in her bones, but these teeth barely sighed at her touch.
Something about the dead Hawk coiled with a dead lover made her furious.
Something about it made her think of Tavin.
Fie stood, breath coming quicker in a warm, sickly rush of mint. For a long moment she wished she’d stuck around to watch Ruffian cut the arbiter’s throat.
“Chief.”
Fie looked up to see Bawd floating down the stairs with a fine-woven red robe laid over her crowsilk cloak, twirling an ornate parasol.
“I’m the prettiest girl at the dance,” Bawd cooed as she draped her dainty self against the wall. It didn’t hold, crumbling round her elbow in a small shower of rotting wood. “Oops.”
Fie couldn’t help but snort. “I don’t know that red’s your color.”
“Right you are.” Bawd hung the robe off a tilting spear. “Always did fancy that Gull blue, though.”
Fie marked a ring on the door with her chalk. “Rather think you fancied just the trousers. No one else in the loft?”
“Not a soul.”
“Then let’s be off.” Fie glanced back, then shook her head, glad the mask hid her reluctant grin. “The parasolstays, Bawd.”
“You’re no fun,” Bawd grumbled. She stuck it in the spear rack, which promptly fell apart.
They left the next house with less cheer, fresh blood on Fie’s hands this time. By then, near every house in sight had been marked with rings or cross marks of chalk.
Fie didn’t have to tally many of the cross marks to know she had more mercy to deal today than ever before. She’d known, really, since they’d said five-score people had been left to rot in Karostei. She’d just not let herself think on it too long.
Steady.She was a chief. She was a Crow. This was part of her road.
Fie shook blood off her blade and headed to the next door.
At the third house, Bawd’s jokes dried up when a thin, gurgling voice inside cried, “Mama?”
At the fifth house, Fie handed her mask off to Bawd, too belly-sick for even the mint to help.
By the seventh, she’d stopped cleaning the Hawk sword afterward.
By the thirteenth, she’d no use for a mask anyway; the smell of blood had overrun the stench of the plague.
The rest of her band were waiting for her, passing water skins about, when she finally trudged back to the well. Their masks hung loose, a grudging concession to the cruel noon sun, which had conquered even the dreadful reek of dead and sick. It was an odd comfort to see the three bodies at the gate had been laid out on a proper pyre in the middle of the commons. It was a colder comfort to see the Crane arbiter lying beside them.
Wretch took one look at Fie’s hands, near black with blood now, and hauled up water with one of the few pails still intact. No one spoke to her, only patted her back or squeezed her shoulder, a mercy Fie was all the more grateful to let someone else deal.
Ruffian returned as Fie was scrubbing up. “Smart, that. If the blooddries, your rags turn stiff enough to chafe. Now your mercy’s done, half your band will go through the houses again for aught that’ll serve for kindling, and the other half will pile that and firewood between each house. One or two ought to take flashburn and splash the walls and the heaps, help the fire spread fast when it catches.”
Wretch stood. “Aye, we can manage that, chief. Spell yourself a bit.”
