Whatever had caught Fie dragged her backward. She wrenched about and found the strips of skin-ghast she’d dumped into the well had plaited themselves into something crawling and dreadful that lashed like a serpent round her ankles. Now it towed her through the dust, toward the well, and Fie kenned exactly what awaited her there.
Jade kenned it, too, for the other chief hacked through the plait of skin in one swift blow. It recoiled, then lashed around Jade’s wrist instead, her broken sword clattering to the dirt.
Fie called on the Phoenix tooth again, trying not to panic as its spark burned lower. Fire seared through the twists of skin-ghast at her ankles and Jade’s arm. The older woman yelped as the rags around herhand caught ablaze, but she shook them off with the charred bits of skin-ghast.
Fie rolled to her feet, fighting to catch her breath in air filthy with smoke and dust and plague-stink. Sparks had traveled in the east, a scattering of little fires licking the sky from thatch roofs, but the west and north remained unlit. Worse, the ghasts were crowding in on all sides. Her last tooth couldn’t hold them back much longer.
The gate itself lurched but caught on skin-ghasts weaving themselves through the bars to hold it fast. No doubt Lakima had heard the screams, but so long as the ghasts blocked the way, no help would come from that quarter.
Fie took a deep breath and scraped together the last bit of Phoenix spark left, fire-song echoing in her own bones, too familiar now. Bits and bobs of the dead Phoenix’s life slipped by: a grand duke, the spare to the heir. He had always believed the throne belonged to him; he had seethed when his aunt’s daughter was sent to the throne, and then he had found himself sent, repeatedly and pointedly, on diplomatic missions to their neighbors across the pirate-infested Sea of Beasts… until he promised to stop trying to poison the new queen.
His was the fire of self-righteous ambition, and as Fie summoned every last ounce of its ghost, she could swear she heard the grand duke whisper,Hello, cousin.
The song hitched in her bones a beat, but she forced it back into tune. They were running out of time, and she had none to spare for the follies of some useless ghost.
Golden fire bloomed from the tooth in her fist, and Fie sent it roaring toward the gate. All she had to do was catch that fallen flashburn jug, catch that rag.
But ghast after ghast piled themselves over the jug, forming a wall of skin between the flame and the shuddering gate.
Fie pushed harder, her own bones humming, singing, screaming as she poured herself into the song of fire, the dying spark, the last scrap of Phoenix gold carving through slick, hollow hide.More, she demanded,farther, shehadto break through, had to get them out—
Goodbye, cousin, the dead Phoenix whispered.
And the fire of her final royal tooth sputtered out.
It was a curious thing: she stood in a black cloak under a blazing sun, sweat rolling down her spine, and yet all Fie felt was the sudden, deadly cold.
A hush fell over the commons as the three bands looked to her and found her empty-handed. The gate rattled fruitlessly against the knot of ghasts.
Every soul left in Karostei knew that even if the Hawks made it through the gate, it would be too late.
Fie turned to Jade. The older chief swallowed, then hefted her half sword, jaw set.
Then her brow furrowed, staring at something beyond Fie.
Fie looked back to the gate and saw a miracle: smoke.
For a moment, she thought she’d managed it, that the rag had caught after all, and she backed toward the well. But the smoke was rising from the other side of the gate.
Lines of gold lit up along the cracks between the gate’s boards. Then something flickered near the base—the flashburn rag snared a spark—
“Get down!” Fie shouted, and threw herself to the ground.
They came so fast, she could scarce tell one from the other: a whistle. A booming crash. An eruption of white and gold.
When she stumbled to her feet, chips of burning ceramic were bouncing off the commons, raining down through wisps of charred skin floating on the breeze. The rest of the Crows seemed to be stunned butunhurt, dust cascading off their black robes as they picked themselves up. Naught was left of the gate and its ghast blockade but burning wood and grease stains in the dirt.
“FIE!”
Through the smoking wreckage strode the last person Fie expected to see, his face full of fury and fear as he took in the commons. Golden fire still rolled off his fingertips.
Fie had thought quite a bit about what she would say the next time she saw Taverin sza Markahn. She liked to think it would be something pithy and full of swagger, to hint that she’d missed him but nottoomuch. A teensy, wretched part of her thought she might like something poetic and fanciful, with grand declarations involving souls and hearts and destinies intertwined. Fie usually told herself she wouldn’t like that at all. At least… not unless he said it first.
But instead of something sly or honey-tongued, Fie found herself just looking to Tavin’s still-burning hands and croaking, “I forgot you could do that.”
His harrowed gaze landed on her, and that secretly starry-eyed part of her was content, because the look on his face was better than any love song.
Wretch cleared her throat. “You’ve an audience, chief. And I don’t mean us.”
