When Pa had been the one cutting throats, he’d done his best to at least rinse off his hands after. The blood spooked the next of kin, he’d explained, and sometimes that made them pay the Crows more to speed them along, but more often than not it just made the mourners clutch their purses tighter.
Fie didn’t bother. If anything, she made a show of slowly peeling away the bloody rags knotted up to her elbow while the family’s representative presented their viatik. No one wanted to count coin into a palm still red and slick with mercy.
And that was the idea.
The Sakars had dispatched a Sparrow to deal with Fie, one who wore the simple fine robe of household servants, one whose red-rimmed eyes said she’d been close to the dead girl. A nursemaid, then. In one hand sat a fat bag of naka for viatik; the other hand skimmed the clinking coins, bitterly weighing out a meager few.
The thing about viatik, Fie had learned over years and years of experience, was that someone was always trying to short them.
Sometimes it was because they thought the Crows couldn’t count and wouldn’t know they’d been cheated. Sometimes it was because they wanted the Crows toknowthey’d been cheated, to remind them they still couldn’t demand fair pay without pushing their luck. This Sparrow woman, Fie reckoned, had the same instructions as too many servants she’d dealt with. Each and every time, they were handed a fat purse, but told to give the Crows as little as possible.
So in the last few weeks, Fie had learned not to let them.
The Sparrow nursemaid flinched back at the gore on Fie’s arms, eyes brimming with tears. Fie shook her head, flicking sweat from her hair. They’d kept to the north for most of Crow Moon, but midsummer humidity had invaded even this territory. “Naught to fear. You can hand the viatik to my lad Khoda.”
Fie could see the sums scratching through the nursemaid’s skull; by the time she’d tallied up that Khoda wasn’t a Crow name, it was too late. A rangy, iron-faced Hawk lad stood before her, hand outstretched, a spear leaning rakishly against his shoulder.
The trick, Fie had learned, was to make them hand the viatik to someone they couldn’t risk cheating.
A flutter of silk on the nearby veranda caught Fie’s eye. Two Peacocks stood there, still in their sleeping robes and clinging to each other, faces hard. The Sparrow servant looked up to the governor and her husband, questioning, as the quarantine hut’s door creaked behind Fie.
Last night they’d had a daughter.
Now, Madcap and Wretch were loading aught that was left of her into the Crow’s wagon, bundled in bloody linen.
Governor Sakar gave a stiff jerk of her chin, then buried her face in her trailing silk sleeves.
The nursemaid swallowed. Her bag of naka jingled like a bell as it landed, whole and hearty, in Khoda’s hand.
Fie caught a muffled snort from Madcap, one that turned into a cough. Not three moons ago, such a bounty would have been unthinkable, even a burden—just one more thing the Oleander Gentry would hunt them for. But now…
Khoda was one of five Hawks who had volunteered to escort Fie’s band as they answered plague beacons. And since acquiring their escort, a peculiar miracle had occurred. Not only did people start paying them fair viatik, but for the first time, they’d been able tokeepit. No Oleanders had raided their camps; no Hawk posts had shaken them down for bribes. Fie’s band had left generous donations in every haven shrine they’d visited, and still they had more than enough to last until the next viatik.
And now they had a bag of coin near the size of Fie’s head. She hadn’t even needed to call a Money Dance.
“That’ll do,” Fie said, and wet her lips to whistle the marching order.
“Wait!” The Sparrow pointed to the scroll cinched in Fie’s belt. “That’s… that was her favorite.”
The Thousand Conquests.Where the Splendid Castes were beautiful and wise, the Hunting Castes were brave and true, and the Phoenixes were near good as gods.
Where Crows were thieves and fools and monsters and naught more.
“It’ll burn with her,” Fie said. The nursemaid’s shoulders slumped in relief. Fie added under her breath, “We all win.”
The Sparrow woman blinked at that. “Wh—”
Fie whistled the marching order and strode down the road before the woman could sum up aught else.
A familiar jingle said Corporal Lakima had fallen into her self-appointed place a step behind Fie, each thud of the Hawk’s boots measured as if rationed out to the greedy road. At first Fie had found it eerie, the creak of leather, the shadow doubling hers. She’d found it near as unsettling when Corporal Lakima asked her for orders.
By now, Fie supposed she was used to both. They made for an odd funeral procession rattling down the dusty gravel: a wiry twist of a girl chief in her beaked mask, a shadow of a Hawk looming at her back, nine more Crows towing their dead sinner in the cart, three Hawks bringing up the rear. They’d left Pa and the remaining two Hawks with theirothercart, back at the flatway.
Even a second cart seemed an unfathomable luxury. They’d never before had enough to merit a second cart, never enough hands or beasts to pull one. But with Hawks to feed and plentiful viatik, things were a-shift. Now they towed one cart for their supplies and one just for sinners.
“Was there a problem with the girl?” Corporal Lakima’s voice ground near as low as the gravel.
Fie shook her head. “Only her mouth.Thatwon’t trouble anyone again.” She picked at the sweaty straps on her mask, more jitters than aught else. They’d keep the masks on until the Peacock manor fell out of sight. “She said the Oleanders will come tonight.”
