The hurt went nowhere, still dragging thorns about her every thought—but her hurt never truly went away. Wounds became scars, pain tempered to bitter wisdom, and from the embers of her grief always, always rose rage.
She let Bawd and Wretch lead her to the temple’s makeshift wash-chamber, where rainwater had been diverted to a great stone cistern surrounded by barrels and basins. They left her with soap-shells and a change of clothes, and it wasn’t until Fie scrubbed the reek of old blood from her stiff hair that she realized it had clung to her like a curse.
Pa was waiting for her when she left the temple. One look at his troubled face unraveled her again, but he’d come prepared; he handed her a clean crowsilk rag to mop up her face, slung an arm around her shoulders, and led her away. “Come on, girl.”
He took her behind the great statue of Gen-Mara, to a sun-dappled grove where a handful of boulders made a ring around a long-cold firepit.
They sat together on the largest stone, and she told him everything.
She told him how Little Witness said she was a failure, how thedead god had said their oath went unkept, how she’d charged Fie to find a Birthright but Fie had chosen the oath instead.
She told him how she’d failed Jasimir, how she’d failed the Crows. She told her pa how she’d failed him.
And then, head bowed, she waited for his judgment.
Pa didn’t say aught for a while. She heard the scratch as he ran his hand over his beard, and a sluggish hot breeze passed through the grove, heavy with the smell of magnolias.
“Could be worse,” he finally said.
She looked up, startled.
Pa shrugged. “Won’t lie to you, Fie: it’s bad. But if you hadn’t sent Jade here with a wagon full of supplies, we’d have days instead of weeks. If you hadn’t given your heart to that lad, likely he never would have bargained for your life, and you and your band would be feeding the crows now. If you hadn’t cut the oath to start with, the prince would be dead, and likely, so would we all. Could be worse.”
“Could be better,” she said thickly. “And that’s on my head.”
“Aye, that’s the way of being a chief. Blow your nose.” Pa waited until she’d done so. “Every chief fouls up. And when we foul up, we don’t do it small, we do it with lives in the balance. Like Skelpie.”
Fie swallowed. Pa rarely called her ma by name, and even rarer did he speak of the night the Oleander Gentry had taken her. It was Fie’s oldest, fiercest wound. “Ma didn’t get up the trees in time because… she was passing me to Swain.”
“And I was the one who didn’t think it outbeforethe raid. See? We should have had a sling ready for you, a plan, anything. Skelpie shouldn’t have had to figure it out herself. We’re supposed to look after our own. But I fouled up.”
“That’s no fault of yours,” Fie argued. “The Oleanders killed her. Not you.”
He gave her a long look. “Aye. I could have thought ahead, I could have given myself to save her, but it was the Oleanders who chose to ride our way. My sins were those of a new chief. Now why can you forgive me for those, but can’t forgive yourself?”
She wanted to say it was different. She knew it wasn’t.
“I’m not the chief I was,” he said. “And neither are you.”
You are not what you were.She’d all but forgotten Little Witness’s last words to her.
If only she could forget the rest. “None of it matters anyhow, Pa. Sabor’s going to rot itself to stone, and we’re going to starve waiting for it to pass.”
“I asked Little Witness what she wanted with you, you know,” Pa said. “She wouldn’t say much, some spooky blather about a storm and teeth and thieves. But she did point out one thing. You know how many Phoenix gods there are?”
Fie’s brow furrowed, trying to recall. “Twenty-four, aye?”
He nodded. “Now, how many Phoenix witches walk this land?”
Tavin had told her King Surimir was the only one, though that was before he’d shown he’d inherited the fire witchery from his father. But the king was dead. That left…
“One,” Fie said. “Only one. What does it mean?”
He rubbed his beard, grave. “Little Witness told me we’re on the edge of an end. She didn’t say what’s ending, but I know one thing: change comes with a cost, and even Phoenixes need ash to rise.”
“So we wait?”
Pa pressed his lips together. “No, Fie. Not you.”
