Every drop of sweat or oil running down the back of Tavin’s neck.
The farther they went, the further a strange, dreadful feeling welled up in Fie’s bones. It wasn’t a sickness, no, nor a weakness she knew; it didn’t feelwrongin the way that skin-ghasts set her on edge.
It felt… it felt like she’d felt at Little Witness’s tower, standing at the edge of a measureless sea, one that meant to swallow her with barely a ruff of foam to mark her drowning.
She clung tight to her teeth until it passed. Not too long after, they emerged into a wide, open courtyard, its intricate tiles little better than an unruffled lake in the dim moonlight. From its center rose an island of a structure, bedecked with domes, fringes of gold, tiled roofs that flared like skirts, intricate friezes, and balustrade-laced verandas that looked high enough to see most of Dumosa sprawled below.
The royal quarters. Where Rhusana slept. And her son. And Tavin. Fie didn’t know if a Crow had ever set foot inside.
She supposed she’d best leave an impression, then.
The guards led them into a grand foyer clearly meant to impress people far more important than Fie. It was like a vision of paradise fromThe Thousand Conquestswith its elegant marble fountain, lacy golden lanterns casting constellations onto an ebony ceiling, and floor inlaid with brass and tile of deepest blue.
Fie’s band hadn’t had to scrape for meals in a while now, but she still couldn’t help measuring every ounce of gilt and finery against every night she’d slept with a hot coal of hunger in her belly.
She did not have long to weigh it, as Tavin’s guard divided, half taking posts at the foot of one of two matching stairways, the other half continuing up the steps. She followed them up one, two flights of stairs, passing more guards whose heads bowed but whose eyes narrowed in Tavin’s wake. Any servants in the halls flattened themselves to the walls, then knelt, staring at the ground.
Fie’s skin crawled.
It wasn’t just the guards and the servants putting her on edge, but it took three dark hallways sweeping by to ken why: they were theonlypeople she saw in this grand jewel box. The royal quarters weren’t a home; they were a Money Dance unto themselves, a show of strength, shoving fingers of gold into visitors’ eyes and sayingSee, this is what Saborian royalty is worth.
But they were also, in a haunting way, empty. When Fie had called memories from Phoenix teeth, the royal quarters were always filled with chatter, light, life, heated debates and petty triumphs, a minor uproar every time the current monarch walked from one wing to another.
These weren’t the same royal quarters. The hushed, still shadows in nigh every corner made Fie feel like a beetle crawling about the guts of a gaudy corpse.
She nearly ran into the back of a guard and caught herself just in time. They’d stopped outside a chamber with two guards already positioned by the doorway.
“Sweep the halls again,” the leader of the guard ordered. “We need to be certain nothing and no one followed us.”
The guards posted at the door traded looks at “nothing.” The rest saluted and turned on their heels. Fie scrambled back, but they were walking down the hall three abreast, leaving no room for her. At their pace, they’d catch up before she could get to the end of the corridor—
Something in her spine gave atug, and when she blinked, she saw it: the threads and currents of fortune as a Pigeon witch saw them. They were drawing her toward a shallow alcove.
Wretch had a saying:When the Covenant grants you a favor, don’t waste it asking why.Fie scuttled back toward the arch, which was identical to one on the opposite side of the corridor—but when she pushed against the back wall, it gave so suddenly that she near fell on her rear.
The back panel had split down the middle like veranda doors, opening to a still, quiet dark. The tide of luck nudged Fie, and she did not need another prompting. She bolted in and eased the panel halves shut again, holding her breath until the footfalls of the Hawks had faded.
The luck current led on into the unbroken dark. Fie swallowed. Then she registered the faint hum in her own bones and the simmer of a tooth on her string.
The Pigeon witch-tooth she’d burned out this morning had, somehow, sparked back to life.
Fie swallowed. The tooth had been cold, empty bone, she’d swear it on any of the two dozen dead gods’ graves she had to choose from here. She’d only left it on the string because she hadn’t found a good place to throw burned-out teeth yet.
Her Sparrow witch-tooth, too, seemed to have recovered enough ofits spark to buy Fie more time, but she let it go cold. Part of her wanted to get out of the royal quarters as swift as possible, go find Khoda and Jas, and sort out their next move from the safety of the Sparrow quarters.
The rest of her had made it this far, and still burned with the wrath she’d kindled in the Hall of the Dawn. Besides, whatever hidey-hole the currents of fortune had led her into, it seemed the only way out would be to keep following them. She didn’t have time to waste asking why.
She made her way along the trail of luck, hands stretched before her. It wasn’t too long before they brushed up against startlingly rough canvas. When she pushed it aside, milk-pale moonlight bloomed before her, carving out a strange and lifeless chamber.
The fortune trails coiled inside, smug and gleeful like a hound who had led its master to a kill. Fie stepped into the room, staring about. Only dim moonlight gave her any reprieve from the dark, peering in from a glass dome overhead like a half-lidded eye. Cloth-covered furniture jutted from the flat sea of the cool tile floor like shoals.
In the far corner, Fie saw something that picked at her memory a moment until she placed it: a spear rack identical to the one in Draga’s tent.
No wonder it felt so cold and still—still as death. Instead of Tavin’s or Rhusana’s rooms, fortune had brought her to the chamber of the late Queen Jasindra.
Now she just needed to find outwhy.
Fie paced about, frowning. Khoda had said the king sealed the room years ago, yet she saw no dust on the furniture covers, nor on the windowsill, nor the floor. It all looked clean as the day the old queen died.
