Tavin caught the stares and gave a sheepish grin, hair falling in an uneven black curtain. “That bad?”
“I’ll tidy it for you,” Wretch offered, and that was when Fie knew Tavin had won the old Crow over. Her belly sank. Was it naught but one more ploy to charm the Crows?
“Thank you.” Tavin started to toss the hair in the fire, then thought better of it, wrinkling his nose. “Is there a place to wash up?”
“Hangdog.” To Fie’s shock, Pa lifted a string of teeth from the grass and handed it to him. “Anyone who wants to wash, follow Hangdog to the creek.”
Strings were for proper chiefs. Fie hoped Hangdog was closer to a chief than she wagered.
Tavin stuck the dagger back in his sash. “Creek it is. Jas? Coming with?”
“Once I’m done eating.” Prince Jasimir picked at his remaining panbread and didn’t look up until Tavin was out of earshot. Then he mumbled to Fie, “Was my father upset?”
“What?”
Jasimir ducked his head. “When you took us through the Hall of the Dawn. Could you see if my father was all right?” Fie shook her head. “He wasn’t all right?”
“He…” She didn’t know why it felt so sour to say. “King Surimir wasn’t there.”
Jasimir stopped tearing at his panbread.
“The thrones were empty,” Fie said. “Rhusana paid us at the gate.”
Jasimir went still. Then he stood, dropped his panbread in the fire, and stalked off after Tavin without another word.
“Hmph.” Besom raised her eyebrows. “Waste of good bread.”
Fie supposed she ought to feel sorry for the prince. She might have if the king’s throne hadn’t been good as empty for every Crow, long as she could remember.
And she had other matters on her head. Apart from her, Pa, and Besom, only Swain lingered, tallying inventory by the cart.
She could talk plain. “Hangdog gets a string?”
“So do you.” Besom wiggled her string-netted fingers.
“I’m no chief.” For that matter, neither was Hangdog, but Fie kept that to herself.
“It’s time you carry your own. Things are a-shift.” Pa prodded another wheel of panbread with a pair of tongs, testing whether the puff of dough was ready to flip. “We’re rolling fortune-bones, Fie. They land right? We’re rid of the Oleanders, and by my ken, that more than earns you a chief’s string. But if the bones land wrong…” He paused to pry the panbread off the hot iron. It was still too raw in the middle, splitting in twain. One half landed in the coals as Pa cursed.
“That’ll be us,” he grumbled, turning the remaining half. “Either way, I want you wearing a string.”
Fie watched the burnt half shrivel, thinking. Most chiefs-in-training had to wait until the ceremonies in Crow Moon to take up a chief’s string. Carrying one was an honor, naught she needed a bribe for.
Unless—
She stared at Pa, aghast. “I’m to inherit the oath.”
Besom cackled as her fingers danced around thread and tooth. “Clever, clever. Told you she’d sniff it out.”
“No call for a fuss,” Pa said, firm, but his eyes were fixed on the fire, not her. “It’s only if the deal goes bad. You’ve got the steadiest head of any of us. If something happens and I can’t keep the oath … well, I won’t be looking to Hangdog to finish it for me.”
Fie’s pulse rattled in her ears. It shouldn’t have shaken her so; she trusted Pa. And though they’d never spoken of it, she and Pa both knew who would lead their band when his time came. But if aught happened to him now … the prince, the oath, the weight of every Crow alive—they’d fall to her alone.
Fie checked over her shoulder, then asked, “Did Hangdog get Phoenix teeth?”
Besom shook her head. “Sparrow, Owl, Pigeon, a few Crane.”
Refuge, memory, fortune, and honesty. Birthrights that couldn’t hurt anyone. That wasn’t happenstance. “You think he’d try to jump the lordlings?”
“I think he’d jump the king himself if he had a chance,” Pa said, grim. “We need this deal.” He plucked the puff of panbread from the griddle. “That’s why I’m trusting you to see it through if need be.”
Fie’s belly knotted up like the string in Besom’s hands. Pa was right. No matter how the prince called her a bone thief, no matter how his pet Hawk rattled his steel, they needed the oath. They’d needed the oath for generations.
Fie’s ma had needed the oath.
Fie’d just never thought she’d be the chief to barter it. And there was no running from the chief’s bloody road for her now. Not anymore.
“Done.” Besom passed the string to Fie. It was heavier than she expected. Teeth of all twelve castes dangled in dull clusters, more than Fie could count. Familiar sparks flickered in each one, a promise and a burden.
Once she tied it on, she’d be duty-bound to bear a chief’s string until the day her road ended.
She’d asked for this, back at the palace. Demanded it. And she had danced Pa into this mess. By every measure, by every dead god, she was bound to help him make it out.
* * *
True to Pa’s word, he whistled the marching order to send them to the roads before the hour was up. Madcap launched into a loud and lewd walking song once they reached the flatway, a wider, busier road that the kingdom’s Pigeon and Sparrow laborers kept smooth and even. Barf resumed her post inside the cart, though Fie reckoned that would last only as long as they stayed to the flatway. Besom had claimed she’d miss the cat more than the lot of them combined.
Then, halfway to the next league marker, the demands of the Covenant called.
Madcap’s song dried up. The cart drew to a halt.
“Why are we stopped?” Prince Jasimir demanded, sweating beneath his hood.
Wretch spat in the road and pointed to a string of deep-blue smoke rising over the treetops.
“I say let ’em rot,” Hangdog grumbled.
“Aye, and then the farmers rot, and their fields rot, and our pay rots, lackwit,” Fie shot back. She’d watched Swain tally up their supplies. Duty to the Covenant was the pretty side of it. The hard truth was that they also had two more mouths to feed.
“But what is that?” the prince asked.
“Really?” Hangdog gave him a look of disgust. “When was the last time your powdered ass set foot off palace grounds?”
“Enough.” Pa cleared his throat, scowling at the sky. “It’s a plague beacon.”
CHAPTER FIVE
FEED THE CROWS
The sun hung at an hour past the noon mark when they reached the village. They had followed the beacons down a twisting eastbound roughway, passing first the blue smoke beacon, then the violet. Both beacons snuffed out in their wake. Pa, Hangdog, and Fie all used the walk to wrap their hands and forearms in clean rags, the better to keep blood off their sleeves.
Now Pa rang the bell at the base of the village’s signal post, where black smoke smeared a charcoaled thumb into the clear sky. A Hawk guard peered over the edge of the platform, found fifteen Crows in fifteen masks and cloaks (and one grumpy gray tabby), and nodded before vanishing again. The smoke began to choke out.