Barf had fled the wagon once they’d turned down the narrower, bumpier roughway, but Fie stowed her back inside the hold now. “You’ll thank me later,” she muttered over outraged mewls. There was no telling how the village would receive them, but Fie had an educated notion. She couldn’t chance they’d take their spite out on the Crows’ pet, too.
Pa looked over Fie’s head and picked out the prince and his Hawk. “We’ll handle the heavy lifting, lads,” he muttered. “You keep clear of the body.”
Behind Fie, Tavin grumbled into his mask, “How do you people even tell one another apart like this?”
The answer was the way Swain rolled up his sleeves so neat in the damp warmth. Or Wretch’s habit of swaying in place, never wholly still. Or how Hangdog’s fingers dug into his palms every time the lordlings spoke.
But all Fie said was “You two are the only ones who walk like we should get out of your way.”
And then she followed Pa into the village common.
The locals clustered near the communal oven, huddled like their round-shouldered thatch houses. Most doors bore the mark of Common Castes; the one beside the town’s god-grave brandished a Hunting Caste crest and the painted border of a Crane arbiter.
The silver-haired Crane stepped forward as Pa approached. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her faded orange smock marbled with faint bloodstains that soap-shells couldn’t break. As the village arbiter, she served as their judge, doctor, and teacher. Likely she’d known the sinners since birth.
She pointed a shaking oak-brown finger to a nearby thatch house. “They’re in there.”
“More than one?” Pa asked.
The woman’s lined face crumpled a moment before steadying. “Two—two adults. A husband and wife.”
“Naden and Mesli,” a man spat. “They have names.”
Had, Fie thought, grim, studying the onlookers. No crying moppets, no wailing family. Anger still simmered below the surface. They hated the Crows for being here. And they hated themselves for calling them.
But if the corpses didn’t burn by their second sunset, plague would spread faster than rumors through a Swan pavilion. Fie knew too well what happened after that: By week’s end, no one in the village would be left untouched. Two weeks in, the dead would be piled up, the crops blackening in the fields. By moon’s end, only rotten timber, ruined earth, and bitter ghosts would remain.
Pa led the cart as far down the path to the thatch house as it could go, stopping before mud could glut the wheels. The nearby field stretched half-tilled, its mossy sod a green island in the sea of dark earth. Pigeon Moon was for sowing; Peacock Moon would be for waiting.
That field wouldn’t be touched again until the thatch house had been burned down and built anew. This time, as they walked up to the door, Fie caught the true, familiar stench of plague and death.
“Hangdog. Watch the cart.” Pa crooked a finger at Fie. “You come with me, girl.”
Fie swallowed. Pa had cut throats in front of her before, but only when he couldn’t shield her from the sight. It felt like one more final handoff, another chief’s string, another oath to carry; the teeth hung heavy round her neck.
When, not if.
The door swung open into stinking dim, and she followed Pa inside.
Two bodies coiled together on a pallet at the far end of the single room. One rash-mottled hand sagged atop the wooden water pail. A blanket had been tossed aside in the throes of fever still lingering in the room’s clingy warmth.
To Fie’s surprise, Pa unstrapped his mask and set it on the low table beside a clay plate of molding panbread. “Gets in the way,” he explained, rubbing his nose.
The whispered question bubbled up before she could gulp it back: “Why didn’t you bring Hangdog?”
Pa glanced over his shoulder as Fie shed her own mask. His voice lowered. “That boy doesn’t need practice cutting throats.”
A whimper pierced the small quiet before Fie could scrub at that answer.
Pa strode over to the pallet, Fie in his shadow. He knelt in the dirt and hooked a careful hand round the nape of the woman’s neck. Sweat plastered her dark hair to her skull, her face and arms purpled with the unmistakable Sinner’s Brand. A yellow rind around her eyes crumbled as they cracked open.
“Hurts” rattled out from dry, bloody lips.
Pa had fair many voices. He had a Chief voice for steering their family of Crows as best he could. He had his Cur voice for needling Wretch or playing a jest on Swain. He had a Pa voice for teaching Fie how to use teeth, how to deal fair in a dispute, how to treat with Peacock gentry and gutter-born Pigeons alike.
But he had another voice, the one he’d used when he’d first adopted Fie as his own. When nightmares of her mother still made her cry herself sick. When she cowered at every flicker of white fabric in the markets. When hoofbeats sent her scuttling into the roadside hedges for fear of Oleanders.
He’d used the Safe voice to quiet her sobs, steady her nerve, coax her from the thorns before she scratched herself worse.
And at that moment, Fie learned that he used it to cut throats.
“Shhh,” Pa said, gentle, reaching for the half blade at his side. “We’re here.”
A drop of blood welled and trembled on the woman’s mouth. “Please,” she gasped, “… burns…”
“Fie.” That was his Pa voice. It was time to study.
“Aye.” She knelt beside him.
“Hold her head.”
Sticky hair crackled under Fie’s palms. Her eyes squeezed shut at the glint of Pa’s sword.
“You have to keep your eyes open.” Pa’s voice landed somewhere between reprimand and apology. Fie ground her teeth together and obeyed.
“Crows,” the sinner mumbled. The red bead spilled as her lips waxed to a shallow smile of relief. “Mercy. No more…”
“No more.” Pa leveled the blade across her throat. “Sleep, cousin.”
There was a savage jerk. The sinner died smiling.
When the body had stilled, Pa handed Fie the broken sword, hilt-first. “For the husband.”
She tried not to stare. The blade slipped a little in her hands. Watching had been hard enough, but this—
When, not if.
Mercy was a chief’s gift. Inflicting it was their duty.
She reached for the other body—then pressed two fingers to where neck met shoulder. The flesh was cooler, salt flaking from a long-dry sweat trail.
No pulse.
She pried his mouth open and touched a tooth. If he yet lived, the bone-spark would’ve sung for her, double as loud as any on her string. Instead, it sighed and hummed.
“He’s dead.” A reprieve. The knot in her gut loosened.
Pa reached for her shoulder, then caught himself. His hands were yet a gory mess. He plunged them into the water pail, then dried them on the cast-off blanket and stood.
Whatever he’d wanted to say had gone stale. Instead, he donned his mask and said, “Pack ’em up.”
With Hangdog’s help, the bodies were bundled and loaded on the cart within a quarter hour. The rest of the village waited for them in the commons, shifting with unease and muttering among themselves.
No viatik in sight. Fie bristled.
The Crane arbiter stepped forward once they were in earshot. “Thank you for your … services,” she said, brittle. “We’ve left two pyres’ worth of firewood at the gate in payment.”