The prince hunched by the campfire, curling flame round his fingers, until Swain sat to his side. “Would His Highness like to see the rarest scroll in the kingdom? You’ll not find its like anywhere, not even in His Majesty’s own library.”
Jasimir’s brows rose.
Fie settled down on her mat. Swain had worked at his scroll long as she could remember, setting down all the songs and tales Crows carried in their heads. She’d never been able to read a single letter, but she supposed it mattered to him.
When Fie’s eyes at last drifted shut, Swain’s and Jasimir’s heads still bowed over the scroll, intently conversing by the fire.
Then Fie’s dreams dragged her from the dark of empty sleep, fast and vicious and red.
She held Hangdog’s hand in front of a pyre in broad day.
It was no pyre; it was the village they’d left behind, and it burned with phoenix-gold fire.
She’d wanted to burn it to the ground. No, she’d wanted them to know that she could.
Teeth spilled from her open palm, bloody and new, bursting into flame as they fell.
We need this deal, Pa said, nowhere to be seen.
The village changed: Now she saw a vale far to the north, burning end-to-end, all a massive black plague beacon. Screams for mercy filled the air.
No one answered, Pa said, shaking his head, much too close to the fire. And now we all will.
It was not Hangdog at her side; it was Tavin’s hand in hers, and he took her measure once again.
She yanked free—
“Fie.”
She woke to a sea of flames.
The campfire. It was naught but the campfire. Fie tried to catch her breath.
“Fie, get up.”
That was the Chief voice.
“Pa?” She sat up, rubbing her eyes. It was too dark yet to pack out.
The prince rolled to his knees, drowsy and scowling. Hangdog stood frozen nearby.
Then the answer came with the faint rumble in the earth beneath her thin pallet. Her own gut frosted over.
They never should have taken the sinners’ teeth.
“Get the prince and grab what you can.” Pa was a blur in the night, rushing from one Crow to the next, then dragging the prince to his feet. The rumble only grew. “Up, Highness. The Oleander Gentry are coming.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE CAT AND THE KING
The prince was barefoot.
In her sixteen years, Fie had learned many a hard lesson when it hit her right in the teeth: Always watch the crowd. Always know your way out. Never go into town alone.
And on the nights you burn sinners, sleep with your sandals on.
Jasimir’s toes slipped on a mossy tree trunk as Fie struggled to hoist him to the nearest branch, choking down a frustrated scream. Thunderous hoofbeats welled in the ground beneath them; Crows darted about camp, scrambling to cover their tracks. Though the prince’s heel was braced on Fie’s shoulder, his hands shook too bad to find purchase on vine or bark. But Pa had said to get the prince out of sight—she had to get them clear—
Tavin pulled the prince from the trunk. “Fie, you go first—pull him up—”
Up. The word was a shackle breaking.
Nails in her sandal soles chewed through bark and moss as up she went, easy as walking a stair. The strap of her loose mask cut into the flesh at her throat, the heavy beak banging against her spine. From the corner of her eye she saw other Crows scaling the trees as well. Wretch had strapped the rolled-up pallets to her back. Swain bore their meager stash of maps and scrolls, the cooking pot bouncing at his side.
She didn’t see Hangdog at all.
Up. If she lost the prince, she lost the oath.
Fie crawled onto the first branch. She whipped her robe over her head, twisted it into a rope, then looped it where branch married trunk. The prince seized a handful of crowsilk and began to climb.
“Fie!” Pa stood below. He threw a tooth up to her, then dashed away once she’d caught it.
The tooth sang in her fist, so loud and clear that she near dropped it when she kenned what she held.
Orange torchlight pinpoints glittered far, far down the road.
Up. Fie knotted the priceless tooth into her waist-sash, then yanked the cloak to hurry the prince.
But this bough wouldn’t hold her, Prince Jasimir, and Tavin as well. Once the prince sat steady, she scuttled up to a sturdier branch.
“You can’t leave me!” Jasimir hissed, wide-eyed.
He was panicky, he was learning a new kin of fear. She had to remember that. But some Crows were more merciful than others.
“Bring up your Hawk boy, lackwit,” she shot back, “then you pass me the cloak—”
Tavin’s forearm curled into view. He’d climbed up on his own. A moment later he straddled the same branch as the prince. It shook and creaked under his weight, as she’d feared.
Up.
Hoofbeats whispered through the leaves.
Below, she spied Pa handing Hangdog a fistful of hemp ropes, each leashed to a spiky, weighted block of wood carved like a crude foot. Hangdog took the ropes in both hands and ran into the dark, away from the Oleanders, blocks tumbling behind him to cut up the road with Crow tracks.
Pa didn’t send out a runner unless things were dire. They’d near lost Madcap to a run last year, and Swain’s wife had vanished into the night two years before, no trace of her or the wooden feet ever found. But if anyone was guaranteed to run far and hard from the Oleander Gentry, it would be Hangdog.
Fie’s robe-rope slapped up to her. She winched it about the bough as first the prince, then his Hawk, climbed to either side of her. Tavin stayed on his feet, toes curling around the thick branch, one hand catching another bough for balance. Jasimir pulled the robe up behind him.
Individual hoofbeats rattled the air now. She knew what came next.
But this time, Pa had given her a witch’s tooth.
Like all the Common Castes, Sparrows birthed scant few witches. Their teeth were good as gold but sore harder to come by. The refuge Birthright let any Sparrow turn unwanted gazes away as they pleased, softened their footfalls, let them slip away from a threat unnoticed. For Oleander raids, Pa burned two teeth at a time, sometimes three, a trick Fie had yet to learn.
But the sole Sparrow witch-tooth he’d handed her—that would wipe her and the lordlings clear out of sight.
“Get steady and keep your mouths shut, cousins,” she warned under her breath, working the tooth free from her sash. “I’m hiding us.”
It warmed against her fingers as she called its spark, eyes closed, searching for a song. Instead, the world went silent. Flickers of the Sparrow witch’s life slipped through her: The Hawk who’d found the witchery in his blood as a boy, years bound to serve the Splendid Castes, solace in a loving husband. A thousand-thousand times he faded from the notice of a Peacock lord, a Dove craft-master, or a Swan courtesan, occasionally to gather secrets, but more often so they didn’t have to think on who served their tea. The thousand-thousand times they forgot he was there. The thousand-thousand times he couldn’t forget.
And at last: the noblewoman who paid the Sparrow witch for his secrets and service, and then one year, paid Fie’s pa with his teeth.
The Sparrow witch’s life passed in the beat of Fie’s heart. Then his Birthright woke in the hum of her bones.
When she opened her eyes again, the boys’ weight still pressed the branch, but they were nowhere to be seen. Her own hands looked solid enough, but she’d be as good as a ghost to the others.