She did know, however, that it wouldn’t be the dirty tabby squirming in the steward’s arms.
The night blistered with sudden, furious tears. A stray cat. Fair pay for a beggar at most. Not for two gold-sucking palace boys they’d marched seven leagues to burn.
Every frayed wisp of Fie’s patience twisted into a taut, angry wire.
The palace had leered at them, drawn steel on them, all but spat on them, and now they’d made a mockery of payment. Queen Rhusana didn’t care about sending her family into the next life with the barest scrap of dignity. All she cared for was flaunting the brutal truth: as queen, she could give Crows naught but contempt, and every time, Crows would have to take it.
No chief would abide this, not even one in training. Not even one facing a queen. Something had to be done.
The Crows were merciful, but they weren’t cheap.
The cart had near caught up to Pa. Fie leaned forward, blinking sweat and tears from her eyes. “Pa,” she whispered. The beak of his mask dipped. “Money Dance?”
For a long moment, he didn’t move. Then the beak dipped again.
For the first time that night, Fie grinned.
She jammed her nail-studded sole into the ground and stuffed every grain of spite into a long, satisfying scratch, the marble screaming for mercy. And then she screamed back.
Around her, the dozen Crows wailed in answer to the call, jolting to a halt. Thirteen torches clattered to the ground.
For the second time that night, the galleries above went silent.
The Crows shrieked again, Fie loudest of all, her pitch climbing at the end. The others took her signal and waited, stock-still. She counted out the quiet in her head: Four. Three. Two. One.
Another bloodcurdling cry tore through the hall from thirteen throats, its unmistakable anger echoing off distant archways. Another silence crashed in its wake.
On the third round of screams, the noble sneers were gone. All eyes hung on the motionless cart.
On the fifth round, half the gallery looked ready to cry.
Most fine lords and ladies had never been this close to Crows or plague-dead. To them, the plague was a poor man’s problem.
They didn’t understand that there were rules. That the plague cared naught for silks or jewels. That it left when the Crows said it could.
But by the thousand dead gods of Sabor, Fie wagered they were starting to catch on now.
She decided they’d stewed enough, and trilled the marching order.
Stamp. The thirteen Crows stepped forward as one, but the cart stayed in its place, its drag-ropes coiling on the marble like asps. Stamp. Hunting Castes, Splendid Castes, Common Castes—it didn’t matter. The Crows would teach every Saborian in this hall to remember. Stamp. Before, their threadbare black rags and long-beaked masks had made them look a superstitious joke. Stamp. Now she saw nightmares in the eyes trailing the corpse-cart. This was the fear they’d learned at their father’s knee.
Fie trilled again.
The footfalls picked up pace, ending in a sweep that carved hellish curls into the tiles. Another stamp. Another guttural scream. Another two paces away from the cart. The gallery recoiled.
Stamp-scrape-scream. Fie huffed under her mask. That was for their ugly palace.
Stamp-scrape-stamp. That was for drawing steel on them.
She trilled again, and the Crows stopped just shy of the threshold. A sick tension clung to the gallery, knuckles whitening on gemstones and silk.
The Crows snapped about and spun into a weaving, vicious pattern back to the cart. Nervous relief wound through the galleries, then wavered when the Crows didn’t immediately take up their ropes and torches again. Fie took her place at the cart’s front-right corner and waited until the nearest Peacock looked likely to piss himself.
Fie let out a murderous whistle. The Crows snatched up torch and rope, exploding down the hall and into the last courtyard like a hurricane, howling with the gods’ own wrath.
Courtiers scattered, tripping over satin trains and painted leather slippers. From the corner of her eye, Fie saw Hangdog had got his wish: at least three Peacocks had fainted.
That, she thought, is for trying to pay us with a damn cat.
Pa liked to call it the Money Dance. Fie just liked that it worked.
Their cart slowed near the gate, yet the dance carried on. The queen had not fled like the others of her court, her steward still quaking by her side. From ten paces off, Fie could see all too clear who they intended to shake down.
Queen Rhusana bristled beneath the arch, pale eyes glittering like two hard moons. Under the intricate whorls of white mourning paint, her face was a few shades lighter than Fie’s own terra-cotta, her brown complexion nearer to polished bronze. Everywhere Fie looked she saw wasted coin: a diamond-studded headdress wrought like a phoenix of white gold; ropes of pearls and diamonds dripping from her arms to drag on the ground; a white tiger pelt draped over her shoulders. The black-striped tail coiled about her arm, one hind paw fastened to clutch at her hip, and its stuffed head lolled on the tiles, eyes blank with more white gold. To Fie’s disgust, even the dead thing’s claws were crusted over with diamonds.
The silent demand of tradition had brought Rhusana to pay for her husband’s dead son. But it was clear as day that the queen had her own unspoken demand: every eye would stay nailed to her glory alone.
It had never been about the coin. But by every dead god, Fie hoped Pa would make it about coin now.
Then Pa gestured to Fie, jerking his head at the gate.
He wanted her to deal with Rhusana. To name the viatik price.
Fie froze. Sweat rolled down her backbone. Calling the Money Dance was one thing. Making demands of a queen was another. She wasn’t a chief, not yet—it wasn’t proper—what if she fouled it up and cost them all—
She didn’t even know what to ask for.
Torchlight glinted off steel as Hawks shifted at the wall, a sign their indulgence ran thin. A paper threat with plague bodies heaped in the cart, but a threat all the same. Enough to make a few Crows flinch. Enough to strike lightning through Fie’s gut.
Only a paper threat, yet they made it because they could. Because they liked seeing Crows jump.
Fie’s anger was a curious thing, sometimes tempered and unwavering as cut steel, sometimes raw and unstoppable as a cut vein. Now an old, sharp kind of rage climbed up her spine, forged of every blade pointed at her for a jest.
And it was that old, sharp rage that told Fie her price.
The screams and footfalls of the Money Dance rose in fury as she stepped forth.
Rhusana had deliberately daubed her face over with boredom, clicking her own diamond-cluttered claws a breath faster than the beats of the dance. Fie knew the signs of impatience: the queen still didn’t think she’d answer for this insult. The steward, however, had gone near as gray as the tabby in his arms.
The cat was offered tremulously. Fie didn’t take it. She had a chief’s price in mind.
She wanted to look the Splendid Castes in the eye without fear. She wanted to make the Hunting Castes think twice before flashing their steel for laughs. She wanted her ma back.
But since the queen couldn’t give her any of that, she’d take the next best thing.
“I’ll have the teeth,” Fie said.
Rhusana glared at the steward. He looked ready to vomit, eyes locked on the bloody shrouds in the cart. “Chief, I cannot—it is not your place to ask—”