She had more than that.
You’re going to be a chief.
She saw Pa, holding out the sword to cut her first throat. She still wasn’t ready. Pa, holding out the bag of teeth.
Look after your own.
“Fie?”
Tavin’s voice dragged her back again. He looked at her like he had a thousand things to say, things like I’m sorry and I know and Please and, above all, I need you.
But only the strongest survived: “Can you do it?”
In answer, she pushed a Sparrow tooth free from her string with aching fingers. “Stay here.”
Fie ducked into what remained of the street, shrouded in smoke and soot and a Sparrow Birthright for good measure. Mercifully, she saw no bodies, only flames dancing fitful across the broken bricks like Lovely Rhensa and his fallen foes. Had Tavin timed it so? Or had the lack of casualties been a solitary scrap of good fortune?
Hawks had started braving the dying fire, pushing at the edges of the flashburn. Fie swerved away from one particular bold guard, prying a Peacock witch-tooth from her string, then slipped behind a charred tent and let the Sparrow tooth go.
The Peacock witch-tooth kindled as it rolled betwixt her palms, a vivid song of whim and majesty. A grandfather, a storyteller, weaving legends of the ancient heroes to chubby, wide-eyed children by the hearth. The tooth’s echo of him laughed with glee at the tale Fie passed on.
With a flick of her wrist, she tossed the tooth into the canal.
And with a twist of her will, three figures flickered into sight: a prince, a Hawk, and a Crow girl, clambering atop the barrels of a cargo barge. Shouts rose up from the guards. The three ghosts started like frightened deer, leaping from one barge to the next.
Boots and steel rumbled past. The Hawk guards were on the hunt. And thanks to the Peacock tooth leading the illusion down the canal as the current bore it along, they’d follow those ghosts until they learned better.
Once the guards had passed, she slipped back through the smoke. A pillar of fire still clawed at the darkening heavens where the oil tent had stood. A few paces off, a Gull woman watched it burn, tears cutting tracks through the soot on her stricken face.
The lordlings appeared from the hazy alley and motioned for her to follow, then set off for the stairs to Fourth Market. Fie couldn’t say whether they knew the damage they’d done to get away; only that as they left Third Market behind, neither looked back, not even once.
* * *
They took a long, halting way through Fourth Market, veering from guards as the afternoon’s pack of bodies scattered into smaller crowds. Fog rose as night swallowed the sun, and a sluggish bay breeze wormed through Fie’s hair, damp and warm as a drunkard’s breath.
Tavin led them down through the market, pausing at each water-lift and drain chute, then finally stopped at a chute behind a shuttered stall. “Wait here.”
He hopped onto an empty barge moored near the stall, then pressed his hand to a tile on the canal’s far wall. It sank into its grout with a deliberate click. As he pulled his hand back, Fie caught the faint outline of a hammer engraved there.
The water cascading down the chute thinned to a trickle, then to a steady drip. Tavin pushed on the tiles below the chute’s spout. A citizen-size panel swung inward with a grinding, sandy grate, revealing pitch-black within. Tavin held up a hand—wait—and climbed inside.
“Maintenance tunnels,” Jasimir said. “Of course.”
Firelight sparked in the dark, and a moment later, Tavin motioned for them to follow. Fie hopped onto the barge and let him pull her into the tunnel, mindful of the sword and tooth bag still knotted secure at her hip. Once Jasimir joined them, Tavin pulled a chain dangling by the entrance. The ceramic panel slid back into place, and with it fell a brutal quiet.
Tavin plucked a burning torch from the wall and lit another that he passed to the prince. Then he led them down a corridor, emerging in a round room where broad terra-cotta banks bracketed a course of slow dark water.
“The reservoir drains into irrigation channels for the Fan,” Prince Jasimir said, swinging his torch about to survey the area. “They’ll look for us to make a break for the gates, not shelter in the city. We should be safe here.”
“That’s the idea.” Tavin dropped his torch into a sconce jutting from rumples of yellow fungi, let out a long, heavy breath, and then sank to the floor. A week ago, the prince might have turned up his nose at the slimy brick and suspicious puddles. Now he joined Fie and Tavin as one more exhausted heap, shoals in a sea of torch-lit gloom.
“May I?”
Fie blinked and found Tavin pointing to her tattered hands. “Aye,” she croaked. He took one and began peeling away the stiff makeshift bandages, murmuring an apology each time she flinched at threads snagging on her wounds.
She’d never been tended to by a Hawk before today. She’d expected healing to be a relief. Instead when Tavin closed his eyes, an awful heat like nettles spread across her broken flesh.
To distract herself, Fie plucked at her string of teeth, over bones of Peacock and Sparrow, Phoenix and Crane. Then her fingers stalled on two milk teeth knotted side by side.
One tooth sat cold, a distant shade where its spark had been an hour before.
That tooth belonged to Hangdog.
The other still simmered with life.
That one belonged to Pa.
How long did he have? How long did any of her kin have?
“Once we’re ready, we can take the tunnels out.”
Tavin’s voice bulled through the quiet. Fie and Jasimir both started.
“What?” Fie asked.
Tavin let her hand go. “Done with this side. Let’s see the other. And the graze on your arm.”
She rolled up her sleeve, wincing at the crackle of blood. “What do you mean, ‘out’?” she asked again.
“The city gates will be buttoned up tight for days,” he said, unwinding the rags from her fingers. “And most of the merchant ships are moored across the bay, so—”
“No. What do you mean, ‘out’?” Fie jabbed her free thumb up. Stinging rolled up her fingers once more. “I’m getting my kin back.”
Tavin’s face stiffened. “Fie … there may not be much to get—”
“Pa.” She pinched his tooth between her thumb and forefinger until it ground against her own knuckle-bone. “He’s … he’s still alive.”
The hush that followed ached near as much as Fie did.
“He swore an oath,” Tavin said at last.
It was Fie’s turn to stiffen. She turned a hard stare on the Hawk. “What,” she hissed, “does that mean?”
“I think you know what it means.”
Fie did. She was a Crow; she knew a Money Dance when she heard one.
Jasimir sat up. “Tav—”
Fie jerked her arm free. It started to bleed again. “If you think I’m going to leave my family with some monster—”
“Your father told me if anything happened to him—” Tavin began.
“You two happened to him.”
“So did your oath.”
Her heels dug into the earthen floor. “We said we’d get you two to Cheparok—”
“Your father swore a Covenant oath to get Jasimir to his allies, in this life or the next.” Frost slivered through Tavin’s voice. He wouldn’t look at her.