Far away, the Sparrow butcher said, “You lot’ll be lucky to go that easy with the Oleander Gentry.”
The viper-nest in her gut thrashed. She couldn’t say if it was the threat or the blood that did it. They had to get out of this mess before aught else fouled up.
What came next? Get the dead sinner out. Was he even dead yet? He’d gone still. Flies crawled about his face once more. The grim necklace of red bubbles popped one by one. His eyes were closed, just like in sleep.
Sleep. The sleeping mat. Get him on the mat.
Fie tried to grab a handful of bloody shirt. Crimson greased her slipping hands. The dead man slid a little deeper into the scum.
“Fie—you need help—”
Tavin’s voice rang much too close. She whirled round again and found him halfway down the steps, halfway to the sinner, halfway to her.
This close and he’d catch the plague. This close and she’d watch his mouth crack and bleed, she’d hear him cough up soft bits of his lungs, and if she was a real chief, she’d be the one dealing him mercy before it got bad. Her hands, his throat, his blood, her mercy—
The blade fell to the stone again.
Look after your own.
“Get out,” she hissed around a traitorous sob. Her empty hands rattled at her sides, shaking blood off in shivering droplets. She had no mercy left in her, not for him, not now. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch the sinner, just watch the damn pr—Watch your cousin, aye?”
“Fie—”
“Get out!”
No mercy, only blood on her hands, and fear of the part of her that wanted him to stay.
Another cackle from the crowd. Mostly Common Castes, they’d cozied up to the edge of the channel, too far to hear her, too close for her guts to settle. At the front stood that Sparrow butcher.
Too close. All of them were too close.
“Oleanders won’t snuff you so swift.” The butcher’s voice was flat, matter-of-fact. “We know there’s nowhere to spill that filth blood but the sewers when we’re done with you.”
“Ignore him and get back to your cousin,” Fie rasped. Light sliced across the glassblack eyes of Tavin’s mask. He didn’t move. “They just want to flash their steel because we sure don’t have any, aye, Pissabed?”
All it’d take to go sideways was one glimpse of Tavin’s short swords.
The Sparrow man licked his lips. “The sewers’ll run red for moons. Look at them. They know what’s coming. Aren’t even going to bother running, are you?”
Tavin uncrossed his arms.
“Ignore him,” Fie ordered, desperate. One fly, then another landed on her blood-soaked hands.
“Oh, noisy tongue on that one,” the Sparrow laughed. “How about your lads there? They got mouths worth using, too?”
A Crow would know how this game played out. Let them say what they will. Let them kick and curse and keep moving on, because the cost of cursing back wasn’t yours alone to pay.
But Tavin was a Hawk, not a Crow, and the high castes never bothered with who paid for their folly.
“Best get used to that scum, bone thief,” the courier laughed. “You’ll be drowning in it with the rest of the filth when the White Phoenix gets…”
He trailed off, looking at his hands. Then he let out a short yip as his fingers purpled and curled like pill-beetles.
And that was where Fie had fouled up: she’d forgotten that war-witches needed no steel to kill.
The butcher crumpled, screaming, as blisters boiled over his blackening flesh.
Panicked shrieks ricocheted off the paving stones. In seconds the throng of onlookers had dissolved to a jostling rush shoving away from the sewage channel. Only the Sparrow remained, a twitching heap of limbs and smoking rag.
The air in Fie’s mask savored of mint and pig fat. Like burnt sinner.
Get out. She had to get out.
“Fie—”
Tavin swayed at the edge of her sight. One hand reached for her.
Then he crashed to the stone, and moved no more.
The prince stumbled down the stairs as she froze. Hangdog had fallen just so—the bridge was behind her, the Floating Fortress was behind her, Hangdog was behind her—no, he lay on the steps now, as good as dead—not again—
Jasimir shook Tavin by the shoulders, again and again. He didn’t stir.
Look after your own.
She was their chief.
Some stony part of her broke through the fear and fury. Cold reckoning ratcheted through her head. The Pigeon courier would be back any moment with some ugly surprise. She couldn’t leave the sinner. Or Tavin. The sinner was dead. Tavin was—
Silent.
Jasimir stripped off Tavin’s mask. Blood trailed from the Hawk’s nose and shuttered eyes.
Terror sucked Fie’s cold reckoning under.
“He breathing?” Her own voice rang pitifully high and strangled in her ears.
Jasimir held a trembling hand over Tavin’s mouth, then nodded.
The flood ebbed. Still alive. She had to get them out.
“Flashburn,” she barked, pointing a bloody finger at her pack.
For once, the prince didn’t argue. Maybe he distrusted his voice as much as she’d doubted her own. He passed the jug to her without a word.
Fie gritted her teeth and turned her back on Tavin. She knelt by the dead sinner, forced her fingers into his mouth, and upturned the jug. Clear ooze slid over her knuckles and down the man’s throat, its bitter reek running roughshod through the air.
“Water.” She snatched up her stump of a sword, spun on a heel, and held her arms out to the prince. “Hands and blade.” He emptied a water skin over her palms and sword until the wet rags on her hands ran near clear.
Cloth scuffed over stone behind her—but neither Jasimir nor Tavin had moved. Where had the sound come from?
Another scrape gave her the dreadful answer.
Still alive. The Sparrow butcher was still alive.
His shriveled hand convulsed, the same shiny red-black as a strip of smoked pig. One bloodshot eye wandered to her broken blade.
“Crow,” he whined.
Fie’s throat closed. She knew what came next.
“Mercy.”
Not again, she couldn’t cut another throat again; only sinners could ask for mercy from Crows—that was the way of it, right? But perhaps the Covenant had sent her instead of waiting for the plague, and if she didn’t send them on it’d bring a hell down on their heads—
“Mercy,” the butcher begged.
“I’ll do it.”
Tavin groggily shoved himself up, blood smeared from cheek to jaw where he’d tried to wipe it off. The blood vessels in his eyes had burst, dyeing their whites bright as poppies.
“Don’t push yourself,” Jasimir protested.
Tavin ignored him, staggering to his feet with a spit-weight of his usual grace. For a moment he looked near ready to collapse again. Then he drew one short sword from a hip, and the weight of a hilt in his hand seemed to tip him into focus once more.
“I’ll do it,” he said again. His gaze reeled to the street leading to the sewer. “Oh. That’s a … problem.”
Fie followed his gaze, even as a hollow clatter on paving stone told her what she’d find. Greggur Tatterhelm rode for them, the Pigeon courier pointing the way.