Every other Vulture shrieked and bolted for shelter. They would find none.
Fie clenched a raised hand into a fist, reaping the fire. It spun into great wheels about the Vultures, caging them in.
Fire-song raged in her bones, in her heart, in her teeth. One dead queen. Three milk teeth. She’d hunted for near an hour to pick out Phoenix teeth that wouldn’t fight one another. Now they balanced as one, burned as one, and answered to her wrath alone.
Tatterhelm had never once believed a Crow could best him.
Pa might be right about witches and dead gods; perhaps she’d been one, and perhaps so had Tatterhelm, once. But right or wrong, it hadn’t taken a god to strike him down. Only a chief and the element of surprise.
She had business to settle before she dealt with the surviving Vultures. She strode to Jasimir through the flames, Tavin trailing behind her.
Jasimir had pushed himself up on one leg, clinging to the wall. His eyes landed on Tavin and the telltale flames nipping harmlessly at his arms. “You’re … you’re a Phoenix.”
Tavin flinched, eyes on the ground. “I’m a bastard.”
“He’s your brother,” Fie finished, hoarse, and sawed at the bonds about Tavin’s wrists. “Half, at least.”
Tavin looked at her then, as the rope fell free.
She wanted to burn away the awful anger and shame in his eyes. She wanted him to heal himself as he had before. She wanted his hand in hers.
She wanted him to forgive her for risking his king, for laying his secret bare, for letting him fall to Tatterhelm to begin with.
But she was a chief, and her own were not out of the valley yet.
“It’ll be all right,” she lied, and cut the slaughter bell from his neck.
An open hand reached into the space between them. Tavin blinked at the prince, then took it. Jasimir wobbled—and embraced his brother.
“I should have seen it,” Jasimir mumbled. “I … didn’t want to. I’m sorry.”
Tavin didn’t answer, but neither did he let go, and in his own way, that was answer enough.
Fie’s breath came hard and harsh as she turned to the Vultures, trying not to choke on the reek of burnt hair and foul cooking flesh. Blood sizzled in the back of her throat, a sign she kenned too well by now. Easy harmony or no, the dead queen was fading.
Fire prowled round the remaining Vultures, keeping its distance, waiting for her command. One way or another, it was time they learned what it meant to cross the wrong Crow.
“Drop your weapons,” she ordered. Most obeyed; a few stragglers hesitated until fire lashed at their elbows. Madcap took a spear and passed it to Jasimir to use as a walking staff.
“Now what, chiefling?” Viimo asked.
Fie swallowed, the burn of blood rising on her tongue. The fire rolled about her and the lordlings like a loyal beast. Three teeth of a dead queen and she could do anything. She could light them up, watch them burn, watch Sabor burn from mountain to coast if she wanted.
She was tired of pretending she wouldn’t.
No—that was false, still, even now.
Just once, she wanted someone to treat her like she would. And the terror in the Vultures’ eyes seemed to be a good start to that.
They’d hunted her for nigh a whole moon. They’d taken her family. They’d shed her kin’s blood. Just because they never imagined they’d find themselves at her mercy.
Tavin’s slaughter bell still dangled from her fingers.
Wind flushed through the vale, spraying ash and grit down the road, through the fire, as sunlight snatched at the edges of the valley walls. Mercy, it seemed to say.
And her teeth answered in kind: Give them fire.
“Fie.” Jasimir’s voice cut through the haze.
“Don’t tell me to spare them,” she hissed, half wishing he would.
“That’s your choice to make,” he said, face steady in the wash of gold firelight. “But it won’t be for much longer.” He pointed back down the road they’d walked.
A horn wailed off the gray hillsides, near buried in thunder as mammoth after mammoth stormed into the vale.
But Viimo had said—
Fie spun and found Viimo’s face in her fiery cage. The skinwitch watched the mammoth cavalry pound down the ashen road, her dirty face grim—not surprised.
So Viimo had lied to Tatterhelm. She’d known the Hawks were coming. She’d betrayed her own leader, and her kin would pay. Why in the twelve hells would she turn on her own?
Maybe Hangdog could have told her.
If she let Viimo burn, she’d never find out.
Mammoth riders cascaded into the ruined village, surrounding them before Fie could make up her mind.
“You can let the fire go,” Tavin said from behind her, resigned.
Fie winced. A Markahn bastard. One more Hawk for the collection. How long had Tavin known who he was? How long had he kept it secret? And now here he stood plain in roaring flame, unscathed, before scores of Crows and Vultures and Hawks. There’d be no running from the truth any longer.
Fie loosed the teeth. Mammoth riders circled the Vultures and dismounted, unwinding shackles. The master-general herself rode toward Fie through the ebbing flames, storm-faced. Fie couldn’t say which loomed more menacing: the mammoth or Draga.
If Draga meant to have her head for this, though, perhaps Fie’d settle for dragging the Vultures into the twelve hells with her after all.
Then someone limped past, leaning on a spear, and planted himself between Fie and the master-general:
Jasimir.
Another dusty shadow followed him, standing steady in the road. Madcap. Another: Wretch. And more still.
Crow by Crow, they walled Fie off, and at last Pa’s arm wrapped about Fie’s shoulders as he took his place by her side.
For all her spite and cleverness, everything had emptied out of Fie, leaving her only with a knot in her throat and eyes that burned with tears. Pa pulled her in and let her bury her face in his shirt, just as he had for years. For a perfect moment, Fie didn’t give a damn for Hawks or princes or skinwitches.
She’d done it. She’d kept the oath, she’d struck down Tatterhelm, she’d looked after her own.
Draga might execute her now, but at least she’d die a chief.
“Out of the way,” the master-general ordered.
“You’ll not lay a finger on her,” Wretch answered, just as hard.
“She assaulted and abducted the heir to the throne so she could use him as bait. He could have been killed.” Draga cleared her throat. “I cannot—”
“I commanded her to.”
Fie raised her head and looked at Jasimir. This had not been part of their plan.
Draga blinked, which seemed to be as much surprise as she’d allow herself to display on a battlefield. “Think very carefully about what you are telling me, Highness.”
“I commanded her to,” Jasimir repeated, loud and plain. “Perhaps we should discuss this on the ground, master-general?”
To Draga’s credit, she knew better than to let the prince shout within her soldiers’ earshot about how he and a half-grown Crow had played the head of Sabor’s armies for a fool. She climbed down from her mammoth and strode over, looking not the slightest bit appeased. “There were clear signs of a fight in your chambers.”
Jasimir shrugged. “If there weren’t, you would have searched Trikovoi for us first. We needed you to come after us at the right time.”