they were born to be chiefs, too. Fie’s gut gave a hard little twist every time she thought on it … but she doubted Hangdog thought on being a chief at all. Pa called him “two-second clever”: too bent on making fools of others to catch his own purse getting cut.
Fie looked at the soldiers, then at Hangdog, and resolved to scalp him if the Hawks didn’t do it for her first.
There was a squawk from the hut’s rare-used hinges as Pa finally stepped outside.
Fie let the loose thread go, head and heart steadying. Damp red streaked down the front of Pa’s robes. He’d dealt a mercy killing, then.
Wretched slow mercy, Fie reckoned.
Her relief lasted half a heartbeat before metal rasped, dreadful, from the wall behind them.
Any Crow knew the song of quality steel being drawn. But Pa only turned toward the sound, torchlight flashing off his mask’s glassblack eyes. And then he waited.
A hush iced over the courtyard as even the Peacocks froze.
In the city streets, in sorghum fields, anywhere from Sabor’s western merchant bays to its cruel mountains of the east, a higher caste could cut down Crows for any invented slight. Brothers, aunts, lovers, friends—every Crow walked with the scars of loss. Fie’s own ma had vanished down a dark road years ago.
But for now, the Hawks kept to their walls. The Sinner’s Plague spread swift once its victim died. One body could rot a town to stone before year’s end. Here in the quarantine court, with two dead boys guaranteed to bring the palace down in less than a half moon … here was where the Crows could not be touched.
There was another rattle as the blade returned to its scabbard. Fie didn’t dare look back. Instead she fixed on the rumble of Pa’s rough voice: “Pack ’em up.”
“I’ll handle the dead moppets,” Hangdog said, starting forward.
“Not on your own.” Pa shook his head and motioned for Fie. “They’re bigger than you.”
Fie blinked. The steward had called the sinners “boys” when he led the Crows in. She’d expected tots, not lordlings near grown.
Pa caught her shoulder just as she reached for the door. She cocked her head at him. “Aye, Pa?”
The mask hid his face, but she still caught a hitch in his breath, the way the beak tipped less than a fingerbreadth to point clearer to the Hawks.
“Just … bring them out,” said Pa.
Fie stiffened. Something was fouled up, she’d swear it on a dead god’s grave. But Pa was the chief, and he’d gotten them out of worse.
Most of them, at least.
She nodded. “Aye, Pa.”
The second the door swung shut, Fie cuffed Hangdog upside the head.
“What in twelve hells were you thinking?” she hissed. “The Hawks near gutted Pa for walking out a door, and you’re aiming to try their patience?”
“Aiming to make you mad.” This time she heard Hangdog’s grin in the hut’s thick darkness. “Those scummers won’t gut the chief. Or they’ll all rot with us if they do.”
“You’re the only one keen to test that,” she snapped, then stopped cold.
Her eyes had adjusted to the little torchlight filtering through the hut’s canvas window screens. The lordlings were already tightly cocooned in linen shrouds on their red-stained pallets, a blot of blood seeping through the fabric at each throat.
Bundling up the dead was their job, not Pa’s.
“Maybe chief didn’t trust us to get it right.” Hangdog didn’t sound like he was grinning anymore.
That was nonsense. The two of them had handled shrouding for five years now, ever since Hangdog had come to her band for chief training.
“If Pa’s got reasons, he’ll tell us,” she lied. “Sooner these scummers are on the cart, sooner we clear the damn patchouli.”
There was a short, muffled laugh as Hangdog picked up one body by the shoulders. Fie took the feet and backed through the door, feeling every gaze in the courtyard alight on her—and then dart to the bloody shroud.
Quiet shrieks ruffled through the Peacock courtiers as Fie swung the body up onto the cart. Hangdog gave it an extra heave. It toppled onto heaps of firewood with an unceremonious thud, knocking over a pile of kindling. A collective gasp swept the galleries.
Fie wanted to kick Hangdog.
Pa cleared his throat, muttering pointedly, “Mercy. Merciful Crows.”
“We’ll be nice,” Hangdog said as they headed back inside. He’d just picked up the remaining body by the feet when he added, “Wager someone faints if we drop this one.”
Fie shook her head. “Pa can sell your hide to a skinwitch,