loud and clear that she near dropped it when she kenned what she held.
Orange torchlight pinpoints glittered far, far down the road.
Up. Fie knotted the priceless tooth into her waist-sash, then yanked the cloak to hurry the prince.
But this bough wouldn’t hold her, Prince Jasimir, and Tavin as well. Once the prince sat steady, she scuttled up to a sturdier branch.
“You can’t leave me!” Jasimir hissed, wide-eyed.
He was panicky, he was learning a new kin of fear. She had to remember that. But some Crows were more merciful than others.
“Bring up your Hawk boy, lackwit,” she shot back, “then you pass me the cloak—”
Tavin’s forearm curled into view. He’d climbed up on his own. A moment later he straddled the same branch as the prince. It shook and creaked under his weight, as she’d feared.
Up.
Hoofbeats whispered through the leaves.
Below, she spied Pa handing Hangdog a fistful of hemp ropes, each leashed to a spiky, weighted block of wood carved like a crude foot. Hangdog took the ropes in both hands and ran into the dark, away from the Oleanders, blocks tumbling behind him to cut up the road with Crow tracks.
Pa didn’t send out a runner unless things were dire. They’d near lost Madcap to a run last year, and Swain’s wife had vanished into the night two years before, no trace of her or the wooden feet ever found. But if anyone was guaranteed to run far and hard from the Oleander Gentry, it would be Hangdog.
Fie’s robe-rope slapped up to her. She winched it about the bough as first the prince, then his Hawk, climbed to either side of her. Tavin stayed on his feet, toes curling around the thick branch, one hand catching another bough for balance. Jasimir pulled the robe up behind him.
Individual hoofbeats rattled the air now. She knew what came next.
But this time, Pa had given her a witch’s tooth.
Like all the Common Castes, Sparrows birthed scant few witches. Their teeth were good as gold but sore harder to come by. The refuge Birthright let any Sparrow turn unwanted gazes away as they pleased, softened their footfalls, let them slip away from a threat unnoticed. For Oleander raids, Pa burned two teeth at a time, sometimes three, a trick Fie had yet to learn.
But the sole Sparrow witch-tooth he’d handed her—that would wipe her and the lordlings clear out of sight.
“Get steady and keep your mouths shut, cousins,” she warned under her breath, working the tooth free from her sash. “I’m hiding us.”
It warmed against her fingers as she called its spark, eyes closed, searching for a song. Instead, the world went silent. Flickers of the Sparrow witch’s life slipped through her: The Hawk who’d found the witchery in his blood as a boy, years bound to serve the Splendid Castes, solace in a loving husband. A thousand-thousand times he faded from the notice of a Peacock lord, a Dove craft-master, or a Swan courtesan, occasionally to gather secrets, but more often so they didn’t have to think on who served their tea. The thousand-thousand times they forgot he was there. The thousand-thousand times he couldn’t forget.
And at last: the noblewoman who paid the Sparrow witch for his secrets and service, and then one year, paid Fie’s pa with his teeth.
The Sparrow witch’s life passed in the beat of Fie’s heart. Then his Birthright woke in the hum of her bones.
When she opened her eyes again, the boys’ weight still pressed the branch, but they were nowhere to be seen. Her own hands looked solid enough, but she’d be as good as a ghost to the others.
Across the clearing, two more Sparrow sparks kindled in her senses. Pa had gone to work. Fie blinked, and her gaze skidded off the other Crow-laden trees. It’d take a fight to look at them head-on while those Sparrow teeth burned.
“Put out the fire,” Tavin said under his breath.
“And how do I do that from a tree, pray?” she demanded.
“Use a Phoenix tooth.”
Her grip tightened on the branch. So far she’d only called a fire, not banished one. But it was worth the risk. Maybe if the Oleanders thought the camp was abandoned, they’d pass by.
The boys reappeared as Fie let the Sparrow witch-tooth stagnate. One of her three Phoenix teeth lit up, searing against the hollow of her throat. She found the spark of the owner—an old princess from centuries past—and tried to bend it to her will.