She tried to sense the campfire. It was wild and wicked, dancing from her mind’s grasp. Go, she willed. Go away.
The fire leaned and cowered—
“It’s not working,” said the prince. Her focus splintered.
The campfire spat a fountain of sparks, crackling higher than before, calling to the torches now strung along the road like a garland.
The bough trembled as Tavin shifted, uneasy.
Fie sucked in a breath and pushed at the campfire with every ounce of command the dead Phoenix princess had in her. For a moment it held, relentless, roaring its fury—and then collapsed. The flames huffed out, the logs cooling to black. Even the coals darkened to a sullen gray.
She let the breath go. The Phoenix tooth simmered yet, its spark far from expired. Be quiet, Fie ordered, smoke still threading her fingers as she returned to the Sparrow witch-tooth.
The boys began to vanish again. There was a scrape to her left as Jasimir adjusted his perch. Then a startled curse—a flash of steel—
The prince’s dagger slid free from its scabbard and landed on the branch below them, a swaying silhouette, ready to drop and betray them at the slightest breeze.
And as the camp flooded with mottled torchlight, Fie saw Jasimir hadn’t wrapped the gilded, jewel-scabbed, gods-damned hilt in rag after all.
“Can you make it disappear?” Tavin whispered.
Fie pushed the Sparrow tooth’s range beyond their branch, but near the dagger, her bones buzzed a warning. She wasn’t about to foul their cover by straining too far.
“No,” she wheezed. The dagger would have to stay as it was. And they’d have to pray the thousand dead gods would, for once, be kind.
The Oleander Gentry circled below, sending tremors up through the branches as they mangled the turf where she’d lain just moments earlier. They were as the coils of an enormous, pale serpent, white sweat frothing from their horses’ flanks, white chalk dusting hands and manes and bridles, undyed veils and cloaks hiding their faces. Only the torch-flame burned hues into their edges.
Fie’s breath glued in her lungs, her heart pounding faster. The Phoenix tooth sizzled on its string. Its surly princess lingered yet. And the princess said she should give the Oleander Gentry a taste of fire.
Steady. Steady. Fie was no princess, she was a chief. She’d never have the luxury of a faint heart again.
Their leader slowed and halted his mount, his silvery sandpine mask turning from the campfire ashes to the forlorn wagon. “Is this it?”
“That’s their cart.” Fie thought she recognized the voice of the Crane arbiter from the village they’d just left. There looked to be near two dozen others, one of the largest Oleander parties Fie’d seen yet, with sabers and clubs and hand-scythes strapped at their sides, even a bronze-tipped Hawk spear.
The leader dismounted. Unlike the others’ mismatched cloaks, his pale silk robe looked tailor-made for nights riding after Crows. Only Peacocks had coin and time alike to waste so. He held one immaculate hand over the darkened coals. “Still warm.”
A thousand obscenities galloped through Fie’s head. It seemed the dead gods were not in a kind mood after all.
“So’s the pyre.” Another man jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “But warm means it burned down mayhap hours ago. Wet or sandy means it was put out in a hurry.”
The leader’s sneer carried through his mask. “Thank you, Inspector, we’ve all seen fires before. But there’s no reason they’d simply abandon their cart.”
“They’re damned animals, they don’t need a reason.” No mistaking the Crane arbiter now, even under a layer of white paint and another of coarse-woven veil. She swung down from her horse and stalked over to the wagon to peer inside an open panel. After a moment she tore a strip from her veil and reached in.
“Well?” demanded the lordly Oleander.
The Crane held up Pa’s pincers, wrapped in her rag. “It’s them all right.” She spat at the ashes and slammed the panel shut, casting the pincers aside. “The wagon’s still full of their trash. They have to be hiding nearby.”
Fie dug her fingers into the bark.
Give them fire, the dead princess urged. Give them fear.
Fie could burn Sabor down from mountain to coast if she wanted to. Her and that bag of Phoenix teeth.
“That fire’s been dying since sundown,” the other Oleander man protested. “They must’ve set the pyre and run, they knew we’d come—”
“Don’t be absurd.” The genteel Oleander ran an idle finger over his mask, pacing slow about the camp. “These are