Crane witches, who could pull the truth out of a liar, or a Sparrow witch, who could utterly vanish from sight.
The dead gods, though, had denied the Crows a Birthright of their own. Their witches could only steal the Birthrights from bones of the other castes, and only as long as a lingering trace of its former life lasted in that bone. And as the only caste immune to the Sinner’s Plague, their trade was cutting throats and collecting bodies.
With all that, Fie didn’t doubt the life of a Crow sounded like a punishment to a highborn Peacock. Most of Sabor believed dead sinners were reborn into the Crow caste so as to atone for whatever crimes had brought the plague down on them to begin with.
And yet …
She crouched on the dirt floor, setting her swords between her and the Peacock. “Funny thing is, were I to think on which of us two the Covenant favors right now—” Fie tapped her cheek. “Reckon that’s where the scholar Sharivi and I would disagree.”
Fie expected the Peacock girl to sneer at her, to lash back.
Instead, Niemi closed her eyes and raised a hand to the Sinner’s Brand rash on her face. Her voice cracked. “I … I suppose you’re right.”
A tiny, cold scrap of guilt knotted in Fie’s gut. Aye, she despised this soft, clean girl, and not merely because the girl despised her. Yet only one of them would leave this room alive.
Pa would tell her to stop dragging it out.
Wretch would tell her not to play with her food.
Instead, Fie asked, “Do you know why the Covenant picked you?”
The Peacock’s lips pressed together. Her finger shook as she pointed to the Hawk sword. “I want that one.”
“Rich ones always go for the fancy sword,” Fie mused. “You didn’t answer me.”
“Just get it over with,” the girl spat.
Fie lifted The Thousand Conquests and began rolling it up. “Been about five years since Crows passed through the lands of Governor Sakar, aye?” The parchment let out a particularly belligerent crackle. “Heard the last band didn’t make it out of here. Most of them, anyway.”
The Peacock girl said naught.
“A boy got away. Another chief found him, brought him to my pa. His name was Hangdog.”
Was. Two moons since he’d tried to run from being a Crow. Two moons since he’d died on the steps of a Peacock mansion.
When Fie had been old enough, Pa had told her what had happened to Hangdog’s first band. Hangdog himself had spoken of it to her only once.
“He told me there was a rich girl who came to their camp. They let her look at the pyre, they let her wear a mask, they let her see the chief’s sword, because you don’t say nay to a Peacock, even a little one … and then that night, the girl led the Oleander Gentry straight to their camp.”
The Peacock girl’s hands fisted in her pristine linen shift. Another bloom of Sinner’s Brand had begun to tattoo her forearm.
Most of Sabor liked to think the Covenant meant for Crows to be punished. By Fie’s ken, the Covenant had naught to do with it; they’d just appointed themselves its hangmen.
Niemi Navali szo Sakar turned a furious, glittering gaze on Fie. “I’d do it again.”
Fie gave her a humorless, toothy smile and tucked The Thousand Conquests into her belt. “Suppose that’s why the Covenant calls for you, then. Lie back.” The girl didn’t move. Fie pointedly hefted the Hawk sword. “Can’t steady both you and the blade.”
The Peacock girl lay back.
Sweat beaded her face. “Will it hurt?”
Fie had seen thousands of lives by now, ghosts darting like minnows through her head as she pulled Birthrights from their long-dry bones. She’d seen the lives of kings and outcasts, lovers and foes, conquerors and thieves. Some ended in blood, others in quiet. Some had even died at Pa’s hand, a cut throat granting them mercy from the agony of the Sinner’s Plague. She saw those lives, and those deaths, more than any other.
“No,” Fie lied, and rested the blade against the sinner girl’s throat.
The clean steel shivered with every heartbeat pounding along the girl’s neck, harder with fury, faster with fear.
The Peacock girl drew a shaky breath and caught Fie’s eye. “The Oleander Gentry will come for you tonight, you know.”
She meant it as a promise. As a threat. As a reminder, even now, of which castes the Covenant favored.