going for a walk.”
“Take a cat and a badge,” Khoda said immediately.
“I’m just going to use a Sparrow witch-tooth.” She stood and headed for the door.
Fie heard the frown in Khoda’s voice. “I thought you only had three of those. You should save them for the ball.”
Fie sighed and leaned her head on the doorframe. “Well then, here’s one more sign the Covenant wants aught from us. I should’ve burned out the last one days ago. The sparks keep coming back. Can’t tell you why.”
She called the witch-tooth to life and slipped out.
By now Fie had committed enough of the palace to memory that she felt safe in the gardens, or as safe as she could feel on palace grounds. She saw crows in nigh every tree, but they only tilted their beaks as she passed, blinking curiously, chortling a croak or two in her wake. If they saw through the refuge the witch-tooth gave her, she couldn’t say.
Through the leaves she saw the Hall of the Dawn and the upraised hands of the Mother of the Dawn’s statue, holding the rising sun. Fie found herself walking toward it. Jasimir had sworn it marked a god-grave, and she could have sworn it marked no such thing. Endless riddles chased themselves through Fie’s skull now; she could at least lay one to rest.
It was easy enough to tell once she drew near. To either side swept the curving wings of the Divine Galleries, and from below them she felt the sleepy hum of god-graves. No such hum rumbled from below the statue.
Jasimir had suggested the grave might lie under the thrones. Fie rounded the pedestal and eyed the iridescent panes of glassblack making the back wall of the Hall of the Dawn. They were still streaked with dribbles of gold from when she’d melted their ugly golden sun sculpture, but from what she could tell, most of the wreckage had been cleared away in preparation for Rhusana’s ball. The twin thrones sat less than a pace behind the panes.
Fie picked her way over, even creeping into the hedge that bordered the wall, and held her breath.
She could feel not so much as a murmur.
Wherever the Mother of the Dawn was buried, it wasn’t here.
Fie’s puzzling was interrupted by rising screams from crows. She sank into the hedge on instinct, peering from between the leaves.
The cries grew louder, and a small parade came into view. Sparrows, Owl clerks, a few bewildered Hawks, all were marching toward one of the quarantine courts. Fie’s heart sank when she recognized a face: Ebrim was walking with them, shoulders slumped.
Then she recognized an indignant sputter. “This is simply unfathomable! When the queen hears of this, you—you’ll all be imprisoned for this outrage!”
Lord Dengor was prodded, blustering, into sight at spear-point. The Sinner’s Brand had framed his face like an elaborate collar.
The half plague, as Jasimir called it, had reached even the Peacocks.
“Look on the bright side,” one of his escorts said sardonically, “there’s plenty of room for you in the quarantine court now.”
Fie sat down hard and buried her face in her lap. She stayed that way even after the crows had gone quiet.
Khoda might think they could last two days more, but this … this was beyond Fie’s ken.
All of it was beyond her.
It was a terrible, welcome thing, that thought scurrying across her mind: it was too much. All of it was too much. It had been too much for weeks, maybe moons, maybe centuries.
She’d spent so much of the last few days dashing through sparks and lives and memories in teeth, and she’d seen hardship and pain, but not like this. She’d seen girls like her in Hawks and Gulls and Sparrows and Peacocks and Pigeons, in nigh every other caste. They were weaving crowns of grain and vine for the harvest dances. They were lying on the decks of their mothers’ boats, reading the stars. They were sneaking off to share sweets with sweethearts. They were cleaning their armor and trading stories from its stains by the fire.
They got to be young, and not careless, but not care-worn either. They got to measure the distance from girl to woman in years, not scars. It was such a simple thing to want for herself, for every Crow girl.
Yet here Fie was, hiding behind thrones, trying to call a Money Dance with the queen, with the boy who’d broken her heart, with the Covenant itself, simply to keep the Crows alive.
It was too much