and benevolent as the steel on the girl’s throat. “Let them.”
The truth was, it had never gotten easier to deal mercy to sinners.
But sometimes, they made it easier.
* * *
In the last three weeks, Fie had learned a handy new trick to negotiating the viatik.
When Pa had been the one cutting throats, he’d done his best to at least rinse off his hands after. The blood spooked the next of kin, he’d explained, and sometimes that made them pay the Crows more to speed them along, but more often than not it just made the mourners clutch their purses tighter.
Fie didn’t bother. If anything, she made a show of slowly peeling away the bloody rags knotted up to her elbow while the family’s representative presented their viatik. No one wanted to count coin into a palm still red and slick with mercy.
And that was the idea.
The Sakars had dispatched a Sparrow to deal with Fie, one who wore the simple fine robe of household servants, one whose red-rimmed eyes said she’d been close to the dead girl. A nursemaid, then. In one hand sat a fat bag of naka for viatik; the other hand skimmed the clinking coins, bitterly weighing out a meager few.
The thing about viatik, Fie had learned over years and years of experience, was that someone was always trying to short them.
Sometimes it was because they thought the Crows couldn’t count and wouldn’t know they’d been cheated. Sometimes it was because they wanted the Crows to know they’d been cheated, to remind them they still couldn’t demand fair pay without pushing their luck. This Sparrow woman, Fie reckoned, had the same instructions as too many servants she’d dealt with. Each and every time, they were handed a fat purse, but told to give the Crows as little as possible.
So in the last few weeks, Fie had learned not to let them.
The Sparrow nursemaid flinched back at the gore on Fie’s arms, eyes brimming with tears. Fie shook her head, flicking sweat from her hair. They’d kept to the north for most of Crow Moon, but midsummer humidity had invaded even this territory. “Naught to fear. You can hand the viatik to my lad Khoda.”
Fie could see the sums scratching through the nursemaid’s skull; by the time she’d tallied up that Khoda wasn’t a Crow name, it was too late. A rangy, iron-faced Hawk lad stood before her, hand outstretched, a spear leaning rakishly against his shoulder.
The trick, Fie had learned, was to make them hand the viatik to someone they couldn’t risk cheating.
A flutter of silk on the nearby veranda caught Fie’s eye. Two Peacocks stood there, still in their sleeping robes and clinging to each other, faces hard. The Sparrow servant looked up to the governor and her husband, questioning, as the quarantine hut’s door creaked behind Fie.
Last night they’d had a daughter.
Now, Madcap and Wretch were loading aught that was left of her into the Crow’s wagon, bundled in bloody linen.
Governor Sakar gave a stiff jerk of her chin, then buried her face in her trailing silk sleeves.
The nursemaid swallowed. Her bag of naka jingled like a bell as it landed, whole and hearty, in Khoda’s hand.
Fie caught a muffled snort from Madcap, one that turned into a cough. Not three moons ago, such a bounty would have been unthinkable, even a burden—just one more thing the Oleander Gentry would hunt them for. But now …
Khoda was one of five Hawks who had volunteered to escort Fie’s band as they answered plague beacons. And since acquiring their escort, a peculiar miracle had occurred. Not only did people start paying them fair viatik, but for the first time, they’d been able to keep it. No Oleanders had raided their camps; no Hawk posts had shaken them down for bribes. Fie’s band had left generous donations in every haven shrine they’d visited, and still they had more than enough to last until the next viatik.
And now they had a bag of coin near the size of Fie’s head. She hadn’t even needed to call a Money Dance.
“That’ll do,” Fie said, and wet her lips to whistle the marching order.
“Wait!” The Sparrow pointed to the scroll cinched in Fie’s belt. “That’s … that was her favorite.”
The Thousand Conquests. Where the Splendid Castes were beautiful and wise, the Hunting Castes were brave and true, and the Phoenixes were near good as gods.
Where Crows were thieves and fools and monsters and naught more.