smoke, it’s the pyres for their kin. That’s when they ought to pray. And if that doesn’t help … tell them the arbiter burns, too.”
She pulled her own mask on, the world dimming to a welcome relief of darkness and a beak full of wild mint. For the briefest of moments, she shut her eyes.
The weight of teeth round her neck and at her belt, the weight of her swords, the faith of her Crows, the respect of two stranger chiefs—they all meant something, if she let them. They all could steady her, if she let them.
No matter what Little Witness said, no matter how Drudge had treated her, she was one of them.
She was a chief, with a harvest of ash beckoning.
Fie let the mint flood her lungs, then strode toward the gates.
They’d been barred from the outside, but at first, even with the bar lifted, the gates refused to budge no matter how Varlet and Bawd pushed. Then Jade shook her head with rue and said, “Eater of Bones, this’s bound to be a rough day. Try giving it a pull.”
Jade was right. The gates swung open with only a little fight when the twins dragged on them, and Fie saw straight away what the older chief meant.
Three bodies lay beneath a shroud of dead bloodflies on the threshold, where they’d collapsed trying to get out. The gates had jammed on them.
“Steady,” Jade whispered, and patted Fie’s shoulder. “Hand out your chalk.” Her voice rose. “My band, start with the western houses.”
“My band, we go north,” Ruffian called, and shoved the arbiter none too gently over the dead at Karostei’s doorstep. Half the bloodflies rose from the corpses with an irate, sluggish buzz. The others rained off in stiff curls, legs folded up in surrender to the plague. “I’ll follow once I’ve dealt with … this.”
“We’ll take east, then.” Fie passed out the chalk to her band. “Suppose you all did this with Pa before?”
“Pair up, leave a ring for dead or empty, a cross mark for mercy,” Wretch said. The others nodded.
“Then I’ll follow. Once every house is marked, gather by…” Fie took a look around the town commons, trying not to grimace at the sight. Dead goats and dogs lay in misshapen heaps, rats huddled like graying warts on the hide of dusty ground already speckled with more fallen bloodflies. Sickly rot wept from nigh every foundation she saw. The market stalls looked about two days gone, canopy stands tilting or buckled in twain where gray ate through the wood and canvas.
The broad stone ring of a communal well in the middle of the open grounds seemed to be the only thing untouched by plague, though Fie wouldn’t put odds on its water in the next decade. At least it served as a landmark. “… There. That well. Let’s be on with it, then.”
Surprisingly, Varlet and Bawd split up, Bawd hanging back while Varlet linked his arm through Madcap’s and strolled toward a house. “You need company, chief,” Bawd informed her. “Can’t have you getting jumped in one of these houses. The whole thing’d be like to come down. Besides, I’ll not listen to my brother make an ass of himself flirting with Madcap.”
“So it’s mercy of a different kind,” Fie allowed. Normally she dealt mercy alone, as Pa had done, but today … today she reckoned she’d be better for company. “No use waiting until someone marks a door for me. Let’s clear houses until I’m called.”
Bawd followed her down the nearest street, stepping over slicks of gray mire and the remains of barrels that had bloated and burst, spilling apples, salt pork, pickle brine, and aught else into the street. The first house Fie went into reeked even worse of the plague, the humid air seeping through her cloak and gumming the crowsilk against her skin.
A Hawk crest had been carved into the wall, and beneath it several spears listed in a crumbling rack. Cold ashes sat in a small central fire pit, and a long table had sagged and collapsed, shards of broken porcelain strewn among molding beans. A set of steep stairs led up to what looked to be a loft; below them huddled two forms beneath a gray-stained blanket, unmoving.
“Check upstairs, will you?” Fie asked. Bawd loped the steps two at a time, while Fie gingerly pulled back the blanket. If she had to guess, this had been the home of the sergeant, who accounted for one of the bodies before