have I cut more throats in one go, and that was because most of the village caught the plague in the same day. You don’t want to know why.” Fie did, morbidly enough, but maybe not now. Ruffian continued, “This’s the most mercy you’ve dealt at once, aye?”
“Aye,” Fie said, trying not to think of the ones younger than she. The last thing they should’ve seen was a friendly face. By every damned dead god, she’d done her best to give them one, even with tears in her eyes.
“Most of us get night terrors after our first ash harvest,” Ruffian said. “They pass with time. Let others take your watch shift, try to keep yourself busy. You might get short with your band for no reason, or want to run off by yourself, but that’s…” His brow furrowed as he searched for words. “It’s like an asp bite, this. You don’t let the poison sit until you lose an arm. You bleed it out. If you can’t talk to anyone in your band, find a shrine and talk to the keeper, aye? We have them for a reason.”
Fie’s throat closed. She told herself her eyes were stinging from looking up against the sun.
“From here it’s easy, aye?” Ruffian shook his hands into the bloody water. For better or worse, his tone had tilted closer to Pa’s. “Just like any other pyre. Most of the fuel’s been built into these houses, these walls. All you have to do is make sure the sparks catch.”
A shadow fell over him, shorter for the noon sun—but something about it struck Fie as amiss. She and Ruffian twisted about for a better look.
The first thing Fie saw was red, from blood still bright and slick.
The second was that the daylight filtered through the figure. Mere holes where the eyes, the nose, the teeth belonged, as if it were no more than cut from canvas—
Not canvas. Skin.
And the third thing Fie realized, wholly too late, was that the warped face gaping at them had belonged to the Crane arbiter.
The arbiter’s boneless hands had already slid onto Ruffian, one on his scalp, one at his chin.
“NO—!” Fie reached for him, too late.
The hands wrenched sideways with a crack.
Ruffian didn’t move for a moment, still balanced on the well’s edge. Then he collapsed, toppling into the pail and hitting the commons ground with a thud. Red water spilled into the dirt about him.
The skin-ghast wobbled over Ruffian’s body.
Then its empty face turned toward Fie.
CHAPTER SIX
THE COVENANT SEES
Screams split the air, and not just Fie’s own. She scrambled to her feet, snatching up Tavin’s sword, and immediately forgot every single one of the combat lessons Lakima had given her over the last four weeks.
The ghast reached for her, its hollow arms drooping deceptively like limp ropes. Fie knew that lie firsthand: though they were naught but walking skin, the monsters had all the strength they’d had in life.
She slashed hastily through its elbows. The forearms fell to the dirt like a wealthy woman’s gloves. They wriggled yet toward Fie, dragging themselves on their fingers.
She scrambled back. More screams echoed through the streets. Bloodflies took to the air as one of the bodies on the nearby pyre convulsed, then a second, then a third. It looked as if the skin itself was bubbling and contorting until it split with a squelch. That was Fie’s final straw: she keeled over, vomiting.
“TO THE COMMONS!” she heard Jade shout. “ALL CROWS TO THE COMMONS!” The cry echoed back from Crow to Crow on the western side of Karostei.
Fie wiped her mouth. “All—” Her voice came out a harsh squeak.
The arbiter skin-ghast lurched toward her, the remains of its arms twisting into something like vines. Fie yelped and staggered back, only for the severed forearms to tangle about her ankles and send her crashing to the earth. When she twisted onto her back, she saw the ghast slithering toward her on its belly like an adder. She reached for her Phoenix teeth—and remembered she had but one left.
Gone.
She’d lost the one way to protect them from skin-ghasts.
Bawd’s shriek pierced through the air.
The ghast raised itself up at the boneless waist, lunging for Fie. With a furious scream, she lashed out, swinging the sword in a clumsy arc. It sheared through the ghast at the belly. Both halves flopped in the dust like a cast-off shirt and trousers. She drew the chief’s sword in her other hand, slashing wildly on her knees, until aught that