shoulders slumped in relief. Fie added under her breath, “We all win.”
The Sparrow woman blinked at that. “Wh—”
Fie whistled the marching order and strode down the road before the woman could sum up aught else.
A familiar jingle said Corporal Lakima had fallen into her self-appointed place a step behind Fie, each thud of the Hawk’s boots measured as if rationed out to the greedy road. At first Fie had found it eerie, the creak of leather, the shadow doubling hers. She’d found it near as unsettling when Corporal Lakima asked her for orders.
By now, Fie supposed she was used to both. They made for an odd funeral procession rattling down the dusty gravel: a wiry twist of a girl chief in her beaked mask, a shadow of a Hawk looming at her back, nine more Crows towing their dead sinner in the cart, three Hawks bringing up the rear. They’d left Pa and the remaining two Hawks with their other cart, back at the flatway.
Even a second cart seemed an unfathomable luxury. They’d never before had enough to merit a second cart, never enough hands or beasts to pull one. But with Hawks to feed and plentiful viatik, things were a-shift. Now they towed one cart for their supplies and one just for sinners.
“Was there a problem with the girl?” Corporal Lakima’s voice ground near as low as the gravel.
Fie shook her head. “Only her mouth. That won’t trouble anyone again.” She picked at the sweaty straps on her mask, more jitters than aught else. They’d keep the masks on until the Peacock manor fell out of sight. “She said the Oleanders will come tonight.”
Corporal Lakima was perhaps the stoniest Hawk Fie had yet met; at a decade older and a head and a half taller than Fie, she did not so much stand on decorum as plant both feet into it and wordlessly dare anyone to push her off. She was not prone to a mummer’s theatrics. And so when Fie caught an exasperated wheeze before the corporal answered, “Understood, chief,” Fie thought at first it had come from the cart. She’d expect a dead Peacock to grumble sooner than Corporal Lakima.
“Did you just sigh?” Fie asked, incredulous.
Lakima coughed. “Did she say when they’ll arrive?”
“Just tonight. Suppose I ought to have asked for specifics before I cut her throat. You sighed.”
“These lowlanders seem to have a surplus of time on their hands.”
Fie snuck a look back. Lakima kept her face blank, her eyes locked solely on the road ahead, but a divot between her brows said the corporal was vexed. Oleanders meant a late night for her and her Hawks.
Three moons ago, before they’d smuggled Prince Jasimir across Sabor, Oleanders would have meant rolling gambling shells with disaster. If Pa had been promised a visit from the masked riders, he would have hurried them along through the night, not even stopping to burn the sinner until dawn peeled the cover of dark from the roads.
But Fie was chief now. Fie had Hawks now. And Pa …
He’d asked her to bear northwest to the Jawbone Gulf a week ago, and that was when she knew his time had come.
That was a trouble Fie’s Hawks couldn’t remedy.
Instead, she said to Lakima, “Maybe they’ll show up early and get it over with before dinner.”
Corporal Lakima lifted her spear in salute. It took Fie a moment to realize it wasn’t to her but to the Hawks on duty at the manor’s signal post above. Helmeted heads jerked back over the small tower’s platform when Fie turned to look their way. A thin wisp of black smoke still lingered from the plague beacon they’d lit to call Crows here.
Likely the Hawk soldiers couldn’t fathom why some of their own would accompany Crows. Fie failed to stuff down a smirk at that. She’d won her Hawks fair and square from Master-General Draga, and more importantly, she’d won Hawks to guard the whole Crow caste once Prince Jasimir took the throne. Those soldiers just might be escorting their own band of Crows soon enough.
Rumors had already floated past Fie, rumors of Crown Prince Jasimir, who’d survived the Sinner’s Plague like his legendary ancestor Ambra, and tales of Master-General Draga’s showy procession to return Jasimir to the capital city of Dumosa. Nobody spoke of Queen Rhusana, but Jasimir had always sworn the queen’s first move in a takeover would be to remove King Surimir from power, and so far it seemed the king breathed yet.
Considering the leader