counted five shrouded bodies laid out in the dust. Five too many.
Jade finished straightening out a sprain and stood with a wince as Fie walked over. “So that—those—those skins, the queen’s behind them, aye?”
“Aye,” Fie rasped.
“You ever see one come off anything still breathing?”
Tavin and Fie traded looks. “No, chief,” Tavin said.
Jade stared at the fields, grim. “Then we just found out why she’s telling towns to handle their own plague-dead, didn’t we? Make her a whole proper army of puppets.”
Fie hadn’t had the time to do that grotesque math, but the weight of its sum hit home. The ghasts could be sliced to ribbons, crushed under stone, even sunk to the bottom of a well, and they’d still never stop. Only fire could hold them off—and without Fie’s Phoenix teeth, there was only one witch in the whole of Sabor who could command fire outside the royal palace.
The boy standing at her side.
“Normally, when a chief passes, we let their band choose who they’ll join up with.” Jade planted her hands on her hips. “But it seems the queen’s got a shine for you. And it’s no fault of your own, but it doesn’t seem like she’ll spare us while she’s shaking the country down for you. So I’ll take Ruffian’s band to Gen-Mara’s shrine, and we’ll see who starves first: us or this storm.”
Fie nodded, guilt drowning even the glow of crossing paths with her Hawk again. “My band’s not two days off from safe harbor. You can take our spare cart, and we’ll split our rations. If this keeps up, that shrine could get crowded.”
“Excuse me,” someone said from the roadside.
The Crows parted and found a woman there in a stained Sparrow patchwork apron, holding an old iron kettle. It was filled to the brim with teeth.
“I’m the headwoman now,” she said. “Long as the lord lets me keep the name. So I’m here to pay viatik. This is all the teeth we have.”
Fie swallowed. She’d never seen so many teeth at once outside a shrine’s stores. Even when teeth were all a family could pay, they rarely gave up the entire store, keeping some back for another stroke of ill fortune.
It didn’t feel like payment. It felt like tribute.
“Khoda, help the lady,” she said slowly.
Khoda took the kettle from her, brows rising at the weight. The new headwoman clenched her empty fists in her apron. “What do we do now?”
“Let it burn to ash,” Jade said. “All of it. With this many survivors, you’ve decent odds someone smuggled out something plague-touched, so keep a sharp eye for the Sinner’s Brand. If you see it, carry the sinner into the ashes and light your beacon. We come when we’re called.”
“Isn’t there anything we can save?” The headwoman’s voice shook. Fie noticed the red rims of her eyes and couldn’t help but wonder who of her family had burned.
Fie’s voice came out kinder than it had when dealing with the Crane arbiter. “It’s not like spotty apples, cousin. The plague rots it whole. Can’t just cut parts away when the whole thing’s gone bad.” The headwoman nodded, eyes glistening. “I’d start rebuilding on the other side of your fields, if not farther. It won’t be safe here until it grows green, and that won’t come for years.”
The headwoman bowed her head. Then she did the unexpected: she raised the first two fingers of her right hand and touched them to her brow.
The fields went still as, citizen by citizen, the people of Karostei followed suit: heads bent, two fingertips pressed to the middle of their foreheads.
The hair on Fie’s arms stood straight up, prickling against her stiffening rags.
She’d seen this in old tooth ghosts, in fleeting memories of war heroes riding by, of healers who wrought the impossible to heal scores of wounded in a breath, of Pigeon witches tilting fortune to avert floods or save harvests. It was an old gesture, living now mostly in corners of Sabor that kept those old ways, and it was meant as a blessing. An acknowledgment of great deeds. A sign of gratitude.
One she’d never seen made for Crows.
Two fingers, pressed dead center above two eyes. It meant “The Covenant sees,” that it would remember what they had done today, when it weighed their deeds at the end of their lives. It would remember the choices Fie had made. Every last one.
It was supposed to be an honor.
The Covenant sees.
Fie didn’t realize her fists were clenched until she felt her nails