that town in ashes. Can a quarter of your population wait it out?”
Lord Geramir’s face darkened. “This is absurd,” he said. “Did you ever consider you might be biased because it’s your job to take the dead? You’re wading around in it all day, but—”
“You aren’t concerned that the plague will reach your home.” This time, it was Jasimir who cut him off. Lord Geramir shrank a bit but gave a noncommittal shrug. “Do you think my father died of the plague?”
“Her … Her Majesty says so,” Geramir stammered.
Fie made herself put her knife down. “But you don’t think you could catch it. You think the gentry are above the plague.”
“It’s called the Sinner’s Plague for a reason,” he returned. He picked up his goblet, found it empty, and set it back down with a scowl. “Forgive my indelicacy, Your Highness, but your father was not … known for his temperance. Besides, surely the Covenant would not have sent someone unfit to the Peacock caste—”
“Last week I cut the throat of the Sakar girl,” Fie said. “You know the family? Nice estate up north. Beautiful cedars. No more children. Their only heir showed the Brand at sunrise, and I burned her corpse by sundown. Not four days ago I watched the plague take the Karostei arbiter where he stood for damning a hundred souls rather than call for Crows. You can tell yourself what you please about the Covenant, and you can tell yourself the plague’s no concern of yours. One way or another, you’ll still feed me and mine.”
For the first time, fear flashed through the Peacock lord’s eyes. But something about it struck her as wrong—and then she placed it.
Peacocks got a certain look when the plague took one of their own: rattled, as they could no longer deny that, for all their fine ways and sturdy walls, their house was vulnerable as any other.
But Geramir didn’t look like a man invaded by doubt. His fear was that of the gambler who’d wagered the whole of his fortune only to realize that the bones had landed bad.
The hush over the table stretched unnaturally long.
It took Fie a moment to ken why: the only people in the tent were seated at the table.
“Where are the servants?” she asked, and the weight of the quiet seemed to push back. The camp ought to have been ringing with noise as they prepared to march at dawn. Her stool tipped as she bolted to her feet, heart pounding.
No—not just her heart. A rumble shook the earth, then another and another, turning the table into a clattering mess. Strange, low cries echoed through the walls of the tent.
For all its soldiers, the camp was no safer than any other house. And from the flicker in Master-General Draga’s eyes, that realization was dawning.
Fie started for the tent flap. Tavin caught her shoulder. “Wait, we don’t know what’s—”
“No—” She twisted free and stumbled out of his reach. “My band—I need to—”
Fie yanked the tent flap aside and found—nothing.
Twilight had drenched the camp in dark, dusty shades of blue, but not so much as a breeze stirred the canvas, stillness lying like a fog over the rows and rows of tents. Then Fie picked out darker, stunted shapes along the lanes: Hawk soldiers staring into the oncoming night, faces blank.
Every single one was on their knees.
Something monstrous and impossible swelled near the banks of the river, then a second, then a score. Fie heard Tavin’s sharp breath at her back but couldn’t tear her eyes away; her head couldn’t quite process what she saw until it was too clear to deny.
Not a hundred paces off, bleeding, empty mammoth skins swayed in an unyielding march toward them, trampling an unswerving path through tent and frozen Hawk alike.
And above the muffled screams and the crunch of tentpoles, clear, musical chimes pierced the air, needle-sharp.
More empty-faced Hawks stamped up the path in inhumanly even time, bearing a glittering covered sedan on their shoulders. Gauzy white silk curtains fluttered demurely with each step, dusk catching on the silver and pearl wrought into its supports.
“Fie,” Tavin said, “please, get behind me.”
Jasimir’s voice rose behind them before she could argue. “Tav—”
Fie’s belly dropped further. She knew that tone. She finally tore her eyes away to look back.
Lord Geramir had drawn a dagger on Jasimir. That wasn’t what had stopped the prince in his tracks, though, one hand frozen halfway to a knife up a sleeve.
What had stopped Jasimir was the blade Draga