a backwater fishing town, where half the locals were like to strip the ship apart overnight.
Domarem, the governor believed, ought to have been a jewel of Sabor, as great a trading hub in the north as Cheparok was to the south. He also believed he could manage it without paying the Gulls. Instead he’d ordered dozens of watchtowers be built atop those shoals and fitted with beacons so captains knew where to steer clear.
He’d made one fatal error, though. The beacons worked fairly well at night, glowing through the heavy fog to mark safe passage.
They weren’t worth a damn during the day.
And since the governor had vexed the Gulls, their witches took his coin no more. So the governor never got his trading hub, and so the towers eroded into ruined fangs, and so the governor’s dream starved away, leaving only the mocking name of the Jawbone Gulf behind. Or so the legend said.
Fie reckoned Domarem involved far too many cliffs to make a practical trading port anyhow, though she knew that’d never stop a Peacock convinced of his own genius. Half the city seemed carved straight into the bluffs, and the other half looked as if it had just slid off the rock and piled up closer to the shore. The docks teemed with dinghies, coracles, and sails dyed the vivid, cheery blue that Gulls favored. The sails of southern Gulls tended to fade with sun and seawater, but the mussels they used for pigment grew so abundant here that the silver sands rippled with indigo streaks of crushed shell.
As they drew near the gates, Corporal Lakima asked delicately, “Will we be walking you in?”
It was a dance they’d near-perfected in the last few weeks, though it had taken time. The entire point of haven shrines was to have secret places where Crows, and only Crows, could seek refuge. It was one thing to sneak a prince and his bodyguard through two or three as Fie had done. It was an entirely different matter to lead six Hawk soldiers straight into every Crow shrine they encountered.
Yet Lakima’s charge was to keep the band safe, and when asked to turn her back while the Crows vanished, unguarded, down secret alleyways and hidden ravines, Lakima had proved … reluctant. She’d been more than willing to pick up where Tavin had left off with tutoring Fie in sword combat, but she hadn’t believed that a sword and a half would be enough to protect the band.
Then one night they’d encountered more of Rhusana’s skin-ghasts, hideous empty puppets made from the skins of the dead. The Hawks’ steel left only holes in their still-wriggling hides, but all Fie had to do was call the Birthright of fire from one Phoenix-caste tooth on her string and the ghasts were done for in a trice.
Since then, Lakima had been willing to let Fie protect the band when they went where Hawks couldn’t follow.
Fie hadn’t been to Little Witness’s watchtower, though; only Pa and Wretch had. She looked to them.
Pa shook his head and pointed to a fork in the road ahead. A thinner dirt road branched up toward the cliffs. “We’ll be taking a stroll.”
“It’ll be easier without the cart,” Fie said. “Pa, Varlet, and Bawd, we’ll go to the shrine. Everyone else, stay here and watch the goods. Wretch, you’re in charge.”
“Pelen, Khoda, and I can restock the supply wagon from the command post in town.” Corporal Lakima gave Fie a significant look. “I’ll let you know what they’re reporting.”
She meant what news they had of the king’s death. No rumors of the official cause had reached the roads, which both Fie and Lakima had found troubling.
“Aye. We’ll meet back at the fork no later than sundown.” Fie fished two packs out of the supply wagon. She’d made them up this morning, stuffed near to bursting with spare pots, dried salt pork, and any other goods they weren’t likely to use soon. It would be rude to show up at Little Witness’s grave empty-handed. One pack went to Pa, and the other Fie shouldered herself. She swept an arm to the dirt road. “Pa, lead on.”
“Lovely day for a walk,” Bawd said merrily, hooking her arm through Varlet’s. Varlet’s grin spread wide as his twin sister’s. The two of them had spent near all of their twenty-some-odd years laboring to make it so precious few could tell them apart—cutting their hair the same, mimicking each other’s turns of phrase, even dressing as close to