she hadn’t found a good place to throw burned-out teeth yet.
Her Sparrow witch-tooth, too, seemed to have recovered enough of its spark to buy Fie more time, but she let it go cold. Part of her wanted to get out of the royal quarters as swift as possible, go find Khoda and Jas, and sort out their next move from the safety of the Sparrow quarters.
The rest of her had made it this far, and still burned with the wrath she’d kindled in the Hall of the Dawn. Besides, whatever hidey-hole the currents of fortune had led her into, it seemed the only way out would be to keep following them. She didn’t have time to waste asking why.
She made her way along the trail of luck, hands stretched before her. It wasn’t too long before they brushed up against startlingly rough canvas. When she pushed it aside, milk-pale moonlight bloomed before her, carving out a strange and lifeless chamber.
The fortune trails coiled inside, smug and gleeful like a hound who had led its master to a kill. Fie stepped into the room, staring about. Only dim moonlight gave her any reprieve from the dark, peering in from a glass dome overhead like a half-lidded eye. Cloth-covered furniture jutted from the flat sea of the cool tile floor like shoals.
In the far corner, Fie saw something that picked at her memory a moment until she placed it: a spear rack identical to the one in Draga’s tent.
No wonder it felt so cold and still—still as death. Instead of Tavin’s or Rhusana’s rooms, fortune had brought her to the chamber of the late Queen Jasindra.
Now she just needed to find out why.
Fie paced about, frowning. Khoda had said the king sealed the room years ago, yet she saw no dust on the furniture covers, nor on the windowsill, nor the floor. It all looked clean as the day the old queen died.
She reached for the dustcloth over the bed. Something brushed across the back of her hand like a cobweb. When she went to pluck it off, she saw … naught.
Fie went still. Then she looked up again at the glass dome. A half moon stared back.
Solstice always fell on the middle of Phoenix Moon, when the moon had swollen to its fullest.
Someone had cast a glamour over the entire room.
No wonder luck had led her here. Fie closed her eyes, trying to think. She didn’t know if a Peacock tooth could undo a glamour the way Tavin’s tooth let her snuff out fires. Maybe the truth Birthright—but she’d only used it to draw the truth from people, not clear away an illusion.
Then again, she’d sorted out how to balance Peacock and Owl. Lips pursing, she found one tooth each of Peacock and Crane and kindled them both.
They clashed horribly, like a flute and a lyre in a tavern brawl, but she knew the trick of it now. It took a few tries to get them to settle into cooperation, but then—then she saw it, the glamour over the room, glowing too vivid to be real.
Show me the truth, she told the teeth.
It was as if they had pulled the cords on a curtain, sweeping the glamour aside in uncanny folds of another world. The true room unrolled before her, lit by the glare of a full, unblinking moon.
Fie couldn’t help a sharp breath. Her hands curled to her chest, nausea crawling up her throat.
Everywhere she looked, she saw hair.
Long, silvery strands strung about the room like sick garlands, knotted with other, darker hairs. Shelves and shelves of shorter hairs, all fastened to neat squares of parchment with names scrawled out in a neat square hand. More of those parchment squares broken out over the bed and the windowsills, even tacked to the walls like a papery rash. Bundles of hair like skeins of yarn, each bearing a single label: Livabai. Chalbora. Teisanar.
One bundle had been left unwound on a desk, its label next to it: Karostei. Beside it were strange, gray, papery curls. Fie made herself squint closer, only to stumble back, trying not to vomit.
Skin. They were strips of dried skin.
It took a moment for Fie to conquer her mutinous belly. When she saw a nearby shelf of tidy jars packed with more bits of skin, she had to fight that battle all over again.
But Fie had work to do and an oath to keep and time that was running short. She glanced about to take in the whole