ASSETS: Owl witch.
“Seems like an awful lot of trouble to keep her secrets,” Fie said around a mouthful of stew. “Why not just kill them?”
Yula covered a small gasp with a sleeve.
“What?” Fie blinked at her. “She murdered a whole score of Crows just to take my teeth.”
Ebrim eyed her like she was a feral cat. “The queen could pick off a half dozen Sparrows, certainly, but there’d be too many gaps in the schedules, too many worried families looking for them. Someone would notice.”
Fie let the unspoken question hang over them all: And no one noticed twenty Crows dead in the road?
That was the pinch of it, though. They’d notice. But so long as the plague beacons were answered, they’d look the other way. And since the Crows would starve without viatik, those beacons would keep being answered.
Khoda turned back to the rest of the room. “I take it no one’s named names, for fear of the queen.” The Sparrows nodded. He started pacing in a circle, scowling. “I’ll check with my other informants, but if she’s only targeting Sparrows, then you two will be my best sources. And I’ll need everything, as soon as possible. If she’s going to this much work to keep something quiet, especially at a time like this…”
“It’s ugly,” Fie finished.
Jasimir nodded. “Maybe ugly enough to sink her.”
“The night kitchen shift has also been hit with a rush order for more savory finger foods,” Yula said. “And the wine-master was given orders to have more casks of dry white wine ready by noon. Lights are on in the calligraphy scribes’ offices, too.”
“Invitations,” Jasimir said. “Light refreshments and white wine? She’s throwing an afternoon revel.”
Khoda looked at Fie. “Well?”
“You don’t have to do this.” Jasimir put a cautious hand on her shoulder. “We can find another way.”
Fie thought of Pa and Wretch and all her Crows, all the Crows across Sabor, waiting for the queen’s knife to fall to their throats. She’d made an oath; she’d bought them a king. She meant to keep it.
“Aye,” Fie whispered. “I’ll do it.”
Khoda only nodded shortly. Then he lifted the chalk to Tavin’s name and wrote, under WEAKNESSES, Lady Sakar.
* * *
In her dream, she knelt before a throne, silk knotted too tight round her head. It took but a thought to light it, and in the glassblack panes she saw her own reflection crowned in golden fire.
We have chosen, a crowd chanted at her back. We have chosen.
You chose wrong, she wanted to tell them, oil seeping into her scalp and down her brow, down her cheeks, until her reflection’s face was streaked with fire.
* * *
You walk like a mammoth, grumbled the undead spark of Niemi Navali szo Sakar.
Better a mammoth than a ghost, Fie thought back. She’d known she’d need the dead Peacock’s help to survive mingling with the gentry, but that didn’t make it any easier to have her voice rattling around Fie’s skull. It was one thing to borrow her face for a moment. It was another to shroud herself in Niemi’s face, her thoughts, her memories, for the whole of an afternoon. Fie could only hope she never saw the memory of Niemi leading Oleanders to Hangdog’s band; with any luck, batting her lashes at a false prince would be enough to keep the Peacock ghost occupied.
Since she’d called on a brand-new tooth of Niemi’s, though, the spark had no notion why Fie had brought her along. There were a great many things that vexed the Peacock girl, but none quite so much as the fact that she’d never had a chance to see the royal palace in person, and now a Crow was using her face to sneak into the queen’s own revel.
Not that much sneaking was required; an invitation had arrived just that morning, requesting the company of the Sakar family in the Midday Pavilion. Fie had surrendered that invitation at a gate made of an ornate gilded trellis, where vines thick with gold-orange blossoms were molded into the form of a phoenix perched on the apex of the arch. Trailing vines made up a fantail like a curtain over the entryway.
Perhaps Rhusana meant to say that she had no fear of phoenixes, even after the previous night. Or perhaps she’d just picked the easiest pavilion.
Now Fie strode down the sandstone walkway, taking in the terrain. The pavilion itself was a grand round structure, its roof like a bronze-laced parasol of amber-hued glassblack, the columns painstakingly brushed with gold leaf