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September 26 - September 28, 2021
Fie’s anger was a curious thing, sometimes tempered and unwavering as cut steel, sometimes raw and unstoppable as a cut vein. Now an old, sharp kind of rage climbed up her spine, forged of every blade pointed at her for a jest. And it was that old, sharp rage that told Fie her price.
Fie decided she liked the cat. Anything happy to leave the royal palace had good taste.
We’ve named the terms, prince. Cut your oath or leave us be.” Fie’s favorite thing about the Money Dance was that it always, always worked. Tavin ran a hand over his dark hair. “She’s got a point, Jas. Several, in fact. Enough points that I’m starting to think she’s mostly thorns.”
Hate the boys or no, Fie had to admit that extorting royalty had its sunny side.
But why, she’d asked long ago, did the thousand gods have to die? And Pa had answered: Everything has a price, Fie. Especially change. Even Phoenixes need ash to rise from.
It wasn’t that she wanted to burn the world down, no. She just wanted the world to know that she could.
Pa had fair many voices. He had a Chief voice for steering their family of Crows as best he could. He had his Cur voice for needling Wretch or playing a jest on Swain. He had a Pa voice for teaching Fie how to use teeth, how to deal fair in a dispute, how to treat with Peacock gentry and gutter-born Pigeons alike. But he had another voice, the one he’d used when he’d first adopted Fie as his own. When nightmares of her mother still made her cry herself sick. When she cowered at every flicker of white fabric in the markets. When hoofbeats sent her scuttling into the roadside hedges for fear of
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Mercy was a chief’s gift. Inflicting it was their duty.
“We stay in Sabor because it’s our home. Aye, the villages don’t want us, but the sinners always do. Every plague-fearing soul sleeps easier knowing we’ll come when they call. So you ask why we stay? Because the plague stays. Because someone out there needs mercy. And because this is our damned home.”
‘When you act in anger, you have already lost your battle.’”
“Jas cares about the welfare of his country, and he looks up to his father. And generally, he frowns on coldblooded murder, which is something I look for in a monarch.”
She’d learned her lesson for digging into ugly truths with pretty boys.
Fie saw walls of gilded fire. A break in the flames. A saw-edged Vulture helm. Pa’s face cracking into desperation. And then she saw naught but blood-soaked sunset as the prince, the Hawk, and the Merciful Crow tumbled over the side of the bridge, down to the black water below.
Look after your own. “Fie?” Tavin’s voice dragged her back again. He looked at her like he had a thousand things to say, things like I’m sorry and I know and Please and, above all, I need you. But only the strongest survived: “Can you do it?”
“And even if you don’t, you just look the other way, and when they’re done you say we provoked them, we brought it down on our heads, we’re the ones who ought to hold our tongues, we ought to shut up and take the high road, we always pay so you don’t have to.”
She hated him for trying to give her hope. She hated herself for hoping at all. And then, with horror and fury, she found she hated her traitor heart, for burning quiet with something that was not hate at all.
my mother always said a leader needs to be as skilled as anyone they lead,
Fie had seen her fair ration of terrible things in her sixteen years: scummed sinners, long-dead Oleander victims, the aftermath of a plague beacon gone unanswered. She’d heard campfire tales of monsters, devils, ghosts of wretched souls even the Covenant refused. All stories, she’d told herself. The only monsters she’d seen were humans with something to hide behind.
He’d felled that man on her account. But she hadn’t asked for it. Wanted it, perhaps, in the ugly way she’d wanted Tatterhelm to burn before her. But wanting and asking were beasts of two wholly different names.
“Pa never said if it got easier.” “It shouldn’t.” Tavin sat up, rubbing his eyes. “It does.”
Death
“I’m a bastard, an heir to nothing. For ten years, I’ve been told my only purpose is to keep Jas alive. That the best thing I can do is die for him. Of course I met people I wanted, but how could I ask them to stay mine when I couldn’t truly be theirs?” Any sneer or jest had long withered on Fie’s tongue. “You’re still going to disappear once we’re out of this. What are you going to tell him then?” “The truth. Fie, I promised I’d do everything I can to help you. I brought this on your family. I owe you a debt. And my life will be my own to give, as long as you would have it.”
She’d no call to fear wolves in summer, not with fresh kill in their belly. The wolves of winter, though … Pa’d taught her to watch the starving wolf. When beasts go hungry too long, he’d said, they forget what they ought to fear.
After, as she lay in his arms under their ragged cloaks and stolen furs, she told him: “You know this won’t be easy.” In answer, he pulled her closer and kissed her one more time. Then he told her: “You make me believe I can do something better with my life than die.”
So you cut your losses, Tavin had said. It was harder to believe when every loss had a name.
What’s your word worth, Hangdog asked on a night too far away, when you’re good as dead? Nothing, it turned out. It was worth nothing.
“I don’t get to look away from the throats I have to cut. Why should you?”
Her anger was a curious thing, sometimes jagged and broken as Pa’s sword, sometimes heavy and storied as the bag of teeth.
Mercy. They always wanted it, in the end.
She whistled the marching order, cast one more look to her lordlings, and turned away. She had a chief’s string; she had Pa’s blade; she had a bag of Phoenix teeth. She had a king-to-be’s oath; she had a Hawk’s sword; she had a bastard boy’s heart. She had a mask and a fistful of fresh mint. A league away, a red trail of smoke called for Merciful Crows. It was time for a chief to answer. Fie set off down the road.
