The Merciful Crow (The Merciful Crow, #1)

by Margaret Owen

She caught herself rolling another thread betwixt two thin brown fingers. The queasy pinch slunk back; she nailed her gaze to the door. It stayed damnably shut.

After the first sentence, I hoped I was in for a treat. Now I'm certain.

But if Fie had learned aught over the years, it was that the dead gods skewed miserly with kindness when it came to Crows.

I just love the use of language in this book

a Crow allergic to dignity,

Fie knew too well what happened after that: By week’s end, no one in the village would be left untouched. Two weeks in, the dead would be piled up, the crops blackening in the fields. By moon’s end, only rotten timber, ruined earth, and bitter ghosts would remain.

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 Oleanders. He’d used the Safe voice to quiet her sobs, steady her nerve, coax her from the thorns before she scratched herself worse. And at that moment, Fie learned that he used it to cut throats.

Mercy was a chief’s gift. Inflicting it was their duty.

Give them fire, the dead princess urged. Give them fear.

This road had trapped her, trapped Pa, trapped them all in the way only roads could—no going back now. For her ma, for her kin, she would walk it to the end. Or, part of her whispered into the night, she was bound to die trying.

The Peacocks are practically catapulting their sons at him for suitors.

There's something going on here that I haven't figured out yet.

“What do you want, Fie?” he asked.

Tavin didn’t mean survival. He meant the way she wanted steel, and fire, and games with pretty boys. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had. And she had no good answer, only a bitter true one. “It doesn’t matter.”

A thousand thoughts clamored for attention as Fie strode across the camp, tossing the bag of shells back to Madcap and ignoring their surprised yelp.

Only the second time I've noticed the pronoun, but many times I have noticed that it's hard to tell some characters gender. I thought it was a mistake. It isn't.

Tavin dragged Jasimir to his feet, wrapped an arm around Fie’s waist, and said, “Yes, chief.”

Oh my god this book is pushing buttons I didn't know I had. I absolutely love it.

The chute spat her out into open air. For a tripe-twisting moment, tile and sea and upturned faces reeled below—then she plunged into the waters of Third Market’s canal.

He twisted to look around, frowning. “On my signal, we jump to the street and—” An arrow cut off the end of his plan, thudding into the crate by his ear. He stared. “Consider that my signal.”

I am envious of the author's mastery of language. And I am wholeheartedly enjoying it.

And at that moment, Fie found what her Chief voice sounded like. “Fix my hand. And tell me where in the twelve hells we’re going.”

“I hate it. I hate how, how we’re always the ones who have to keep our mouths shut and take it and keep doing our job, because we’re Crows. You can kick us around anytime because we all know if we kick back, you’ll just put on some white powder, call yourselves Oleanders, and cut every one of us down.” She couldn’t stop. “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.”

“Pa never said if it got easier.” “It shouldn’t.” Tavin sat up, rubbing his eyes. “It does.”

Now Fie didn’t know if she could tear herself away, caught in a way that felt like binds breaking, lost in a way that felt like being found.

The moon hung at an hour past midnight.

The dawn broke.

“Crows name their babes for the first cross word sent their way. It’s luck. That word can’t hurt you any if it’s already your name. She said I howled like a devil when I came out, like I was born vexed with the world. Ma couldn’t abide the noise. That’s how I came to be Fie.”

Silence waxed, then waned. “I swore an oath.