The second time, she kept her grip, but daylight shivered along its chipped blade, the rag-bound hilt locked in her shaking fist.

“Think her hands got more use than that under those rags?” a Sparrow man jested at the top of the channel.

She heard the scrape of sandal-nails and whipped round. Tavin had half turned toward the Sparrow, one white-knuckled fist drifting to where his own short swords were belted below the Crow cloak.

If he were a Crow, she could tug at her hood to signal, Don’t make trouble. If he were a Crow, he’d know better than to make trouble here to start with.

She cleared her throat. Thunderously. It served well enough: he turned back to her, arms folding tidy and harmless. For the time being.

The sinner spasmed at her feet.

Fie’s gut was a nest of vipers, ready to betray her at one wrong move.

What had Pa done? The memories shied from her like mice in dark corners. He’d taken off his mask. Twelve hells if she’d take hers off and let her face show plain now.

He’d used his Safe voice. He’d had her for a helper. Here, she had neither.

All she had was mercy in her shuddering grasp. And it was time to deal it.

She knelt by the sinner.

“I’m a Crow,” she told him. Her quiet voice shook as much as the rest of her. “I’m here for you.”

The sinner smiled.

She wanted to run from the road that had trapped her so. She wanted to leave the man to die in the scum. She wanted to cast the chief’s blade behind her and never look back.

You have to keep your eyes open.

Fie laid one hand on a salt-rimed forehead and lowered the blade against the sinner’s throat.

And then she did what Pa had done.

The flesh parted all too easy. Fie choked on her own breath, fumbling the sword as the man jerked. Blood splashed over her hands, over the sinner, over the stone steps—had Pa’s sinners all bled so? Had she done it right?

Blood burned in her mouth—no, no, the salt of tears rolling down to her quivering chin, tears she couldn’t fathom, tears she couldn’t hold off—she’d been merciful, she’d done what Pa would, she’d given the sinner what he wanted—she was a chief, she was a chief, she was a chief—

Far away, the Sparrow butcher said, “You lot’ll be lucky to go that easy with the Oleander Gentry.”

The viper-nest in her gut thrashed. She couldn’t say if it was the threat or the blood that did it. They had to get out of this mess before aught else fouled up.