Fie yanked her gaze from the door and searched for trouble in the crowds packing the walls of the royal quarantine court. She’d kept the habit since the first time an angry next-of-kin had trailed them out. From the looks of it, the latticed galleries were all Peacock courtiers, fluttering in mourning paints and ornamental woe as they gawped from a safe distance.

Fie grimaced behind her mask as she caught whispers all too familiar: “… such disgrace…”, “… his father?”, and the pestilent “… bone thieves.” An old, tired kind of trouble. The scandal-thirsty Peacocks were transfixed by the spectacle of thirteen Crows below, awaiting a show.

Hawk trouble was wholly a different beast. King Surimir fancied the war-witches as his palace guards, warriors who healed wounds just as easily as they tore their foes apart from within. Double as dangerous and, since the Hawks knew it, thrice as easy to vex.

These war-witches’ hands had anchored on their sword hilts the moment the Crows dragged their cart through the gate. They hadn’t budged since.

Fie found no grief in their stony stares. The Hawks weren’t waiting on a show. They were waiting for the Crows to foul up.

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.

There was a slip of a movement to her left. Hangdog, Pa’s other trainee, had shifted by the cart. Torch-flame charred his silhouette, edging it in vivid orange where the light caught tattered robes and the long curve of his beaked mask. From the tilt of his head, he was eyeing the patchouli burners squatting about the hut.

Fie wrinkled her nose. She’d stuffed a fistful of wild mint into her own mask’s beak to ward off plague-stink. She couldn’t fault this fine palace for trying to daub it over as well. She could, however, fault them for their terrible taste in patchouli.

Hangdog’s sandal idly inched toward the burner.

Anywhere else and she’d have accidentally punted the patchouli herself. Hangdog was likely itching under so much high-caste attention, and the sneering arcades of gentry above were begging for some nasty surprise.

But not here, not now. Fie tugged at the hood of her robes, a sign only the other Crows would ken. Don’t make trouble.

Hangdog’s foot slid another toe-length toward the burner. Fie could all but smell his grin behind the mask.

They’d both been born witches, and for Crows, that meant they were born to be chiefs, too. Fie’s gut gave a hard little twist every time she thought on it … but she doubted Hangdog thought on being a chief at all. Pa called him “two-second clever”: too bent on making fools of others to catch his own purse getting cut.