But if the corpses didn’t burn by their second sunset, plague would spread faster than rumors through a Swan pavilion. 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 led the cart as far down the path to the thatch house as it could go, stopping before mud could glut the wheels. The nearby field stretched half-tilled, its mossy sod a green island in the sea of dark earth. Pigeon Moon was for sowing; Peacock Moon would be for waiting.

That field wouldn’t be touched again until the thatch house had been burned down and built anew. This time, as they walked up to the door, Fie caught the true, familiar stench of plague and death.

“Hangdog. Watch the cart.” Pa crooked a finger at Fie. “You come with me, girl.”

Fie swallowed. Pa had cut throats in front of her before, but only when he couldn’t shield her from the sight. It felt like one more final handoff, another chief’s string, another oath to carry; the teeth hung heavy round her neck.

When, not if.

The door swung open into stinking dim, and she followed Pa inside.

Two bodies coiled together on a pallet at the far end of the single room. One rash-mottled hand sagged atop the wooden water pail. A blanket had been tossed aside in the throes of fever still lingering in the room’s clingy warmth.

To Fie’s surprise, Pa unstrapped his mask and set it on the low table beside a clay plate of molding panbread. “Gets in the way,” he explained, rubbing his nose.

The whispered question bubbled up before she could gulp it back: “Why didn’t you bring Hangdog?”

Pa glanced over his shoulder as Fie shed her own mask. His voice lowered. “That boy doesn’t need practice cutting throats.”

A whimper pierced the small quiet before Fie could scrub at that answer.

Pa strode over to the pallet, Fie in his shadow. He knelt in the dirt and hooked a careful hand round the nape of the woman’s neck. Sweat plastered her dark hair to her skull, her face and arms purpled with the unmistakable Sinner’s Brand. A yellow rind around her eyes crumbled as they cracked open.

“Hurts” rattled out from dry, bloody lips.

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.