The woman was a glittering specter, from her unbound cascades of silvery hair to the silk white gown that barely rippled in the sluggish breeze. Even from so far off, the telltale shatter of moonlight and torch-flame on her finery promised enough gems to feed Fie’s whole band of Crows—twelve hells, maybe the entire Crow caste—for her lifetime. But one thing carried more weight than the sum of her jewels: the collar around her neck.

Two hands of gold, cradling a sun that dawned below her collarbones. It was the royal crest. Fie had seen those hands stamped into every Saborian coin and woven into every flag, and now she could say she’d seen them wrapped around the neck of a queen.

Marriage had made the woman a Phoenix, but she’d been called the Swan Queen even before she left the courtesan caste’s pavilions. One of those empty thrones Fie’d passed belonged to her.

And in that moment, Fie kenned what part of tonight had fouled up.

It had been five hundred years, or somewhere near it, since the Sinner’s Plague had touched the royal palace. Five hundred years since Phoenixes had lit that plague beacon. Five hundred years since they’d called for Crows.

But if Queen Rhusana was here to pay viatik for these sinner boys, Fie knew sore plain who was under one of their shrouds.

The Crows were hauling the crown prince of Sabor to his funeral pyre.

CHAPTER TWO

THE MONEY DANCE

A dead prince lay in their cart like any other sinner, not an arm’s length away. Fie could scarce believe it. A prince. A Phoenix.

Some morbid part of her wondered if Phoenix boys burned like any other sinner. Maybe slower. At least they had the poor bastard beside him to compare.

But Pa didn’t move, still fixed to the spot even as the rest of the band pulled the cart nearer. And then Fie saw why.

The queen at the gate meant to pay them, to be sure; the steward at her side held the viatik in plain view. A viatik’s worth fit the family’s means, that was the rule. A Sparrow farmer might pay them in a sack of salt or dried panbread; a Crane magistrate might offer panes of glassblack. Viatik for royalty, though … Fie didn’t even know what would be proper.

She did know, however, that it wouldn’t be the dirty tabby squirming in the steward’s arms.

The night blistered with sudden, furious tears. A stray cat. Fair pay for a beggar at most. Not for two gold-sucking palace boys they’d marched seven leagues to burn.

Every frayed wisp of Fie’s patience twisted into a taut, angry wire.