Each gate before them sat lower than the last, dropping from east to west like a stair. The first gate was meant for Phoenixes, and it stood empty save for its guards. The polish on their armor glittered nigh as bright as the green tassels on their spears, and just as eye-catching even from hundreds of paces off. Less flashy Hawks milled in and out of the second gate, stepping around Splendid Caste palanquins festooned in fringe and bead. That gate yawned the largest, its arch stretched high for visiting mammoth riders, though the heat made no such accommodation for the beasts. The third gate bustled with Hunting Castes, from melon-orange open carriages of Crane magistrates to the tiered lavender wagons of proud Owl scholars.

The fourth gate rambled even more chaotic, strewn with Common Castes. Sparrow farmers waited with strings of goats and cattle; Pigeons had set up shop at the roadside with their goods spread about the ground, peddling anything from clay luck charms to meat that Fie judged extremely untrustworthy. A few Gull sailors wandered from vendor to vendor, some haggling with Sparrows for livestock.

The line for the fourth gate was long, but it crept along with a slow, steady order. The same could not be said for the fifth gate. The muddy road sloped down, down, down, to the lowest point in Cheparok’s walls. There the fifth gate gapped, teeming with beggars, bloodflies, and the brands of Common-Caste convicts. It hadn’t a line so much as a mass that slid down the hill and pooled at the gate, some trickling through, others turned away to plead sanctuary elsewhere. The mud itself gave off a damp reek, one part ox dung, one part plant decay, and one part a musk Fie didn’t care to speculate on.

Her Sparrow tooth held as they waited their turn, humming patient in her mind. The second one stayed buried in her sweating fist until, bit by bit, they trudged down to the bottom of the hill.

Two Vulture skinwitches hunched together by the gate on rickety wood stools, the yellow of their thin cotton robes clashing against their fish-flesh-pink hides. Meager boastings of valor marks were scattered over their arms. One eyed the creeping shadow of the city wall and scooted his stool a little farther into its shade as a Hawk behind him laughed. The other Vulture rattled off a halfhearted oath and beckoned the Crows’ cart forward.

Pa whistled and flicked the reins. To other castes, it’d sound like a marching order. Fie knew better. In the Money Dance, that whistle meant “pair up.”

“Keep quiet,” she told the lordlings, “keep close, and move when I say.”

Harmony, she told herself, and kindled the second tooth.