The second body was met with another round of sobs as they loaded it. Yet once the Crows began to haul their cart toward the courtyard’s gateway, the Peacock courtiers miraculously overcame their sorrow enough to jostle at the lattices for a better look.
The spectators’ enraptured angst grated like a broken axle. The dead boys must have been favorites of the royal Phoenix caste if this many Peacocks battled to out-grieve one another.
Fie’s skin crawled. Of all the bodies she had ever dragged off to burn, she decided she hated these two most.
To reach the quarantine court, they’d been all but smuggled down cramped, plain servant passageways; now a stone-faced Hawk hustled them straight through the belly of the palace. The longer the bodies lingered, the greater the odds the plague would pick a new victim.
Fie’s spite grew with every marvel they passed. Their cart clattered over ceramic inlays in mesmerizing whorls, past gardens of amber-pod wafting its perfume through the damp late-spring night, and into arching corridors of alabaster and bronze. Every pillar, every alcove, every tile paid some tribute to the Phoenix royals: a sun, a gold feather, a curl of flame.
The Hawk threw open a set of enormous ebony doors and pointed her spear inside. “You’ll know your way from here.”
Pa motioned them on, and the cart creaked into what could only be the fabled Hall of the Dawn. They’d emerged at the head of the hall, which was crowned with a dais; the way out waited far, far down a grand walkway bracketed in more galleries. Great black iron pillars held up an arched ceiling, each cut like a lantern into the likeness of a dead Phoenix monarch. Fires burned within every column, hot enough to cling to Fie’s arms even from the door.
Most of the hall was lacquered in deep purples, scarlets, and indigos, but frothy gilt laced the railings of each gallery, and at the dais, a grand disc of mirror-polished gold sat on the far wall above a pool of fire. Gem-studded rays of gold fanned all the way to the roof. Every facet hoarded up firelight until the dais hurt to look at straight on. The whole mess made a sun that rose behind the Phoenix thrones.
The empty Phoenix thrones.
Fie sucked in a breath. No king, no queen, and neither the older prince nor the new one here to mourn the dead lordlings, yet the gentry wailed as if their fortunes depended on it. It didn’t make sense. But whatever this was, whatever had fouled up, Pa would get them out as he had every time before.
They rolled onto the walkway and began to march.
She hated the way the hall’s slick marble tiles whined against the nails spiking her sandal soles, dulling them with every step. She hated the perfume oils besmirching the stagnant air. And most of all, she hated the galleries of Peacock gentry, who shuddered daintily in their satins as if the Crows were no more than a parade of rats.
But behind the Hawk guards stood a silent legion in the brown tunics of Sparrow-caste palace servants, near outnumbering the courtiers above. Harrowed expressions said their grief was more than decorative.
The pinch in Fie’s gut returned with a vengeance. Nobody liked Peacocks that much.
This was bad business, treating with castes too high to fear the plague. At this rate Pa would be throttling their viatik fee out at the gate. At this rate, maybe they wouldn’t get paid at all.
Then, halfway to the door and ten paces ahead of the cart, Pa stopped.
At first Fie didn’t understand. Then her eyes skipped to the colossal palace gate, the final landmark betwixt them and the capital city of Dumosa. It had been built large enough for parades of dignitaries and mammoth riders alike; it would swallow the thirteen Crows and their cart easy enough.
And sure enough, a lone sentry stood at the gate, waiting to pay viatik for the dead.
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.