The Priory of the Orange Tree

by Samantha Shannon

  His smile faded. “Forgive my long silence, Eadaz.” He sighed. “I would have written, but the Prioress decided that you should be left alone to learn Inysh ways in peace.”

  Ead wanted to be angry, but this was the man who had sat her on his lap when she was small and taught her to read, and her relief at seeing him outweighed her vexation.

  “The task you were given was to protect Sabran,” Chassar said, “and you have honored the Mother by keeping her alive and unharmed. It cannot have been easy.” He paused. “The cutthroats that stalk her. You said in your letters that they carried Yscali-made blades.”

  “Yes. Parrying daggers, specifically, from Cárscaro.”

  “Parrying daggers,” Chassar repeated. “A strange choice of weapon for murder.”

  “I thought the same. A weapon used for defense.”

  “Hm.” Chassar stroked his beard, as he often did when he was thinking. “Perhaps this is as simple as it looks, and King Sigoso is hiring Inysh subjects to kill a queen he despises . . . or perhaps these blades are a rotten fish. Covering the scent of the true architect.”

  “I think the latter. Someone at court is involved,” Ead said. “Finding the daggers would have been possible on the shadow market. And someone let the cutthroats into the Queen Tower.”

  “And you have no sense of who in the Upper Household might want Sabran dead?”

  “None. They all think she keeps the Nameless One chained.” Ead swilled her wine. “You always told me to trust my instinct.”

  “Always.”

  “Then I tell you now that something does not sit right with me about these attempts on Sabran. Not just the choice of weapon,” she said. “Only the last incursion seemed . . . serious. All the others have botched the thing. As if they wanted to be caught.”

  “Most likely they are simply untrained. Desperate fools, bribed with a pittance.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps it is deliberate,” she said. “Chassar, do you remember Lord Arteloth?”

  “Of course,” he replied. “I was surprised that he was not with Sabran when I arrived.”

  “He is not here. Combe exiled him to Yscalin for stepping too close to her, to clear the way for the marriage to Lievelyn.”

  Chassar raised his eyebrows. “The rumors,” he murmured. “I heard them even in Rumelabar.”

  Ead nodded. “Combe was willing to send Loth to his death. And now I fear the Night Hawk is moving the pieces once more. That by making Sabran fear for her life, he drove her to Lievelyn.”

  “So she would beget an heir as soon as possible.” Chassar seemed to consider this. “In a way, this would be good news, were it true. Sabran is safe. She has done as he wants.”

  “But what if she does not in future?”

  “I do not think he would go any further than he has. His power dissolves without her.”

  “I am not sure he believes that. And I do not think it well that Sabran remains unaware of his scheming.”

  Chassar stilled at this. “You must not voice these suspicions to her, Eadaz. Not without evidence,” he said. “Combe is a powerful man, and he would find a way to hurt you.”

  “I would not. All I can do is continue to watch.” She caught his gaze. “Chassar, my wardings are beginning to fail.”

  “I know.” He kept his voice down. “When word reached us that Fýredel had shown himself, and that Sabran had banished him from Ascalon, we knew the truth at once. We also knew it would have burned through your siden. You have been away from the tree for too long. You are a root, beloved. You must drink, or you will wither.”

  “It may not matter. I might have a chance, finally, to be a Lady of the Bedchamber,” Ead said. “To protect her with my own blade.”

  “No, Eadaz.”

  Chassar placed a big hand over hers. An orange blossom, cut from glass-like sunstone, was mounted on a silver ring on his forefinger. The symbol of their shared and true allegiance.

  “Child,” he murmured, “the Prioress is dead. She was old, as you know, and passed in peace.”

  The news pained Ead, but it was no surprise. The Prioress had always seemed ancient, her skin as gnarled and furrowed as an olive tree. “When?”

  “Three months ago.”

  “May her flame ascend to light the tree,” Ead said. “Who has taken up her mantle?”

  “The Red Damsels elected Mita Yedanya, the munguna,” Chassar said. “Do you remember her?”

  “Yes, of course.” From what little Ead could remember of her, Mita had been a quiet and serious woman. The munguna was the presumed heir to the Priory, though the Red Damsels would occasionally elect someone else if they deemed her unfit for the position. “I wish her well in her new role. Has she chosen her own munguna already?”

  “Most of the sisters wager it will be Nairuj, but in truth, Mita has not yet decided.”

  Chassar leaned closer. In the faint light that remained, Ead noticed lines around his mouth and eyes. He looked so much older than when she had last seen him.

  “Something has changed, Eadaz,” he said. “You must feel it. Wyrms have been stirring from their slumber, and now a High Western has risen. The Prioress fears that these are the first steps toward the Nameless One himself awakening.”

  Ead took a moment to let the words settle inside her. “You are not alone in fearing this,” she said. “A maid of honor, Truyde utt Zeedeur, sent a messenger to Seiiki.”

  “The young heir to the Duchy of Zeedeur.” Chassar frowned. “Why would she want to parley with the East?”

  “The girl has taken it into her head to call their wyrms to protect us from the Nameless One. She is convinced he will return—whether the House of Berethnet stands or not.”

  Chassar let a soft hiss escape between his teeth. “What has led her to believe this?”

  “The Draconic awakenings. And her own imaginings, I suppose.” Ead poured them both more wine. “Fýredel said something to Sabran. The thousand years are almost done. He also said his master stirred in the Abyss.”

  The ocean that yawned between one side of the world and the other. Black water that sunlight could not penetrate. A vault of darkness that seafarers had always feared to cross.

  “Ominous words indeed.” Chassar contemplated the horizon. “Fýredel must believe, as Lady Truyde does, and as the Prioress does, that the Nameless One is poised to return.”

  “The Mother defeated him more than a thousand years ago,” Ead said. “Did she not? If that were the date the wyrm meant, the Nameless One should have risen already.”

  Chassar took a thoughtful sip of wine. “I wonder,” he said, “if this threat has anything to do with the Mother’s lost years.”

  All sisters knew about the lost years. Not long after vanquishing the Nameless One and founding the Priory, the Mother had left on unknown business and perished before she could make her way home. Her body had been returned to the Priory. No one knew who had sent it.

  One small faction of sisters believed that the Mother had gone to join her suitor, Galian Berethnet, and had a child with him, establishing the House of Berethnet. This idea, unpopular in the Priory, was the founding legend of Virtudom—and what had landed Ead in Inys.

  “How could it?” she asked.

  “Well,” Chassar said, “most sisters believe that the Mother left to protect the Priory from some unnamed threat.” He pressed his lips together. “I will write to the Prioress and tell her what Fýredel said. She may be able to solve this riddle.”

  They fell into a brief silence. Now twilight had drawn in, candles began to flicker to life in the windows of the palace.

  “I must go soon,” Ead murmured. “To pray to the Deceiver.”

  “Eat a little first.” Chassar moved the bowl of fruit toward her. “You look tired.”

  “Well,” Ead said dryly, “banishing a High Western alone, as it turns out, is a tiring affair.”

  She picked at the honey-sweet dates and cherries. Tastes of a life she had never forgotten.

  �
��Beloved,” Chassar said, “forgive me, but before you go, there is something else I must tell you. About Jondu.”

  Ead looked up.

  “Jondu.” Her mentor, her beloved friend. Something twisted in her gut. “Chassar, what is it?”

  “Last year, the Prioress decreed we must resume our efforts to find Ascalon. With Draconic stirrings on the rise, she believed we should do everything we could to find the sword the Mother used to vanquish the Nameless One. Jondu began her search in Inys.”

  “Inys,” Ead said, chest tight. “Surely she would have come to see me.”

  “She was ordered not to approach the court. To leave you to your task.”

  Ead closed her eyes. Jondu was headstrong, but she would never have disobeyed a direct order from the Prioress.

  “We last heard from her when she was in Perunta,” Chassar continued, “presumably making her way home.”

  “When was this?”

  “The end of winter. She did not find Ascalon, but she wrote to tell us she carried an object of importance from Inys and urgently required a guard. We sent sisters to find her, but there was no trace. I fear the worst.”

  Ead stood abruptly and walked to the balustrade. Suddenly the sweetness of the fruit was cloying.

  She remembered Jondu teaching her how to yoke the raw flame that scorched in her blood. How to hold a sword and string a bow. How to open a wyvern from gizzard to tail. Jondu, her dearest friend—who, along with Chassar, had made her all she was.

  “She may still be alive.” Her voice was hoarse.

  “The sisters are searching. We will not give up,” Chassar said, “but someone must take her place among the Red Damsels. That is the message I bring from Mita Yedanya, our new Prioress. She commands you to return, Eadaz. To wear the cloak of blood. We shall need you in the days to come.”

  A shiver caressed Ead from her scalp to the base of her spine, chill and warm at once.

  It was all she had ever wanted. To be a Red Damsel, a slayer-in-waiting, was the dream of every girl born into the Priory.

  And yet.

  “So,” Ead said, “the new Prioress does not care to protect Sabran.”

  Chassar joined her at the balustrade. “The new Prioress is more skeptical of the Berethnet claim than the last,” he admitted, “but she will not leave Sabran undefended. I have brought one of your younger sisters with me to Inys, and I mean to present her to Queen Sabran in exchange for you. I will tell her one of your relatives is dying, that you must return to the Ersyr.”

  “That will look suspicious.”

  “We have no choice.” He looked at her. “You are Eadaz du Zāla uq-Nāra, a handmaiden of Cleolind. You should not stay any longer in this court of blasphemers.”

  Her name. It had been so long. As she digested his words, his face grew taut with worry.

  “Eadaz,” he said, “do not tell me now that you wish to stay. Have you become attached to Sabran?”

  “Of course not,” Ead said flatly. “The woman is arrogant and overindulged—but, whatever she is, there is a chance, however small, that she is the Mother’s true descendant. Not only that: if she dies, the country with the greatest naval strength in the West will collapse—and that will not do any of us a whit of good. She needs protection.”

  “And she will have it. The sister I have brought is gifted—but you have a different path to follow now.” He placed a hand on her back. “It is time to come home.”

  A chance to be close to the orange tree again. She could speak her own tongue and pray to the true image of the Mother without being cooked in Marian Square.

  Yet she had spent eight years learning about the Inysh—their customs, their religion, the intricacies of this snare of a court. She could not waste that knowledge.

  “Chassar,” Ead said, “I want to leave this place with you, but you are calling me away just as Sabran is beginning to trust me. All my years here will have been for nothing. Do you think you could persuade the new Prioress to give me a little more time?”

  “How long?”

  “Until the royal succession is assured.” Ead turned to him. “Let me guard her until she bears a daughter. Then I will come home.”

  He mulled this over for some time, his mouth a thin line in the thicket of his beard.

  “I will try,” he concluded. “I will try, beloved. But if the Prioress refuses, you must submit.”

  Ead kissed his cheek. “You are too good to me.”

  “I can never be too good to you.” He took her by the shoulders. “But be mindful, Eadaz. Do not lose your focus. It is the Mother who compels you, not this Inysh queen.”

  She looked back at the towers of the city. “Let the Mother compel us in all that we do.”

  15

  West

  Cárscaro.

  Capital of the Draconic Kingdom of Yscalin.

  The city sat high in the mountains above a vast plain. It was scarped into a ridge in the Spindles, the snow-capped range that stood between Yscalin and the Ersyr.

  Loth gazed through the window of the coach as it approached the mountain path. He had heard stories about Cárscaro all his life, but had never thought to lay eyes on it.

  Yscalin had become the second link in the Chainmail of Virtudom when King Isalarico the Fourth had wed Queen Glorian the Second. For love of his bride, he had abjured the old gods of his country and pledged it to the Saint. In those days, Cárscaro had been famed for its masques, its music, and the red pear trees that grew along its streets.

  No longer. Since Yscalin had renounced its age-old devotion to the Saint and taken the Nameless One as its god, it had been doing all it could to undermine Virtudom.

  As dawn broke, bright threads of cloud appeared over the Great Yscali Plain. Once upon a time, this expanse of land had been carpeted with lavender, and when the wind blew, it had carried its scent up to the city.

  Loth wished he could have seen it then. All that remained was a charred waste.

  “How many souls live in Cárscaro?” he asked Lady Priessa, if only to distract himself.

  “Fifty thousand, or thereabouts. Ours is a small capital,” she replied. “When you arrive, you will be shown to your chambers in the ambassadorial gallery. You will have an audience with Her Radiance at her earliest convenience to present your credentials.”

  “Will we also meet King Sigoso?”

  “His Majesty is indisposed.”

  “I am sorry to hear it.”

  Loth pressed his brow to the window and stared at the city in the mountains. Soon he would be at the heart of the mystery of what had happened to Yscalin.

  A blur of movement caught his attention. He reached for the latch so that he might get a better look at the sky, but a gloved hand snapped it shut.

  “What was that?” Loth asked, unnerved.

  “A cockatrice.” Lady Priessa folded her hands in her lap. “You would do well not to wander far from the palace, Lord Arteloth. Many Draconic beings dwell in the mountains.”

  Cockatrices. The spawn of bird and wyvern. “Do they harm the people in the city?”

  “If they are hungry, they will harm anything that moves, except those who already have the plague. We keep them fed.”

  “How?”

  No reply.

  The coach began its trundle up the mountain path. Across from Loth, Kit stirred from his doze and rubbed his eyes. He hitched up his smile at once, but Loth could tell he was afraid.

  Night had fallen by the time the Gate of Niunda came into view. Colossal as the deity it was named after, carved from green and black granite and lit by torches, it was the sole entrance to Cárscaro. As they grew closer, Loth could make out shapes below its lintel.

  “What is that, up there?”

  Kit understood first.

  “I would look away, Arteloth.” He sat back. “Unless you want this hour to haunt your nights forever.”

  It was too late. He had seen the men and women chained by their wrists to the gate. Some looked dead or hal
f-dead already, but others were alive and bloody, fighting their restraints.

  “That is how we keep them fed, Lord Arteloth,” Lady Priessa said. “With our criminals and traitors.”

  For a terrible moment, Loth thought he was going to cast up his last meal right here in the coach.

  “I see.” His mouth flooded with saliva. “Good.”

  He ached to make the sign of the sword, but here that would condemn him.

  As the coach approached, the Gate of Niunda opened. No fewer than six wyverns guarded it. They were smaller than their High Western overlords and had only two legs, but their eyes scorched with the same fire. Loth looked away until they were past.

  He was in a nightmare. The bestiaries, the stories of old, had come to life in Yscalin.

  A tower of volcanic rock and glass rose from the middle of the city. That must be the Palace of Salvation, seat of the House of Vetalda. The mountain Cárscaro sat on was one of the lowest in the Spindles, but vast enough that its summit was hidden by the haze above the plateau.

  The palace was a fearful thing, but it was the river of lava that unsettled Loth. It flowed in six forks around and through Cárscaro before merging into one pool and cascading onto the lower slopes of the mountain, where it cooled to volcanic glass.

  The lava falls had appeared in Cárscaro a decade ago. It had taken the Yscals some time to build channels for the flaming river. In Ascalon, people now whispered that the Saint had sent it as a warning to the Yscals—a warning that the Nameless One would one day be the false god of their country.

  Streets wound like rat tails around the buildings. Loth could see now that they were linked by high stone bridges. Stalls with red awnings were surrounded by people in heavy robes. Many wore veils over their faces. Fortifications against the plague could be seen everywhere, from charms in doorways to masks with glass eyes and long beaks, but some dwellings were still marked with red writing.

  The coach brought them to the vast doors of the Palace of Salvation, where a line of servants waited. Lifelike carvings of Draconic creatures formed an arch around the entrance. It looked like the neck of the Womb of Fire.

  Loth stepped from the coach and stiffly held out a hand to Lady Priessa, who declined it. It had been foolish to offer in the first place. Melaugo had told him to keep his distance.