The Priory of the Orange Tree

by Samantha Shannon

  Or to tell her the truth. Perhaps that was what Sabran valued most.

  It had been years since she had slept so close to someone else. She was too aware of Sabran. The flicker of sooty lashes. The warmth of her body. The rise and sink of her breast.

  “I have had many nightmares of late.” Her voice broke the silence. “Your remedy helped, but Doctor Bourn tells me I must take nothing while I am with child. Not even sleepwater.”

  “I have no wish to contest Doctor Bourn,” Ead said, “but perhaps you could use the rosewater in an ointment. It will soothe your skin, and may still help fend off the nightmares.”

  Nodding, Sabran laid a hand on her belly. “I will ask for it tomorrow. Perhaps your presence will keep the nightmares at bay tonight, Ead. Even if roses cannot.”

  Her hair was unbound, parted like drapes where her shoulders peeked through.

  “I never thanked you. For everything you did in Quiver Lane,” she said. “Pained though I was, I did notice how well you fought to protect me.” She lifted her chin. “Was it you who slew the other cutthroats? Are you the watcher in the night?”

  Her expression was impenetrable. Ead wanted to do as she had resolved—tell the truth—but the risk was too great. If word got back to Combe, she would be forced out of court.

  “No, madam,” she said. “Perhaps they could have protected Prince Aubrecht, as I could not.”

  “It was not your duty to protect the prince,” Sabran said. Her profile was half shadow and half gold. “It is my fault that Aubrecht is dead. You told me not to open that door.”

  “The cutthroat would have found a way to him, that day or another,” Ead said. “Somebody paid Bess Weald handsomely to ensure Prince Aubrecht died. His fate was sealed.”

  “That may be true, but I should have listened. You have never deceived me. I cannot ask Aubrecht for his forgiveness, but . . . I will ask yours, Ead Duryan.”

  It took effort to hold her gaze. She had no idea just how greatly Ead had deceived her.

  “Granted,” Ead said.

  Sabran released her breath through her nose. For the first time in eight years, Ead felt a stab of remorse for the lies she had told.

  “Truyde utt Zeedeur must pay the price for her treachery, no matter her youth,” Sabran stated. “By rights I should demand that High Princess Ermuna sentences her to death. Or perhaps you would prefer me to offer mercy, Ead, since you find its taste so comforting.”

  “You must do as you will with her.”

  In truth, Ead did not want the girl dead. She was a dangerous fool, and her stupidity had caused a slew of deaths, but she was seventeen. There was time for her to make amends.

  Another silence passed before the queen turned to face her. This close, Ead could see the thick black rings that surrounded her irises, dark against their startling green.

  “Ead,” she said, “I cannot speak with Ros or Kate of this, but I will speak with you. I feel that you will think no less of me. That you will . . . understand.”

  Ead interlaced their fingers.

  “You can always speak freely to me,” she said.

  Sabran shifted closer. Her hand was cold and delicate, the fingers bare without their jewels. She had buried her love-knot ring in the Sunken Gardens to mark a place for a memorial.

  “You asked me, before I took Aubrecht to consort, if I wanted to wed,” she said, almost too softly to hear. “I confess now, to you alone, that I did not. And . . . still do not.”

  The revelation hung between them. This was dangerous talk. With the threat of invasion, the Dukes Spiritual would soon be exhorting Sabran to take another companion, even with the heir inside her.

  “I never thought I would say those words aloud.” Her breath verged on a laugh. “I know that Inys faces war. I know that Draconic things are waking the world over. I know that my hand would strengthen any of our existing alliances, and that the other countries of Virtudom were brought into the fold through the sacred institution of companionship.”

  Ead nodded. “But?”

  “I fear it.”

  “Why?”

  Sabran was still for a time. One hand sat on her belly, while Ead kept hold of the other.

  “Aubrecht was kind to me. Tender and good,” she finally said, voice low in her throat, “but when he was inside me, even when I found pleasure in it, it felt—” She closed her eyes. “It felt as if my body were not wholly my own. It . . . still feels that way now.”

  Her gaze dipped to the barely visible bump, swathed by the silk velvet of her nightgown.

  “Alliances have ever been forged and strengthened through royal marriages,” she said. “While Inys has the greatest navy in the West, we lack a well-trained standing army. Our population is small. If we are invaded, we will need as much support as we can muster . . . but each nation in Virtudom will consider itself duty-bound to defend its own shores first. A marriage, however, would come with legal stipulations. Guarantees of military support.”

  Ead kept her silence.

  “I have never had any great inclination toward marriage, Ead. Not the sort of marriage those of royal blood must make—born not of love, but fear of isolation,” Sabran murmured. “Yet if I refrain, the world will stand in judgment. Too proud to wed my country to another. Too selfish to give my daughter a father to love her if I should perish. This is how I will be seen. Who would rise in defense of such a monarch?”

  “Those who call her Sabran the Magnificent. Those who saw her vanquish Fýredel.”

  “They will soon forget that deed when enemy ships darken the horizon,” Sabran said. “My blood cannot deter the armies of Yscalin.” Her eyelids were sinking. “I do not expect you to say anything to comfort me, Ead. You have let me unburden myself, even though my fears are selfish. The Damsel has granted me the child I begged of her, and all I can do is … quake.”

  Even though a fire roared in the hearth, gooseflesh flecked her skin.

  “Where I come from,” Ead said, “we would not call it selfish to do as you have done.”

  Sabran looked at her.

  “You have just lost your companion. You are carrying his child. Of course you feel vulnerable.” Ead pressed her hand. “Childing is not always easy. It seems to me that this is the best-kept secret in all the world. We speak of it as though there were nothing sweeter, but the truth is more complex. No one talks openly about the difficulties. The discomfort. The uncertainty. So now you feel the weight of your condition, you believe yourself alone in it. And you have turned the blame upon yourself.”

  At this, Sabran swallowed.

  “Your fear is natural.” Ead held her gaze. “Let no one convince you otherwise.”

  For the first time since the ambush, the Queen of Inys smiled.

  “Ead,” she said, “I am not quite sure what I did without you.”

  31

  East

  White River Castle was named not for a river, but for the moat of seashells that surrounded its grounds. Behind it was the ageless Forest of the Wounded Bird, and beyond that, the bleak and brutal Mount Tego. A year before their Choosing Day, all apprentices had been challenged to climb to the top of that peak, where the spirit of the great Kwiriki was said to descend to bless the worthy.

  Of all the apprentices from the South House, Tané alone had made it to the summit. Half-frozen, beset with mountain sickness, she had crawled up the last slope, retching blood on to the snow.

  She had not been human in that final hour. Just a paper lantern, thin and wind-torn, clinging to the flickering remnants of a soul. Yet when there was no more to climb, and she had looked up and seen nothing but the terrible beauty of the sky, she had found the strength to rise. And she had known the great Kwiriki was with her, within her.

  At this moment, that feeling had never felt so far away. She was the tattered lantern again. Barely alive.

  She was not sure how long they had kept her in the jailhouse. Time had become a bottomless pool. She had lain with her hands cupped over her ea
rs, so all she could hear was the sea.

  Then other hands had loaded her into a palanquin. Now she was escorted past a guardhouse, into a room with a high ceiling and walls painted with scenes from the Great Sorrow, and then on to a roofed balcony.

  The Governor of Ginura dismissed her soldiers. She stood tall, her gaze crisp with distaste.

  “Lady Tané,” she said coolly.

  Tané bowed and knelt on the mats. The title already sounded like something from another life.

  Outside, a sorrower called out. Its hic-hic-hic, like a grizzling child, was said to have driven an empress mad. Tané wondered if it would break her, too, if she listened hard enough.

  Or perhaps her mind was already lost.

  “Several days ago,” the Governor said, “a prisoner incriminated you in a most serious crime. He was smuggled into Seiiki from Mentendon. In accordance with the Great Edict, he was put to death.”

  A head on the gate, hair stiff with blood.

  “The prisoner told magistrates in Cape Hisan that when he arrived here, a woman found him on the beach. He described the scar beneath her eye.”

  Tané pressed her clammy palms to her thighs.

  “Tell me,” the Governor continued, “why an apprentice with a spotless record, who was raised from nothing, who was given the rare opportunity to be god-chosen, would risk everything—including the safety of every citizen of this island—by doing this.”

  It took Tané a long time to find her voice. She had left it in a bloodstained ditch.

  “There were whispers. That those who broke seclusion would be rewarded. Just once, I wanted to be fearless. To take a risk.” She sounded nothing like herself. “He . . . came out of the sea.”

  “Why did you not report it to the authorities?”

  “I thought the ceremony would not proceed. I thought the port would be closed, the gods kept out. That I would never ride.”

  How craven it sounded. How selfish and senseless. When she had explained it to Nayimathun, her dragon had understood. Now the shame of it was crushing.

  “He seemed like a message. Sent from the gods.” She could hardly speak. “I was too fortunate. All my life, the great Kwiriki was too good to me. Every day, I have waited for his favor to disappear. When the outsider came, I knew it was time. But I was not ready. I had to . . . sever his connection to me. Hide him away until I had what I wanted.”

  All she could see was her hands, fingernails bitten raw, knurled with faint scars.

  “The great Kwiriki has favored you, Lady Tané.” The Governor sounded almost pitying. “Had you made a different choice that night, that favor might still be yours.”

  The bird outside, hic-hic-hic. A child that could never be soothed.

  “Susa was innocent, honored Governor,” Tané said. “I forced her to help me.”

  “No. We interrogated the sentinel she convinced to let her into Orisima. She was a willing participant. Loyal to you above Seiiki.” The Governor pressed her lips together. “I am aware that a dragon requested clemency for her. Unfortunately, the news reached me too late.”

  “Nayimathun,” Tané whispered. “Where is she?”

  “That brings me to the second, even more serious matter. Close to dawn, a group of hunters landed in Ginura Bay.”

  “Hunters?”

  “The Fleet of the Tiger Eye. The great Nayimathun of the Deep Snows was . . . taken.”

  All sensation drained from Tané. Her hands clammed into fists.

  “The High Sea Guard will do its utmost to retrieve her, but it is rare that our gods are spared the butchery that awaits them in Kawontay.” The Governor tightened her jaw for a moment. “It pains me to say it, but the great Nayimathun is most likely beyond our reach.”Tané trembled.

  Her stomach was a poison in her. She tried not to imagine what Nayimathun must be suffering. The thought of it was so unbearable that her vision swam and her lips quaked.

  She was doomed, and she had nothing and no one left to lose. Perhaps, in this final act, she could leach some of the corruption out of Seiiki with her.

  “There is someone else involved,” she said quietly. “Roos. A surgeon from Orisima. He tried to blackmail me. Told me to bring him dragon scales and blood for his work. He has nothing moral or good in him.” Heat pricked her eyes. “He must have helped them take the great Nayimathun. Let him hurt no other dragons. Let him face justice.”

  The Governor considered her for some time.

  “Roos has been reported as missing,” she finally said. Tané stared. “He went to the beach last night, according to his friends. We think he may have escaped the island.”

  If Roos was with the Fleet of the Tiger Eye, he was already dead. A man like him would soon cross the wrong person.

  It brought Tané no comfort. Her enemy was gone, but so was her dragon. So was her friend. And so was the dream she had never deserved.

  “I made a mistake.” It was all she had left. “A terrible mistake.”

  “You did.”

  Silence gaped between them.

  “By rights, you should be executed,” the Governor told her. “Your self-interest and greed could have destroyed Seiiki. Out of respect for the great Nayimathun, however, and for what you could have been, I will show mercy on this day. You will live out your days on Feather Island. There, you may learn to serve the great Kwiriki well.”

  Tané stood and bowed, and the soldiers took her back to the palanquin. She had thought she would beg or weep or ask forgiveness, but in the end, she felt nothing.

  32

  South

  The reflection of water danced on an arched ceiling. The air was cool, but not so cool as to raise gooseflesh. Loth became aware of these things shortly after realising he was naked.

  He lay on a woven rug. To his right was a four-sided pool, and to his left, a recess scooped into the rock, where an oil lamp shone.

  Sudden pain clawed up his back. He turned on to his belly and vomited, and then it was upon him.

  The bloodblaze.

  It had been a far-off nightmare in Inys. A fireside story for dark nights. Now he knew what all the world had faced in the Grief of Ages. He knew why the East had locked its doors.

  His very blood was boiling oil. He screamed into the darkness of his cauldron, and the darkness screamed back. A skep broke open somewhere inside him, and a swarm of enraged bees disgorged into his organs, setting them aflame. And as his bones cracked in the heat, as tears melted down his cheeks, all he desired in the world was to be dead.

  A flash of memory. Through the crimson haze, he knew he must reach the pool he had seen and douse the fire within. He started to get up, moving as if on a bed of hot coals, but a cool hand graced his brow.

  “No.”

  A voice spoke, a voice like sunlight. “Who are you?”

  His lips burned. “Lord Arteloth Beck,” he said. “Please, st-stay away. I have the plague.”

  “Where did you find the iron box?”

  “The Donmata Marosa.” He shuddered. “Please—”

  Fear made him sob, but someone else was soon beside him, urging a jug to his lips. He drank.

  When he woke next, he was in a bed, though still quite naked, in the same underground chamber as before.

  It was a long time before he dared to move. There was no pain, and the red had vanished from his hands.

  Loth made the sign of the sword over his chest. The Saint, in his mercy, had seen fit to spare him.

  He lay still for a time, listening for footsteps or voices. At last, he stood on quaking legs, so weak his head swam. His bruises from the cockatrice were coated in ointment. Even the memory of the agony was draining, but some good soul had treated him and given him their hospitality, and he meant to be presentable when he greeted them.

  He sank into the pool. The smooth floor was bliss against his weary soles.

  He remembered nothing after his arrival in Rauca. A vague recollection of a market returned to him, and a sense of being on the move,
and then the inn. After that, a void.

  His beard had grown too thick for his liking, but there was no sign of a razor. When he was refreshed, he rose and drew on the bedgown that had been left on the nightstand.

  He startled when he saw her. A woman in a green cloak, holding a lamp in her palm. Her skin was a deep brown, like her eyes, and her hair spiraled around her face.

  “You must come with me.”

  She spoke Inysh with a Lasian accent. Loth shook himself. “Who are you, mistress?”

  “Chassar uq-Ispad invites you to his table.”

  So the ambassador had found him, somehow. Loth wanted to ask more, but he had not the boldness in him to question this woman, who looked at him with a cool, unblinking gaze.

  He followed her through a series of windowless passages, carved out of rosy stone and lit with oil lamps. This must be where the ambassador lived, though it was nothing like the place Ead had described growing up in. No open-air walkways or striking views of the Sarras Mountains. Just alcoves here and there, each framing a bronze statuette of a woman holding a sword and an orb.

  His guide stopped outside an archway, which was hung with a translucent curtain.

  “Through here,” she said.

  She walked away, taking her light with her.

  The chamber beyond the veil was small, with a low ceiling. A tall Ersyri man sat at a table. He wore a silver wrap around his head. When Loth entered, he glanced up.

  Chassar uq-Ispad.

  “Lord Arteloth.” The ambassador motioned to another seat. “Please, do sit down. You must be very tired.”

  The table was piled with fruit. Loth sat in the opposite chair.

  “Ambassador uq-Ispad,” he said a little hoarsely. “Is it you I should thank for saving my life?”

  “I did vouch for you,” was the reply, “but no. This is not my estate, and the remedy you took was not mine. In the spirit of Ersyri hospitality, however, you may call me Chassar.”

  His voice was not as Loth remembered it. The Chassar uq-Ispad he had known at court had been full of laughter, not this unnerving calm.

  “You are very lucky to be at this table,” Chassar said. “Few men seek the Priory and live to see it.”