The Priory of the Orange Tree

by Samantha Shannon

  “Yes, Majesty.”

  “You will also send mercenaries to Quarl Bay. I expect them to be hand-chosen by you, and indisputably loyal to Inys.” Her eyes were hard as emeralds. “I want his fleet torched.”

  Her cousin considered this. “A foray into Draconic territory could incite an armed response.”

  “The Knight of Courage bids us go forth into even the greatest danger in the interest of defending Virtudom, Your Grace. I see no reason why I should wait for bloodshed before I defend this isle,” Sabran said. “Send Sigoso a message. If he wants to dance with fire, it is he who will burn.”

  Fynch bowed. “Majesty, I will see it done.”

  He marched back out. Two of the Knights of the Body closed the doors behind him.

  “If Yscalin courts war, I will oblige, but we must be ready,” Sabran murmured. “If Raunus is not in a generous mood, it may be my fate to make this marriage to the Chieftain of Askrdal. For Inys.”

  Marriage to a man old enough to be her grandsire. Even Katryen, who was practiced in courtesy, creased her nose in distaste. Sabran crossed her arms over her midriff.

  “Come.” Ead laid a hand on her back. “Let us take the air while the snow is untouched.”

  “Oh, yes.” Katryen rose to the occasion with relish. “We could pick some damsons and blackberries. And do you know, Sabran, Meg said she saw a dear little hedgepig a few days ago. Perhaps we can help the servants to chase the poor things from under the balefires.”

  Sabran nodded, but her face was a mask. And Ead knew that, in her mind, she was trapped under a balefire of her own, waiting for an unseen hand to set light to the kindling.

  Not long after the announcement, Ead found herself once more in the Privy Chamber, embroidering roses on a baby cap. Since the scent of roses had kept her nightmares at bay, Sabran wanted them on everything her daughter would wear in the first days of her life.

  The queen lay on a couch in her padded bedgown. She had shed weight in the days following the ambush in Ascalon, making her belly impossible to miss.

  “I feel nothing,” she said. “Why does she not move?”

  “That is natural, Majesty.” Roslain was bordering one end of a swaddle blanket. Katryen worked on the other. “You may not feel her quicken for some time.”

  Sabran kept exploring the little round in her belly with her fingers.

  “I believe,” she said, “that I have a name for my daughter.”

  The Chief Gentlewoman looked up so quickly, she must have given herself a cricked neck. The blanket was forgotten as she and Katryen rushed to sit on either side of Sabran. Only Ead remained where she was.

  “This is wonderful news, Sab.” Smiling, Katryen laid a hand over hers. “What have you chosen?”

  There were six historical names for Berethnet monarchs, Sabran and Jillian being the most popular.

  “Sylvan. After Sylvan-by-the-River,” the queen said, “where her lord father died.”

  That name was not one of them.

  Roslain and Katryen exchanged a worried glance. “Sabran,” Roslain said, “it is not traditional. I do not think your people would take well to it.”

  “And am I not their queen?”

  “Superstition knows no rulers.”

  Sabran looked coldly toward the window. “Kate?”

  “I agree, Your Majesty. Let the child not have the shadow of death over her head.”

  “And you, Ead?”

  Ead wanted to support her. She should have the right to name her own child as she pleased, but the Inysh did not take kindly to change.

  “I agree.” She pulled her needle through the cloth. “Sylvan is a beautiful name, Majesty, but it may serve to make your daughter melancholy. Better to name her after one of your royal ancestors.”

  At this, Sabran looked exhausted. She turned on to her side and pressed her cheek into the cushion.

  “Glorian, then.”

  A grand name indeed. Since the death of Glorian Shieldheart, it had never been bestowed on any princess.

  Katryen and Roslain both made approving sounds. “Her Royal Highness, Princess Glorian,” Katryen said, with the air of a steward announcing her entrance. “It already suits her. What hope and heart it will give to your subjects.”

  Roslain nodded sagely. “It is high time such a magnificent name was resurrected.”

  Sabran stared at the ceiling as if it were a bottomless chasm.

  Within a day, the news had seeped into the capital. Celebrations were planned for the day the princess was born, and the Order of Sanctarians prophesied the might of Glorian the Fourth, who would lead Inys into a Golden Age.

  Ead watched it all with weary detachment. Soon the Prioress would call her home. Part of her longed to be among her sisters, united with them in praise of the Mother. Another part wanted nothing but to remain.

  She had to crush it.

  There was something Ead had to do before she left. One evening, when the other ladies were occupied and Sabran was resting, she made her way to the Dearn Tower, where Truyde utt Zeedeur remained imprisoned.

  The guards were on high alert, but she needed no siden to get into forbidden places. As the clock tower struck eleven, she reached the highest floor.

  Dressed in naught but a soiled petticoat, the Marchioness of Zeedeur was a shadow of the beauty she had been. Her curls were twisted and heavy with grease, and her cheekbones strained against her skin. A chain snaked between her ankle and the wall.

  “Mistress Duryan.” Her gaze was as intense as ever. “Have you come to crow over me?”

  She had wept when she saw her prince lying dead. It seemed her grief had cooled.

  “That would not be courteous,” Ead said. “And only the Knight of Justice can judge you.”

  “You know no Saint, heretic.”

  “Rich words, traitor.” Ead took in the piss-soaked straw. “You do not look afraid.”

  “Why should I be afraid?”

  “You are responsible for the death of the prince consort. That is high treason.”

  “You will find I am protected here, as a Mentish citizen,” Truyde said. “The High Princess will try me in Brygstad, but I am confident I will not be executed. I am so young, after all.”

  Her lips were split. Ead took a wineskin from her bodice, and Truyde, after a moment, drank.

  “I came to ask,” Ead said, “what you thought you would achieve.”

  Truyde swallowed the ale. “You know.” She wiped her mouth. “I will not tell you again.”

  “You wanted Sabran to fear for her life. You wanted her to feel as if there were too many battles for her to fight alone. You imagined that this would cause her to seek help from the East,” Ead said. “Was it also you who let the cutthroats into Ascalon Palace?”

  “Cutthroats?”

  As a maid of honor, she would not have been told.

  “Has someone tried to kill her before?” Truyde pressed.

  Ead nodded. “Do you know the identity of this Cupbearer the shooter invoked?”

  “No. As I told the Night Hawk.” Truyde looked away. “He says he will have the name from me, one way or another.”

  Ead found that she believed in her ignorance. Whatever her faults, the girl did appear to want to protect Inys.

  “The Nameless One will rise, as his servants have,” Truyde said. “Whether there is a queen in Inys or a sun in the sky, he will rise.” The chain had rubbed her ankle bloody. “You are a sorceress. A heretic. Do you believe the House of Berethnet is all that binds the beast?”

  Ead stoppered the wineskin and sat.

  “I am not a sorceress,” she said. “I am a mage. A practitioner of what you might call magic.”

  “Magic is not real.”

  “It is,” Ead said, “and its name is siden. I used it to protect Sabran from Fýredel. Perhaps that will confirm to you that we are on the same side, even if our methods differ. And even if you are a dangerous fanatic whose folly killed a prince.”

  “I never
meant for him to die. It was all a masque. Wrong-headed outsiders poisoned it.” Truyde paused to cough pitifully. “Still, Prince Aubrecht’s death does open a new avenue for an Eastern alliance. Sabran could marry an Eastern noble—the Unceasing Emperor of the Twelve Lakes, perhaps. Give her hand and claim an army to kill every wyrm.”

  Ead huffed a laugh. “She would sooner swallow poison than share a bed with a wyrm-lover.”

  “Wait until the Nameless One shows himself in Inys. Wait until her people see that the House of Berethnet is built on a lie. Some of them must already believe it,” Truyde raised her eyebrows. “They have seen a High Western. They see that Yscalin is emboldened. Sigoso knows the truth.”

  Ead held out the wineskin again.

  “You have risked a great deal for this . . . belief of yours,” she said as Truyde swallowed. “There must be more to it than mere suspicion. Tell me what planted the seed.”

  Truyde withdrew, and for a long time, Ead thought she would not answer.

  “I tell you this,” she finally said, “only because I know no one will listen to a traitor. Perhaps it will plant a seed in you as well.” She curled an arm around her knees. “You are from Rumelabar. I trust you have heard of the ancient skystone tablet that was unearthed in its mines.”

  “I know of it,” Ead said. “An object of alchemical interest.”

  “I first read about it in the library of Niclays Roos, the dearest friend of my grandsire. When he was banished, he entrusted most of his books to me,” Truyde said. “The Tablet of Rumelabar speaks of a balance between fire and starlight. Nobody has ever been able to interpret it. Alchemists and scholars have theorized that the balance is symbolic of the worldly and the mystic, of anger and temperance, of humanity and divinity—but I think the words should be taken literally.”

  “You think.” Ead smiled. “And are you so much cleverer than the alchemists who have puzzled over it for centuries?”

  “Perhaps not,” Truyde granted, “though history boasts many so-called scholars of only middling ability. No, not cleverer . . . but more disposed to take risks.”

  “What risk did you take?”

  “I went to Gulthaga.”

  The city that had once lain in the shadow of the Dreadmount, now buried under ash.

  “My grandsire told us he was going to visit Wilgastrōm,” Truyde said, “but he died of the Draconic plague, contracted in Gulthaga. My father told me the truth when I was fifteen. I rode to the Buried City myself. To see what had driven my grandsire there.”

  The world believed that the late Duke of Zeedeur had died of the pox. Doubtless the family had been commanded to uphold the lie to avoid creating panic.

  “Gulthaga has never been excavated, but there is a way through the tuff, to the ruins,” Truyde said. “Some ancient texts have survived. I found the ones my grandsire had been studying.”

  “You went to Gulthaga knowing the Draconic plague was there. You are mad, child.”

  “It is why I was sent to Inys. To learn temperance—but as you have seen, Mistress Duryan, Temperance is not my patron knight.” Truyde smiled. “Mine is Courage.”

  Ead waited.

  “My ancestor was Viceroy of Orisima. From her journals, I learned that the comet that ended the Grief of Ages—that came the hour the wyrms fell—also gave strength to the Eastern dragons.” Her eyes were bright. “My grandsire knew a little of the ancient language of Gulthaga. He had translated some of the astronomical writings. They revealed that this comet, the Long-Haired Star, causes a starfall each time it passes.”

  “And what has this to do with anything else, pray tell?”

  “I think it connects to the Tablet of Rumelabar. I think the comet is supposed to keep the fire beneath the world in check,” Truyde said. “The fire builds over time, and then a starfall cools it. Before it can grow too strong.”

  “Yet it grows strong now. Where is your comet?”

  “That is the problem. I believe that at some point in history, something upset the cycle. Now the fire grows too strong, too fast. Too fast for the comet to subdue it.”

  “You believe,” Ead said, frustrated.

  “As others believe in gods. Often with less proof,” Truyde pointed out. “We were lucky in the Grief of Ages. The coming of the Long-Haired Star coincided with the rise of the Draconic Army. It saved us then—but by the time it comes again, Fýredel will have conquered humankind.” She grabbed Ead by the wrist, eyes flashing. “The fire will rise as it did before, when the Nameless One was born into this world. Until it has consumed us all.”

  Her face was wrought with conviction, her jaw tight with it.

  “That,” she finished, with an air of triumph, “is why I believe he will return. And why I think the House of Berethnet has naught to do with it.”

  They locked gazes for a long moment. Ead pulled her wrist free.

  “I want to pity you, child,” she said, “but I find my heart cold. You have fished in the waters of history and arranged some fractured pieces into a picture that gives your grandsire’s death some meaning—but your determination to make it truth does not mean it is so.”

  “It is my truth.”

  “Many have died for your truth, Lady Truyde. I trust,” Ead said, “that you can live with that.”

  A draft shivered through the arrow-slit. Truyde turned away from the chill, rubbing her arms.

  “Go to Queen Sabran, Ead. Leave me to my beliefs, and I will leave you to yours,” she said. “We will see soon enough whose truth is correct.”

  As she walked back to the Queen Tower, Ead winnowed her memories for the exact words that had been scored into the Tablet of Rumelabar. The first two lines eluded her, but she recalled the rest.

  . . . Fire ascends from the earth, light descends from the sky.

  Too much of one doth inflame the other,

  and in this is the extinction of the universe.

  A riddle. The sort of nonsense alchemists bickered over for want of anything more useful to do. Bored with her privileged existence, the girl had parsed her own meaning from the words.

  And yet Ead found herself dwelling on it. After all, fire did ascend from the earth—through wyrms, and through the orange tree. Mages ate of its fruit, becoming vessels of the flame.

  Had the Southerners of ancient times known some truth that had disappeared from history?

  Uncertainty threw shadows on her mind. If there was some connection between the tree and the comet and the Nameless One, surely the Priory would know of it. But so much knowledge had been lost over the centuries, so many records destroyed . . .

  Ead cast the thought aside as she entered the royal apartments. She would think on the girl in the tower no more.

  In the Great Bedchamber, the Queen of Inys sat upright in her bed, nursing a cup of almond milk. As Ead sat beside the fire, braiding her hair, she felt Sabran’s gaze like the tip of a knife.

  “You took their side.”

  Ead stopped. “Madam?”

  “You agreed with Ros and Kate about the name.”

  Days had passed since that discussion. This must have been curdling inside her ever since.

  “I wanted my child to carry some part of her father,” Sabran said bitterly. “Morose it might be, but it is the place where we were last together. Where he learned that we would have a daughter. Where he vowed that she would be beloved.”

  Compunction waxed in Ead.

  “I wanted to support you,” she said, “but I thought Lady Roslain was right, about not breaking with tradition. I still do.” She tied off her braid. “Forgive me, Majesty.”

  With a sigh, Sabran patted the bed. “Come. The night is cold.”

  Ead stood with a nod. Ascalon Palace did not hold in warmth so well as Briar House. She blew out all but two of the candles before she got under the coverlets.

  “You are not yourself.” Sabran inferred. “What troubles you, Ead?”

  A girl with a skullful of dangerous ideas.

  “Only the
talk of invasion,” Ead answered. “These are uncertain times.”

  “Times of treachery. Sigoso has betrayed not only the Saint, but humankind.” Sabran exerted a stranglehold on her cup. “Inys survived the Grief of Ages, but barely. Villages were turned to ash, cities set afire. Our population was decimated, and even centuries later, any armies I can muster will not be as large as those we had before.” She put the cup aside. “I cannot think of this now. I must . . . deliver Glorian. Even if all three High Westerns lead their forces to my queendom, the Nameless One cannot join them.”

  Her nightgown was drawn back to bare her belly, as if to let the child breathe. Blue veins traced her sides.

  “I prayed to the Damsel, asking her to fill my womb.” Sabran released her breath. “I can be no good queen. No good mother. Today, for the first time, I . . . almost resented her.”

  “The Damsel?”

  “Never. The Damsel does what she must.” One pale hand came to rest on the bump. “I resent . . . my unborn child. An innocent.” Her voice strained. “The people already turn to her as their next queen, Ead. They speak of her beauty and her magnificence. I did not expect that. The suddenness of it. Once she is born, my purpose is served.”

  “Madam,” Ead said gently, “that is not true.”

  “Is it not?” Sabran circled a hand on her belly. “Glorian will soon come of age, and I will be expected, sooner or later, to abdicate in her favor. When the world considers me too old.”

  “Not all Berethnet queens have abdicated. The throne is yours for as long as you desire.”

  “It is considered an act of greed to hold it for too long. Even Glorian Shieldheart abdicated, despite her popularity.”

  “Perhaps by the time your child is grown, you will be ready to relinquish the throne. To lead a quieter life.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps not. Whether I live or die in childbed, I will be cast aside. Like an eggshell.”

  “Sabran.”

  Before she knew it, Ead had reached to touch her cheek. Sabran looked at her.

  “There will be fools and flatterers,” Ead said, “who forsake your side to fawn over a newborn. Let them. See them for what they are.” She kept Sabran’s gaze prisoner. “I told you fear was natural, but you must not let it consume you. Not when there is so much at stake.”