The Priory of the Orange Tree

by Samantha Shannon

  The skin against her palm was cool and petal-soft. Warm breath caressed her wrist.

  “Be at my side for the birth. And onward,” Sabran murmured. “You must always stay with me, Ead Duryan.”

  Chassar would be back for her in half a year. “I will stay with you for as long as I can,” Ead said. It was all that she could promise.

  With a nod, Sabran shifted closer and rested her head on Ead’s shoulder. Ead held still—allowing herself to grow used to her nearness, to the shape of her.

  Her skin was all chills. She could smell the milky sweetness of creamgrail in her hair, feel the swell of her belly. Ead sensed she would jostle the child as they slept, so she rotated their bodies until Sabran faced away from her, and they fitted together like acorn and cup. Sabran reached for Ead’s hand and brought it around her middle. Ead drew the coverlets over both of their shoulders. Soon the queen was fast asleep.

  Her grasp was soft, but Ead still felt a heartbeat in her fingers. She imagined what the Prioress would say if she could see her now. No doubt she would scorn her. She was a sister of the Priory, destined to slay wyrms, and here she was, giving succor to a sad Berethnet.

  Something was changing in her. A feeling, small as a rosebud, was opening its petals.

  She had never been meant to harbor anything more than indifference toward this woman. Yet she knew now that when Chassar returned, it would be hard to go. Sabran would need a friend more than ever. Roslain and Katryen would be preoccupied with the newborn, and would talk of nothing but blankets and cradles and milk nurses for months. Sabran would not weather that time well. She would go from being the sun of her court to the shadow behind a child.

  Ead fell asleep with her cheek against a wash of black hair. When she woke, Sabran was quiet beside her.

  A drumbeat pounded at her temple. Her siden lay dormant, but her instincts had woken.

  Something was wrong.

  The fire was low, the candles almost burned out. Ead rose to trim the wicks.

  “No,” Sabran breathed. “The blood.”

  From the tortured look on her face, she was dreaming. Dreaming, so it seemed, of the Lady of the Woods.

  Kalyba was no ordinary mage. From what little Ead remembered about her, she had possessed gifts unknown to the Priory, including immortality. Perhaps dream-giving was another. But why should Kalyba be concerned with tormenting the Queen of Inys?

  Ead went back to Sabran and laid a hand on her brow. She was sodden. Her nightgown was stuck fast, and strands of hair clung to her face. Chest tight, Ead felt her brow for the heat of a fever, but her skin was icy cold. Incoherent words escaped her.

  “Hush.” Ead reached for the goblet and tipped it to her lips. “Drink, Sabran.”

  Sabran took a swallow of milk and sank back into the pillows, twisting like a kitten caught by the scruff of its neck. As if she were trying to escape from her nightmare. Ead sat beside her and stroked her lank hair.

  Perhaps it was because Sabran was so cold that Ead noticed at once when her own skin heated.

  A Draconic thing was near.

  Ead strove to remain calm. When Sabran was still, she sponged the sweat from her and arranged the bedclothes so only her face was exposed to the night. She could alert no one, for it would betray her gifts.

  All she could do was wait.

  The first warning was the shouts from the palace walls. At once, Ead was on her feet.

  “Sabran, quickly.” She scooped an arm around the queen. “You must come with me now.”

  Her eyes flickered open. “Ead,” she said, “what is it?”

  Ead helped her into her slippers and bedgown. “You must get to the wine cellars at once.”

  The key turned in the door. Captain Lintley appeared, armed with his crossbow.

  “Majesty,” he said, with a rigid bow, “there is a flock of Draconic creatures approaching, led by a High Western. Our forces are ready, but you must come with us now, before they breach the walls.”

  “A flock,” Sabran repeated.

  “Yes.”

  Ead watched her waver. This was the woman who had gone out to meet Fýredel.

  It was not in her nature to hide.

  “Your Majesty,” Lintley urged. “Please. Your safety is paramount.”

  Sabran nodded. “Very well.”

  Ead wrapped the heaviest coverlet around her shoulders. Roslain appeared at the doors, her face lit stark by the taper in her hand.

  “Sabran,” she said, “hurry, you must hurry—”

  Throwing a final, unreadable look at Ead, Sabran was escorted away by Lintley and Sir Gules Heath, who kept a reassuring hand at the small of her back. Ead waited for them to vacate the Great Bedchamber before she ran.

  In her own rooms, she changed and threw on a hooded cloak before grabbing her longbow. She would have to aim true. Only certain parts of a High Western could be pierced.

  The arrows were vast things. She took them and sheathed her arm in a leather bracer. It had been twelve years since she had fought a wyrm without her siden, but she, of all the people in this city, had the greatest chance of driving off the High Western.

  She needed a vantage point. Carnelian House, where many of the courtiers lodged, would give her a clear view.

  She took the Florell Stair, which connected on the third floor to the main stair of the Queen Tower. She could hear the Knights of the Body coming down it.

  She quickened her pace. The stairs spiraled in a rush beneath her. Soon she emerged into the biting chill of the night. Fleet-footed, unseen by the guards, she skirted the edge of the Sundial Garden and, with a great leap, caught hold of a blind arch on the north-facing side of Carnelian House. Each adornment on the walls gave her a handhold.

  A bitter wind pulled at her hair as she climbed. Her body was no longer as strong as it had been in Lasia, and she had not tested her limbs like this in months. She ached all over by the time she hitched herself on to the roof.

  The Knights of the Body and the ladies-in-waiting emerged from the Queen Tower and gathered into a protective knot around Sabran and Heath. The party struck out from the vestibule and across the Sundial Garden.

  When they were halfway across, Ead beheld a sight that would have been unthinkable a year ago.

  Wyverns coming toward Ascalon Palace, screaming like crows surrounding a carcass.

  She had seen nothing like this in all her years. These were no blear-eyed creatures jarred from their sleep, scavenging for livestock. This was a declaration of war. Not only were these wyverns bold enough to show themselves in the capital, but they were flocking. As dread threatened to freeze her, she thought back to her lessons in the Priory.

  Wyverns would only fly in these numbers if they were united by a High Western. If she killed the master, they would scatter.

  Her breath clouded before her. The High Western had not yet shown itself, but she caught its foul stench on the wind, like the fumes from a fire mountain. She slid an arrow from her quiver.

  The Mother had designed these arrows. Long enough to pierce the thickest Draconic armor, made of metal from the Dreadmount, they froze at the lightest touch of ice or snow.

  Her fingers prickled. The reek of brimstone blew through the courtyard, and the snow thawed around her boots.

  She knew the cadence of wings when she heard it. Thunderous as the footsteps of a giant.

  With every whump, the ground quaked. A drumbeat of impending grief.

  The High Western tore through the night. Almost as large as Fýredel, its scales were pale as bone. It crashed down next to the clock tower and, with a bone-shattering lash of its tail, threw a group of palace guards across the courtyard. More charged at it with swords and partizans. With this monstrosity blocking the way, Lintley and the Knights of the Body could no longer reach the entrance to the cellars.

  In the days after Fýredel had come, several weapons on the walls of Ascalon Palace had been set on rounds of wood, allowing them to be revolved. Cannons flung gunstones at t
he intruder. Two hit it in the flank, another in the thigh—hard enough to break bone on a wyvern—but they only served to incense the High Western. It scoured the walls with its spiked tail, sweeping away the guards who had been trying to load a harpoon. Their screams died as quickly as they began.

  Ead dragged the arrow through the snow, freezing it, and fitted it to her bow. She had seen Jondu fell a wyvern with one well-placed shot, but this was a High Western, and her arm was no longer strong enough to make a full draw. Years of needlework had milked her strength. Without that, and without her siden, her chances of a hit were slim.

  A breath left her. She released the bow and, with a thrwang, the arrow skirred toward the wyrm. It moved at the last, and the arrow just missed its flank. Ead glimpsed Lintley at the northwest corner of the Sundial Garden, hurrying his charges into the cover of the Marble Gallery.

  Retreating to the Queen Tower would now take Sabran into full view of the wyrm. They were trapped. If Ead could distract the beast, and if they were quick, they might be able to slip past unnoticed and make a break for the cellars.

  Another arrow was in her hand a moment later, nocked and drawn. This time, she angled it toward a softer part of the face before she let go. It clanked off a scaled eyelid.

  The slit of the pupil constricted, and the High Western turned its head to face her. Now its attention was all hers.

  She iced a third arrow.

  Hurry, Lintley.

  “Wyrm,” she called in Selinyi. “I am Eadaz du Zāla uq-Nāra, a handmaiden of Cleolind. I carry the sacred flame. Leave this city untouched, or I will see you brought down.”

  The Knights of the Body had reached the end of the Marble Gallery. The wyrm gazed at her with eyes as green as willow. She had never seen that eye color in a Draconic thing.

  “Mage,” it said in the same tongue, “your fire is spent. The God of the Mountain comes.”

  Its voice churned like a millstone through the palace. Ead did not flinch.

  “Ask Fýredel if my fire is spent,” she answered.

  The wyrm hissed.

  Most Draconic creatures were easy to distract. Not this one. Its gaze snapped to where the Knights of the Body had emerged. Their copper-plated armor reflected the flames, drawing its eye.

  “Sabran.”

  Ead felt a chill in her bones. The wyrm said that name with a softness. A familiarity.

  That softness did not last. Teeth bared, the beast threw back its head and spoke in the Draconic tongue. As fireballs rained from the wyverns, the Knights of the Body, in terror, divided. Half retreated into the Marble Gallery, while the others ran for the Banqueting House. Lintley was one of the latter. So was Margret. So was Heath, ever fearless. Ead could see him with his shield raised high, cradling Sabran with his sword arm. She was bent over her belly.

  The wyrm opened its jaws. The Marble Gallery melted beneath its fiery breath, cooking the knights inside.

  Ead released the bowstring. With punishing force, her arrow seared across the space between mage and wyrm.

  It found its mark.

  The bay of agony was deafening. She had struck it in the place Jondu had shown her, the supple armor under the wing. Blood poured down its scales and bubbled around the spit of ice.

  One green eye burned into Ead. She felt herself etched into that eye. Into its memory.

  Then it happened. As it took off, bleeding and enraged, the wyrm swung his spiked tail—and the vestibule of the Dearn Tower, its foundations already weakened by Fýredel, collapsed into the courtyard. So did the statues of the Great Queens atop it. Ead looked down in time to see Heath struck by a block of masonry, and Sabran falling from his arms, before a cloud of dust swallowed them both.

  The silence was a held breath. It rang with a secret that could not be spoken.

  Ead dropped like a shadow from the roof, and she ran as she never had in her life.

  Sabran.

  She was curled, like a feather shaken from a bird, by the body of Sir Gules Heath. Eyes closed. Still breathing. Just breathing. Ead wrapped the Queen of Inys in her arms and gathered her up as darkness stole into her nightgown, stemming from between her thighs.

  The stone head of Glorian Shieldheart watched her bleed.

  35

  East

  All things considered, his first surgery aboard the Pursuit—the flagship of the Fleet of the Tiger Eye—had gone better than Niclays had anticipated. He had been presented with a Lacustrine fellow who had been stung by a frilled and glowing quarl, rarely seen in these waters. The poor man had shrieked in agony while his leg took on the appearance of rawhide.

  By a stroke of luck, Eizaru had once told Niclays exactly how to soothe a sting from this quarl. Niclays had cobbled together the ingredients and, lo and behold, the pirate was free of pain, if mutilated for life. He would be back to pillaging and killing again soon.

  Having received word that the Seiikinese had sent the High Sea Guard to reclaim the dragon, the Golden Empress had ordered the fleet to scatter in all directions. The Pursuit would skirt the Abyss before sailing to the Sleepless Sea and unloading its forbidden cargo in the lawless city of Kawontay. The Eastern dragons were afraid of the Abyss, slow to enter it.

  That night, Niclays found himself shivering in the rain on the three-foot stretch of the deck he had been allotted to sleep on. A few pirates had kicked him in the shins as they passed. He wondered dimly if anyone had ever felt worse than he did at this moment.

  This was his life now. He should have been grateful for his little house in Orisima. Suddenly he missed the sunken hearth and the pothook, the bedding he left to air in the sun, the dark walls, and woven mats. It had not belonged to him, but it had kept a roof over his head.

  A pair of booted feet appeared in front of him. He shrank away, expecting another kick.

  “Gods lie weeping. Look at the state of you.”

  The interpreter was standing over him, one hand on her hip. This time she wore a shawl and gloves that made him weak with envy. A cloud of dark hair, marbled with gray, sprang in tiny curls around her face. A band of silk kept it out of her eyes.

  “No sea legs yet, I see, Old Red,” she said.

  Niclays blinked. She spoke his language impeccably. Few but the Mentish spoke Mentish.

  “I don’t suppose you feel well enough for supper, but I thought I’d bring it.” With a broad smile, she handed him a bowl. “The Golden Empress bids me tell you that you are now her master surgeon. You’re to be ready at all hours to tend her seafarers.”

  “The quarl was a test, then,” he said gloomily.

  “I’m afraid so.” She bent to kiss his cheek. “Laya Yidagé. Welcome aboard the Pursuit.”

  “Niclays Roos. Would that I could greet you in a more dignified state, dear lady.” He squinted at the food. Rice and globs of pinkish meat. “Saint. Is that raw eel?”

  “Be glad it’s not still wriggling. The last hostage had to bite its head off. That was before his head came off, of course.” Laya squeezed in beside him. “Cure a few more pirates and you might get it cooked. And somewhere a little more hospitable to sleep.”

  “You realize I’m more likely to kill one of them. I have a degree in anatomy, but a master surgeon I am not.”

  “I suggest you keep pretending otherwise.” She threw some of her cloak around him. “Here. It’s warm.”

  “Thank you.” Niclays pulled it close and smiled wearily at her. “I beg you to distract me from this supposed meal. Tell me how you came to sail with the dreaded Golden Empress.”

  While he winnowed the clean grains from the bloodstained rice, she did.

  Laya had been born in the beautiful city of Kumenga, famous for its academies, sun wine, and limpid waters. As a child, she had thirsted for knowledge of the world, her interest fed by her father, an explorer, who had taught her several languages.

  “One day, he set off for the East, determined to be the first Southerner to set foot in it in centuries,” she said. “He never came back, of
course. No one does. Years later, I paid the pirates of the Sea of Carmentum to take me over the Abyss to find him.” Rain seeped down her cheek. “We came under fire by a ship in this fleet. Everyone was slain, but I pleaded for my life in Lacustrine, which surprised the captain. He took me to the Golden Empress, and I became her interpreter. It was that or the sword.”

  “How long have you worked for her?”

  She sighed. “Too long.”

  “You must wish to go back to the South.”

  “Of course,” she said, “but I would be a fool to try an escape. I am no navigator, Old Red, and the Abyss is wide.”

  She had a point.

  “Do you suppose, Mistress Yidagé—”

  “Laya.”

  “Laya. Do you suppose the Golden Empress would allow me to see the dragon below decks?”

  Laya raised her eyebrows. “And why would you want to do that, pray tell?”

  Niclays hesitated.

  It would be safest to hold back. After all, many feared or mocked alchemy—but he imagined that Laya, having spent years on a pirate ship, would not be easily daunted.

  “I am an alchemist,” he told her under his breath. “Not a great one—an amateur, really—but I have been trying, for the last decade, to create an elixir of immortality.” Her eyebrows crept higher. “I have so far failed in this endeavor, mostly thanks to a scarcity of decent ingredients. Given that the dragons can live for centuries, I was hoping to . . . study the one below. Before we reach Kawontay.”

  “Before every part of its body is sold.” Laya nodded. “Usually I would advise you against mentioning this.”

  “But?”

  “The Golden Empress has a vested interest in immortality. Your alchemy may endear her to you.” She leaned closer, so their breath formed one plume. “There is a reason this ship is called the Pursuit, Niclays. Did you ever hear the story of the mulberry tree?”

  Niclays knitted his eyebrows. “The mulberry tree?”

  “It’s a little-known legend in the East. More myth than history.” Laya leaned against the gunwale. “Centuries ago, a sorceress was said to rule over an island called Komoridu. Black doves and white crows flocked to her, for she was mother to the outcasts.