“The story is told from the perspective of an unnamed woman, who is shunned by the people of Ginura. She hears whispers of Komoridu, where all are welcome, and decides she must get there by any means necessary. When she finally does, she goes to visit the fabled sorceress, whose power comes from a mulberry tree. A source of eternal life.”
Now his heart was pounding like a tabor.
“Although the legend has survived,” Laya said, “no one has ever been able to find Komoridu. For centuries, the scroll containing its story was kept on Feather Island. Someone stole it from the sacred archives and gave it to the Golden Empress . . . but it soon became apparent that part of it was missing. A part she believes is vital.”
Niclays was as raw as if he had been struck by lightning.
My aunt received it from a man who told her to carry it far from the East and never bring it back.
“Yes. You brought it to her.” Seeing his astonished expression, Laya smiled at him. “The final piece of the puzzle.”
The puzzle.
Jannart.
A sound grumbled through the belly of the ship. The Pursuit listed, shunting Niclays against Laya.
“Is it a storm?” he asked, his voice a notch higher than usual.
“Shh.”
The next sound was an echo of the first. Frowning, Laya got to her feet. Niclays rubbed some feeling back into his legs and followed. The Golden Empress was on the quarterdeck.
They were at the threshold of the Abyss, the place where even dragons feared to go, where the water deepened from green to black. And not a ripple marred the surface.
Within this impossible sea, every star, every constellation, every fold and spiral of the cosmos was reflected. As if there were two firmaments, and their ship was a ghost ship, adrift between worlds. The sea had turned itself to glass, so the heavens might finally look upon themselves.
“Did you ever see such a thing?” Niclays murmured.
Laya shook her head. “This is no natural thing.”
Not a single wave broke against the fleet. Each ship was as steady as if it were on land. The crew of the Pursuit stood in restless silence, but Niclays Roos was tranquil, entranced by the vision of the double universe. A balanced world, like the one described in the Tablet of Rumelabar.
What is below must be balanced by what is above, and in this is the precision of the universe.
Words that no one living understood. Words that had made Truyde send her lover across the sea with a plea for help that would go unheard. A lover who must now be dead.
Voices shouted in myriad languages. Niclays staggered back as spray exploded over the deck, drenching his hair in hot water. His moment of calm dissolved.
Bubbles swarmed around the hull. Laya clutched his arm. She ran with him to the nearest mast and seized the ropes.
“Laya,” he called to her, “what is happening?”
“I don’t know. Hold on!”
Niclays blinked away salt water, gasping. He shouted out as water roiled into the fleet, destroying a rowing boat and sweeping pirates off the decks. Their shrieks were lost to a sound he thought at first was thunder.
And then, as the sea crested the side of the Pursuit, it appeared. A mass of red-hot scale. Niclays stared in disbelief at the tail that ended in cruel spikes, at the wings that could have bridged the River Bugen. Amid the roar of the sea and the howl of the wind, a High Western swooped low over the fleet and screamed in triumph.
“MASTER,” it screamed. “SOON. SOON. SOON.”
36
West
The nightingales had forgotten how to sing. Ead lay on her side on the truckle bed, listening to Sabran breathe.
Oftentimes since the wyrm had come, she had drowned in dreams of what had happened that night. How she had carried Sabran to the Royal Physician. The hideous barb he had drawn from her belly. The blood. The cloth-wrapped form they had carried away. Sabran unmoving on the bed, looking as if she were on her bier.
A breeze wafted through the Great Bedchamber. Ead turned over.
Though she had watched Doctor Bourn and his assistants to ensure they first boiled everything that touched Sabran, it had not been enough. Inflammation had taken root. Fever had ravaged her, and she had lain on the brink of death for days—but she had fought. She had fought for her life like Glorian Shieldheart.
In the end, she had clawed herself from the edge of the grave, drained in body and soul. Once her fever had broken, the Royal Physician had concluded that the barb he had pulled from her had come from the High Western. Fearful that it might have given her the plague, he had sent for a Mentish expert in Draconic anatomy. What she had concluded was the unutterable.
The Queen of Inys did not have the plague, but she would never bear a living child.
Another draft rushed into the room. Ead rose from bed and shut the window.
Stars dotted the midnight sky. Beneath them, Ascalon flickered with torchlight. Some of its people would be awake now, praying for protection from what the commons were calling the White Wyrm.
They did not carry the same knowledge that haunted the Dukes Spiritual and the Ladies of the Bedchamber. Aside from the Royal Physician, only they knew the most dangerous secret in the world.
The House of Berethnet would end with Sabran the Ninth.
Ead trimmed the wick on one of the candles and lit it again. Since the White Wyrm had come, Sabran had only grown more fearful of the dark.
Fragments of historical evidence from the world over agreed that there had been five High Westerns. There were likenesses of them in the caves of Mentendon and the bestiaries made after the Grief of Ages.
According to that evidence, none of those High Westerns had possessed green eyes.
“Ead.”
She glanced over her shoulder. Sabran was a silhouette behind the see-through drapes around her bed.
“Majesty,” Ead said.
“Open the window.”
Ead placed the candle on the mantelpiece. “You will catch a chill.”
“I may be barren,” Sabran bit out, “but until I breathe my last, I am your queen. Do as I say.”
“You are still healing. If you perish from cold, the Principal Secretary will have my head.”
“Damn you, obstinate bitch. I will have your head myself if you do not do as I command.”
“By all means. I doubt I will have much use for it once it has bid my neck farewell.”
Sabran twisted to face her.
“I will kill you.” The cords in her neck were straining. “I despise all of you, overweening crows. All any of you think about is what you can peck from me. A pension, estates, an heir—” Her voice broke. “Damn you all. I would sooner throw myself off the Alabastrine Tower than I would swallow another spoonful of your pity.”
“Enough,” Ead snapped. “You are not a child. Cease this wallowing.”
“Open the window.”
“Come and open it yourself.”
Sabran let out a small, dark laugh. “I could have you burned for this insolence.”
“If it rouses you from that bed, I would gladly dance upon the pyre.”
The clock tower chimed once. Shuddering, Sabran lapsed back into the pillows.
“I was meant to die in childbed,” she whispered. “I was meant to give Glorian life. And yield my own.”
Her breasts had leaked for days after her loss, and her belly was still round. Even as she tried to heal, her own body kept opening the wound.
Ead lit two more candles. She pitied Sabran, so much so that she thought her ribs would break apart with it, but could not pander to her fits of self-hatred. Berethnet sovereigns were prone to what the Inysh called grievoushead—periods of sadness, with or without a discernible root. Carnelian the Fifth had been known as the Mourning Dove, and it was rumored at court that she had taken her own life by walking into a river. Combe had charged the Ladies of the Bedchamber with ensuring Sabran did not wander down the same path.
To be a moth on t
he window of the Council Chamber tonight. Some of the Dukes Spiritual would be arguing that the truth should never come out. Padding under gowns. An orphan child with black hair and jade eyes. Some of the council might contemplate such notions, but most of them would not brook the idea of bowing to anyone but a Berethnet.
“I was certain—” Sabran clenched her fists in her hair. “I must be beloved of the Saint. I drove away Fýredel. Why am I abandoned now?”
Ead forced down a surge of guilt. Her warding had fed into the lie.
“Madam,” she said, “you must maintain your faith. It does not do to dwell on—”
Another joyless laugh interrupted her. “You sound like Ros. I do not need another Ros.” Sabran tightened her hands. “Perhaps I should think of lighter things. Ros would tell me so. What shall I think of, Ead? My dead companion, my barren womb, or the knowledge that the Nameless One is coming?”
Ead made herself kneel and stoke the fire.
Sabran had spoken little for days, but what she had said had been meant to hurt. She had barked at Roslain for being too quiet. She had taunted the maids of honor when they served her meals. She had told a page to get out of her sight, reducing her to tears.
“I will be the last Berethnet. I am the destroyer of my house.” She gripped the sheets. “This is my doing. For spurning the childbed for so long. For trying to avoid it.”
Her head dropped forward.
Ead went to the Queen of Inys. She moved the drape aside and sat on the edge of the bed. Sabran was half-sitting, huddled over her bruised abdomen.
“I was selfish. I wanted—” Sabran breathed out through her nose. “I asked Niclays Roos to make me an elixir, something that would preserve my youth, so I would never have to get with child. When he could not,” she whispered, “I banished him to the East.”
“Sabran—”
“I turned my back on the Knight of Generosity for all that he had given me. I resented having to give just once in return.”
“Stop this,” Ead said firmly. “You had a great burden to bear, and you bore it bravely.”
“It is a divine calling.” Her cheeks glinted. “Over a thousand years of the same rule. Thirty-six women of the House of Berethnet bore daughters in the name of Inys. Why could I not?” She pressed a hand to her belly. “Why did this have to happen?”
At this, Ead took her gently by the chin.
“It is not your fault,” she said. “Remember it, Sabran. None of this is on your head.”
Sabran shied from her touch. “The Virtues Council will try everything, but my people are not fools,” she said. “The truth will out. Virtudom will collapse without its foundation. Faith in the Saint will be destroyed. The sanctuaries will be empty.”
The prophecy had the ring of truth. Even Ead knew that the collapse of Virtudom would cause turmoil. It was part of why she had been sent here. To preserve order.
She had failed.
“I have no place in the heavenly court,” Sabran said. “When I lie rotting in the soil, the Dukes Spiritual, whose blood comes from the Holy Retinue, will each lay claim to my throne.” A breath of humorless laughter escaped her. “Perhaps they will not even wait for me to die before the infighting begins. They believed in my power to keep the Nameless One shackled, but that power will now end with my death.”
“Then surely it is in their interest to keep you safe.” Ead tried to sound reassuring. “To buy themselves time to prepare for his coming.”
“Safe, perhaps, but not enthroned. Some of them will be asking themselves, at this very moment, if they should act at once. To choose a new ruler before Fýredel returns to destroy us.” Sabran narrated this in hollow tones. “They will all be asking themselves if the story of my divinity was ever true. I have been asking myself the same question.” Her hand slid back to her belly. “I have shown that I am only flesh.”
Ead shook her head.
“They will press me to name one of them my successor. Even if I do, the others may challenge it,” Sabran said. “The nobles will each raise their banners for one of the claimants. Inys will divide. While it is weak, the Draconic Army will return. And Yscalin stands poised to aid it.” She closed her eyes. “I cannot see it, Ead. I cannot see this queendom fall.”
She must have feared this outcome from the beginning.
“She was so . . . delicate. Glorian,” Sabran rasped. “Like the tracery of a leaf. The frail after the green has left it.” She gazed into nothing. “They tried to hide her from me, but I saw.”
A different lady-in-waiting would have told her that her child was safe in the heavenly court. Roslain would have painted her a picture of a black-haired baby swaddled in the arms of Galian Berethnet, smiling forever in a castle in the sky.
Ead did not. Such an image would not comfort Sabran in her grief. Not yet.
She reached for one icy hand and warmed it between hers. Shivering in the vastness of the bed, Sabran seemed more of a lost child than a queen.
“Ead,” she said, “there is a pouch of gold in the coffer.” She nodded to the chest her jewels were stored in. “Go into the city. The shadow market. They sell a poison there called the dowager.”
The breath went out of Ead.
“Don’t be a fool,” she whispered.
“You dare call the last Berethnet a fool.”
“Of course, when you speak like one.”
“I ask you this,” Sabran said, “not as your queen, but as a penitent.” Her face was taut, and her jaw trembled. “I cannot live knowing my people are doomed to death by the Nameless One or civil war. I could never be at peace with myself.” She took back her hand. “I thought you would understand. I thought you would help me.”
“I understand more than you know.” Ead cupped her cheek. “You have tried to turn yourself to stone. Do not be afeared to find that you are not. Queen you may be, but you are flesh and blood.”
Sabran smiled in a way that broke her heart.
“That is what it is to be a queen, Ead,” she said. “Body and realm are one and the same.”
“Then you cannot kill the body for the realm.” Ead held her gaze. “So no, Sabran Berethnet. I will not bring you poison. Not now. Not ever.”
The words came from a place she had tried to lock. The place where a rose had grown.
Sabran looked at her with an expression Ead had never seen. All the melancholy faded, leaving her curious and intent. Ead could see every splinter of green in her eyes, every lash, the candles trapped inside her pupils. The firelight danced on her shoulder. As Ead chased it with her fingertips, Sabran leaned into her touch.
“Ead,” she said, “stay with me.”
Her voice was almost too soft to hear, but Ead felt each word in her very flesh. Their lips were close now, a breath apart. Ead dared not move for fear that she would shatter this moment. Her skin was tender, aching at the feel of Sabran pressed against her.
Sabran framed her face between her hands. In her gaze was both a question and her fear of the answer.
As black hair brushed her collarbone, Ead thought of the Prioress and the orange tree. She thought of what Chassar would say if he knew how her blood sang for the pretender, who prayed to the empty tomb of the Mother. Scion of Galian the Deceiver. Sabran drew her close, and Ead kissed the Queen of Inys as she would kiss a lover.
Her body was spun glass. A flower just opened to the world. When Sabran parted her lips with her own, Ead understood, with an intensity that wrenched the breath from her, that what she had wanted for months now was to hold her like this. When she had lain beside Sabran and listened to her secrets. When she had stowed the rose behind her pillow. It was a realization that pierced her to the core.
They were still. Their lips lingered, just touching.
Her heart was too fast, too full. At first, she dared not breathe—even the smallest movement could sunder them—but then Sabran embraced her, voice breaking on her name. Ead felt the flutter of a heart against her own. Soft and quick as a butterfly.
/>
She was lost and found and wandering, all at once. At the cusp of dreaming, yet somehow never more awake. Her fingers mapped Sabran, drawn across her skin by instinct. They followed the scar up her thigh, coursed in her hair, traced beneath her swollen breasts.
Sabran drew back to look at her. Ead caught a glimpse of her face in the candlelight—brow smooth, eyes dark and resolute—before they came together again, and the kiss was hot and new and world-forming, the flare of starbirth on their lips. They were honeycombs of secret places, fragile and intricate. Ead shivered as the night welcomed her skin.
She felt the wash of gooseflesh on Sabran. The nightgown slipped from her shoulder, farther, until it came to rest around her hips, so Ead could trace the pathway of her spine and fold her hands at the arch in her back. She kissed her neck and the naked place behind her ear, and Sabran breathed her name, head tilting back to bare the hollow of her throat. Moonlight filled it up like milk.
The silence of the Great Bedchamber was vast. Vast as night and all its stars. Ead heard each rustle of silk, each brush of hand on skin on sheets. Their breaths were hushed, held in anticipation of a knock on the door, a key in the lock, and a torch to bare their union. It would light a flame of scandal, and the fire would rise until it scorched them both.
But Ead called fire her friend, and she would plunge into the furnace for Sabran Berethnet, for just one night with her. Let them come with their swords and their torches.
Let them come.
Later, they lay in the light of the blood moon. For the first time in many years, the Queen of Inys slept without a candle.
Ead gazed at the canopy. She knew one thing now, and it blotted all else out of her mind.
Whatever the Priory desired, she could not abandon Sabran.
As she stirred in the depths of sleep, Ead breathed in the scent of her. Creamgrail and lilacs, laced with the clove from her pomander. She imagined stealing her away to the Milk Lagoon, that fabled land, where her name would never find her.
The Priory of the Orange Tree Page 39
