The Priory of the Orange Tree

by Samantha Shannon

  “Mistress Duryan!”

  Roslain flinched. Retainers wearing the winged book were at the end of the corridor, led by two Knights of the Body.

  “Seize her,” Sir Marke Birchen shouted. “Ead Duryan, you are arrested. Stop at once!”

  Ead flung open the nearest door and rushed into the night.

  “Ead,” Roslain cried after her, horror-struck. “Sir Marke, what is the meaning of this?”

  A line of balconies took Ead to another open door. She ran blindly through the corridors until she slammed through the door of the Privy Kitchen, where Tallys, the scullion, crouched in the corner, eating a custard tart. When Ead burst in, she gasped.

  “Mistress Duryan.” She looked terrified. “Mistress, I was only—”

  Ead raised a finger to her lips. “Tallys,” she said, “is there a way out?”

  The scullion nodded at once. She took Ead by the hand and led her to a small door, hidden behind a drape.

  “This way. The Servant Stair,” she whispered. “Are you leaving forever?”

  “For now,” Ead said.

  “Why?”

  “I cannot tell you, child.” Ead looked her dead in the eye. “Tell no one you saw me. Swear it on your honor as a lady, Tallys.”

  Tallys swallowed. “I swear it.”

  Footsteps outside. Ead ducked through the door, and Tallys bolted it behind her.

  She hurried down the stair beyond. If she was to leave the palace, she would need a horse and a disguise. There was one person left who might give them to her.

  In her quarters, Margret Beck sat in her nightgown. She looked up with a gasp when Ead entered.

  “What is the meaning of—” She stood. “Ead?”

  Ead shut the door behind her. “Meg, I have no time. I must—”

  Almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth, a metallic knock came, the sound of knuckles sheathed in a gauntlet.

  “Lady Margret.” Knock. “Lady Margret, this is Dame Joan Dale, of the Knights of the Body.” Another knock. “My lady, I come on urgent business. Open the door.”

  Margret motioned Ead toward her unmade bed. Ead pushed herself under it and let the valance fall behind her. She heard Margret walk across the flagstones.

  “Forgive me, Dame Joan. I was sleeping.” Her voice was slow and hoarse. “Is something the matter?”

  “Lady Margret, the Principal Secretary has ordered the arrest of Mistress Ead Duryan. Have you seen her?”

  “Ead?” Margret sat down on the bed, as if stunned. “This is impossible. On what grounds?”

  She was a consummate actor. Her voice wavered at the crossroads between shock and disbelief.

  “I am not at liberty to speak with you further on the subject.” Armored feet crossed the room. “If you do see Mistress Duryan, sound the alarm at once.”

  “Of course.”

  The Knight of the Body left, closing the door behind her. Margret slid the bolt across and drew the curtains before she hauled Ead from under the bed.

  “Ead,” she whispered, “what in damsam have you done?”

  “I stepped too close to Sabran. Just like Loth.”

  “No.” Margret stared at her. “You used to tread so carefully in this court, Ead—”

  “I know. Forgive me.” She extinguished the candles and stole a look between the curtains. Guards and armed squires were all over the grounds. “Meg, I need your help. I must return to the Ersyr, or Combe will kill me.”

  “He wouldn’t dare.”

  “He cannot let me leave the palace alive. Not knowing—” Ead faced her again. “You will hear things about me, things that will make you doubt me, but you must know that I love the queen. And I am certain she is in grave danger.”

  “From the Cupbearer?”

  “And her own Dukes Spiritual. I think they mean to move against her,” Ead said. “Combe has some part in it, I am sure. You must watch Sabran, Meg. Stay close to her.”

  Margret searched her face. “Until you return?”

  Ead met her expectant gaze. Any promise she made to Margret now, she might not be able to keep.

  “Until I return,” she finally said.

  This seemed to nerve Margret. Jaw set, she went to her press and tossed a woollen cloak, a ruffled shirt, and a kirtle on to the bed. “You won’t get far in all that finery,” she said. “Fortunate that we are the same height.”

  Ead stripped to her shift and put on the new clothes, thanking the Mother for Margret Beck. Once the cloak was fastened and the hood up, Margret led her to the door.

  “Downstairs is a painting of Lady Brilda Glade. There is a stair to the guardhouse behind it. From there, you can circle around the Privy Garden to the stables. Take Valour.”

  That horse was her pride and joy. “Meg,” Ead said, grasping her hands, “they will know you helped me.”

  “So be it.” She pressed a silk purse on Ead. “Here. Enough to buy you passage to Zeedeur.”

  “I will remember this kindness, Margret.”

  Margret embraced her, so tightly Ead could not breathe. “I know there is little chance of it,” she said thickly, “but if you should meet Loth on the road—”

  “I know.”

  “I love you like my own sister, Ead Duryan. We will meet again.” She pressed a kiss to her cheek. “May the Saint go with you.”

  “I know no Saint,” Ead said honestly, and saw her friend’s confusion, “but I take your blessing, Meg.”

  She left the chamber and made haste through the corridors, avoiding the guards. When she found the portrait, she descended the stair beyond and emerged in a passage with a window at its end. She hurdled through it and into the night.

  Inside the Royal Mews, all was dark. Valour, a gift to Margret from her father for her twentieth birthday, was the envy of every rider at court. He filled the stall at eighteen hands. Ead placed a gloved hand on his blood-bay coat.

  Valour snorted as she saddled him. If rumor had it true, he could outrun even Sabran’s horses.

  Ead wedged her boot into the stirrup, mounted, and snapped the reins. At once, Valour wheeled out of his stall and charged through the open doors. They were through the gates of Ascalon Palace before Ead heard the cry, and by then there was no catching her. Arrows rained in her wake. Valour let out a whinny, but she whispered to him in Selinyi, urging him on.

  As the archers stood down, Ead looked back at the place that had been her prison and her home for eight years. The place where she had met Loth and Margret, two people she had not expected to befriend. The place where she had grown to care for the seed of the Deceiver.

  The guards came after her. They hunted a ghost, for Ead Duryan was no more.

  She rode hard for six days and nights through the sleet, stopping only to rest Valour. She had to stay ahead of the heralds. If Combe had his way, they would already be taking word of her escape through the country.

  Instead of taking the South Pass, she traversed country lanes and fields. The snow began again on the fourth day. Her journey took her through the bountiful county of the Downs, where Lord and Lady Honeybrook had their seat at Dulcet Court, to the town of Crow Coppice. She watered Valour and filled her wineskin before returning to the road under cover of darkness.

  She focused on anything but Sabran, but even the swiftest riding left room for thoughts to prey. Now that she was sick, she was even more vulnerable than she had been before.

  As Ead urged the gelding across a farmstead, she damned her own folly. The Inysh court had softened her heart.

  She could not tell the Prioress how it had been with Sabran. Even Chassar might not understand. She hardly understood herself. All she knew was that she could not leave Sabran at the mercy of the Dukes Spiritual.

  When dawn broke on the seventh day, the sea bruised the horizon. To the untaught eye, the cliffs simply fell away, land planing seamlessly into water. One could look at it and never imagine that a city stood between them.

  Today, smoke betrayed its presence. A thic
k, dark cloud of it, billowing skyward.

  Ead watched for a long moment. That was more than chimney smoke. She rode to the edge of the cliffs and surveyed the rooftops below.

  “Come, Valour,” she murmured, and dismounted. She led him to the first set of steps.

  Perchling was a mess. Cobblestones splashed with blood. Bone char and melted flesh, oily on the wind. The living wept over the remains of their loved ones, or stood in confusion. No one paid any mind to Ead.

  A dark-haired woman was sitting outside the remains of a bakehouse. “You there,” Ead said to her. “What happened here?”

  The woman was shivering. “They came in the night. Servants of the High Westerns,” she whispered. “The war machines drove ’em away, but not before they did . . . this.” A tear dripped to her jaw. “There will be another Grief of Ages before the year is out.”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” Ead said, too softly for her to hear.

  She took Valour down the stair to the beach. Catapults and other artillery lay wrecked on the sand. Smoking corpses were littered here and there—soldier and wyrm, tangled in eternal battle, even in death. Cockatrices and basilisks were strewn about in grotesque contortions, tongues lolling, eyes pecked by gulls. Ead walked alongside the gelding.

  “Hush,” she said when he whickered. “Hush, Valour. The dead have made their beds upon this sand.”

  From the looks of things, all the Draconic creatures involved in this attack had been killed, either by the war machines or the sword. Sabran would know about it soon. Fortunate for her that her navy was stationed at ports all over Inys, or the whole fleet might have burned.

  Ead crossed the beach. The wind blew down her hood, cooling the sweat on her brow. Perchling would ordinarily be full of ships, but each one had been set on fire. Those that were intact would need work before they could sail. Only a rowing boat looked untouched.

  “Lost, are you?”

  A knife was in her grasp before she knew it, and she spun, poised to throw. A woman held up her hands.

  “Easy.” She wore a wide-brimmed hat. “Easy.”

  “Who are you, Yscal?”

  “Estina Melaugo. Of the Rose Eternal.” The woman cocked an eyebrow. “You’re a little too late to board a ship.”

  “So I see. The boat is yours, I presume.”

  “It is.”

  “Will you take me?” Ead sheathed her knife. “I seek passage to Zeedeur.”

  Melaugo looked her up and down. “What do I call you?”

  “Meg.”

  “Meg.” Her smile said she knew full well it was an alias. “From your filthy cloak, I’d say you’ve been riding hard for a few days. Not much sleep, either, by the looks of you.”

  “You would ride hard if the Night Hawk wanted your head.”

  Melaugo grinned, showing a tiny gap between her front teeth. “Another enemy of the Night Hawk. He ought to start paying us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing.” Melaugo motioned to the horizon. “The ship is out there. I’d usually expect coin for safe passage—but perhaps, with so many wyrms in the sky, we should all be kinder to each other.”

  “Soft words for a pirate.”

  “Piracy was more of a necessity than a choice for me, Meg.” Melaugo eyed Valour. “You can’t take that horse.”

  “The horse,” Ead said, “goes where I go.”

  “Don’t make me leave you behind, Meg.” When Ead kept her hand on Valour, Melaugo folded her arms and sighed. “We’ll have to bring the ship in. The captain will expect compensation for that, if not for you.”

  Ead tossed her the purse. Inysh money would be useless in the South.

  “I take no charity, pirate,” she said.

  It would not take long to reach Mentendon. Ead lay in her berth and tried to sleep. When she did, she was pierced by unquiet dreams of Sabran and the faceless Cupbearer. When she did not, she padded to the deck and gazed at the crystal stars above the sails, letting them calm her mind.

  The captain, Gian Harlowe, stepped from his cabin to smoke his pipe. This was the man who had loved the Queen Mother, according to rumor. Dark eyes, a stern mouth, pockmarks on his brow and cheeks. He looked as if he had been carved by the sea wind.

  Their gazes met across the ship, and Harlowe nodded. Ead returned the gesture.

  At first light, the sky was a smear of ash, and Zeedeur was on the horizon. This was where Truyde had spent her childhood, where she had first conceived her perilous ideas. It was here that the death of Aubrecht Lievelyn had been written in the stars.

  Estina Melaugo joined Ead at the bow.

  “Be careful out there,” she said. “It’s a hard ride from here to the Ersyr, and there are wyrms in those mountains.”

  “I fear no wyrm.” Ead nodded to her. “Thank you, Melaugo. Farewell.”

  “Farewell, Meg.” Melaugo pulled down the brim of her hat and turned away. “Safe travels.”

  Flanked by the sea and the River Hundert, the Port of Zeedeur was shaped like an arrowhead. Canals hatched the northern quarter, lined with elegant houses and elm trees. Ead had passed through the city only once before, when she and Chassar had sailed for Inys. Here the houses were built in the traditional Mentish style, with bell gables. The crocketed spire of the Port Sanctuary reached up from the heart of the city.

  It was the last sanctuary she would see for some time.

  She mounted Valour and spurred him past the markets and book peddlers, toward the salt road that would lead her to the capital. In a few days, she would be in Brygstad, and then she would be on her way to the Ersyr—far away from the court she had deceived for so long. From the West.

  And from Sabran.

  III

  A Witch to Live

  The bay-trees in our country are all withered,

  And meteors fright the fixèd stars of heaven.

  —William Shakespeare

  38

  East

  A bell rang full-throated every morning at first light. On hearing it, the scholars of Feather Island folded away their bedding and proceeded to the bathhouse. Once they had washed, they would eat together, and then, before the elders woke, they would have an hour for prayer and reflection. That hour was her favorite time of day.

  She knelt before the image of the great Kwiriki. Water trickled down the walls of the underground cavern and dripped into a pool. Only a lantern fended off the dark.

  This statue of the Great Elder was not like those she had prayed before in Seiiki. This one showed him with parts of some of the forms he had taken in his lifetime: the antlers of a stag, the talons of a bird, and the tail of a snake.

  It was some time before Tané became aware of the clunk of an iron leg on rock. She rose to see the learnèd Elder Vara standing at the entrance to the grotto.

  “Scholar Tané.” He inclined his head. “Forgive me for disturbing your reflection.”

  She bowed in return.

  Elder Vara was thought by most of the residents of Vane Hall to be an eccentric sort. A thin man with weathered brown skin and crow footprints around his eyes, he always had a smile and a kind word for her. His chief duty was to protect and manage the repository, but he also acted as a healer when the need arose.

  “I would be honored if you would join me at the repository this morning,” he said. “Someone else will see to your chores. And please,” he added, “take your time.”

  Tané hesitated. “I am not permitted in the repository.”

  “Well, you are today.”

  He was gone before she could answer. Slowly, she knelt again.

  This cavern was the only place where she could forget herself. It was one of a honeycomb of grottos behind a waterfall, shared between the Seiikinese scholars on this side of the isle.

  She fanned out the incense and bowed to the statue. Its jewel eyes glinted at her.

  At the top of the steps, she emerged into daylight. The sky was the yellow of unbleached silk. She picked her
way barefoot across the stepping stones.

  Feather Island, lonely and rugged, lay far away from anywhere. Its steep cliff faces and ever-present hood of cloud presented an imposing front to any ship that dared come near. Snakes lazed on its stony beaches. It was home to people from all over the East—and to the bones of the great Kwiriki, who was said to have laid himself to rest at the bottom of the ravine that divided the island, which was called the Path of the Elder. It was also said that his bones kept the island wreathed in fog, for a dragon continued to attract water long after its death. It was why Seiiki was so misty.

  Seiiki.

  Windward Hall stood on Cape Quill to the north, while Vane Hall, the smaller—where Tané had been placed—was set high on a long-dead volcano, surrounded by forest. There were ice caves just behind it, where lava had once flowed. To get between the hermitages, one had to take a rickety bridge across the ravine.

  There were no other settlements. The scholars were alone in the vastness of the sea.

  The hermitage was a puzzle-box of knowledge. Each new piece of wisdom was earned with understanding of the last. Ensconced in its halls, Tané had learned first about fire and water. Fire, the element of the winged demons, required constant feeding. It was the element of war and greed and vengeance—always hungry, never satisfied.

  Water needed no coal or tinder to exist. It could shape itself to any space. It nourished flesh and earth and asked for nothing in return. That was why the dragons of the East, lords of rain and lake and sea, would always triumph over the fire-breathers. When the ocean had swallowed the world and humankind was washed away, still they would abide.

  A fish-hawk snatched a bitterling from the river. A chill wind soughed between the trees. The Autumn Dragon would soon return to her slumber, and the Winter Dragon would wake in the twelfth lake.

  As she stepped on to the roofed walkway that led back to the hermitage, Tané wrapped her cloth hood over her hair, which she had cut short before she had left Ginura, so it grazed her collarbones. Miduchi Tané had long hair. The ghost she had become did not.