The night seemed to embrace her as she descended to her knees. As her fingers sank into the earth, the tears of relief overran, and each breath came like the drag of a knife up her throat. She forgot about everyone she had ever known. There was only the tree. The giver of fire. It was her one purpose, her reason to live. And it was calling to her, after eight years, promising the sacred flame.
Somewhere nearby, the Prioress, or one of the Red Damsels, would be watching. They needed to see that she was still worthy of this rank. Only the tree could decide who was worthy.
Ead turned up her palms and waited, as the crop waits for rain.
Fill me with your fire again. She held the prayer in her heart. Let me serve you.
The night grew too still. And then—slowly, as if it were sinking through water—a golden fruit dropped from on high.
She caught it in both hands. With a gasping sob, she sank her teeth into the flesh.
A feeling like dying and coming to life. The blood of the tree spreading over her tongue, soothing the blaze in her throat. Veins turning to gold. As quickly as it quenched one fire, it sparked another, a fire that torched through her whole being. And the heat cracked her open, like the clay she was, and made her body cry out to the world.
All around her, the world answered.
40
East
Rain sheeted over the Sundance Sea. It was forenoon, but the Fleet of the Tiger Eye kept its lanterns burning.
Laya Yidagé strode across the Pursuit. As he followed her, shivering in his sodden cloak, Niclays could not help but glance toward the contused sky, as he had every day for weeks.
Valeysa the Harrower was awake. The sight of her above the ships, crowing and infernal, was seared into his mind forever.
He had seen enough paintings to know her. With scales of burnt orange and golden spines, she was a living ember, as bright as if she had just been retched from the Dreadmount.
Now she was back, and at any moment, she could reappear and reduce the Pursuit to cinders. It might, at least, be quicker than whatever gruesome death the pirates would invent for him if he had the misfortune to vex them. He had been on the treasure ship for weeks and had so far managed not to have his tongue cut out or a hand lopped off, but he lived in expectation of it.
His gaze darted to the horizon. Three Seiikinese iron ships had tailed them for days, but just as the Golden Empress had predicted, they had not drawn close enough to engage. Now the Pursuit was moving east again, heading for Kawontay, where the pirates would sell the Lacustrine dragon. Niclays wished he knew what they would do to him.
Rain speckled his eyeglasses. He rubbed at them fruitlessly and hurried after Laya.
The Golden Empress had summoned them both to her cabin, where a stove offset the chill. She stood at the head of the table, wearing a padded coat and a hat of otter fur.
“Sea-Moon,” she said, “do sit down.”
Niclays had scarcely opened his mouth since Valeysa had terrified the wits out of him, but now he found himself blurting out, “You speak Seiikinese, all-honored Captain?”
“Of course I speak fucking Seiikinese.” Her gaze was on the table, where a detailed map of the East was painted. “Did you think me a fool?”
“Well, ah, no. But the presence of your interpreter led me to believe—”
“I have an interpreter so my hostages will think me a fool. Did Yidagé do a poor job?”
“No, no,” Niclays said, aghast. “No, all-honored Golden Empress. She did excellently.”
“So you do think me a fool.”
Lost for words, he shut up. She finally looked up at him.
“Sit.”
He sat. Eyeing him, the Golden Empress took an eating knife from her belt and ran its tip under her inch-long fingernails, each of which was painted black.
“I have spent thirty years on the high seas,” she said. “I have dealt with many manner of people, from fisherfolk to viceroys. I have learned who I need to torture, who I need to kill, and who will tell their secrets, or share their riches, with no bloodshed at all.” She spun the knife in her hand. “Before I was taken hostage by pirates, I owned a brothel in Xothu. I know more about people than they know themselves. I know women. I know men, too, from their minds to their cocks. And I know how to judge them almost on sight.”
Niclays swallowed.
“If we could leave the cocks out of this.” He offered a strained grin. “Old as it is, I am still attached to mine.”
The Golden Empress barked a laugh at that.
“You are funny, Sea-Moon,” she said. “You people from over the Abyss are always laughing. No wonder you have so many jesters in your courts.” Those black eyes bored into him. “I see you. I know what you want, and it has nothing to do with your cock. It has to do with the dragon we took from Ginura.”
Niclays deemed it best to remain silent at this point. An armed madwoman was not to be taken lightly.
“What do you want from it?” she asked. “Saliva, perhaps, to perfume a lover? Brains to cure the bloody flux?”
“Anything.” Niclays cleared his throat. “I am an alchemist, you see, all-honored Golden Empress.”
“An alchemist.”
Her tone was scathing. “Yes,” Niclays said, with great feeling. “A method-master. I studied the art at university.”
“I was under the impression that you had studied anatomy. That was why I gave you a post. Let you live.”
“Oh, yes,” he said hastily. “I am an anatomist—an excellent one, I assure you, a giant of my field—but I also pursued alchemy out of passion for the subject. I have sought the secret of eternal life for many years. Though I have not yet been able to brew an elixir, I believe Eastern dragons could help me. Their bodies age over thousands of years, and if I could only re-create that—”
He stopped dead, awaiting her judgment. She had never taken her gaze off him.
“So,” she said, “you wish to persuade me that your brain is not as soft as your spine. Doubtless it would be simpler for me to cut off the top of your skull and see for myself.”
Niclays dared not answer.
“I think we could strike a bargain, Sea-Moon. Perhaps you are the sort of man who knows how to do business.” The Golden Empress reached into her coat. “You said this item was bequeathed to you by a friend. Tell me more about him.”
She pulled out a familiar scrap of writing. In her gloved hand was the last piece of Jannart.
“I want to know,” she said, “who gave this to you.” When he was silent, she held it toward the stove. “Answer me.”
“The love of my life,” Niclays said, heart pounding. “Jannart, Duke of Zeedeur.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“No. Only that he bequeathed it to me.”
“Why?”
“Would that I knew.”
The Golden Empress narrowed her eyes.
“Please,” Niclays said hoarsely. “That fragment of writing is all I have left of him. All that remains.”
The corner of her mouth lifted. She laid the fragment on the table. The gentleness with which she handled it made Niclays realize she would never have set it on fire.
Fool, he thought. Never show your weakness.
“This writing,” the Golden Empress said, “is part of an Eastern text from long ago. It tells of a source of eternal life. A mulberry tree.” She patted it. “I have been searching for this missing piece for many years. I expected it to contain directions, but it does not yield the location of this tree. All it does is complete the story.”
“Is this not just . . . a legend, all-honored Golden Empress?”
“All legends have truth in them. I should know,” she said. “Some say I ate the heart of a tiger and it sent me mad. Some say I am a water ghost. What is true is that I despise the so-called gods of the East. All rumor that surrounds me stemmed from that.” She tapped a finger on the text. “I doubt the mulberry tree grew from the heart of the world, as the tale claims. What
I do not doubt is that it hides the secret to eternal life. So you see, you will not need to damage a dragon.”
Niclays could not quite take this in. Jannart had inherited the key to alchemy.
The Golden Empress considered him. He noticed for the first time that there were notches down the length of her wooden arm. She beckoned to Laya, who had retrieved a gilded wooden box from under the throne.
“Here is my offer. If you can solve this puzzle and find us the route to the mulberry tree,” the Golden Empress said, “I will let you drink the elixir of life from it yourself. You will share in our spoils.”
Laya brought the box to Niclays and lifted the lid. Inside, nestled in watersilk, lay a thin book. Shining on its wooden cover were the remains of a gold-leaf mulberry tree. Reverently, Niclays took it. It was bound in a Seiikinese style, the leaves stitched into an open spine. Each page was made of silk. Whoever had made it had wanted it to weather many centuries, and so it had.
This was the book Jannart would have dreamed of seeing.
“I have read every possible meaning into each word in Old Seiikinese, yet I have found nothing but a story,” the Golden Empress said. “Perhaps a Mentish mind can see it in a different way. Or perhaps the love of your life sent you some message you have yet to hear. Bring me an answer by sunrise in three days, or you may find I grow tired of my new surgeon. And when I grow tired of things, they are not long for this world.”
Stomach roiling, Niclays ran his thumbs over the book.
“Yes, all-honored Golden Empress,” he murmured.
Laya led him away.
Outside, the air was taut and cold. “Well,” Niclays said heavily, “I suspect this will be one of our last meetings, Laya.”
She frowned. “Are you giving up hope, Niclays?”
“I will not solve this mystery in three days, Laya. Even if I had three hundred, I could not.”
Laya took him by the shoulders, and the force of her grasp stopped him. “This Jannart—the man you loved,” she said, looking him dead in the eye. “Do you think he would want you to give up, or carry on?”
“I don’t want to carry on! Do you not understand? Does nobody in this world understand, damn you? Is no one else haunted?” A quiver of wrath entered his voice. “Everything I did—everything I was—everything I am, is because of him. He was someone before me. I am no one without him. I am tired of living without him at my side. He left me for that book and, by the Saint, I resent him for it. I resent him every minute of every day.” His voice cracked. “You Lasians believe in an afterlife, don’t you?”
Laya studied him.
“Some of us, yes. The Orchard of Divinities,” she said. “He may be waiting for you there, or at the Great Table of the Saint. Or perhaps he is nowhere at all. Whatever has become of him, you are still here. And you are here for a reason.” She held a callused palm to his cheek. “You have a ghost, Niclays. Do not become a ghost yourself.”
How many years had it been since anyone had touched his face, or looked at him with sympathy?
“Goodnight,” he said. “And thank you, Laya.”
He left her.
On his stretch of floor, he lay on his side and pressed one fist over his mouth. He had fled from Mentendon. He had fled from the West. No matter how far he ran, his ghost still followed him.
It was too late. He was mad with grief. He had been mad for years. He had lost his mind the night he had found Jannart dead at the Sun in Splendor, the inn that had been their love nest.
It had been a week since Jannart was supposed to return from his journey, but no one had seen him. Unable to find him at court, and with word from Aleidine that he was not in Zeedeur, Niclays had gone to the only other place he could be.
The smell of vinegar had hit him first. A physician in a plague mask had been outside the room, painting red wings on the door. And when Niclays had shoved past her, into their room, there was Jannart, lying as if asleep, his red hands folded on his chest.
Jannart had lied to everyone. The library where he had hoped to find answers was not in Wilgastrōm, but in Gulthaga, the city razed in the eruption of the Dreadmount. Doubtless he had thought the ruins would be safe, but he must have known there was a risk. Deceived his family and the man he loved. All so he could stitch a single hole in history.
A wyvern had been sleeping in the long-dead halls of Gulthaga. One bite had been all it took.
There was no cure. Jannart had known that, and had wanted to leave before his blood started to burn and his soul was scorched away. And so he had gone to the shadow market in disguise and procured a poison named eternity dust. It gave a quiet death.
Niclays trembled. He could still see the scene now, detailed as a painting. Jannart in the bed, their bed. In one hand, the locket Niclays had given him the morning after their first kiss, with the fragment inside. In the other, an empty vial.
It had taken the physician, the innkeeper, and four others to hold Niclays back. He could still hear his own howls of denial, taste the tears, smell the sweetness of the poison.
You fool, he had screamed. You fucking selfish fool. I waited for you. I waited thirty years . . .
Did lovers ever reach the Milk Lagoon, or did they only dream of it?
He gripped his head between his hands. With Jannart’s death, he had lost one half of himself. The part of him worth living for. He closed his eyes, head aching, chest heaving—and when he fell into a fitful doze, he dreamed of the room at the top of Brygstad Palace.
There is a hidden message in it, Clay.
He tasted black wine on his tongue.
Intuition tells me that it is a vital piece of history.
He felt the heat of the fire on his skin. He saw the stars, richly painted in their constellations, as real as if their love nest opened out on to the sky.
Something about the characters sits oddly with me. Some are larger, others smaller, and they are spaced in a strange manner.
His eyes snapped open.
“Jan,” he breathed. “Oh, Jan. Your golden fox still has his cunning.”
41
South
Ead lay in her eyrie, glossed with sweat. Her blood ran hot and swift.
This had happened before. The fever. A fog had been around her for eight years, dampening her senses, and now the sun had burned it away. Each breath of wind was like a broad stroke of a finger on her skin.
The sound of the waterfall was crystal-clear. She could hear the calls of honeyguides and sunbirds and mimics in the forest. She could smell ichneumons and white orchids and the perfume of the orange tree.
She missed Sabran. With her skin this tender, the memory of her was torture. She slid a hand between her legs and imagined a cool touch on her body, silken lips, the sweetness of wine. Her hips reared once before she sank into the bed.
After, she lay quiet, burning.
It must be close to dawn by now. Another day that Sabran was alone in Inys, circled by wolves. Margret would only be able to do so much to keep her safe. She was quick-witted, but no warrior.
There had to be a way to convince the Prioress to defend the Inysh throne.
The servants had left a platter of fruit and a knife on her nightstand. For a time, she would burn through enough food for three grown men. She took a pomegranate from the platter.
As she cut away the flower, her hand slipped, made clumsy by her fever. The blade sheared the other wrist, and blood brimmed from the wound. A droplet leaked down to her elbow.
Ead looked at it for a long time, thinking. Then she shrugged on a robe and lit an oil lamp with a snap of her fingers.
An idea was taking form.
The halls were quiet tonight. On her way to the dining chamber, she stopped suddenly next to one of the doors.
She remembered running through these passageways with Jondu, carrying a squeaking Aralaq. How she had feared this corridor, knowing it was where her birthmother had drawn her final breath.
Zāla du Agriya uq-Nāra, who had been th
e munguna before Mita Yedanya. Behind this door was the room she had died in.
There were many legendary sisters in the Priory, but Zāla had made a habit of being legendary. At nineteen, in the second month of her pregnancy, she had answered a call from the young Sahar Taumargam, the future Queen of Yscalin, who was then a princess of the Ersyr. A Nuram tribe had inadvertently woken a pair of wyverns in the Little Mountains. Zāla had found not two, but six of the creatures harrowing the nomads and, against the odds, she had slain them single-handed. Then she had dusted herself off and ridden all the way to the market in Zirin to satisfy her craving for rose candy.
Ead had been born half a year later, too early. You were small enough to cradle in one hand, Chassar had once told her, chuckling, but your cry could have brought down mountains, beloved. Sisters were not supposed to involve themselves too deeply with their children, for the Priory was one family, but Zāla had often slipped Ead honey pastries and cuddled her close when nobody was looking.
My Ead, she had whispered, and breathed in the baby scent of her head. My evening star. If the sun burned out tomorrow, your flame would light the world.
The memory made Ead ache to be held. She had been six when Zāla had died in her bed.
She placed a hand on the door and walked on. May your flame ascend to light the tree.
The dining chamber was dark and silent. Only Sarsun was there, his head tucked against his chest. When she set foot on the floor, he woke sharply.
“Shh.”
Sarsun ruffled his feathers.
Ead placed the oil lamp beside his perch. As if he sensed her intention, he hopped down to scrutinize the riddlebox. Ead took hold of the knife. When she lifted the blade to her skin, Sarsun let out a small hoot. She sliced across her palm, deep enough for blood to flow generously, and placed her hand on the lid of the box.
it closed in clouds of salt and steam—it opens with a golden knife.
“Siyāti uq-Nāra once said that mage blood was golden, you see,” she said to Sarsun. “To possess a golden knife, I must draw blood with it.”
The Priory of the Orange Tree Page 44
