If she returned to Inys, she would be anathema to the Priory. Her name unsaid, her life forfeit.
If she did not return to Inys, she would be abandoning all of Virtudom. That seemed to Ead to be a betrayal of all she knew to be right, and all the Priory represented. She was loyal to the Mother, not to Mita Yedanya.
She had to follow the flame in her heart. The flame the tree had given her.
The realization of what she had to do carved pieces from her soul. She tasted salt on her lips. Tears ran down to her chin and fell in fat drops.
This place was where she had been born. It was where she belonged. All she had ever wanted, all her life, was a red cloak. The cloak she would have to leave behind.
She would continue the work of the Mother. In Inys, she could end what Jondu had started.
Ascalon. Without the sword, there was no chance of defeating the Nameless One. The Red Damsels had searched for it. Kalyba had searched for it. To no avail.
None of them had possessed the waning jewel.
Both forms of magic are drawn to themselves most of all, but also to the other.
The jewel had to be sterren. Ascalon might answer to it, and it, in turn, would answer only to her.
Ead gazed out at the tree, throat aching. She sank to her knees, and she prayed that this was the right decision.
Aralaq found her there in the morning, when the sun burned in the pearl-blue sky.
“Eadaz.”
She turned her head to look at him, raw and sleepless. His tongue sanded her cheek. “My friend,” she said, “I need your help.” She took his face between her hands. “Do you remember how I fed you, when you were a pup? How I cared for you?”
His amber eyes seemed to catch the sunlight.
“Yes,” he said.
Of course he remembered. Ichneumons did not forget the first hand to feed them.
“There is a man here, among the Sons of Siyāti. His name is Arteloth.”
“Yes. I brought him here.”
“You were right to save him.” She swallowed the thickness in her throat. “I need you to get him out of the Priory, to the mouth of the cave in the forest, after sundown.”
He studied her. “You are leaving.”
“I must.”
His slit nostrils flared. “They will follow.”
“Which is why I need your help.” She stroked his ears. “You must discover where the Prioress keeps the white jewel from my chamber.”
“You are a fool.” He nudged her brow with his nose. “Without the tree, you will wither. All sisters do.”
“Then wither I will. Better to do that than to do nothing.”
A huff escaped him. “Mita has the jewel on her person,” he rumbled. “She smells of it. Of the sea.”
Ead closed her eyes.
“I will find a way,” she said.
45
East
The beaches of Feather Island were overrun by seawater. Tané had spent hours with Elder Vara while the island shivered, making it impossible to read.
Elder Vara had managed, of course. The world could end and he would find a way to keep on reading.
After the waters, a terrible hush had fallen. Every bird in the forest had lost its voice. That was when the scholars began to examine the damage wrought by the quake. Most of their number were unscathed, but two men had been tossed from the cliffs. The sea had not returned their bodies—but another body had washed up a day later.
The body of a dragon.
Tané had gone with Elder Vara at sunset to look upon the lifeless god. The steps were hard on his iron leg, and it had taken them a long time to reach the beach, but he had been resolved to go, and Tané had not left his side.
They had found a young Seiikinese dragon twisted across the sand, her jaw slack in death. Birds had already pecked the gleam from her scales, and mist clung to her bones. Tané had shuddered at the sight, and eventually, when she could bear it no more, she had turned away in grief.
She had never seen the carcass of a dragon. It was the most terrible thing she had ever beheld. They had thought at first that the little female had been butchered in Kawontay, and the remains abandoned to the sea—Tané had thought of Nayimathun and sickened—but the body had been whole, with all its scales and teeth and claws.
Gods could not drown. They were one with water. Finally, the elders had concluded that this dragon had been boiled.
Boiled alive by the sea itself.
Nothing was more unnatural. No omen could be more sinister.
Even if all the scholars had combined their strength, they would not have been able to move the dragon. She would be left to thaw out of existence. Eventually, all that remained would be iridescent bone.
The surgeon arrived while Tané was sweeping leaves with three other scholars, who worked in silence. Some shook with tears. The dead dragon had left everyone in a state of shock.
“Scholar Tané,” Elder Vara called.
She walked behind him like a shadow, into the corridors.
“The surgeon has come at last. I thought she might examine your side,” he said. “The learnèd Doctor Moyaka is a practitioner of Seiikinese and Mentish medicine.”
Tané stopped dead.
Moyaka. She knew that name.
Elder Vara turned to face her with a cockled brow. “Scholar Tané, you look distressed.”
“I don’t want to see this doctor. Please, learnèd Elder Vara. Doctor Moyaka has—” She felt sick. “He knows someone who threatened me. Who threatened my dragon.”
She could see Roos again, on the beach. His callous smile as he told her she must mutilate her dragon or lose everything. Moyaka had let that monster stay in his house.
“I know your last days in Seiiki were unhappy, Tané.” Elder Vara spoke gently. “I also know how hard it is to let go of the past. But on Feather Island, you must let go.”
Tané stared at his lined face. “What do you know?” she whispered.
“Everything.”
“Who else knows?”
“Only myself and the honored High Elder.”
His words made her feel as if she had been stripped naked. Deep down, she had hoped the Governor of Ginura would tell no one why she had been sent away from Seiiki.
“If you are certain you do not want to see learnèd Doctor Moyaka,” Elder Vara said, “say it once more, and I will take you to your room.”
She had no desire whatsoever to see Doctor Moyaka, but she also had no wish to embarrass Elder Vara by acting like a child.
“I will see him,” she said.
“Her,” Elder Vara corrected.
A stout Seiikinese woman awaited them in the healing room, where a water fountain burbled. Tané had never seen her before, but she was plainly a relative of the Doctor Moyaka she had met in Ginura.
“Good day, honorable scholar.” The woman bowed. “I understand you have an injury to your side.”
“An old one,” Elder Vara explained, when Tané only bowed in return. “It is a swelling she has had since childhood.”
“I see.” The learnèd Moyaka patted the mats, where a blanket and a headrest had been placed. “Open your tunic, please, honorable scholar, and lie down.”
Tané did as instructed.
“Tell me, Purumé,” Elder Vara said to the doctor, “have there been any more attacks in Seiiki by the Fleet of the Tiger Eye?”
“Not since the night they came to Ginura, to my knowledge,” Moyaka replied heavily. “But they will soon return. The Golden Empress is emboldened.”
It took Tané all her willpower not to shrink from her touch. The lump was still tender.
“Ah, here it is.” Moyaka traced the shape of the lump. “How many years have you taken, honorable scholar?”
“Twenty,” Tané said softly.
“And you have had this all your life?”
“Since I was a child. My learnèd teacher said my rib was broken once.”
“Does it ever hurt?”
&nbs
p; “Sometimes.”
“Hm.” Moyaka probed it with two fingertips. “From the feel of it, it is most likely a bone spur—nothing to be concerned about—but I would like to make a small incision. Just to be sure.” She opened a leather case. “Will you need something for the pain?”
The old Tané would have refused, but all she had wanted since arriving here was to feel nothing. To forget herself.
One of the younger scholars brought ice from the caves, wrapped in wool to keep it cold. Moyaka prepared the drug, and Tané drank it in through a pipe. The smoke rubbed her throat raw. When it reached her chest, it blew a dark, sweet comfort through her blood, and her body was half feather and half stone, sinking as her thoughts grew light.
The weight of her shame evaporated. For the first time in weeks, she breathed easy.
Moyaka held the ice to her side. Once Tané could no longer feel much there, the doctor selected an instrument, washed it in boiled water, and glided its edge beneath the lump.
A far-off pain registered. The shadow of pain. Tané pressed her palms to the floor.
“Are you well, child?” Elder Vara asked.
There were three of him. Tané nodded, and the world seemed to nod with her. Moyaka peeled the incision open.
“This is—” She blinked. “Strange. Very strange.”
Tané tried to raise her head, but her neck was weak as a blade of grass. Elder Vara placed a hand on her shoulder. “What is it, Purumé?”
“I can’t be sure until I remove it,” was the puzzled reply, “but . . . well, it almost looks like a—”
Her finding was cut off by a shattering crash from outside.
“Another earthshake,” Elder Vara said. His voice sounded so far away.
“That did not feel like an earthshake.” Moyaka stiffened. “Great Kwiriki save us—”
A glow burst through the window. The floor trembled, and someone shouted fire. Moments later, the same voice let out a spine-chilling scream before it cut off sharply.
“Fire-breathers.” Elder Vara was already on his feet. “Tané, quickly. We must take shelter in the ravine.”
Fire-breathers. But no fire-breathers had been seen in the East for centuries . . .
He pulled her arm around his bony shoulders and lifted her from the mats. Tané swayed. Her mind was spindrift, but she had kept enough sense to move. Shoeless and numbed, she went with Elder Vara and Doctor Moyaka through the corridors and into the dining hall, where he slid open the door to the courtyard. Other scholars were making for the forest.
The smells of rain and fire mingled around her. Elder Vara pointed to the bridge.
“Go across. There is a cave on the other side—wait for me inside it, and we will climb down together,” Elder Vara said. “Doctor Moyaka and I must see that no one has been left behind.” He gave her a push. “Go, Tané. Hurry!”
“And keep pressure on the wound,” Doctor Moyaka called after her.
Everything moved as if through water. Tané broke into a loose-footed run, but it felt like she was wading.
The bridge was within sight of Vane Hall. She was closing on it when a shadow winged above her. Heat flared against her back. She tried to go faster, but exhaustion made her blunder and, with every step, the incision wept more blood. Pain beat at the padded armor the drug had wrapped around her.
The bridge crossed the ravine near the Falls of Kwiriki. An elder was already shepherding a cluster of scholars over it. Tané stumbled after them, one hand pressed to her side.
Beneath the bridge was a fatal drop to the Path of the Elder. Treetops rose from a bowl of fog.
Another shadow fell from above. She tried to shout a warning to the other scholars, but her tongue was a wad of cloth in her mouth. A fireball slammed into the roof of the bridge. Seconds later, a spiked tail turned it to an explosion of splinters. Wood groaned and split underfoot. Tané almost fell as she stopped herself running on to it. Powerless, she watched as the structure trembled, a gaping hole ripped through its middle. A third fire-breather smashed one of the pillars that anchored it. Faceless silhouettes cried out as they slid off the edge and plummeted.
Flame ripped through flesh and timber alike. Another section of the bridge crumbled away, like a log that had been ablaze for too long. Wind howled in the wake of wings.
There was no choice. She would have to jump. Tané ran onto the bridge, eyes stinging in the smoke, as the fire-breathers wheeled for a second attack.
Before she could reach the gap, her knees folded. She rolled to break her fall, and her skin ripped open like wet paper. Sobbing in agony, she reached for her side—and the lump, the thing she had carried for years, slipped from the burst seam in her body. Shuddering, she looked at it.
A jewel. Slick with her blood, and no larger than a chestnut. A star imprisoned in a stone.
There was no time to be bewildered. More fire-breathers were flocking. Weak with pain, Tané closed her hand around the jewel. As she struggled across the bridge, dizzier by the moment, something crashed through the roof and landed in front of her.
She found herself face to face with a nightmare.
It looked and smelled like the remnant of a volcanic eruption. Burning coals where there ought to be eyes. Scales as black as cinder. Steam hissed where rain stippled its hide. Two muscular legs took most of its weight, and the joints of its wings ended in cruel hooks—and those wings. The wings of a bat. A lizard tail whipped behind. Even with its head lowered, it towered over her, teeth bared and bloodstained.
Tané shivered under its gaze. She had no sword or halberd. Not even a dagger to put out its eye. Once she might have prayed, but no god would hearken to a rider in disgrace.
The fire-breather screamed a challenge. Light scorched in its throat, and Tané came to the detached realization that she was about to die. Elder Vara would find her smoking ruins, and that would be the end of it.
She did not fear death. Dragonriders put themselves in mortal danger every day, and since she was a child, she had known the risks she would face when she joined Clan Miduchi. An hour ago, she might even have embraced this end. Better than the spun-out rot of shame.
Yet when instinct told her to hold out the jewel—to fight to the last with whatever she had—she obeyed.
It burned white-cold against her palm as she thrust it at the beast. Blinding light erupted from inside it.
She held a moonrise in her hand.
With a scream, the fire-breather recoiled from the glare. Throwing up its wing to shield its face, it let out a rasping call, over and over, like a crow greeting the dusk.
The sky came alive with echoing answers.
She stepped closer, still holding out the jewel. With a final look of hatred, the fire-breather roared once more, whipping her hair back from her face, and flung itself skyward. As it veered toward the sea, its kin swerved after it and disappeared into the night.
The other side of the bridge crumbled into the ravine, throwing up a cloud of cinders. Her eyes filled. Weak with pain, she crawled back toward Vane Hall. One half of her tunic was red through.
She buried the jewel in the soil of the courtyard. Whatever it was, she had to keep it hidden. As she had all her life.
The roof of the healing room was staved in. She searched the wet mats for Moyaka’s case and found it upturned in the corner. Close to the bottom was a coil of gut-string and a bent needle.
The drugging pipe had been shattered. When she lifted her hand from the wound, blood pulsed out.
With clumsy fingers, she threaded the needle. She cleaned the cut as best she could, but dirt clung to its edges. Touching it made darkness blotch her vision. Head spinning, mouth dry, she groped in the case of oddities again and found an amber bottle.
The worst was yet to come. She had to stay awake, just for a little longer. Nayimathun and Susa had suffered because of her. Now it was her turn.
The needle pierced her skin.
46
South
The kitchens were
behind the waterfall, just below the sunrooms. As a child, Ead had loved to sneak in with Jondu and purloin rose candies from Tulgus, the head cook.
The scullery was sun-dappled and always smelled of spices. The servants were preparing jeweled rice, scallions, and chicken in a lime marinade for the evening meal.
She found Loth arranging a platter of fruit with Tulgus. His eyelids looked heavy.
Dreamroot. They must be trying to make him forget.
“Good afternoon, sister,” said the white-haired cook.
Ead smiled, trying not to look at Loth. “Do you remember me, Tulgus?”
“I do, sister.” He returned the smile. “I certainly remember how much of my food you stole.”
His eyes were the pale yellow of groundnut oil. Perhaps he was the one who had gifted Nairuj her eyes.
“I have grown up since then. Now I ask for it.” Ead lowered her voice and leaned closer. “Nairuj said you might let me taste a little of the Prioress’s sun wine.”
“Hm.” Tulgus wiped his liver-spotted hands on a cloth. “A small glass. Call it a homecoming gift from the Sons of Siyāti. I will have it brought to your chamber.”
“Thank you.”
Loth was looking at her as if at a stranger. It took Ead all her strength not to meet his gaze.
As she walked back toward the doorway, she spied the urns where herbs and spices were stored. Seeing that Tulgus was preoccupied, Ead found the jar she needed, took a generous pinch of the powder inside, and dropped it into a pouch.
She snatched a honey pastry from a platter before she left. It would be a long time before she tasted another.
For the rest of the day, she did as any good Red Damsel would when she was about to be sent on a long journey. She practiced her archery under the watchful eyes of the Silver Damsels. Each of her arrows found its mark. Between draws, Ead made certain to look calm, unhurried about nocking her arrows. One bead of sweat could give her away.
When she reached her sunroom, she found it empty of her saddlebags and weapons. Aralaq must have taken them.
A cold feeling came over her. This was it.
The Priory of the Orange Tree Page 49
