The Priory of the Orange Tree

by Samantha Shannon

  It happened so quickly. One moment, all was silent, save the rain.

  Then, madness.

  The first thing she thought was that the sun had risen, such was the light that ignited in the north. Then came a heat that sucked the breath from her. Fire exploded across the Seiikinese warship Chrysanthemum, moments before a second eruption tore through the fleet of the Northern king, and a full-throated roar announced the arrival of the enemy.

  When the black High Western appeared, the downwind from its flight extinguished every lantern on every ship. “Fýredel,” someone bellowed.

  Tané choked on the hot stench from his scales. Screams rang out. In the light from the fire, she saw Loth rushing Queen Sabran to her Knights of the Body and the Imperial Guard encircling the Unceasing Emperor before a shoulder slammed into her chest, knocking her flat.

  A war conch sounded in the darkness. The riders disappeared with their dragons into the sea. Even as chaos sparked around her, Tané ached to be among them.

  The black High Western circled the fleet. Its servants came tearing above the ships. They tangled with the Eastern dragons. Wings, endless wings, flocking like bats. Tails whipped lightning across the sky.

  A wyvern flew straight at the mainmast of the Reconciliation. It groaned and buckled, bringing down the highest sail. An agonized cry went up from the deck.

  The sails of the iron-armored Chrysanthemum were engulfed in flame. Tané ran with the crowd, pistol in hand. The force of the power inside her—her siden—throbbed in her blood like a second heartbeat.

  A fire-breather landed in front of her. Bigger than a stallion. Two legs. A scarlet tongue rattled in its mouth.

  Wyvern.

  All her life she had prepared for this. It was what she had been born to do.

  Tané took out the rising jewel. White light flared out of it, and the wyvern screamed in rage, shielding itself from the glow with its wing. She drove it back, away from the archers.

  Another wyvern crashed down behind her, shaking the deck, eyes like live coals in its head. Caught between them, Tané stuffed the jewel back into its case with one hand and drew her Inysh sword from its scabbard with the other. The weight of it unbalanced her, and the first swing went wide, but the second found its mark. Red-hot blood spurted as the blade hewed through scale and flesh and bone. The wyvern struck the deck, headless, its body still thrashing.

  And just for a moment, she saw Susa in that pool of blood, a head of dark hair rolling into a ditch, and she could not move an inch. The first wyvern vomited flame at her back.

  She twisted just in time. Of its own accord, her hand flew up, and golden light discharged from her palms. The Draconic fire glanced off her, burning up the shoulder of her shirt and making her cry out as blisters formed, but the rest of the flames petered into the fog.

  The wyvern cocked its head, pupils slitted, before it let out a hideous snarl and erupted with more blue-tinged fire. Tané backed away, sword at the ready. She needed a Seiikinese blade. No one could move like water with this dead weight in their hands.

  Her enemy spat its fire in bursts. Rain hammered its hide. When it was close enough, Tané ducked a bite from its rotting teeth and slashed at its legs. Her next move was too slow—a burly tail snapped across her midriff, its spines just missing her. She went flying across the deck.

  The sword clattered out of her hand just before she hit one of the masts and thumped down again, bashing her head. The shock of the impact held her in place. At least one of her ribs was cracked. Her back felt shredded. As the wyvern stalked toward her, nostrils smoking, a Seiikinese soldier thrust his blade into its flank. In the first moment of its rage, he circled the wyvern and aimed for its eye. It clapped its jaws over his leg and slammed him into the deck, over and over, back and forth, as if he were a scrap of meat. Tané heard his bones shatter, his screams bubbling away. The beast hurled what was left over the side.

  A charred soldier lay nearby, clad in blue and silver armor. Tané took up a shield emblazoned with the heraldry of the Kingdom of Hróth and hefted it on to her left arm, clenching her jaw against the pain in her ribs. With her other hand, she lifted her bloody sword.

  The heat from the fires drew sweat to the surface. The sword was slippery in her hand.

  She was no longer aware of the other fire-breathers that flocked above the ships, tearing at sails and breathing great clouds of fire, or the soldiers battling around her. All she knew was the wyvern, and all the wyvern knew was her.

  When it lunged for her, she rolled away from its bite and hurdled the tail that whipped toward her knees. Its lack of front limbs made it too cumbersome to fight at close quarters with something as small and quick as a human. This fiend had been bred for swooping and snatching. Like a bird of prey. As it pursued her, her sword gouged the wound the soldier had left. Her shield blocked a flame. The wyvern wrenched it out of her grip. She thrust the sword up, crunching through the underside of its jaw and deep into the roof of its mouth, and the fire in its eyes was extinguished. She backed away from the corpse.

  The siden replenished her before exhaustion could set in. Nothing could touch her. Not even death. As the black High Western smashed down the mast of the Water Mother, Tané snatched up a fallen spear.

  Her eyes ached. She could see the fire-breathers as if they were motes of dust in a sunray. With one swing of her arm, the spear flew at a bird-headed monster and impaled its wing, pinning it to its body. Flapping wildly with the other, it plummeted into the waves.

  The Reconciliation had pulled away from the Dancing Pearl. So had the Defiance and the Chrysanthemum. Their cannons were slanting upward. She heard the crump of a swivel gun before the Reconciliation released everything it had. Chainshot swiveled skyward and snagged on wings and tails. A deafening whump-whump began as the cannons fired. Crossbow bolts shivered from the Lacustrine ships, splinters of bronze catching the firelight. She could hear captains bellowing orders and pistols discharging from the decks of the Defiance and the twang of bowstrings across the fleet.

  The clamor was too much. Her head was spinning. She was drunk on siden, seeing the whole battle like a vision.

  A weapon. She needed another weapon. If she could reach the Defiance, she could find something. One step took her onto the gunwale, and she dived into the sea.

  The quiet beneath the water cooled the fire within. She surfaced and swam hard for the Defiance. Nearby, one of the Ersyri ships had been overcome by flame, and it shed its crew from every side.

  There would be black powder on that ship. Lots of it. She took a huge breath and swam downward.

  When the ship exploded, she felt the flash of heat through the water. Foul orange light stained the Abyss. The force of it took hold of her and spun her off-course. She kicked back, blinded by her own hair. As she neared the Defiance, she surfaced.

  Black smoke swelled from the flaming carcass of the ship. For a moment, Tané could only stare at the destruction.

  The black High Western settled on the ruins as though they were a throne. Flesh-fed and banded with muscle, it was a grotesque size. The spikes on its tail were each ten feet long.

  Fýredel.

  “Sabran Berethnet.” His voice bled with hatred. “My master comes for you at last. Where is the child that will keep him at bay?”

  As he mocked the Queen of Inys, a Seiikinese elder dragon, glowing all over, shattered the surface of the Abyss. One great leap took him high over the Dancing Pearl to catch a wyvern in his mouth. Lightning flashed between his teeth. His eyes shone blue-white. Tané saw the wyvern erupt into white flame before the dragon plunged back into the sea, taking his trophy with him. Fýredel watched the display with bared teeth.

  “Dranghien Lakseng.” The name boomed across the water. “Will you not show your face?”

  Tané kept swimming. The cannons of the Defiance seemed as loud as the thunder. She found the handholds and climbed.

  “Behold the Roar of Hróth, who hides in the snow,” Fýredel sneered, exp
osing his teeth again. Cannons barked from the Bear Guard in answer. “Behold the Warlord of Seiiki, who preaches unity between human and sea-slug. We will throw down your guardians and scatter them like sheep, as we did centuries ago. We will leave black sand from shore to shore.”

  Tané reached the deck of the Defiance. Seiikinese soldiers wielded longbows and pistols. An arrow skittered off a wyvern. She pulled a sword from the hand of a dead woman. Somewhere in the night, a dragon was keening.

  “Gone are the days of heroes,” Fýredel said. “From North to South and West to East, your world will burn.”

  Tané took the rising jewel from its case. If Kalyba was close, she would be drawn to its power.

  Sterren punched through the waves like a needle through silk and drew them like a shroud over Fýredel. He launched himself skyward with a snarl, droplets raining off his wings, scales billowing steam.

  “Black sails, west sou’west!” came a shout.

  In the distance, through the haze of smoke, Tané could see them.

  “Yscali ensign,” the captain of the Reconciliation bellowed. “The Draconic Navy!”

  Tané counted them. Twenty ships.

  Another wyvern swooped, and she rolled behind a mast. A full line of archers fell to its tail. A soldier hurled his halberd at the creature, straight into its haunch.

  An archer was slumped over the gunwale, bones shattered. Tané shoved the jewel away and took his bow and quiver. Four arrows left.

  “Fire-breather,” the lookout above her roared. “Port, port!”

  The remaining archers turned and drew while matchlocks were reloaded. Tané nocked an arrow of her own.

  A second High Western, pale as a crane, came out of the night. Tané watched the wings fold inward, the scales change seamlessly to skin, the green eyes gain their whites, and black hair flow where horns had been. By the time it landed on the Defiance, the wyrm had become the same woman Tané had seen in Lasia. Red lips closed over the last flicker of a forked tongue.

  “Child,” Kalyba said in Inysh, “give me that jewel.”

  Something in Tané urged her to obey.

  “It is not a weapon. It is the imbalance.” The witch stalked toward her. “Give it to me.”

  Shaken, Tané pulled back her bowstring and forced herself not to look at what Kalyba held. The blade was the bright, pure silver of a star.

  Ascalon.

  “A bow. Oh, dear. Eadaz should have warned you that you cannot kill a witch with a splinter of wood. Or fire.” Kalyba kept striding toward her, naked, eyes wild. “I should have expected this defiance from the seed of Neporo.”

  With every step Kalyba took across the deck, Tané took one away from her. Soon she would run out of ship. The bow was useless—her enemy could shape-shift away from an arrow in a heartbeat, and it was clear the sword could transfigure with her. When it was in her hand, it was like another limb.

  “I wonder,” Kalyba said, “if you could best me in combat. After all, you are Firstblood.” Her mouth curved. “Come, blood of the mulberry tree. Let us see who is the greater witch.”

  Tané set down her bow. Planting her feet apart, she let her siden rise like the sun into her hands.

  71

  Abyss

  On the Reconciliation, Loth stood guard beside his queen in the shadow beneath the quarterdeck, surrounded by twelve of the Knights of the Body.

  One of the topsails was afire. Bodies strewed the decks. Cannons hawked barshot and chainshot, cut with cries of Fire from the boatswain, while siege engines from Perchling hurled grappling hooks that tangled around legs and wings.

  It was all the gunners could do to avoid the Eastern dragons. Though some of them were in flight, strangling the fiery breeds the way snakes crushed their quarry, others had adopted a different way to kill. They would dive beneath the waves, then swim up with all their might and breach. One clap of their jaws, and they would drag their prey back to the deep.

  Water streamed from their scales as they soared over the Reconciliation. Fires sputtered out beneath them.

  Sabran kept one hand on the Sword of Virtudom. They watched the pale wyrm transform into a woman and land on the Defiance.

  Kalyba.

  The Witch of Inysca.

  “Ead will go to her,” Sabran shouted to him over the clangor. “Someone must distract the witch so she can strike.”

  The Draconic Navy was drawing closer by the moment. A square-rigger with red sails bore down on the Reconciliation.

  “Hard to port,” the captain bawled. “Gun crew, belay last order. Fire on that ship!”

  A terrible shriek of wood and metal. The ship rammed straight into the nearby Merrow Queen.

  “All right,” Loth called to Sabran. “To the Defiance.”

  The Knights of the Body were already moving. Keeping Sabran between them, they struck out across the deck. As they ran, they shed their heaviest armor. Breastplates, greaves, and pauldrons clattered in their wake. Cannons ripped into the enemy ship.

  “Swords!” The captain drew his cutlass. “Get Her Majesty to the boat!”

  “There’s no time,” Loth shouted.

  The captain gritted his teeth. His hair clung to his face. “Take her, then, Lord Arteloth, and don’t look back,” he replied. “Hurry!”

  Sabran climbed over the side of the ship. Loth joined her, and she took his hand.

  The waves swallowed them all.

  Tané hurled fire at Kalyba across the Defiance. Flames danced along the deck, catching in pools of Draconic blood. When the witch countered the attack with lurid red fire of her own, so hot it roasted the moisture from the air, Tané gripped the rising jewel. Seawater crashed onto the ship, which pitched beneath them, and the fires were smothered.

  Every soldier and archer had fled from the duel. The ship was their battleground.

  Kalyba moved lithely from bird to woman, quick as lightning. Tané screamed in frustration as a beak ripped her cheek open and a talon almost took out her eye. Each time the witch changed, Ascalon changed with her. When she was in her human guise, she swung with the sword, and when Tané parried, and their blades locked, the rising jewel sang in answer.

  “I hear it,” Kalyba breathed. “Give it to me.”

  Tané slammed her forehead into hers and struck with a concealed knife, catching the witch across the cheek. Kalyba reeled, eyes flared wide, red lacing her face. Then antlers erupted from her skull, and she was a bleeding white stag, ghastly and massive, and the sword was gone again.

  Tané used the jewel to throw back a cockatrice. The siden sharpened her senses, made her limbs move quicker than she would have thought possible as the stag thundered across the deck. She saw that one of the antlers was tipped with silver, and as it lowered its head to skewer her, she brought her sword up, severing it.

  Kalyba collided with the deck in human form. Blood jeweled from her shoulder, where a chunk of flesh had been hacked away, and Ascalon lay beside her, glazed with ruby. Tané lunged for it, but the witch already had fire in her hands.

  Tané threw herself behind the mainmast. Red fire blazed off her thigh, so hot—like molten iron on her flesh—that it made her cry out. Eyes full of brine, she crushed the pain and struck out across the deck. She was almost at the stern when she stopped in her tracks.

  Queen Sabran was on the Defiance. Loth stood beside her, broadsword drawn, and twelve bodyguards fanned out around them. All of them were dripping wet.

  “Sabran,” Kalyba breathed.

  The queen gazed at her forebear. Their faces were identical.

  “Your Majesty,” one of the guards stammered. All of them were looking between their queen and her double. “This is sorcery.”

  “Stand back,” Sabran said to her guards.

  “Yes, do, gallant knight. Do as my offspring decrees.” Kalyba curled her fingers around the flame in her palm. “Do you not see that I am your Damsel, foremother of Inys?”

  The knights did not move. Neither did the queen. Her left hand s
trangled the hilt of her sword.

  “You are an imitation of me,” Kalyba said to her, venomous. “Just as your sword is a cheap imitation of this one.”

  She held up Ascalon. Sabran flinched.

  “I did not want to believe Ead,” she replied, “but I see that my affinity with you cannot be denied.” She stepped toward Kalyba. “You took my child from me, Witch of Inysca. Tell me, after you went to so much trouble to found the House of Berethnet, why would you destroy it?”

  Kalyba closed her first, and the flame was snuffed.

  “One shortcoming of immortality,” she said, “is that everything you build seems too small, too transient. A painting, a song, a book—all of them rot away. But a masterwork, made over many years, many centuries . . . I cannot tell you the fulfilment it brings. To see your actions, in your lifetime, made into a legacy.” She lifted up Ascalon. “Galian lusted after Cleolind Onjenyu the moment he laid eyes on her. Though I had nursed him at my breast, though I gave him the sword that was the sum of all my achievements, and though I was beautiful, he wanted her above all things. Above me.”

  “So it was unrequited love,” Sabran said. “Or was it jealousy?”

  “A little of both, I suppose. I was younger then. Caged by a tender heart.”

  Tané saw a flicker in the shadows.

  Sabran moved a little to the left. Kalyba circled with her. Here, on this stretch of the ship, it was as if they were in the eye of the storm. No wyrms breathed fire near the witch.

  “I watched Inys grow into a great nation. At first, that was enough,” Kalyba confessed. “To see my daughters thrive.”

  “You still could,” Sabran told her softly. “I have no mother now, Kalyba. I would welcome another.”

  Kalyba paused. Just for a moment, her face looked as naked as the rest of her.

  “No, my lykyn,” she said, just as softly. “I mean to be a queen, as I once was. I will sit on the throne you can no longer hold.” She walked toward Sabran. The Knights of the Body pointed their swords at her. “I watched my daughters rule a country for a thousand years. I watched you preach against the Nameless One. What you failed to see is that the only way forward is to join with him.