News of the royal progress to Ascalon spread across Inys, from the Bay of the Balefire to the misty cliff-lined reaches of the Fells. After fourteen long years, Queen Sabran would show herself to the people of the capital, and the capital prepared to welcome her. Before Ead knew it, the day was upon them.
As she dressed, she concealed her blades. Two went beneath her skirts, another she tucked behind her stomacher, a fourth into one of her boots. The ornamental dagger carried by all Ladies of the Bedchamber was the only one she could display.
At five of the clock, she joined Katryen in the royal apartments and went with her to rouse Sabran and Roslain.
For her first public appearance since her coronation, the ladies-in-waiting had to make the queen more than beautiful. They had to make her divine. She was arrayed in midnight velvet, a girdle of carnelians, and a stole of bodmin fur, making her stand out against the bronze tinseled satin and brown furs around her. This way, she would invoke memories of Queen Rosarian, who had loved to wear blue.
A sword-shaped brooch was pinned to her bodice. She alone, in all Virtudom, took the Saint himself as her patron.
Roslain, whose hair was adorned with amber and cranberry glass, took charge of choosing the jewels. Ead picked up a comb. Holding Sabran by the shoulder, she grazed its teeth through the cascade of black hair until each lock glided between her fingers.
Sabran stood like a stanchion. Her eyes were raw with sleeplessness.
Ead gentled her brushing. Sabran tilted her head into her touch. With each stroke of the comb, her stance lost some of its tension, and the cast of her jaw softened. As she worked, Ead set her fingertips on the naked place behind Sabran’s ear, holding her still.
“You look very beautiful today, Ead,” Sabran said.
It was the first time she had spoken since rising.
“Your Majesty is kind to say so.” Ead teased at a stubborn knot. “Are you looking forward to your visit to the city?”
Sabran did not answer for some time. Ead kept combing.
“I look forward to seeing my people,” Sabran finally said. “My father always encouraged me to walk among them, but . . . I could not.”
She must be thinking of her mother. The reason she had seen little but the gleaming interiors of her palaces for fourteen years.
“I wish I could tell them I am with child.” She touched her jewel-encrusted stomacher. “The Royal Physician has advised me to wait until my daughter quickens.”
“What they desire is to see you. Whether your belly is big or not,” Ead said. “In any case, you will be able to tell them in a few weeks. And think how pleased they will be then.”
The queen studied her face. Then, quite unexpectedly, she took her by the hand.
“Tell me, Ead,” she said, “how is it you always know what to say to comfort me?”
Before Ead could answer, Roslain approached. Ead stepped away, and Sabran’s hand slipped from hers, but she still felt the ghost of it against her palm. Its fine-spun bones. The scallops of her knuckles.
Sabran let her ladies guide her to the washbasin. Katryen took charge of reddening her lips, while Ead braided six sections of her hair and wound them into a rosette at the back of her head, leaving the rest loose and waving. Last came a silver crown.
Once she was ready, the queen beheld herself in the glass. Roslain straightened the crown.
“Just one last touch,” she said, and slipped a necklace around Sabran’s throat. Graduated sapphires and pearls, and a pendant shaped like a seahorse. “You remember.”
“Of course.” Sabran traced the pendant, her expression distant. “My mother gave it to me.”
Roslain placed a hand on her shoulder. “Let her be with you now. She would be so proud.”
The Queen of Inys studied the glass a moment longer. Finally, she gathered her breath and turned.
“My ladies,” she said, with a faint smile, “how do I look?”
Katryen tucked a strand of hair into her crown and nodded. “Like the blood of the Saint, Your Majesty.”
By ten of the clock, the sky was blinding in its blueness. The ladies-in-waiting escorted Sabran to the gates of Briar House, where Aubrecht Lievelyn was waiting in a greatcloak with the six Dukes Spiritual. Seyton Combe, as usual, had a clement smile on his lips. Ead itched to swipe it away.
He might look pleased with himself, but he had clearly made no progress on the matter of the cutthroats. Neither, to her frustration, had Ead. Much as she wanted to investigate, her duties left her with so little time.
If the killers were to strike again, it would be today.
While Sabran was given a hand into the royal coach, Igrain Crest held out a hand to her granddaughter.
“Roslain,” she said, smiling. “How lovely you are today, child. The jewel of my world.”
“Oh, Grandmother, you are too generous.” Roslain curtsied and kissed her on the cheek. “Good day.”
“We can only hope it will be a good day, Lady Roslain,” Lord Ritshard Eller muttered. “I mislike the queen walking among the commons.”
“Everything will be fine,” Combe said. His livery collar reflected the sunlight. “Her Majesty and His Royal Highness are well protected. Are they not, Sir Tharian?”
“Never more so than they will be today, Your Grace,” Lintley said, with a smart bow.
“Hm.” Eller looked unconvinced. “Very good, Sir Tharian.”
Ead shared a coach with Roslain and Katryen. As they trundled away from the palace, into the thick of the city, she gazed out of the window.
Ascalon was the first and only capital of Inys. Its cobbled streets were home to thousands of people from all corners of Virtudom and beyond. Before Galian had returned to these isles, they had been a patchwork of ever-warring territories, ruled by a surfeit of overlords and princelings. Galian had united them all under one crown. His crown.
The capital he built, named after his sword, was said to have been a paradise once. Now it was as rife with knavery and filth as any other city.
Most of the buildings were stone. After the Grief of Ages, when fire had raged across Inys, a law had been passed to ban thatched roofs. Only a handful of wooden houses, designed by Rosarian the Second, had been allowed to remain, for their beauty. Dark timberwork, arranged in opulent designs, formed a striking contrast to the white of their filling.
The richer wards were rich indeed. Queenside boasted fifty goldsmiths and twice as many silversmiths. Hend Street was for workshops, where inventors devised new weapons to defend Inys. On the Isle of Knells, Pounce Lane was for poets and playwrights, Brazen Alley for booksellers. Goods from elsewhere in the world were sold at the great market in Werald Square. Bright Lasian copper and ceramic and gold jewelry. Mentish paintings and marquetry and salt-glazed pottery. Rare cranberry glass from the old Serene Republic of Carmentum. Perfume burners and skystone from the Ersyr.
In the poorer wards the royal party would visit today, like Kine End and the Setts, life was less beautiful. In these wards were the shambles, the brothels—disguised as inns to avoid the Order of Sanctarians—and alehouses where footpads counted stolen coin.
Tens of thousands of Inysh were out in force, waiting for a glimpse of their queen. The sight of them struck disquiet into Ead. There had been no cutthroats since the marriage, but she was certain the threat had not yet diminished.
The royal procession stopped outside the Sanctuary of Our Lady, which was believed to house the tomb of Cleolind. (Ead knew that it did not.) It was the highest building in Inys, taller even than the Alabastrine Tower, made of a pale stone that shone beneath the sun.
Ead stepped from the coach, into the light. It had been a long time since she had walked the streets of Ascalon, but she knew them well. Before Chassar had presented her to Sabran, she had spent a month learning every vein and sinew of the city so she would find her way if she ever had to flee from court.
A concourse had gathered at the steps of the sanctuary, hungry for attention from their sovereign. They had scattered queenflower and jewel lilies over the cobblestones. While the maids of honor and the Extraordinary Chamberers emerged from their coaches with Oliva Marchyn, Ead took stock of the crowd.
“I don’t see Lady Truyde,” she said to Katryen.
“She has a headache.” Katryen pursed her lips. “A fine day for it.”
Margret came to stand beside them. “I expected a great many people,” she said, breath clouding, “but by the Saint, I think the whole city has come.” She nodded to the royal coach. “Here we go.”
Ead braced herself.
When Lievelyn emerged, the Inysh cheered as if the Saint himself had returned. Unfazed, he raised a hand in greeting before extending it to Sabran, who climbed out with poise.
The roar of the crowd grew so loud, so fast, that it seemed to Ead to transcend sound and attain a physicality. It wrenched out her breath and dealt a blow to her insides. She felt Katryen shiver with exhilaration beside her, and saw Margret stare, as the Inysh went to their knees before their queen. Hats were removed, tears were shed, and she thought the cheers would lift the Sanctuary of Our Lady from the ground. Sabran stood like one stricken by a thunderbolt. Ead watched her take it all in. Since the day she was crowned, she had hidden in her palaces. She had forgotten what she was to her people. The living embodiment of hope. Their shield and their salvation.
She recovered quickly. Though she did not wave, she smiled and joined hands with Lievelyn. They remained side by side for a time and allowed their subjects to adore them.
Captain Lintley walked first, one hand resting on his basket-hilted sword. The Knights of the Body and some three hundred guards, posted along the route they would take, had been mustered to protect the queen and the prince consort on their tour of the city.
As she followed Sabran, Ead watched the crowd, her gaze darting from face to face, hand to hand. No good killer would ignore an opportunity like this.
The Sanctuary of Our Lady was as magnificent inside as it was on the exterior, with a vaulted ceiling. Trefoil windows towered, scattering the party with splinters of purple light. The guards waited outside.
Sabran and Lievelyn walked toward the tomb. It was a stately block of marble, set into an alcove behind the altar. The Damsel was thought to rest incorrupt in a locked vault beneath it. There was no effigy.
The royal couple knelt on the hassocks in front of it and bowed their heads. After a while, Lievelyn stepped back to allow Sabran to say a prayer in private. The Ladies of the Bedchamber came to kneel around her.
“Blessèd Damsel,” Sabran said to the tomb, “I am Sabran the Ninth. Mine is your crown, mine is your queendom, and every day I long to bring glory to the House of Berethnet. I long to be possessed of your compassion, your courage, and your forbearance.”
She closed her eyes, and her voice became a ghost of a breath.
“I confess,” she said, “that I am not much like you. I have been impatient and arrogant. For too long I forswore my duty to this realm, refusing to gift unto my people a princess, and instead sought errant means of prolonging my own life.”
Ead glanced at her. The queen took off her fur-trimmed glove and laid her hand upon the marble.
She was praying to an empty tomb.
“I ask you this, as your loving scion. Let me carry my daughter to term. Let her be hale and spirited. Let me give the people of Virtudom hope. I will do anything for this. I will die to give my daughter life. I will sacrifice all else for her—but let our house not end with me.”
Her voice was steady, but her face was an ode to fatigue. Ead considered, then reached for her.
At first, Sabran stiffened. A moment later, she twined their fingers and held on.
No woman should be made to fear that she was not enough.
When Sabran rose, so did her ladies. Ead steeled herself. The next part of the journey would be the most dangerous. Sabran and Lievelyn were to meet the unfortunate of Ascalon and give them purses of gold. As they descended the steps of the sanctuary, Sabran stayed close to her companion.
The party would go on foot from here. They followed Berethnet Mile through the city, flanked by city guards. Halfway down it, they crossed Marian Square, and a tinker called, “Get her with child, or get back to Mentendon!” Lievelyn remained impassive, but Sabran clenched her jaw. As the man was dragged away by the guards, she took Lievelyn by the hand.
To reach Kine End, they had to pass through the ward of Sylvan-by-the-River, where the streets were shaded by evergreens, and the Carnelian Theatre loomed over the stalls. The noise was thunderous, the air heady with excitement.
As Sabran paused to admire a bolt of cloth, something made Ead glance toward the bakehouse across the street. Crouched on its balcony was a figure with a rag over his nose and mouth. As Ead watched, he raised his arm.
A pistol gleamed in the sunlight.
“Death to the House of Berethnet,” he shouted.
It was as if time slowed. Sabran looked up sharply, and someone let out a cry of horror, but Ead was already there. She collided with Sabran and hooked an arm around her waist, and they dropped to the cobblestones as the pistol discharged with a sound like the world splitting. Screams erupted from the crowd as an old man buckled, hit by the bullet meant for the queen.
Ead landed hard on her hip, curled around Sabran, who clutched her in return, one arm crossed over her belly. Ead scooped her up and handed her to Lievelyn. He wheeled her away from the direction of the gunfire. “The queen,” Captain Lintley bellowed. “All swords to the queen!”
“Up there.” Ead pointed. “Kill him!”
The shooter had already hurdled to the next balcony. Lintley took aim with his crossbow, but the quarrel missed by an inch. He cursed and loaded another.
Ead put herself in front of Sabran. Lievelyn drew his broadsword and guarded her back. The other ladies-in-waiting fanned out around their queen. As her gaze shadowed the shooter, who was now leaping like an antelope between rooftops, Ead grew cold all over. She looked to the other side of the street.
They did not wear visards. Not like the cutthroats in the palace. Instead, their faces were hidden by plague masks, the sort physicians had used to protect themselves in the Grief of Ages. As the first of them burst out of the crowd and bore down on the royal party, Ead hurled the dagger from her girdle. It hit the nearest attacker in the throat.
The crowd splintered. In the chaos, the next attacker was suddenly on top of them. “Fuck the House of Berethnet,” he screamed at Sabran. He slammed into one of the Knights of the Body, who threw him off and thrust her sword at him. “Hail the Nameless One!”
“The God of the Mountain!” The invocation went up nearby. “His kingdom will come!”
Doomsingers. In a heartbeat, Lintley had traded crossbow for sword and cut down the nearest threat. The gallant knight was gone, replaced by a man who had been hand-picked to protect the Queen of Inys. The next attacker stopped in her tracks, and when Lintley bore down on her, she turned and fled. A musket fired and blew her guts across the cobblestones.
In the chaos, Ead looked for the Night Hawk, but there was too much panic, too many bodies. Sabran stayed rooted in place, fists clenched at her side, unbowed.
A preternatural calm descended on Ead. As she drew two blades, she forgot that Ladies of the Bedchamber were not educated in combat. She let fall the cloak of secrecy she had worn for all these years. All she knew was her duty. To keep Sabran alive.
The war dance was calling to her. As it had the first time she had hunted a basilisk. Like wind on fire, she flashed into the next wave of attackers, wheeling her blades, and they fell dead around her.
She pulled herself back from the brink. Lintley was staring at her, his face dappled with blood. A scream made his head turn. Linora. She keened in terror, pleading, as two of the doomsingers wrestled her to the ground. Ead and Lintley both ran toward her at once, but a knife opened her throat, spraying blood, and it was too late, she was lost.
Ead tried to temper her shock, but bile scalded her gorge. Sabran stared at her dying lady. The Knights of the Body encircled their queen, but they were surrounded, the threat everywhere. Another masked figure charged at the royals, but Roslain, with a ferocity Ead had never seen in her, thrust her knife into his thigh. A shout came from behind the mask.
“The Nameless One will rise,” a voice said, panting. “We pledge our allegiance.” Fog obscured the eyeholes. “Death to the House of Berethnet!”
Roslain went for his throat, but he smashed his fist into her head, snapping it back. Sabran cried out in anger. Ead pulled out of the fray and ran toward her just as the knave slashed with a knife at Lievelyn, who raised his sword just in time to parry.
The tussle that followed was short and violent. Lievelyn was the stronger, years of tutelage behind every movement. With one brutal downcut, it was over.
Sabran backed away from the corpse. Her companion beheld his own sword and swallowed. Blood dripped from its blade.
“Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, follow me.” A Knight of the Body had broken free of the fray. His copper-plated armor was redder than before. “I know a safe place in this ward. Captain Lintley commanded me to take you hence. We must go now.”
Ead pointed one of her knives at him. Most Knights of the Body wore close helms outdoors, and the voice beneath this one was muffled. “Come no farther,” she said. “Who are you?”
“Sir Grance Lambren.”
“Take off your helm.”
“Peace, Mistress Duryan. I recognize his voice,” Lievelyn said. “It is not safe for Sir Grance to remove his helm.”
“Ros—” Sabran was straining to reach her Chief Gentlewoman. “Aubrecht, carry her, please.”
Ead looked for Margret and Katryen, but they were nowhere to be seen. Linora lay in her lake of blood, eyes glazed in death.
Lievelyn gathered Roslain into his arms and followed Sir Grance Lambren, who was rushing Sabran away. Roundly cursing Lievelyn for his trust, Ead chased after them. The other Knights of the Body strove to join their queen, but they were overwhelmed.
How had someone orchestrated such a swarm?
She caught up to Sabran and Lievelyn just as Lambren was leading them around a corner, out of sight of Berethnet Mile. He took them through an overgrown charnel garden on Quiver Lane, to a sanctuary that had fallen into ruin. He shepherded his royal charges inside, but when Ead reached the doors, he barred her way.
“You ought to find the other ladies, mistress.”
“I will follow the queen, sir,” Ead said, “or you will not.”
Lambren did not move. She tightened her grip on her knives.
“Ead.” Sabran. “Ead, where are you?”
The knight was as a statue for a moment longer before he stood aside. Once Ead had passed, he sheathed his sword and bolted the doors behind them. When he removed his helm, Ead beheld the ruddy face of Sir Grance Lambren. He shot her a look of intense dislike.
The interior of the sanctuary was as wild as the charnel garden. Weeds fingered through the shattered windows. Roslain lay on the altar, still but for the rise and fall of her breast. Sabran, who had covered her with her own cloak, stood beside her with outward composure, holding her limp hand.
Lievelyn paced back and forth, his face pinched. “Those poor souls outside. Lady Linora—” Blood smeared his cheek. “Sabran, I must return to the street and assist Captain Lintley. You stay with Sir Grance and Mistress Duryan.”
At once, Sabran went to him. “No.” She grasped his elbows. “I command you to stay.”
“Mine is as good a sword as any,” Lievelyn told her. “My Royal Guard—”
“My Knights of the Body are also outside,” Sabran cut in, “but if we die, their labors to protect us will be in vain. They will have to think of us as well as themselves.”
Lievelyn framed her face in his hands.
“Sweeting,” he said, “I will be all right.”
For the first time, Ead saw how deeply in love with Sabran he was, and it shook her. “Damn you, you are my companion. You have shared my bed. My flesh. My—my heart,” Sabran snapped at him. Her face was taut, her voice ragged. “And you will not leave our daughter fatherless, Aubrecht Lievelyn. You will not leave us here to mourn you.”
His face twitched from one expression to another. Hope kindled a light in his eyes.
“Is it true?”
Holding his gaze, Sabran took his hand in hers and guided it to her belly.
“It is true,” she said very softly.
Lievelyn released a breath. A smile pulled at his mouth, and he stroked a thumb over her cheek.
“Then I am the most fortunate of all princes,” he whispered. “And I swear to you, our child will be the most beloved princess who ever lived.” Breathing out, he gathered Sabran to his chest. “My queen. My blessing. I will love you both until I am worthy of my good fortune.”
“You are already worthy.” Sabran kissed his jaw. “Do you not wear my love-knot ring?”
She set her chin on his shoulder. Her hands stroked up and down his back, and her eyes fluttered shut as he touched his lips to her temple. Whatever tension had been there was erased. A flame pressed into nonexistence as the rift between their bodies closed.
Fists hammered on the doors.
“Sabran,” a voice called. “Majesty, it’s Kate, with Margret! Please, let us in!”
“Kate, Meg—” Sabran pulled away from Lievelyn at once. “Let them in,” she barked at Lambren. “Make haste, Sir Grance.”
Too slow, Ead heard the trick. It was not Lady Katryen Withy behind that door. It was an imitation. The mockery of a mimic.
“No,” she said sharply. “Stop.”
“How dare you countermand my orders?” Sabran rounded on her. “Who gave you authority?”
She was flushed with anger, but Ead kept her nerve. “Majesty, it is not Katryen—”
“I think I should know her voice.” Sabran nodded to Lambren. “Let my ladies in. Now.”
He was a Knight of the Body, so he obeyed.
Ead wasted no time. One of her knives was already slicing through the air when Lambren unlocked the doors and someone crashed into the sanctuary. The intruder avoided whirling death with one deft turn, fired a pistol at Lambren, then pointed it at Ead.
Lambren collapsed with a peal of armor on stone. The bullet was buried between his eyes.
“Don’t move, Ersyri,” a voice said. The pistol smoked. “Put down that knife.”
“So you can kill the Queen of Inys?” Ead remained still. “I would sooner you kept that pistol on my heart—but I suspect you only have one bullet, else all of us would be dead.”
The cutthroat gave no answer.
“Who sent you?” Sabran squared her shoulders. “Who conspires to end the bloodline of the Saint?”
“The Cupbearer wishes you no ill, Your Majesty, except when you do not listen to reason. Except when you lead Inys down paths it should not tread.”
Cupbearer.
“Paths,” the woman continued, her voice muffled by the plague mask, “that will lead Inys toward sin.”
As the pistol snapped toward the royals, Ead threw her last knife. It struck the cutthroat through the heart just as the pistol fired.
Sabran flinched. Ead closed the space between them and felt for moisture on her bodice, sick with dread, but there was no blood. The gown was still pristine.
Behind them, Aubrecht Lievelyn dropped to one knee. His hands were at his doublet, where darkness was spreading.
She turned.
“No,” she rasped. “Aubrecht—”
Ead watched, as if from a great distance, as the Queen of Inys ran to her companion and lowered him to the floor with her, gasping out his name as his heart’s blood soaked into her skirts. As she held him close and pleaded with him to stay with her, even as he slipped away. As she doubled over him, cradling his head. As he grew still.
“Aubrecht.” Sabran looked up, her eyes overflowing. “Ead. Ead, help him, please—”
Ead had no time to go to her. The doors opened again, and a second cutthroat stumbled into the sanctuary, heaving. At once, Ead divested the dead Lambren of his sword and pinned the cutthroat to the wall.
“Take off your mask,” she bit out, “or I swear to you, I will take off the face beneath it.”
Two gloved hands revealed a pale countenance. Truyde utt Zeedeur stared at the lifeless High Prince of Mentendon.
“I never meant for him to die,” she whispered. “I only wanted to help you, Your Majesty. I only wanted you to listen.”
