When she shunned the Banqueting House, which was often, the Queen of Inys supped in her Privy Chamber. Tonight, Ead and Linora had been invited to break bread with her, an honor customarily reserved for her three bedfellows.
Margret had one of her headaches. Skull-crushers, she called them. Usually she refused to let them keep her from her obligations, but she must be sick with worry about Loth.
Despite the summer heat, a fire crackled in the Privy Chamber. So far, nobody had spoken to Ead.
Sometimes she felt as if they could smell her secrets. As if they sensed she had not come to this court to be a lady-in-waiting.
As if they knew about the Priory.
“What do you think of his eyes, Ros?”
Sabran gazed at the miniature in her hand. It had already been passed between the women and scrutinized from every angle. Now Roslain Crest took it and studied it again.
The Chief Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber, heir apparent to the Duchy of Justice, had been born only six days before Sabran. Her hair was thick and dark as treacle. Pale and smalt-eyed, always fashionably dressed, she had spent almost her whole life with her queen. Her mother had been Chief Gentlewoman to Queen Rosarian.
“They are agreeable, Your Majesty,” Roslain concluded. “Kind.”
“I find them to be a trifle too close together,” Sabran mused. “They put me in mind of a dormouse.”
Linora tittered in her delicate way.
“Better a mouse than some louder beast,” Roslain said to her queen. “Best he remembers his place if he weds you. He is not the one who is descended from the Saint.”
Sabran patted her hand. “How are you always so wise?”
“I listen to you, Your Majesty.”
“But not your grandmother, in this instance.” Sabran looked up at her. “Lady Igrain thinks Mentendon will be a drain on Inys. And that Lievelyn should not trade with Seiiki. She has told me she will voice this at the next meeting of the Virtues Council.”
“My lady grandmother worries about you. It makes her over-cautious.” Roslain sat beside her. “I know she prefers the Chieftain of Askrdal. He is rich and devout. A safer candidate. I can also understand her concerns about Lievelyn.”
“But?”
Roslain offered a faint smile. “I believe it would behoove us to give this new Red Prince a chance.”
“I agree.” Katryen lay on a settle, leafing through a book of poesy. “You have the Virtues Council to caution you, but your ladies to embolden you in matters such as these.”
Beside Ead, Linora was drinking in the conversation in ravening silence.
“Mistress Duryan,” Sabran said suddenly, “what is your opinion of Prince Aubrecht’s countenance?”
All eyes turned to Ead. Slowly, she set down her knife. “You ask for my judgment, Majesty?”
“Unless there is another Mistress Duryan present.”
Nobody laughed. The room was silent as Roslain delivered the miniature into her hands.
Ead considered the Red Prince. High cheekbones. Sleek copper hair. Strong brows arched over dark eyes, a hard contrast to his pallor. The set of his mouth was somewhat grave, but his face was pleasant.
Still, miniatures could lie, and often did. The artist would have flattered him.
“He is comely enough,” she concluded.
“Faint praise indeed.” Sabran sipped from her goblet. “You are a harder judge than my other ladies, Mistress Duryan. Are the men of the Ersyr more attractive than the prince?”
“They are different, Your Majesty.” Ead paused, then added, “Less like dormice.”
The queen gazed at her, expressionless. For a moment, Ead wondered if she had been too bold. A stricken look from Katryen only served to feed her misgiving.
“You have a quick tongue as well as light feet.” The Queen of Inys reclined in her chair. “We have not spoken often since your coming to court. A long time has passed—six years, I think.”
“Eight, Your Majesty.”
Roslain shot her a warning glance. One did not correct the descendant of the Saint.
“Of course. Eight,” was all Sabran said. “Tell me, does Ambassador uq-Ispad ever write to you?”
“Not often, madam. His Excellency is busy with other matters.”
“Such as heresy.”
Ead dropped her gaze. “The ambassador is a devout follower of the Dawnsinger, Majesty.”
“But you, of course, no longer are,” Sabran said, and Ead inclined her head. “Lady Arbella tells me you pray often at sanctuary.”
How Arbella Glenn conveyed these things to Sabran was a mystery, since she never seemed to speak.
“The Six Virtues is a beautiful faith, Majesty,” Ead said, “and impossible not to believe in, when the true descendant of the Saint walks among us.”
It was a lie, of course. Her true faith—the faith of the Mother—blazed as strong as ever.
“They must tell tales of my ancestors in the Ersyr,” Sabran said. “Of the Damsel, especially.”
“Yes, madam. She is remembered in the South as the most rightwise and selfless woman of her time.”
Cleolind Onjenyu was also remembered in the South as the greatest warrior of her time, but the Inysh would never believe that. They believed that she had needed to be saved.
To Ead, Cleolind was not the Damsel.
She was the Mother.
“Lady Oliva tells me that Mistress Duryan is a born storyteller,” Roslain said, giving her a cool look. “Will you not tell us the tale of the Saint and the Damsel as you were taught it in the South, mistress?”
Ead sensed a trap. The Inysh seldom enjoyed hearing anything from a new perspective, let alone their most sacred tale. Roslain was expecting her to put a foot wrong.
“My lady,” Ead said, “it cannot be told better than it is by the Sanctarian. In any case, we will hear it tomor—”
“We will hear it now,” Sabran said. “As more wyrms stir, the story will comfort my ladies.”
The fire crackled. Looking at Sabran, Ead felt a strange tension, as if there were a thread between them. Finally, she rose to take the chair beside the hearth. The place of the storyteller.
“As you wish.” She smoothed her skirts. “Where shall I begin?”
“With the birth of the Nameless One,” Sabran said. “When the great fiend came from the Dreadmount.”
Katryen took the queen by the hand. Ead breathed in, steadying the roil within her. If she told the true story, she would doubtless face the pyre.
She would have to tell the tale she heard each day at sanctuary. The butchered tale.
Half a tale.
“There is a Womb of Fire that churns beneath this world,” she began. “Over a thousand years ago, the magma within it came suddenly together, forming a beast of unspeakable magnitude—as a sword takes shape within the forge. His milk was the fire within the Womb; his thirst for it was quenchless. He drank until even his heart was a furnace.”
Katryen shivered.
“Soon this creature, this wyrm, grew too large for the Womb. He longed to use the wings it had given him. Having torn his way upward, he broke through the peak of a mountain in Mentendon, which is called Dreadmount, and brought with him a flood of molten fire. Red lightning flashed at the summit of the mountain. Darkness fell upon the city of Gulthaga, and all who lived there died choking on pernicious smoke.
“There was a lust in this wyrm to conquer all he saw. He flew south to Lasia, where the House of Onjenyu ruled a great kingdom, and settled close to their seat in Yikala.” Ead took a sip of ale to wet her throat. “This nameless creature carried a terrible plague—a plague no humans had ever encountered. It made the very blood of the afflicted burn, driving them mad. To keep the wyrm at bay, the people of Yikala sent him sheep and oxen, but the Nameless One was never sated. He lusted after sweeter flesh—human flesh. And so, each day, the people cast their lots, and one was chosen as a sacrifice.”
All was silent in the room.
“Lasia was ruled then by Selinu, High Ruler of the House of Onjenyu. One day, his daughter, Princess Cleolind, was chosen as the sacrifice.” Ead spoke that name softly, reverently. “Though her father offered his subjects jewels and gold, and pleaded with them to choose another, they stood firm. And Cleolind went forth with dignity, for she saw that it was fair.
“On that very morning, a knight from the Isles of Inysca was riding for Yikala. At the time, these isles were riven by war and superstition, ruled by many overkings, and its people quaked in the shadow of a witch—but many good men dwelt there, sworn to the Virtues of Knighthood. This knight,” Ead said, “was Sir Galian Berethnet.”
The Deceiver.
That was the name he now had in many parts of Lasia, but Sabran had no idea of that.
“Sir Galian had heard of the terror that now abided in Lasia, and he wished to offer his services to Selinu. He carried a sword of extraordinary beauty; its name was Ascalon. When he was close to the outskirts of Yikala, he saw a damsel weeping in the shadow of the trees, and he asked why she was so afeared. Good knight, Cleolind answered, thou art kind of heart, but for thine own sake, leave me to my prayers, for a wyrm doth come to claim my life.”
It sickened Ead to speak of the Mother in this way, as if she were some swooning waif.
“The knight,” she pressed on, “was moved by her tears. Sweet lady, he said, I should sooner plunge my sword into my own heart than see thy blood water the earth. If thy people will give their souls to the Virtues of Knighthood, and if thou giveth me thy hand in marriage, I will drive this fell beast from these lands. This was his promise.”
Ead paused to gather her breath. And suddenly, an unexpected taste entered her mouth.
The taste of the truth.
“Cleolind told the knight to leave, insulted by his terms,” she found herself saying, “but Sir Galian would not be deterred. Determined to win glory for himself, he—”
“No,” Sabran cut in. “Cleolind agreed to his terms, and was grateful for his offer.”
“This is as I heard it in the South.” Ead raised her eyebrows, even as her heartbeat stumbled. “Lady Roslain asked me to—”
“And now your queen commands you otherwise. Tell the rest as the Sanctarian does.”
“Yes, madam.”
Sabran nodded for her to continue.
“As Sir Galian battled with the Nameless One,” Ead said, “he was gravely wounded. Nonetheless, with the greatest courage of any man living, he found the strength to thrust his sword into the monster. The Nameless One slithered away, bleeding and weak, and tunneled back into the Womb of Fire, where he remains to this day.”
She was too aware of Sabran observing her.
“Sir Galian returned with the princess to the Isles of Inysca, gathering a Holy Retinue of knights along the way. There he was crowned King of Inys—a new name for a new age—and for his first decree, he made the Virtues of Knighthood its true and sole religion. He built the city of Ascalon, named for the sword that had wounded the Nameless One, and it was there that he and Queen Cleolind were joyfully wed. Within a year, the queen gave birth to a daughter. And King Galian, the Saint, swore to the people that while his bloodline ruled Inys, the Nameless One could never return.”
A neat story. One that the Inysh told again and again. But not the whole story.
What the Inysh did not know was that it was Cleolind, not Galian, who had banished the Nameless One.
They knew nothing of the orange tree.
“Five hundred years later,” Ead said, softer, “the break in the Dreadmount widened again, and it let out other wyrms. First came the five High Westerns, the largest and cruelest of the Draconic creatures, led by Fýredel, he who was most loyal to the Nameless One. So too came their servants, the wyverns, each lit with fire from one of the High Westerns. These wyverns made their nests in the mountains and the caves, and they mated with fowl to birth the cockatrice, and with serpent to birth the basilisk and the amphiptere, and with ox to birth the ophitaur, and with wolf to birth the jaculus. And by means of these unions, the Draconic Army was born.
“Fýredel longed to do what the Nameless One had not, and conquer humankind. For more than a year, he turned the might of the Draconic Army on the world. Many great realms crumbled in that time, which we call the Grief of Ages. Yet Inys, led by Glorian the Third, was still standing when a comet passed over the world, and the wyrms fell suddenly into their age-old sleep, ending the terror and bloodshed. And to this day, the Nameless One remains in his tomb beneath the world, chained by the sacred blood of Berethnet.”
Silence.
Ead folded her hands in her lap and looked straight at Sabran. That cold face was unreadable.
“Lady Oliva was right,” the queen said eventually. “You do have the tongue of a storyteller—but I suspect you have heard too many stories, and not quite enough truth. I bid you listen well at sanctuary.” She set down her goblet. “I am tired. Goodnight, ladies.”
Ead rose, as did Linora. They curtsied and left.
“Her Majesty was displeased,” Linora said crossly when they were out of earshot. “You told the story ever so beautifully at first. Why in the world did you say that the Damsel rejected the Saint? No sanctarian has ever said that. What a notion!”
“If Her Majesty was displeased, I am sorry for it.”
“Now she might not invite us to sup with her again.” Linora huffed. “You should have apologized, at least. Perhaps you should pray more often to the Knight of Courtesy.”
Mercifully, Linora refused to speak after that. They parted ways when Ead reached her chamber.
Inside, she lit a few tapers. Her room was small, but it was her own.
She unlaced her sleeves and removed the stomacher from her gown. Once she was out of it, she cast away the petticoat and the farthingale, and, finally, off came the corset.
The night was young. Ead took a seat at her writing table. Inside was the book she had borrowed from Truyde utt Zeedeur. She could not read any Eastern script, but it bore the mark of a Mentish printer. It must have been published before the Grief of Ages, when Eastern texts were permitted in Virtudom. Truyde was a blossoming heretic, then, fascinated by the lands where wyrms basked in human idolatry.
At the end of the book, on a flyleaf, was a name in fresh ink, scribbled in a curling hand.
Niclays.
Ead thought back as she braided her hair. It was a common name in Mentendon, but there had been a Niclays Roos at court when she had first arrived. He had excelled in anatomy at the University of Brygstad and was rumored to practice alchemy. She remembered him as gorbellied and cheerful, kind enough to acknowledge her where others did not. There had been some trouble that had concluded in his departure from Inys, but the nature of the incident was a closely guarded secret.
In the silence, she listened to her body. Last time, the cutthroat had almost beaten her to the Great Bedchamber. She had not felt the flicker of her warding until it was almost too late.
Her siden was weak. The wardings she made with it had kept Sabran safe for years, but it was finally dying, like a candle at the end of its wick. Siden, the gift of the orange tree—a magic of fire and wood and earth. The Inysh in their witlessness would call it sorcery. Their ideas about magic were born of fear of what they could not understand.
It was Margret who had once explained to her why the Inysh had such a fear of magic. There was an ancient legend in these isles, still told to children in the north, of a figure known as the Lady of the Woods. Her name had been lost to time, but the fear of her enchantments, and her malice, had knitted itself into the bones of the Inysh and seeped through generations. Even Margret, level-headed in most things, had been reluctant to speak of it.
Ead raised a hand. She mustered her power, and golden light sputtered in her fingertips. In Lasia, when she had been close to the orange tree, siden had glowed like molten glass in her veins.
Then the Prioress had sent her here, to protect Sabran. If the years of distance extinguished her power for good, the queen would always be vulnerable. Sleeping at her side would be the only way to keep her safe, and only the Ladies of the Bedchamber did that. Ead was a long way from being a favorite.
Her restraint had cracked at supper, telling that story. She had learned to play a game over the years, to speak Inysh falsehoods and utter their prayers, but telling that butchered story herself had been difficult. And though her moment of defiance might have hurt her chances of rising any further at court, she could not quite regret it.
With the book and letters under one arm, Ead climbed onto the back of her chair and pressed at the strapwork on the ceiling, sliding a loose panel to one side. She stowed the items in the alcove beyond, where her longbow was hidden. When she was a maid of honor, she had buried the bow in the grounds of whatever palace the court occupied, but she was confident that even the Night Hawk could not find it in here.
Once she was ready for bed, she sat at her table and wrote a message to Chassar. In code, she told him there had been another attack on Sabran, and that she had stopped it.
Chassar had promised he would reply to her letters, but he never had. Not once in the eight years she had been here.
She folded the letter. The Master of the Posts would read it on behalf of the Night Hawk, but he would see nothing but courtesies. Chassar would know the truth.
A knock came at the door.
“Mistress Duryan?”
Ead put on her bedgown and undid the latch. Outside was a woman wearing a badge shaped like a winged book, marking her as a retainer in the service of Seyton Combe.
“Yes?”
“Mistress Duryan, good evening. I have been sent to inform you that the Principal Secretary wishes to see you at half past nine tomorrow,” the girl said. “I will escort you to the Alabastrine Tower.”
“Just me?”
“Lady Katryen and Lady Margret were both questioned today.”
Ead’s hand tightened on the door handle. “It is a questioning, then.”
“I believe so.”
With the other hand, Ead drew her bedgown closer. “Very well,” she said. “Is that all?”
“Yes. Goodnight, mistress.”
“Goodnight.”
When the retainer walked away, darkness took back the corridor. Ead shut the door and set her brow against it.
She would have no sleep this night.
The Rose Eternal rocked on the water, tilted by the east wind. It was this ship that would bear them across the sea to Yscalin.
“This,” Kit declared as they walked toward it, “is a fine ship. I believe that I would marry this ship, were I a ship myself.”
Loth had to agree. The Rose was battle-scarred, but very handsome—and colossal. Even on his visits to see the navy with Sabran, he had never laid eyes upon such an immense ship as this ironclad man-of-war. She boasted one hundred and eight guns, a fearsome ram, and eighteen sails, all emblazoned with the True Sword, the emblem of Virtudom. The ensign attested that this was an Inysh vessel, and that the actions of its crew, however morally dubious they might appear, were sanctioned by its monarchy.
A figurehead of Rosarian the Fourth, lovingly polished, gazed down from the bow. Black hair and white skin. Eyes as green as sea glass. Her body tapered into a gilded tail.
Loth remembered Queen Rosarian fondly from the years before her death. The Queen Mother, as she was known now, had often watched him at play with Sabran and Roslain in the orchards. She had been a softer woman than Sabran, quick to laugh and gamesome in a way her daughter never was.
“She’s a beauty, right enough,” Gautfred Plume said. He was the quartermaster, a dwarf of Lasian descent. “Not half as great a beauty as the lady who gifted her to the captain, mind.”
“Ah, yes.” Kit doffed his feathered hat to the figurehead. “May she rest forever in the arms of the Saint.”
Plume clicked his tongue. “Queen Rosarian had a merrow’s soul. She should have rested in the arms of the sea.”
“Oh, by the Saint, how beautifully put. Do merfolk really exist, incidentally? Did you ever see them when you crossed the Abyss?”
“No. Blackfish and greatsquid and baleens, I’ve seen, but nary the cap of a sea maid.”
Kit wilted.
Seagulls circled in the cloud-streaked sky. The port of Perchling was ready for the worst, as always. The jetties rattled under the weight of soldiers armed with long-range muskets. Row upon row of mangonels and cannon bursting with chainshot, interspersed with stone mantlets, stood grimly on the beach. Archers occupied the watchtowers, ready to light their beacons at the whump of wings or the sight of an enemy ship.
Above it, a small city teetered. Perchling was so named because it perched on two great shelves that jutted halfway down the cliffside, joined to the top of the cliff, and to the beach, by a long and drunken stair. Buildings huddled like birds on a branch. Kit had been amused by its precariousness (“Saint, the architect must have been wondrous deep in the cups”), but it made Loth nervous. Perchling looked as if one good squall would blow it clean into the sea.
Still he drank it in, committing it to memory. This might be the last time he looked upon Inys, the only country he had ever known.
They found Gian Harlowe in his cabin, deep in letter-writing. The man the Queen Mother had favored was not quite what Loth had imagined. He was clean-shaven, his cuffs starched, but there was a bitten edge to him. His jaw was set like a sprung trap.
When they entered, he glanced up. Smallpox had pitted his deeply tanned face.
“Gautfred.” A mane of pewter hair gleamed in the sunlight. “I take it these are our . . . guests.”
Though his accent was firmly Inysh, Kit had mentioned that Harlowe came from far-off shores. Rumor had it that he was descended from the people of Carmentum, once a prosperous republic in the South, that had fallen in the Grief of Ages. The survivors had scattered far and wide.
“Aye,” Plume said, sounding jaded. “Lord Arteloth Beck and Lord Kitston Glade.”
“Kit,” came the prompt correction.
Harlowe put down his quill. “My lords,” he said coolly. “Welcome aboard the Rose Eternal.”
“Thank you for finding cabins for us at such short notice, Captain Harlowe,” Loth said. “This is a mission of the utmost importance.”
“And the utmost secrecy, I’m told. Strange that no man but the heir to Goldenbirch could attend to it.” Harlowe studied Loth. “We set sail for the Yscali port city of Perunta at dusk. My crew are not accustomed to having nobles under their feet, so it might well be more comfortable for us all if you keep to your cabins while you’re with us.”
“Yes,” Kit said. “Good idea.”
“I’m full of those,” the captain said. “Either of you been to Yscalin before?” When they both shook their heads, he said, “Which of you offended the Principal Secretary?”
Loth sensed, rather than saw, Kit jab a thumb at him.
“Lord Arteloth.” Harlowe barked a coarse laugh. “And you such a respectable fellow. Clearly you displeased His Grace to the point that he would rather not see you alive again.” The captain leaned back in his chair. “I’m sure you’re both aware that the House of Vetalda now openly declares its Draconic allegiance.”
Loth shivered. The knowledge that a country could, within a few years, go from following the Saint to worshipping his enemy had shaken the whole of Virtudom.
“The people do as their king commands, but they suffer. We hear from the dockworkers that plague is all over Yscalin.” Harlowe picked up his quill again. “Speaking of which, my crew won’t be escorting you ashore. You’ll use a boat to reach Perunta.”
Kit swallowed. “And then?”
“You’ll be met by an emissary, who will take you to Cárscaro. No doubt its court is free of the sickness, since nobles have the luxury of barring themselves into their fortresses when this sort of thing occurs,” Harlowe said, “but try to avoid touching anyone. The most common strain is passed from skin to skin.”
“How do you know this?” Loth asked him. “The Draconic plague has not been seen in centuries.”
“I have an interest in survival, Lord Arteloth. I recommend you nurture one, too.” The captain stood. “Master Plume, ready the ship. Let’s see to it that my lords reach the coast in one piece, even if they do die on arrival.”
