“No.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Have you?”
“I do not need to meet them to know that they have forced the East to worship them. I will not kneel at the altar of heresy.”
“They may not force worship,” Margret mused. “Perhaps they share a mutual respect with the Easterners.”
“Do you hear yourself, Margret?” Loth said, appalled. “They are wyrms.”
“The East also fears the Nameless One,” Ead said. “Each of our religions agrees that he is the enemy.”
“And the enemy of the enemy is a potential friend,” Margret agreed.
Loth bit his tongue. If the foundations of his faith were struck once more, they might come tumbling down.
“You do not know what you ask, Ead.” When Sabran spoke, her voice sounded too heavy to lift. “We have kept our distance from the East because of their heresy, yes—but to my understanding, the Easterners closed the door first, out of fear of the plague. I will not be able to persuade them to join us without making them a very generous offer in return.”
“The banishment of the Nameless One will profit us all,” Ead said. “The East did not escape the Grief of Ages, and it will not escape this.”
“But its people might buy themselves time to prepare while we lay our heads upon the block,” Sabran pointed out.
A bird landed outside. Loth glanced at the balcony, hoping to see a rock dove with a letter. A crow looked back at him.
“I told you that even the countries of Virtudom would not come to the aid of Inys if their own shores were under attack,” Sabran said, too concerned with Ead to notice the bird. “You looked surprised.”
“I was.”
“You should not have been. My grandmother once said that when a wolf comes to the village, a shepherd looks first to her own flock. The wolf bloods his teeth on other sheep, and the shepherd knows it will one day come for hers, but she clings to the hope that she might be able to keep him out. Until the wolf is at her door.”
Loth thought that sounded like something Queen Jillian would have said. She had famously argued for tighter alliances with the rest of the world.
“That,” Sabran finished, “is how humankind has existed since the Grief of Ages.”
“If the Eastern rulers have a whit of intelligence between them, they will see the necessity of cooperation,” Ead maintained. “I have faith in the shepherds, even if Queen Jillian did not.”
Sabran cast her gaze toward her own right hand, spread on the table. The hand that had once held a love-knot ring.
“Ead, I would speak with you alone.” She rose. “Loth, Meg, please see to it that the summons go out to the Virtues Council at once. I need them all here to discuss the future.”
“Of course,” Margret said.
Sabran walked with Ead from the Council Chamber. When the doors were shut, Margret looked at Loth with an expression he recognized from their music lessons. She had dealt it to him whenever he hit the wrong note.
“I hope you’re not intending to argue against this plan.”
“Ead is mad to so much as insinuate it,” Loth muttered. “An alliance with the East is a remedy for misfortune.”
The crow took off again.
“I don’t know.” Margret reached for a quill and ink. “Perhaps their dragons are nothing like wyrms. These days I feel obliged to question everything I have ever known.”
“We are not supposed to question, Meg. Faith is an act of trust in the Saint.”
“And are you not questioning yours at all?”
“Of course I am.” He rubbed his brow with one hand. “And every day I fear I will be damned for it. That I will have no place in Halgalant.”
“Loth, you know how I love you, but the sense in your head could fit in a thimble.”
Loth pursed his lips. “And you, I suppose, are worldly-wise.”
“I was born worldly-wise.”
She drew a roll of parchment toward her. Loth asked, “What else happened in Goldenbirch?”
Smile fading, Margret said, “I will tell you tomorrow. And I recommend you have a good, long sleep before you hear it, Loth, because your faith will be tested yet again.” She nodded to the pile of letters. “Be quick about it, brother. I must get these to the Master of the Posts.”
He did as he was bid. Sometimes he wondered why the Saint had not made Margret the older child.
Night had fallen over Ascalon. Half of the Knights of the Body followed Ead and Sabran to the Privy Garden, but the queen ordered them to wait outside the gate.
Only the stars could see them in the snow-draped dark. Ead remembered strolling with Sabran on these paths in the high summer. The first time she had walked with her alone.
Sabran, the descendant of Kalyba. Kalyba, the founder of the House of Berethnet.
It had haunted her on the way back from Caliburn-on-Sea. It had haunted her as they rode to find Aralaq. The secret that had divided the Priory for centuries.
Drunk on an enchantment, Galian Berethnet had lain with a woman he had seen as a mother and got her with child. He had built his religion like a wall around his shame. And to save his legacy, he had seen no choice but to sanctify the lie.
Tension poured from Sabran like heat off an open flame. When they reached the fountain, with its frozen rivulets of water, they faced each other.
“You realize what a new alliance may entail.”
Ead waited for her to finish.
“The East will already have weapons and money. I can add to those,” Sabran said, “but remember what I told you. Alliances have ever been forged through marriage.”
“Alliances must have been made without marriage in the past.”
“This alliance is different. It would have to unite two regions that have been estranged for centuries. Knit two bodies, and you knit two realms. That is why we royals marry—not for love, but to build our houses. That is the way the world is.”
“It does not need to be that way. Try, Sabran,” Ead urged. “Change the way things are.”
“You speak as if nothing was ever easier.” Sabran shook her head. “As if custom and tradition have no hold on the world. They are what shapes the world.”
“It is that easy. A year ago, you would not have believed that you could love someone you considered a heretic.” Ead did not look away. “Is that not so?”
Sabran breathed a white mist between them.
“Yes,” she said. “It is so.”
Snowflakes frosted her eyelashes and caught in her hair. She had stormed outside without a cloak, and now held her own arms to keep in the warmth.
“I will try,” she concluded. “I will … present this as a military alliance only. I am resolved that I will reign without a consort, as I have always desired. It is no longer my duty to marry and conceive a child. But if it is the custom in the East, as it usually is here—”
“It may not be the custom.” Ead paused. “But if it is … perhaps you should reconsider your determination to remain unwed.”
Sabran studied her face. Even as her throat ached, Ead did not break her gaze.
“Why do you speak like this?” Sabran said quietly. “You know I never wanted to marry in the first place, and I am not inclined to do it again. That aside, it is you I want. No one else.”
“But while you rule, you can never be seen to be with me. I am a heretic, and—”
“Stop.” Sabran embraced her then. “Stop it.”
Ead drew her close, breathed her in. They sank onto a marble settle.
“Sabran the Seventh, my namesake, fell in love with her Lady of the Bedchamber,” Sabran murmured. “After she abdicated in favor of her daughter, they lived together for the rest of their days. If we defeat the Nameless One, my duty will be done.”
“As will mine.” Ead wrapped her cloak around them both. “Perhaps then I can steal you away.”
“Where?”
Ead kissed her temple. “Somewhere.”
Another foolish dream but, just for a moment, she allowed herself to inhabit it. A life with Sabran at her side.
“You and Meg kept something from me,” Sabran said. “What happened in Goldenbirch?”
It was some time before Ead could bring herself to answer.
“You asked me once if I knew who the first Queen of Inys was, if not Cleolind.”
Sabran looked up at her.
“My mother always said it was best to receive bad news in winter, when everything is already dark. So one can heal for spring,” she said, while Ead searched for the words. “And I must be at my strongest this particular spring.”
Faced with those eyes—the eyes of the witch—Ead knew she could not withhold the revelation any longer. After eight years of lies, she owed Sabran this truth.
Underneath the stars, she gave it.
57
West
In an undercroft in Ascalon Palace, a murderer of hallowed blood awaited execution. Sabran, who had never shown bloodthirst in all the years Loth had known her, had decided she wanted Crest drawn and quartered, but the other Dukes Spiritual had counseled that her people would find it unsettling at such a fragile time. Best to make it quiet and quick.