She walked down a flight of steps and into the open gallery below the Royal Solarium, where twelve small balconies spilled winter-flowering blossoms. As she strode toward the door to her own chamber, she heard a footstep behind her, soft as felt.
Silently, she turned. A Red Damsel stood in a beam of sunlight. At her lips was a blowpipe, whittled from wood.
The dart had punched through her shirt before Ead could take a breath. Death spread from its bite.
The floor met her knees with bone-jarring force. She lifted a shaking hand to her belly and felt the slender dart in it. Her killer caught and lowered her.
“Forgive me, Eadaz.”
“Nairuj,” Ead coughed out.
She had known this day would come. A sister of the Priory could avoid her wardings.
The molten glass was setting in her veins. Her muscles cramped around the dart, rejecting the poison. “You had the child,” she managed to say.
Ochre eyes looked down at her. “A girl,” Nairuj said, after a hesitation. “I did not want this, sister, but the Prioress commands that you are silenced.” Ead felt Nairuj twist the ring off her finger, the ring that had been her dream. “Where is the jewel, the white jewel?”
Ead could not reply. The feeling was already trickling from her. She had the curious sense that her ribs were disappearing. As Nairuj felt at her throat for the jewel, Ead gripped the dart in her belly and removed it.
She was so cold. All the fire in her was going out, leaving ashes in its wake.
“Nameless is—” Even breathing was agony. “Spring. The third d-day of spring.”
“What is this?”
Sabran. Fear strained her voice.
Nairuj moved like an arrow. Ead watched through watering eyes as her one-time sister pulled a band of silk across her mouth and vaulted over the nearest balustrade.
Footsteps clattered down the corridor. “Ead—” Sabran gathered her into her arms, gasping. “Ead!” Her features were bleeding together. “Look at me. Look at me, Ead, please. T-tell me what she did to you. Tell me which poison—”
Ead tried to speak. To say her name, just one more time. To say she was sorry to break her promise.
I will always come back to you.
Darkness closed around her like a cocoon. She thought of the orange tree. Not you. Ead. Please. The voice was fading. Please don’t leave me here alone. She thought of how it had been between them, from the candle dance to the first touch of her lips.
Then she did not think at all.
The sun was setting over Ascalon. Loth gazed through the window at the candlelit Alabastrine Tower, where the Virtues Council were debating the Eastern Proposal.
Ead lay on her bed. Her lips were as black as her hair, her corset unraveled to reveal a pinhole in her belly.
Sabran had not left her side. She was staring at Ead as if looking away would snap her fragile hold on life. Outside, Aralaq was prowling in the Privy Garden. It had taken a great deal of wheedling to convince him to leave for long enough for the Royal Physician to examine Ead and, even then, he had snapped his jaws when the man had tried to touch her.
Doctor Bourn moved like the hand of a clock around the sickbed. He measured her heartbeat, felt her brow, and studied the wound. When he finally took off his eyeglasses, Sabran raised her head.
“Lady Nurtha has been poisoned,” he said, “but by what, I cannot tell. The symptoms are like none I have ever seen.”
“The cruel sister,” Loth said. “That is its name.”
It was supposed to cause death. Once again, Ead had defied her fate.
The Royal Physician frowned at this. “I have never heard of such a poison, my lord. I do not know how to purge it from her.” He looked back at Ead. “Majesty, it seems to me that Lady Nurtha has been put into a deep sleep. Perhaps she can be woken from it. Perhaps not. All we can do is try to keep her alive for as long as we can. And pray for her.”
“You will wake her,” Sabran whispered. “You will find a way. If she dies—”
Her voice broke, and she held her head between her hands. The Royal Physician bowed.
“I am sorry, Your Majesty,” he said. “We will do our best for her.”
He retreated from the chamber. When the door closed, Sabran began to shiver.
“I was cursed in my cradle. The Lady of the Woods laid a hex upon my head.” She never took her eyes from Ead. “Not only is my crown lost, but my loved ones fall like roses in winter. Always before my eyes.”
Margret, who had been keeping watch on the other side of the bed, now went to sit beside her.
“Don’t think these things. You are not cursed, Sab,” she said gently, but firmly. “Ead is not dead, and we will not mourn her. We will fight for her, and for everything she believes in.” She looked at Ead. “But I tell you this—I will not marry Tharian until she wakes. If she thinks this foolishness will get her out of giving me away, she is sorely mistaken.”
Loth took the seat that Margret had left. He lifted his clasped hands to his lips.
Even when she had been bleeding in Lasia, Ead had never looked this vulnerable. All life and warmth had fled from her.
“I will go to the East.” His voice was hoarse. “No matter what the Virtues Council decides, I must go across the Abyss as your representative, Sabran. To broker an alliance. To seek out the other jewel.”
Sabran was silent for a very long time. Outside, Aralaq let out a chilling howl.
“I want you to go first to the Unceasing Emperor, Dranghien Lakseng,” Sabran said. “He is unwed, and consequently we have more to offer him. If he is convinced to join us, he may persuade the Warlord of Seiiki.”
Loth watched her, heartsore.
“I will send with you an entourage of two hundred persons. If you are to reach the Unceasing Emperor, you must display the might of the Queendom of Inys.” She met his gaze. “You will bid him meet us on the Abyss with his dragons on the third day of spring. There will not be time for you to come back, or to debate the terms in Inys. I trust that you will seal this alliance with our interests at heart, to achieve the outcome we desire.”
“I will, I swear it.”
It seemed to Loth that this room was already like a crypt. Shaking off the thought, he went to Ead and brushed a spiral of hair behind her ear. He would not permit himself to think that this was a farewell.
With dignity, Sabran rose from her chair.
“You promised you would return to me,” she said to Ead. “Queens do not forget promises made, Eadaz uq-Nāra.”
Her stance was rigid. Loth took her by the arm and guided her tenderly from the chamber, leaving Margret to her vigil.
He walked beside his queen. When they reached the end of the corridor, Sabran buckled at last. Loth wrapped her in his arms as she sank to the floor and sobbed as if her soul had been ripped out.
V
Here Be Dragons
Whose word did he fondly follow
That he dared this perilous voyage,
These raging seas?
—Anonymous, from The Man’yōshū
58
West
The Elegant had been sailing for days, but it felt like centuries. Loth had lost count of exactly how long it had been. All he knew was that he wanted to be off this ship and on dry land.
Sabran had argued with great spirit for the so-called Eastern Proposal. During that time, the Virtues Council had not slept. Their chief worry was how the Inysh people might respond to an alliance with heretics and wyrms, which went against everything they knew.
After hours of debate on how it could be justified from a religious perspective, several consultations with the College of Sanctarians, and fierce arguments for and against, Sabran had moved the vote in her favor. The embassy had been on its way within a day.
The plan, desperate as it was, began to take shape. To raise their chances of victory on the Abyss, they would have to divide the Draconic Army. Sabran had invoked the holy call to arms and written to the sovereigns of both Virtudom and the South, asking them to assist Inys in besieging and reclaiming Cárscaro on the second day of spring. An attack on the sole Draconic stronghold might compel Fyredel and his underlings to remain in Yscalin to defend it.
It would be dangerous. Many would die. It was possible that they would all die—but there was no other choice. Either they must smite the Nameless One the hour he rose, or wait for him to annihilate the world. Loth would far sooner die with a sword in his hand.
His mother had been distraught to see him leave again, but at least he had been able to say goodbye this time. She and Margret had sent him off at Perchling, as had Sabran, who had given him her coronation ring to show to the Unceasing Emperor. It hung from a chain around his neck.
Her determination was something to behold. It was clear that she feared this alliance, but Sabran would do anything for her subjects. And he sensed this was her way to honor Ead.
Ead. Every time he woke, he thought she was there, on the road with him.
A knock on the door. Loth opened his eyes.
“Yes?”
The cabin girl entered and bowed.
“Lord Arteloth,” she said, “we’re in sight of the other ship. Are you ready to leave?”
“We’ve reached the Bonehouse Trench?”
“Yes, m’lord.”
He reached for his boots. The next ship would take him to the Empire of the Twelve Lakes.