Tané pulled her hand from her mouth. The body was close enough to touch. One last risk, and she could leave this madness behind her. She shifted back onto her belly and crawled toward the dead Prioress.
An arrow whistled from somewhere in the clearing, just missing Kalyba. Tané flinched back. Sweat ran down her cheek as she reached for the corpse, but her fingers were too clumsy. Hardly daring to breathe, she bent over the body, the crater where a heart had been. Her fingers shook as she pulled at the chain, passed it over her own head, and tucked the jewel underneath her tunic.
When Kalyba looked back, both she and Tané froze. Recognition sparked in her eyes.
“Neporo.”
Tané watched her expression flicker. Kalyba began to laugh.
“Neporo,” she exclaimed. “I wondered— all these centuries, I wondered so often if you had survived, my sister. How wonderfully strange that it should be here that I find my answer.” A smile twisted her mouth, beautiful and terrible. “Look upon my work. All this destruction is because of you. And now you come on your hands and knees to beg the orange tree for mercy.”
Tané scrambled back, boots sliding through mud. She had never been afraid to fight in her life, but this woman, this creature, made something ring in her blood like a sword out of a sheath.
“You’re too late. The Nameless One will rise, and no starfall will weaken him. He would welcome you, Neporo.” Kalyba walked toward her, blood dripping from the heart in her palm. “Flesh Queen of Komoridu.”
“I am not Neporo,” Tané found her voice in a dark hollow. “My name is Tané.”
Kalyba stopped.
She was wrong. Like a cockroach wrapped in amber, preserved in the wrong time.
Yet Tané felt irresistibly drawn to her. Her blood called to this woman even as her flesh recoiled.
“I almost forgot that she had a child,” Kalyba said. “How could it be possible that her descendants have not only lasted this long without my knowledge, but that you are here on the very same day as I am?” This little quirk of fate seemed to amuse her. “Know this, blood of the mulberry tree. Your ancestor is responsible for this. You are born of wicked seed.”
The rush of the river was closer now. Kalyba watched her go deeper into the roots.
“You look … so much like her.” The witch softened her voice. “A ghost of her.”
An arrow sailed across the clearing then and struck Kalyba in the back of her shoulder, making her turn in fury. A woman with golden eyes had emerged from the caves, a second arrow already nocked. She looked straight at Tané, and her gaze was a command.
Run.
Tané wavered. Honor told her to stand and fight, but instinct pulled harder. All that mattered now was that she reached Inys, and that Kalyba stayed ignorant of what she carried there.
She threw herself into the river, and the river took her back into its arms.
For a long time, all she knew was the fight to keep her head above water. As the river carried her from the valley, she crossed one arm over the fruit and used the other to swim. Smoke followed her all the way to the fork, where she hauled herself, dripping, from the rush, so bruised and tired and footsore that she could only lie and shudder.
Twilight turned to dusk, and dusk to moonless night.
Tané stood, her legs shaking, and walked.
Instinct made her take the jewel from its case, and it lit her way. Between the boughs of the canopy, she found the right star and followed its glimmer. Once, she saw the eyes of an animal watching her from the trees, but it kept its distance. Everything did.
At some point, her boots found a path of hard-packed earth, and she walked until the trees began to thin. When she was out of the forest, under the sky, she fell at last.
Her own hair was her pillow. She breathed through the clenched fist of her throat, and she wished on everything she loved that she was home in Seiiki, where the trees grew sweet.
An earth-shaking thump made her open her eyes. Wind unsettled her hair, and Tané looked up to see a bird looming over her. White as moonshine, with wings of bronze.
Ascalon Palace glistened in the first glow of sunrise. A ring of high towers at the crook of a river. Tané limped toward it, past the city-dwellers who had risen from their beds.
The great white bird had found a gap in the coastal defenses and taken her to a forest north of Ascalon. From there, she followed a well-trodden road until the horizon birthed a city.
The gates of the palace were threaded with flowers. When she got close, a throng of guards in silver plate blocked her way.
“Hold.” Spears pointed at her chest. “No farther, mistress. State your business here.”
She raised her head so they could see her face. The spears flinched higher as the guards stared at her.
“By the Saint,” one of them murmured. “An Easterner.”
“Who are you?” another asked her.
Tané tried to form words, but her mouth was dry, and her legs quaked.
Frowning, the second man loosened his grip on his sword. “Get the Resident Ambassador to Mentendon,” he said to the woman beside him.
Her armor rattled as she left. The others kept their spears trained on the stranger.
It was some time before another woman approached the gates. Her braided hair was a deep red, and she wore a black garment that flattened her breasts and waist, with skirts that belled out from her hips. Lace covered her brown skin to the throat.
“Who are you, honorable stranger?” she said in perfect Seiikinese. “Why have you come to Ascalon?”
Tané did not give her name. Instead, she held the ruby ring into the light.
“Take me to Lady Nurtha,” she said.
VI
The Keys to the Abyss
For whatsoever from one place doth fall,
is with the tide unto an other brought:
For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.
—Edmund Spenser
66
West
Her world had become a night without stars. It was sleep, but not-sleep; a boundless darkness, settled by one soul. She had been chained here for a thousand years, but now, at last, she stirred.
A golden sun seared to life within her. As the fire sloughed off her skin, she remembered the bite of the cruel sister. She could see the outlines of faces all around her, but their features were unclear.
“Ead.”
She felt sculpted from marble. Her limbs cleaved to the bed, as an effigy was bound forever to the tomb. In the dark spots in her vision, somebody was praying for her soul.
Ead, come back to us.
She knew that voice, the scent of cicely, but her lips were stone and would not part.
Ead.
New warmth fired deep in her bones, burning away the bounds that imprisoned them. The calyx that surrounded her cracked and, at last, the heat opened her throat.
“Meg,” she whispered, “I believe this is the second time I have found you nursing me.”
A choked laugh. “Then you should stop giving me cause to nurse you, silly goose.” Margret folded her into her arms. “Oh, Ead, I feared this wretched fruit might not work—” She turned to her servants. “Send word at once to Her Majesty that Lady Nurtha is awake. Doctor Bourn, too.”
“Her Majesty is in council, Lady Margret.”
“I assure you that Her Majesty will have you all gelded if this is kept from her. Go, now.”
Wretched fruit. Ead realized what Margret had said and looked over her shoulder. On the nightstand was an orange with a bite taken out of it. Drunken sweetness roiled her senses.
“Meg.” Her throat was so dry. “Meg, tell me you did not go to the Priory on my account.”
“I’m not fool enough to think I could fight my way through a house of dragonslayers.” Margret kissed the top of her head. “You might not believe in the Saint, but a higher power must have a care for you, Eadaz uq-Nāra.”
“Indeed. The higher power of Lady Margret Beck.” Ead grasped her hand. “Who brought the fruit?”
“That,” Margret said, “is a wondrous tale. And I will tell it to you as soon as you’ve had some caudle.”
“Is there anything you think that foul stuff doesn’t cure?”
“Cankers. Otherwise, no.”
It was Tallys who brought the caudle to her bed. Upon seeing Ead, she burst into tears.
“Oh, Mistress Duryan,” she sobbed. “I thought you were going to die, m’lady.”
“Not quite yet, Tallys, despite efforts to the contrary.” Ead smiled. “How lovely it is to see you again.”
Tallys curtsied several times before retreating. Margret closed the door behind her.
“Now,” Ead said to Margret, “I am drinking my caudle. Tell me everything.”
“Three more mouthfuls, if you please.”
Ead grimaced and obeyed. When she had forced it down, Margret made good on her word.
She told her how Loth had volunteered to be the Inysh ambassador in the East, and how he had gone across the Abyss to make the proposal to the Unceasing Emperor. How weeks had passed. How wyverns had burned the crops. How a Seiikinese girl had stumbled to the palace with bloody hands, carrying a golden fruit and the Inysh coronation ring, which Loth had last possessed.
“And that was not all she carried.” Margret glanced at the door. “Ead, she has the other jewel. The rising jewel.”
Ead almost dropped the cup.
“That cannot be,” she said hoarsely. “It is in the East.”