When she was alone, Tané folded her hands on the covers. Eels were twisting in her stomach. She had wanted to meet Lady Nurtha on her feet, but the Inysh had put her in a lace-trimmed garment that made her look a fool. Better to maintain a semblance of dignity.
A woman soon appeared in the doorway. Her riding boots made no sound.
Tané studied the slayer. Her skin was smooth and golden-brown, and her hair, which curled like wood shavings, sat thick and dark on her shoulders. There was something of Chassar, the man who had saved her, in the lines of her jaw and brow, and Tané wondered if they were kin.
“The Resident Ambassador tells me you speak Inysh.” She had a Southern lilt. “I had no idea it was taught in Seiiki.”
“Not to everyone,” Tané said. “Only to those in training for the High Sea Guard.”
“I see.” The slayer folded her arms. “I am Eadaz uq-Nāra. You may call me Ead.”
“Tané.”
“You have no family name.”
“It was Miduchi once.”
There was a brief silence.
“I am told you made a perilous journey to the Priory to save my life. I thank you for it.” Ead went to the window seat. “I assume Lord Arteloth told you what I am.”
“A wyrm-killer.”
“Yes. And you are a wyrm-lover.”
“You would slay my dragon if she were here.”
“A few weeks ago, you would have been right. My sisters once slaughtered an Eastern wyrm that thought it shrewd to fly over Lasia.” Ead spoke without apparent remorse, and Tané wrestled with a surge of hatred. “If you will oblige me, I would like to hear how you started this journey, Tané.”
If the slayer was going to be civil, so would Tané. She told Ead how she had come to have the rising jewel, her skirmish with the pirates, and her brief and violent detour to the Priory.
It was at this point that Ead began to pace back and forth. Two small lines appeared between her eyebrows.
“So the Prioress is dead, and the Witch of Inysca has possession of the orange tree,” she said. “Let us hope that she seeks only to keep it to herself, and not to gift it to the Nameless One.”
Tané allowed her a moment. “Who is the Witch of Inysca?” she finally asked, quietly.
Ead closed her eyes.
“It is a long tale,” she said, “but if you wish, I will tell it to you. I will tell you everything that has happened to me over the last year. After your journey, you deserve the truth.”
While rain drizzled down the window, she did. Tané listened without interrupting.
She listened to Ead tell her the history of the Priory of the Orange Tree, and the letter she had found from Neporo. About the Witch of Inysca and the House of Berethnet. About the two branches of magic, and the comet and the sword Ascalon, and how the jewels fit into it all. A servant brought them hot wine while Ead talked, but by the time she was finished, both cups had turned cold, untouched.
“I understand if you find this difficult to believe,” Ead said. “It all sounds quite ridiculous.”
“No.” Tané released her breath for what felt like the first time in hours. “Well, yes, it does. But I believe you.”
She realized she was shivering. Ead flicked her fingers, and a fire sprang up in the hearth.
“Neporo had a mulberry tree,” Tané said, even as she took in this evidence of magic. “I may be her descendant. It is how I came to have the rising jewel.”
For a time, Ead seemed to digest this. “Is this mulberry tree alive?”
“No.”
Ead visibly clenched her jaw.
“Cleolind and Neporo,” she said. “One mage of the South. One of the East. It seems that history is to repeat itself.”
“I am like you, then.” Tané watched the flames dance behind a grate. “Kalyba also had a tree, and Queen Sabran is her descendant. Does that make us both sorceresses?”
“Mages,” Ead corrected, though she sounded distracted. “Having mage blood does not make you one. You must eat of the fruit to call yourself that. But it is why the tree yielded you a fruit in the first place.” She lowered herself on the window seat. “You said my sisters grounded your wyrm. It never occurred to me to ask how you reached Inys.”
“A great bird.”
Ead’s gaze snapped to her.
“Parspa,” she said. “Chassar must have sent her.”
“Yes.”
“I am surprised he trusted you. The Priory does not take kindly to wyrm-lovers.”
“You would not despise the Eastern dragons if you knew anything about them. They are nothing like the fire-breathers.” Tané stared her out. “I despise the Nameless One. His servants threw down our gods in the Great Sorrow, and I mean to throw him down in punishment for it. In any case,” she said, “you have no choice but to trust me.”
“I could kill you. Take the jewel.”
From the look in her eyes, she would do it. There was a knife in a sheath at her hip.
“And use both jewels yourself?” Tané said, undaunted. “I assume you know how.” She took her case from under the pillows and tipped the rising jewel into her palm. “I have used mine to guide a ship through a windless sea. I have used it to draw the waves onto the sand. So I know that it drains you—slowly at first, so you can bear it, like the ache from a rotten tooth. Then it turns your blood cold, and your limbs heavy, and you long only to sleep for years.” She held it out. “The burden must be shared.”
Slowly, Ead took it. With her other hand, she eased a chain from around her neck.
The waning jewel. A little moon, round and milky. The steady glow from a star was inside it, calm where its twin was always sparkling. Ead held one jewel in each palm.
“The keys to the Abyss.”
Tané felt a chill.
It seemed impossible that they had united them.
“There is a plan in place to defeat the Nameless One. I assume Loth told you.” Ead handed back the blue jewel. “You and I will use these keys to bind him forever in the deep.”
Just as Neporo had a thousand years ago, with a fellow mage beside her.
“I should warn you,” Ead said, “that we cannot kill the Nameless One without Ascalon. Someone must drive it into his heart before we use the jewels. To quench his fire. My hope is that the Witch of Inysca will bring it to us, and that we can take it from her. If not, it is possible that your Eastern wyr— dragons … will be able to weaken him enough for us to use the jewels without the sword. Perhaps then we can bind him for another thousand years. I mislike that option, for it means that another generation will have to take up this mantle.”
“I agree,” Tané said. “It must end here.”
“Good. We will practice with the jewels together.”
Ead reached into a pouch at her side and withdrew the golden fruit Tané had brought to Inys.
“Take a bite of this,” she said. “Siden may help you in this battle. Especially if Kalyba comes.” Tané watched her place it on the nightstand. “Do it soon. It will rot today.”
After a moment, Tané nodded.
“Binding the Nameless One may be the end of us both,” Ead said, softer. “Are you willing to take that risk?”
“To die in the service of a better world would be the highest honor.”
Ead gave her a faint smile. “I believe we understand each other. On this one thing, at least.”
To her surprise, Tané found herself smiling in return.
“Come and find me when you feel stronger,” Ead said. “There is a lake in Chesten Forest. We can learn to use the jewels. And see how long we can last without killing each other.”
With that, she took her leave. Tané slipped the rising jewel, still glinting, back into its case.
The golden fruit was glowing. She cupped it in her hands for a long time before she tasted of its flesh. Sweetness burst beneath her teeth and washed over her tongue. When she swallowed, it was hot.
The fruit fell to the floor, and she erupted into flame.
In the Great Bedchamber, the Queen of Inys burned. Doctor Bourn had watched her all day, but now Ead went to her side, against her word.
Sabran slept in the vise of her fever. Ead sat on the bed and soaked a cloth with water.
The Prioress was dead, and the Priory in the hands of the witch. The thought of the Vale of Blood filled with wyrms, brought there by a mage, was as bitter to Ead as wormwood.
At least Kalyba would not harm the orange tree. It was her only source of the siden she craved.
Ead cooled Sabran’s hot brow. She could not mourn for Mita Yedanya, but she did for her sisters, who had lost their second matriarch in as many years. With the Prioress dead, they would either flee elsewhere and elect a new leader—likely Nairuj—or submit to Kalyba so they might stay close to the tree. Whatever they chose, Ead prayed Chassar would be safe.
Sabran had fallen still by dusk. Ead was trimming the wicks on the candles when the silence broke.
“What did the Easterner say?”
Ead looked over her shoulder. Sabran was watching her.
Quietly, so no one outside the door could eavesdrop, Ead recounted her meeting with Tané. When she was finished, Sabran gazed with glassy eyes at the canopy.
“I will address my people the day after tomorrow,” she said. “To tell them about the alliance.”
“You are not well. Surely you can delay for a day or two.”
“A queen does not abandon her plans for a trifling fever.” She sighed as Ead covered her with the mantle. “I told you not to play nursemaid.”