“Sounds foolish, I know,” he continued. “Like the ravings of a madman … but it was just what Jannart always knew, and what I failed to see. For him, the pursuit of the mulberry tree in the East was his great work. He had the final piece, but not the rest.”
“Jannart utt Zeedeur,” Ead said softly.
He looked at her through burning eyes. “Jannart was my midnight sun,” he rasped. “The light I have followed. My grief drove me to Inys, and that step took me to the East. There, I tried to finish his work in the hope that it would bring me closer to him. By doing all this, I completed, unbeknownst to me, the first stage of alchemy, of my work. The putrefaction of my soul. With his death, my work began. I faced the shadows in myself.”
Nobody moved or spoke. Ead was looking at him with a strange expression. Something like pity, but not quite. Niclays pressed on, trying not to notice the burning in his brow. He was on fire, body and mind.
“So you see,” he said, “the work lies in myself. I fell into shadow, and now I must rise, so I might be a better man.”
“That would take a long time,” the dragonrider said.
“Oh, it will,” Niclays agreed, fevered as much by excitement as the wound, “but that is the point. Don’t you see?”
“I see that you are raving mad.”
“No, no. I am approaching the next stage of transmutation. The white sun. The cleansing of impurities, the illumination of the mind! Any fool could tell that nothing can bring Jannart back,” Niclays ploughed on, “so I will resist Kalyba. She represents my past impurities, the one who comes to undo my progress and return me to my old instincts. To earn the white sun, I will give you the key to destroying all darkness.”
“Which is?” Ead said.
“Knowledge,” he finished, triumphant. “The Nameless One has a weakness. The twentieth scale of his chest armor is the one that Cleolind Onjenyu damaged all those years ago. She failed to hit the mark, but perhaps she opened the door. A door into his armor.”
Ead studied his face, her eyes narrowed a little.
“You can’t trust him,” Miduchi said. “He would sell his soul for a handful of silver.”
“I have no soul to sell, honored Miduchi. But I may yet earn one,” Niclays said. Saint, he was hot. “You see, Jan did leave someone behind, someone who I still care for. Truyde utt Zeedeur, his granddaughter. I want to be what he was to her, and to do that, I must be better. I must be good. And this is the way.”
He finished, staring around in wall-eyed excitement, but all was still. Sabran lowered her gaze, and Ead closed her eyes for a moment.
“She is still in Inys. A maid of honor.” As Niclays looked between them, his smile faded. “Isn’t she?”
“Leave us,” Sabran said to her Knights of the Body. “Please.”
They obeyed their queen.
“No,” Niclays whispered, trembling. “No.” His voice cracked. “What did you do to her?”
“It was Igrain Crest.” It was Ead who spoke. “Truyde plotted with her companion, Triam Sulyard, to bring about a reunion between East and West. She staged an assault on Queen Sabran, which Crest infiltrated to cause the death of Aubrecht Lievelyn.”
Niclays tried to take it in. Truyde had never expressed strong political views, but when he had last seen her, she had been no more than ten years old.
As he listened, numbness enveloped him. His ears rang. Everything turned dark at the corners, and a chain twisted around him and cut away his breath. By the time Ead had finished speaking, he could no longer feel anything but the dull throb at the end of his arm.
The fires within him had suddenly died. The shadows had returned.
“You left her in the Dearn Tower.” He forced it out. “She should have been sent to Brygstad and tried fairly. But no. You drew it out, just as you did to me.” A tear seeped into the corner of his mouth. “Her bones lie on one side of the world, and Triam Sulyard’s on the other. How much suffering might have been avoided if they had felt safe enough to broach their ideas with you, Sabran, rather than take matters into their own hands.”
Sabran did not look away.
“It is not only you who seeks a white sun,” she said.
Slowly, Niclays rose. Cold sweat dotted his brow. The pain in his arm was now so great, he could hardly see.
“Is Crest dead?”
“Yes,” Sabran said. “Her reign in the shadow of the throne is at an end.”
It should comfort him. Perhaps one day it would. But it would not bring her back.
He pictured Truyde, the granddaughter he had never and would never have. Her eyes and freckles had come from her mother, but her red hair, that had been a gift from her grandsire. All gone. He remembered how her face had lit up when he had visited the Silk Hall, and how she had run to him with her arms full of books and begged him to help her learn from them. Everything, she had said. I want to know everything. Above all things, it was her bright mind, ever-curious, that had made her most like Jannart.
“High Princess Ermuna has extended you an invitation to return home,” Sabran said quietly. “She seeks no permission from Inys, and even if she had, I have no further quarrel with it.”
It was all he had wanted to hear for seven years. Victory had never tasted so much like ashes.
“Home. Yes.” A hollow laugh escaped him. “Take my gift of knowledge. Destroy the Nameless One, so there might be other children who strive to change the world. And then, I pray you, Your Majesty, leave me to my shadows. I’m afraid they are all I have left.”
70
Abyss
The Reconciliation was a ghost ship in the distance. Loth watched other vessels emerge behind it from the fog.
It was the end of the second day of spring, and they were above the Bonehouse Trench, the deepest part of the Abyss. In Cárscaro, a group of mercenaries would be making their way through the mountain pass to kill King Sigoso and secure the Donmata Marosa.
If she was still alive. If the Flesh King had already died, his daughter might be a puppet now.
The ensigns of every country, save one, rippled among the ships. The Unceasing Emperor was gazing at them, hands behind his back. He wore a scaled cuirass over a dark robe, a heavy surcoat on top, and an ornate iron helmet, inlaid with silver moons and stars.
“So,” he said, “it begins.” He glanced at Loth. “I thank you, Lord Arteloth. For the pleasure of your company.”
“The pleasure was mine, Majesty.”
It took time for the ships to be tied to each other. Finally, Sabran came to the Dancing Pearl with Lady Nelda Stillwater and Lord Lemand Fynch on either side of her, followed by most of her Knights of the Body and a throng of Inysh naval officers and soldiers.
Befitting the situation, her attire struck a delicate balance between splendor and practicality. A gown that was more like a coat, lacking a framework and cutting off above the ankle, with riding boots beneath. A crown of twelve stars, interspersed with dancing pearls, sat atop her braided hair. And though she was no warrior, she wore the Sword of Virtudom, the stand-in for Ascalon, at her side.
When Loth saw Ead in the party, wrapped in a cloak with a fur collar, he breathed without strain for the first time in days. She was alive. Tané had kept her word.
Tané herself was also among those who came across, though her dragon was nowhere to be seen. When their gazes met, she inclined her head. Loth returned the gesture.
The Unceasing Emperor stopped a short distance from Sabran. He bowed, while Sabran curtsied.
“Your Majesty,” the Unceasing Emperor said.
Her face was cast in marble. “Your Imperial Majesty.”
There was a moment in which they regarded one another, these two rulers who governed with irreconcilable mandates, who had lived out their lives in the shadow of giants.
“Forgive our ignorance of your language,” Sabran said at last. “We understand you speak ours.”
“Indeed,” the Unceasing Emperor said, “though I assure you that I am ignorant of Inysh matters on most other fronts. Language was one of my passions as a boy.” He offered a gracious smile. “I see you have a passion from my side of the world, too. Dancing pearls.”
“We are very fond of them. This crown was made before the Grief of Ages, when Inys still traded with Seiiki.”
“They are exquisite. We have fine pearls in the Empire of the Twelve Lakes, too. Freshwater pearls.”
“We should like to see them,” Sabran said. “We must thank Your Imperial Majesty, and the all-honored Warlord, for your swift acquiescence to our request for aid.”
“My brother-in-arms and I could hardly have refused, Your Majesty, given the urgency of our situation. And how passionately Lord Arteloth argued for this alliance.”
“We expected no less.” Loth caught her eye, and she gave him the faintest smile. “May we ask if the dragons of the East are close?” she added. “We rather expected to be able to see them. Or perhaps they are smaller than we have always assumed.”