Ead swam. The white jewel rang against her skin.
You need not give your life. Her head broke the surface, and she kept swimming. Another fire burns in your heart. Become my handmaiden instead, and I will spare Sabran Berethnet. If you do not do this, the voice said, I will break her.
You will have to break me first. And I have proven difficult to break.
She climbed onto the ship and rose.
So be it.
And so the Nameless One, the blight upon the nations, plunged toward the ship.
Every fire in the Abyss went out. All Ead could hear were cries of fear as death came as a shadow from above. Only starlight pierced the darkness, but in that light, Ascalon shone.
She ran across the Dancing Pearl. Her world darkened until there was only the beat of her heart and the blade. She willed the Mother to give her the strength that had filled her on that day in Lasia.
Unearthly metal, alive to her touch. The Nameless One opened his jaws, and a white sun rose inside his mouth. Ead saw the place where his armor had been torn away. She lifted the sword that Kalyba had made, that Cleolind had wielded, that had lived in song for a thousand years.
She buried it to the hilt in flesh.
Ascalon glowed until it blinded her. She had a moment to see the skin of her hands simmering with heat—a moment, an age, something between—before the sword was wrenched from them. She was thrown high across the deck, over the gunwale, into the sea. Scale crashed through the Dancing Pearl, carving it fesswise.
The strength left her as quickly as it had come.
She had driven the blade into his heart, as the Mother had not, but it was not enough. He must be chained to the Abyss to die. And she carried a key.
The jewel drifted in front of her. The star inside it lit the dark. How she longed to sleep for eternity.
Another light flickered in the shadows. Lightning, glowing in a vast pair of eyes.
Tané and her dragon. A hand reached through the water and Ead grasped it.
They rose from the ocean, toward the stars. Tané held the blue jewel in one hand. The Nameless One thrashed in the Abyss, head thrown back, fire spraying from his mouth like lava from the mantle of the earth, with Ascalon still buried in his breast.
Tané locked her right hand over Ead’s and pushed her fingers between her knuckles, so they both held the waning jewel. It pressed against the dying beat of her heart.
“Together,” Tané whispered. “For Neporo. For Cleolind.”
Slowly, Ead reached up with her other hand, and their fingers interlocked around the rising jewel.
Her thoughts waxed faint with every breath, but her blood knew what to do. It was instinct, deep-rooted and ancient as the tree.
The ocean rose to their command. They played this final game by turns, never breaking their hold on each other.
They spun him a cocoon, two seamsters weaving with the waves. Steam filled the air as they knitted the Nameless One into the sea, and the darkness quenched the hot coal of his heart.
He looked up at Ead one last time, and she looked into him. A flash of light blinded her where Ascalon had torn him open. The Beast of the Mountain let out a scream before he disappeared.
Ead knew that she would hear that sound for as long as she drew breath. It would echo through her unquiet dreams, like a song across the desert. The dragons of the East dived after him, to see him to his grave. The sea closed over all their heads.
And the Abyss was still.
72
West
In the foothills of the Spindles, the wyrm Valeysa was dead, brought down by a harpoon. All around her, the ground was strewn with the earthly remains of human and wyrm.
Fyredel had not stayed to defend his Draconic territory. Instead, he had summoned his brother and sister to rout the combined armies of North and South and West. They had failed. As for Fyredel himself, he had taken wing as soon as the Nameless One had disappeared beneath the waves, and his followers had scattered once more.
The sun was rising over Yscalin. Its light fell on the blood and the char, the fire and the bones. A Seiikinese woman named Onren had brought Loth here on dragonback so he could find Margret. Standing on the wretched plain, he strained his gaze to Cárscaro.
Smoke rose from the once-great city. No one had been able to tell him whether the Donmata Marosa had survived the night. What was known was that King Sigoso, murderer of queens, was dead. His wasted corpse hung from the Gate of Niunda. Seeing it had caused his soldiers to desert.
Loth prayed the princess lived. With all his soul, he prayed she was up there, ready to be crowned.
The field hospital was a league from where the fight had begun. Several tents had been erected near a mountain stream, and the flags of all nations flew outside them.
The wounded were crying in agony. Some had burns that went deep into their flesh. Others were so covered in blood, they were unrecognizable. Loth spotted King Jantar of the Ersyr among those who were gravely hurt, lying with his warriors, tended to from all sides. One woman, whose leg had been shattered, was biting down on a leather strap while the barber-surgeons sawed it off below the knee. Healers brought in pails of water.
He found Margret in a tent for Inysh casualties. Its flaps were open to let out the reek of vinegar.
A bloodstained apron was tied over her skirts. She was kneeling beside Sir Tharian Lintley, who lay still and bruised on a pallet. A deep wound stretched from his jaw to his temple. It had been stitched with care, but he would be scarred for life.
Margret looked up at Loth. For a moment, she was blear-eyed, as if she had forgotten who he was.
“Loth.”
He crouched beside her. When she leaned into him, he enveloped her in his arms and rested his chin on the top of her head.
“I think he’ll be all right.” She smelled of smoke. “It was a soldier. Not a wyrm.”
His sister curled against his chest.
“He is dead.” Loth kissed her brow. “It’s over, Meg.”
Her face was smeared with ash. Tears washed into her eyes, and she pressed a trembling hand to her mouth.
Outside, a finger of light broached the horizon, pink as a wild rose. As a new spring dawn crested the Spindles, they held each other close and watched it gild the sky.
73
West
Brygstad, capital of the Free State of Mentendon, crown jewel of learning in the West. Years he had dreamed of returning to its streets.
There were the tall and narrow houses, each with a bell gable. There were the sugared roofs. There was the crocketed spire of the Sanctuary of the Saint, towering from the heart of the city.
Niclays Roos sat in a heated coach, wrapped in a fur-lined cloak. During his convalescence at Ascalon Palace, High Princess Ermuna had written to request his presence at court. His knowledge of the East, she had told him in her letter, would help enrich the relationship between Mentendon and Seiiki. He might even be called upon to help open negotiations for a new trade deal with the Empire of the Twelve Lakes.
He wanted none of it. That court was haunted. If he walked there, all he would see were the ghosts of his past.
Still, he had to show his face. One did not refuse a royal invitation, especially if one was intending not to be banished again.
The coach trundled over the Sun Bridge. Through the window, he looked out at the frozen River Bugen and the snow-capped spires of the city he had lost. He had crossed this bridge on foot when he had first come to court, having traveled from Rozentun on a haywain. In those days, he had not been able to afford coaches. His mother had withheld his inheritance, pointing out, not erroneously, that it amounted to the cost of his degree. All he had possessed was a sharp tongue and the shirt on his back.
It had been enough for Jannart.
His left arm now ended just below the elbow. Though it ached at times, the pain was easy to ignore.
Death had kissed his cheek on the Dancing Pearl. The Inysh physicians had assured him that now he was through the worst, what was left of the limb would heal. He had never trusted Inysh physicians—pious quacks, the lot of them—but he supposed he had no choice but to believe them.
It was Eadaz uq-Nāra who had mortally wounded the Nameless One with the True Sword. And then, as if that were not sufficient heroism for one night, she and Tané Miduchi had finished him off with the jewels. It was the stuff of legend, a tale destined to be enshrined in song—and Niclays had slept through the whole damned thing. The thought made a smile pull at the corner of his mouth. Jannart would have laughed his guts out.
Somewhere in the city, bells were ringing. Someone had been wed today.