They sat in silence from then on. When the water was shallow enough to wade in, Melaugo stopped rowing.
“I’ll go no closer.” She nodded to the city. “You’re to go to a tavern called the Grapevine. Someone should collect you.” She pushed Kit with the toe of her boot. “Go, now. I’m a privateer, not a milk nurse.”
Loth stood. “Our thanks to you, Mistress Melaugo. Your kindness will not be forgotten.”
“Please forget it. I’ve a reputation to uphold.”
They struck out from the boat with their chests. When they were both on the sand, dripping wet, Melaugo sculled back to the Rose Eternal, singing in quavering Yscali.
Harlowe might have taken them both. They could have seen places that no longer had names, oceans that had never been cross-stitched by trading routes. Loth could have found himself at the prow of his own ship one day—but he was not that man, and never would be.
“Not our most dignified entrance.” Panting, Kit let his chest fall. “How do you suppose we find this tavern?”
“By … relying on our instincts,” Loth said, unsure. “The commons must get on well enough.”
“Arteloth, we are courtiers. We have no useful instincts.”
Loth had no counterstroke.
They made slow progress into the city. The chests were heavy, and they had neither map nor compass.
Perunta had once been known as the most beautiful port in the West. These mud-clotted streets, overflowing with fish bones and ashes and swill, were not what Loth had imagined. A dead bird writhed with maggots. Cesspits overflowed. In one unlit square, a sanctuary lay in ruins. Sabran had heard reports that King Sigoso had executed the sanctarians who would not renounce the Saint, but she had not wanted to believe them.
Loth tried not to breathe as he stepped over a rivulet of dark liquid. He dared not stray too far from Kit. People jostled around them, shrouding their faces with veils or cloth rags.
They saw their first plague house on the next street. Boards had been nailed over the windows, the oak door stained with scarlet wings. Yscali words were chalked above it.
“Pity this house, for here we are cursed,” Kit read.
Loth looked askance at him. “You read Yscali?”
“I know. You’re shocked,” Kit said gravely. “After all, I am such a master of Inysh, such a prodigy of verse, it seems impossible that I could have room in my skull for another language, but—”
“Kit.”
“Melaugo told me the translation.”
The darkness was disorienting. Few candles were lit in Perunta, though braziers fumigated the broader streets. By dint of striding about with as much confidence as possible, Loth and Kit finally happened upon the tavern where they were to meet their escort to Cárscaro. Its sign displayed a bunch of succulent black grapes that had no business in this sump.
A coach waited outside. Built of what Loth was quite sure was iron, it terrified him even before he wondered what sort of horse could draw such a thing. Then he saw.
A great wolfish head turned to look at him, and a massive jaw, packed with teeth, slackened to let slip a rope of drool.
The creature was larger than a bear. Its thick neck tapered into a serpentine body, which could be moved by its muscular legs or a pair of bat wings. At its side was a second monster, this one furred with gray. Their eyes were identical. Embers from the Womb of Fire.
Jaculi.
The offspring of wyvern and wolf.
“Stay still,” Kit whispered. “The bestiaries say that sudden movements make them pounce.”
One of the jaculi growled. Loth wanted to make the sign of the sword, but he dared not move.
How many Draconic creatures were awake in Yscalin?
The driver of the coach was an Yscal with oiled hair. “Lord Arteloth and Lord Kitston, I presume,” he said.
Kit made an incoherent noise. The driver pulled a lever, and a set of steps unfolded. “Leave the chests,” he muttered. “Get in.”
They obeyed.
Inside the coach, they found a woman awaiting them, dressed in a heavy crimson gown and a veil of black drum lace. She wore long velvet gloves, frilled at the elbow. A filigrain pomander hung at her side.
“Lord Arteloth. Lord Kitston,” she said in a soft voice. Loth could just make out dark eyes through the veil. “Welcome to Perunta. I am Priessa Yelarigas, First Lady of the Bedchamber to Her Radiance, the Donmata Marosa of the Draconic Kingdom of Yscalin.”
She was not afflicted. No one tortured by the plague could speak with so gentle a tongue.
“Thank you for meeting us here, my lady.” Loth endeavored to steady his voice. Kit squeezed into the coach beside him. “We are honored to be received at the court of King Sigoso.”
“His Majesty is honored to receive you.”
A whip snapped outside, and the coach jolted forward.
“I confess myself surprised that Her Radiance would send such a high-ranking lady to meet us,” Loth said. “Since this city is so full of the afflicted.”
“If the Nameless One wishes me to surrender my life to his plague, so be it,” was her even reply.
Loth clenched his jaw. To think that these people had once professed loyalty to Sabran, and to Virtudom.
“You will be used to horses drawing a coach, my lords,” Lady Priessa continued, “but it would take many days to cross Yscalin that way. Jaculi are fleet-footed and never tire.”
She folded her hands on her lap. Her fingers were home to several gold rings, fitted over the gloves.
“You should rest,” she said. “However swift our coach, we have some way to go, my lords.”
Loth attempted a smile. “I would prefer to watch the scenery.”
“As you wish.”
In truth, it was too dark to see a thing out of the window, but he would not sleep with a wyrm-lover so close.
This was Draconic territory. He would rise from the silk pillow of nobility and find the spy within. He would harden himself to the dangers of his mission. So while Kit nodded off, Loth sat as still as he could, eyes propped open by sheer force of will, and made a promise to the Saint.
He would accept the road he had been thrust on. He would seek out Prince Wilstan. He would reunite his queen with her father. And he would find his way home.
He could not tell if Priessa Yelarigas slept, or if she watched him all night long.
There was smoke in her hair. She could smell it.
“Where in Virtudom did you find her?”
“The belfry, of all places.”
Footsteps. “Saint, it’s Mistress Duryan. Send word to Her Majesty at once. And fetch a physician.”
Her tongue was an ember in her mouth. When the strangers let go of her, she plunged into a fever dream.
She was a child again, shaded from the sun by the branches of the tree. The fruit hung above her head, too high for her to reach, and Jondu was calling Come here, Eadaz, come and see.
Then the Prioress was lifting a cup to her lips, saying it was the blood of the Mother. It tasted like sunlight and laughter and prayer. She had burned like this in the days that followed, burned until the fire melted away her ignorance. That day she had been born anew.
When she woke, a familiar woman was at her bedside, pouring water from a ewer to a bowl.
“Meg.”
Margret turned to her so quickly she almost knocked the ewer over.
“Ead!” With a laugh of relief, she leaned in to kiss her brow. “Oh, thank the Saint. You’ve been insensible for days. The physicians said you had an ague, then the sweat, then the pestilence—”
“Sabran,” Ead rasped. “Meg, is she well?”
“We must first establish if you are well.” Margret felt her cheeks, her neck. “Does anything hurt? Should I fetch a physician?”
“No physicians. I am perfectly all right.” Ead wet her lips. “Have you anything to drink?”
“Of course.”
Margret filled a cup and held it up to her mouth. Ead swallowed a little of the ale inside.
“You were in the belfry,” Margret said. “What were you doing up there?”
Ead pieced a lie together. “I took a wrong turn in the library. I found the door to the clock tower open and thought I would explore, and there I was when the beast came. I suppose its … dreadful fumes gave me this fever.” Before Margret could question this, she added, “Now, tell me if Sabran is all right.”
“Sabran is as well as I have ever seen her, and all Inys knows that Fyredel himself could not touch her with his fire.”
“Where is the wyrm now?”
Margret returned the cup to the nightstand and soaked a cloth in the bowl.
“Gone.” Her brow pinched. “There were no deaths, but he did set fire to a few storehouses. Captain Lintley says the city is on edge. Sabran sent out heralds to reassure the people of her protection, but no one can believe that a High Western has woken.”
“It was bound to happen,” Ead said. “Smaller things have been stirring for some time.”
“Aye, but never one of the overlords. Fortunately, most of the city has no idea that what they saw was the right wing of the Nameless One. All the tapestries depicting him are hidden away in here.” Margret wrung out the cloth. “Him and his infernal kin.”