Sabran had never seen the Bower of Eternity. If she was dreaming of it, something was afoot.
Hours tiptoed by. Ead remained still, watching for any movement between shadow and moonbeam.
Siden allowed her to cloak herself in darkness. A cutthroat, no matter how skilled, did not have that gift. If another one came to either of the doors, she would see them.
Close to one of the clock, Roslain Crest, who was also on night duty, appeared with a candle.
“Mistress Duryan,” she said.
“Lady Roslain.”
They stood in silence for some time.
“Do not think me unaware of your intentions,” Roslain said. “I know full well what you are doing. As does Lady Katryen.”
“I was not aware that I had given you offense, my—”
“Do not take me for a fool. I see you moving closer to the queen. I see you trying to curry favor with her.” Her eyes were dark as sapphires in the gloom. “Lady Truyde has said that you are a sorceress. I cannot think that she would make such an accusation without reason.”
“I took the spurs and the girdle. I renounced the false faith of the Dawnsinger,” Ead said. “The Knight of Fellowship tells us to embrace the converts. Perhaps you should listen to him better, my lady.”
“I am the blood of the Knight of Justice. Be careful how you address me, Mistress Duryan.”
Another silence rang between them.
“If you truly care for her,” Roslain said, softer, “I take no issue with your new standing. Unlike many Inysh, I have nothing against converts. We are all equal in the eyes of the Saint. But if you only seek gifts and riches, I will see to it that you are cut from her side.”
“I seek no gifts or riches. Only to serve the Saint as best I may,” Ead said. “Can we not both agree that no more of her friends should be cut from her side?”
Roslain looked away.
“I know Loth was fond of you,” she said, with what Ead could see was a degree of difficulty. “For that, I must think the best of you.” With still more difficulty, she continued: “Forgive my caution. It is wearisome to watch the spiders that surround her, who only think to climb the—”
A cry rose from the Royal Bedchamber. Ead spun to face the door, heart thumping.
She had no movement from the wardings. No cutthroat could have entered that chamber.
Roslain stared at her, lips parted, eyes wide. Ead took the key from Roslain’s frozen hand and ran up the steps.
“Hurry, Ead, open it,” Roslain shouted. “Captain Lintley! Sir Gules!”
Ead turned the key in the lock and flung open the door. The fire burned low in the hearth.
“Ead.” A shape moved on the bed. “Ead, Ros, please, you must wake Arbella.” Sabran, ravels of hair escaping her braid. “I woke and reached for her hand, and it was so cold—” She sobbed. “Oh, Saint, say it is not so—”
Captain Lintley and Sir Gules Heath appeared at the door, swords drawn. “By the Saint, Lady Roslain, is she hurt?” Heath barked.
While Roslain hastened to her queen, Ead circled to the other side of the bed, where a small figure lay beneath the coverlet. Even before Ead searched in vain for a pulse, she knew. A terrible hush descended as she moved away.
“I am sorry, Your Majesty,” she said.
The two men bowed their heads. Roslain began to weep, one hand over her mouth.
“She did not see me wed,” Sabran said faintly. A tear ran down her cheek. “I promised her she would.”
18
East
The journey to the capital was hideous. Niclays was jounced along for days in the stuffy palanquin with little to do but doze, or squint at bits of scenery between the wooden blinds.
Ginura lay north of the Bear’s Jaw, the mountain range that guarded Cape Hisan. The trade road cleaved to the foothills before it struck a crossway.
Ever since the day Niclays had arrived in Seiiki, it had been his dream to visit Ginura. Back then, he had been grateful for the chance to live in a place few Westerners would ever see.
He remembered being called to Brygstad Palace, where Leovart had broken the news that Sabran had ordered his expulsion from Virtudom. He had thought her rage quenched after Seyton Combe had questioned him at length in the Dearn Tower about his misuse of Berethnet money. Na?vely, he had believed it would be a short exile.
Only after the third year had he understood that the tiny house on the edge of the world was to be his final resting place. That was when he had stopped dreaming of discovery, and had dreamed only of home. Now he could feel his old curiosity in the world awakening.
On the first night of the journey, they stopped at an inn in the foothills, where Niclays bathed in a hot spring. He looked at the far-off lights of Cape Hisan, and the ember that was Orisima, and for the first time in close to seven years, he started to feel as if he could breathe again.
The feeling did not last. The next morning, the chair-carriers began to complain about the owl-faced Ment they were lugging north, the spy of a prince who spat upon dragons, who must have the red sickness in his breath. Certain words were said in return, and from that point on, the jolting grew worse. The chair-carriers also began to sing about an insolent man no one liked, who was left crying on the side of the road for the mountain cats to take away.
“Yes, yes, very funny,” Niclays barked at them in Seiikinese. “Shall I sing about the four chair-carriers who fell down a cliff and into the river, never to be seen again?”
All that did was make them laugh.
Countless things went wrong following that incident. A handhold broke off the palanquin (“Great Kwiriki wash away this owl man!”) and they were forced to delay their journey while a carpenter was fetched to repair it. Once they were on their way again, the chair-carriers finally let Niclays sleep.
When he heard voices, his eyes cracked open. The chair-carriers were singing a lullaby from the Great Sorrow.
Hush, my child, the wind is rising.
Even the birds are quiet.
Stop your tears. The fire-breathers will hear us.
Sleep now, sleep, or you will see them coming.
Hold on to me and close your eyes.
There were cradle songs like this in Mentendon. Niclays strained his memory to when he was small enough for his mother to sit him on her lap and croon to him while his father drank himself into rages that had left them both quaking in fear of his belt. Fortunately, he had drunk himself into such a fury on one occasion that he had been good enough to stumble off a cliff, and that was the end of that.
For a time, all had been peaceful. Then was when Helchen Roos had convinced herself that her son would grow up to be a sanctarian and atone for the many sins of his father. She had prayed for that outcome every day. Instead, Niclays had become, in her view, a morbid hedonist who spent his time either slicing open dead bodies or tinkering with potions like a sorcerer, all while drinking himself sodden. (This was not, Niclays conceded, a baseless impression.) To her, science was the greatest sin of all, anathema to virtue.
Of course, she had still written to him at once when she had discovered his unexpected friendships with the Marquess of Zeedeur and Prince Edvart, demanding he invite her to court, as if the years she had tormented him about every facet of his existence were nothing. He and Jannart had made a sport out of finding ways to destroy her letters.
Thinking of that made him smile for the first time in days. The trill of insects in the forest sent him back to sleep.
After two more painful days, during which he thought he might die of the heat and boredom and confinement, the palanquin stopped. A bang on the roof shunted him from a doze.
“Out.”
The door slid open, letting in a glare of sunlight. Niclays got down blearily from the palanquin, straight into a puddle.
“Galian’s girdle—”
One of the chair-carriers lobbed his cane after him. They hefted the palanquin on to their shoulders and turned back to the road.
“Hold a moment,” Niclays shouted after them. “I said hold, damn you! Where am I to go?”
Laughter was his only reply. Niclays cursed, picked up his cane, and trudged toward the west gate of the city. By the time he reached it, the hem of his robe was soaked and sweat dripped down his face. He had expected soldiers, but there was nobody in armor to be seen. The sun burned on the crown of his head as he entered the ancient capital of Seiiki.