“Can he hear us?” Loth asked her.
“No. He sleeps again.” She sounded tired. “I pray Fyredel will not realize that I stopped him. He may think Father is dying. Which I think he is.” Her chin lifted. “I have no doubt the wyrm intends for me to replace him. His manikin to be controlled.”
“Does Fyredel not take issue with your keeping the king like this, chained in a dark room?”
“Fyredel understands that my father does not look … kingly in his present state, his body rotting even as it continues to draw breath,” the Donmata said dryly, “but I must lead him from his rooms when ordered. So our lord and master can see into the palace whenever he desires. So he can issue orders to the Privy Council. So he can ensure we are not mounting a rebellion. So he can stop us calling for aid.”
“If you killed your father, Fyredel would know,” Loth realized. “And punish you.”
“The last time I defied him, he had one of my ladies put on the Gate of Niunda.” Her face tightened. “I had to watch as his cockatrices pecked her to shreds.”
They were quiet and still for a time.
“Queen Rosarian died fourteen years ago,” Loth stated. “Then … Sigoso did not do it under Draconic control.”
“Not all evil comes from wyrms.”
The Donmata turned to face him on the stair, so her back was against the wall.
“I do not remember a great deal about my father from my childhood. Just his cold gaze,” she murmured. “When I was sixteen, my mother came to my bedchamber in the middle of the night. Their marriage had always been strained, but now she looked afraid. And angry. She said we were going to join her brother, King Jantar, in Rauca. We dressed as servants and stole through the palace.
“Of course, the guards stopped us. Confined us both to our bedchambers and forbade us from speaking. I have never cried so hard in my life. Mama bribed a guard to pass me a letter, telling me to remain strong.” She touched the pendant at her throat, set with emeralds. “A week later, Father came to inform me of her death. He told the court that she took her own life, shamed by her attempt to abandon her king … but I know otherwise. She would never have left me alone with him.”
“I am sorry,” Loth said.
“Not as sorry as I am.” Disgust tightened her face. “Yscalin does not deserve this, but my father does. He deserves to look as corrupt on the outside as he always was within.”
Sahar Taumargam and Rosarian Berethnet, both dead by the hand of the same king. All while Inys had considered him a friend in Virtudom.
“I wanted to tell Sabran the truth. I wanted to call for aid, for troops … but this palace is a dungeon. The Privy Council has fallen utterly to Fyredel, too afraid to anger him. They have families in the city who would die if we stoked his wrath.”
Loth lifted his sleeve to his face to blot the sweat.
“Sabran was my friend. Prince Aubrecht was my betrothed for a long while,” the Donmata reminded him. “I know they must think ill of me now.”
Guilt pricked at Loth. “Forgive us,” he murmured. “We should not all have assumed—”
“You could never have known Fyredel was awake. Or that we were under his wing.”
“Tell me how Cárscaro fell. Help me understand.”
The Donmata breathed out through her nose.
“Two years ago, there was a quake in the Spindles,” she said. “Fyredel had awakened in a chamber in Mount Fruma, where he had gone to sleep after the Grief of Ages. We were on his doorstep. Ripe for the seizing.
“The lavender fields burned first. Black smoke choked the evening sky.” She shook her head. “It all happened so quickly. Wyverns had surrounded Cárscaro before the city guards could reach the old defenses. Fyredel appeared for the first time in centuries. He said he would set us all afire if my father did not come to him to pay tribute.”
“And did he?”
“He sent a decoy at first, but Fyredel sensed the deception. He burned the man alive, and my father was forced to emerge,” she said. “Fyredel took him into the mountains. For the rest of that night, Cárscaro descended into chaos. People thought a second Grief of Ages had begun—which, in a way, it had.” A terrible sadness darkened her eyes. “Panic reigned. Thousands tried to flee, but the only way out is through the Gate of Niunda, and the wyverns guarded it.” Her mouth pinched. “Father returned at dawn. The people saw that their king was alive and unharmed and did not know what to think. He told them they would be the first to witness the rise of the Draconic world—if they obeyed.
“Behind the walls of this palace, Father ordered his Privy Council to announce our allegiance to the Nameless One. They sent word to every nation, too craven to challenge him. Too craven when he ordered our defenses be torn down. Too craven when he burned down the aviary, and every bird left in it. I tried to organize a counterstroke, to no avail. I could do no more without endangering my life.”
“But the rest of the country did not know the truth,” Loth said.
“Cárscaro became a fortress that night. No one could get word out.” Her head dropped back against the wall. “Wyrms are weak when they first stir. For a year, Fyredel remained under Mount Fruma, regaining his strength. I watched as he used my father to turn my country into the base of his power. I watched him destroy the Six Virtues. I watched the plague awaken and spread among my people. And my home became my prison.”
That was when Arteloth Beck did exactly what Gian Harlowe had warned him not to do.
He took Marosa Vetalda by the hand.
She wore velvet gloves. It was still a risk, and yet he did it without a second thought.
“You are the very embodiment of courage,” he told her. “And your friends in Virtudom have failed you.”
The Donmata looked at their hands with a notch in her brow. Loth wondered when it was that she had last been touched.
“Tell me how I can help you,” he said.
Slowly, she placed her other hand over his. “You can go back into that bedchamber,” she said, lifting her gaze to his, “and lay your uncovered hands upon my father.”
It took him a moment to understand. “You want me to … afflict myself?”
“I will explain,” she said, “but if you do it, I offer you a chance to escape Cárscaro in return.”
“You said it was a fortress.”
“My mother knew one way out.” She set a hand on the bundle in her lap. “I want you to journey across the Spindles and deliver this to Chassar uq-Ispad, the Ersyri ambassador. You must entrust it only to him.”
The man who had raised Ead, and who had presented her to court eight years ago. The Donmata unwrapped the silk. Inside was an iron box, engraved with symbols.
“In the spring, a woman was captured near Perunta, trying to find a ship that would take her on to Lasia. The torturers had her for days, but she never spoke. When my father set eyes on the red cloak she had with her, Fyredel was enraged. He ordered that she must spend her last hours in agony.”
Loth was not sure if he could stand to hear this.
“That night, I sought her out.” The Donmata skimmed her fingers over the box. “I thought they had torn her tongue out at first, but when I gave her wine, she told me her name was Jondu. She told me that if I valued human life, I would get the object she had been carrying to Chassar uq-Ispad.” She paused. “I killed Jondu myself. Told Fyredel she had died of her wounds. Better that than the gate.
The box that had been taken from Jondu was locked. No one could open it, and eventually they lost interest. It was easy for me to steal it. I am sure that it is vital in our fight, and that Ambassador uq-Ispad will know more.”
She traced the patterns on its lid.
“He is most likely in Rumelabar. To reach the Ersyr and avoid the guarded borders, you must cross the Spindles. The safest way to do that without harm from the Draconic creatures that now live there is to become afflicted, so that when they smell you, they will not attack,” she continued. “Jondu swore the ambassador knows a cure for the plague. If you reach him in time, you may live to tell the tale.”
Loth understood then. “You sent Prince Wilstan to do this,” he said. “Or tried.”
“I did everything the same. I showed him my father and had him hear from his own lips how Rosarian died. And then I gave him the box. But Fynch had been waiting for his opportunity to flee, and to return to his daughter with news of this place,” she said. “He assured me he had given himself the plague. When I realized he had not, I went after him with all haste. He had abandoned the box in the secret tunnel that leads to the mountains. He clearly never meant to honor my request … but I can hardly blame him for thinking he could get back to Sabran.”
“Where is he now?” Loth asked quietly.
“I found him not far from the end of the tunnel,” she said. “It was an amphiptere.”
Loth rested his brow against his clasped hands.