But no longer.
Tané listened to the sea below. She imagined herself as a conch, carrying that roar in her belly. As her eyelids grew heavier, Nayimathun looked down at her.
“Something troubles you.”
Tané tensed. “No,” she said. “I was just thinking how happy I am. I have everything I ever wanted.”
Nayimathun rumbled, and mist puffed from her nostrils. “There is nothing you cannot tell me.”
Tané could not meet her gaze. Every grain of her being told her not to lie in the presence of a god, but she could not tell the truth about the outsider. For that crime, her dragon would cast her aside.
She would sooner die than have that happen.
“I know,” was all she said.
The pupil of the dragon’s eye grew to a pool of darkness. Tané could see her own face inside it. “I meant to fly you back to the castle,” Nayimathun said, “but I must rest tonight.”
“I understand.”
A low growl rolled through Nayimathun. She spoke as if to herself. “He is stirring. The shadow lies heavy on the West.”
“Who is stirring?”
The dragon closed her eyes and lowered her head back on to her neck. “Stay with me until sunrise, Tané.”
“Of course.”
Tané lay on her side. Nayimathun shifted closer and coiled around her.
“Sleep,” she said. “The stars will watch over us.”
Her body shut out the wind. As Tané drowsed against the dragon she had always dreamed about, lulled by her heartbeat, she had the curious sense that she was in the womb again.
She also had the sense that something was closing in on her. Like a net around a writhing fish.
26
West
News of the royal progress to Ascalon spread across Inys, from the Bay of the Balefire to the misty cliff-lined reaches of the Fells. After fourteen long years, Queen Sabran would show herself to the people of the capital, and the capital prepared to welcome her. Before Ead knew it, the day was upon them.
As she dressed, she concealed her blades. Two went beneath her skirts, another she tucked behind her stomacher, a fourth into one of her boots. The ornamental dagger carried by all Ladies of the Bedchamber was the only one she could display.
At five of the clock, she joined Katryen in the royal apartments and went with her to rouse Sabran and Roslain.
For her first public appearance since her coronation, the ladies-in-waiting had to make the queen more than beautiful. They had to make her divine. She was arrayed in midnight velvet, a girdle of carnelians, and a stole of bodmin fur, making her stand out against the bronze tinseled satin and brown furs around her. This way, she would invoke memories of Queen Rosarian, who had loved to wear blue.
A sword-shaped brooch was pinned to her bodice. She alone, in all Virtudom, took the Saint himself as her patron.
Roslain, whose hair was adorned with amber and cranberry glass, took charge of choosing the jewels. Ead picked up a comb. Holding Sabran by the shoulder, she grazed its teeth through the cascade of black hair until each lock glided between her fingers.
Sabran stood like a stanchion. Her eyes were raw with sleeplessness.
Ead gentled her brushing. Sabran tilted her head into her touch. With each stroke of the comb, her stance lost some of its tension, and the cast of her jaw softened. As she worked, Ead set her fingertips on the naked place behind Sabran’s ear, holding her still.
“You look very beautiful today, Ead,” Sabran said.
It was the first time she had spoken since rising.
“Your Majesty is kind to say so.” Ead teased at a stubborn knot. “Are you looking forward to your visit to the city?”
Sabran did not answer for some time. Ead kept combing.
“I look forward to seeing my people,” Sabran finally said. “My father always encouraged me to walk among them, but … I could not.”
She must be thinking of her mother. The reason she had seen little but the gleaming interiors of her palaces for fourteen years.
“I wish I could tell them I am with child.” She touched her jewel-encrusted stomacher. “The Royal Physician has advised me to wait until my daughter quickens.”
“What they desire is to see you. Whether your belly is big or not,” Ead said. “In any case, you will be able to tell them in a few weeks. And think how pleased they will be then.”
The queen studied her face. Then, quite unexpectedly, she took her by the hand.
“Tell me, Ead,” she said, “how is it you always know what to say to comfort me?”
Before Ead could answer, Roslain approached. Ead stepped away, and Sabran’s hand slipped from hers, but she still felt the ghost of it against her palm. Its fine-spun bones. The scallops of her knuckles.
Sabran let her ladies guide her to the washbasin. Katryen took charge of reddening her lips, while Ead braided six sections of her hair and wound them into a rosette at the back of her head, leaving the rest loose and waving. Last came a silver crown.
Once she was ready, the queen beheld herself in the glass. Roslain straightened the crown.
“Just one last touch,” she said, and slipped a necklace around Sabran’s throat. Graduated sapphires and pearls, and a pendant shaped like a seahorse. “You remember.”
“Of course.” Sabran traced the pendant, her expression distant. “My mother gave it to me.”
Roslain placed a hand on her shoulder. “Let her be with you now. She would be so proud.”
The Queen of Inys studied the glass a moment longer. Finally, she gathered her breath and turned.
“My ladies,” she said, with a faint smile, “how do I look?”
Katryen tucked a strand of hair into her crown and nodded. “Like the blood of the Saint, Your Majesty.”
By ten of the clock, the sky was blinding in its blueness. The ladies-in-waiting escorted Sabran to the gates of Briar House, where Aubrecht Lievelyn was waiting in a greatcloak with the six Dukes Spiritual. Seyton Combe, as usual, had a clement smile on his lips. Ead itched to swipe it away.
He might look pleased with himself, but he had clearly made no progress on the matter of the cutthroats. Neither, to her frustration, had Ead. Much as she wanted to investigate, her duties left her with so little time.
If the killers were to strike again, it would be today.
While Sabran was given a hand into the royal coach, Igrain Crest held out a hand to her granddaughter.
“Roslain,” she said, smiling. “How lovely you are today, child. The jewel of my world.”
“Oh, Grandmother, you are too generous.” Roslain curtsied and kissed her on the cheek. “Good day.”
“We can only hope it will be a good day, Lady Roslain,” Lord Ritshard Eller muttered. “I mislike the queen walking among the commons.”
“Everything will be fine,” Combe said. His livery collar reflected the sunlight. “Her Majesty and His Royal Highness are well protected. Are they not, Sir Tharian?”
“Never more so than they will be today, Your Grace,” Lintley said, with a smart bow.
“Hm.” Eller looked unconvinced. “Very good, Sir Tharian.”
Ead shared a coach with Roslain and Katryen. As they trundled away from the palace, into the thick of the city, she gazed out of the window.
Ascalon was the first and only capital of Inys. Its cobbled streets were home to thousands of people from all corners of Virtudom and beyond. Before Galian had returned to these isles, they had been a patchwork of ever-warring territories, ruled by a surfeit of overlords and princelings. Galian had united them all under one crown. His crown.
The capital he built, named after his sword, was said to have been a paradise once. Now it was as rife with knavery and filth as any other city.
Most of the buildings were stone. After the Grief of Ages, when fire had raged across Inys, a law had been passed to ban thatched roofs. Only a handful of wooden houses, designed by Rosarian the Second, had been allowed to remain, for their beauty. Dark timberwork, arranged in opulent designs, formed a striking contrast to the white of their filling.
The richer wards were rich indeed. Queenside boasted fifty goldsmiths and twice as many silversmiths. Hend Street was for workshops, where inventors devised new weapons to defend Inys. On the Isle of Knells, Pounce Lane was for poets and playwrights, Brazen Alley for booksellers. Goods from elsewhere in the world were sold at the great market in Werald Square. Bright Lasian copper and ceramic and gold jewelry. Mentish paintings and marquetry and salt-glazed pottery. Rare cranberry glass from the old Serene Republic of Carmentum. Perfume burners and skystone from the Ersyr.
In the poorer wards the royal party would visit today, like Kine End and the Setts, life was less beautiful. In these wards were the shambles, the brothels—disguised as inns to avoid the Order of Sanctarians—and alehouses where footpads counted stolen coin.