She pulled herself back from the brink. Lintley was staring at her, his face dappled with blood. A scream made his head turn. Linora. She keened in terror, pleading, as two of the doomsingers wrestled her to the ground. Ead and Lintley both ran toward her at once, but a knife opened her throat, spraying blood, and it was too late, she was lost.
Ead tried to temper her shock, but bile scalded her gorge. Sabran stared at her dying lady. The Knights of the Body encircled their queen, but they were surrounded, the threat everywhere. Another masked figure charged at the royals, but Roslain, with a ferocity Ead had never seen in her, thrust her knife into his thigh. A shout came from behind the mask.
“The Nameless One will rise,” a voice said, panting. “We pledge our allegiance.” Fog obscured the eyeholes. “Death to the House of Berethnet!”
Roslain went for his throat, but he smashed his fist into her head, snapping it back. Sabran cried out in anger. Ead pulled out of the fray and ran toward her just as the knave slashed with a knife at Lievelyn, who raised his sword just in time to parry.
The tussle that followed was short and violent. Lievelyn was the stronger, years of tutelage behind every movement. With one brutal downcut, it was over.
Sabran backed away from the corpse. Her companion beheld his own sword and swallowed. Blood dripped from its blade.
“Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, follow me.” A Knight of the Body had broken free of the fray. His copper-plated armor was redder than before. “I know a safe place in this ward. Captain Lintley commanded me to take you hence. We must go now.”
Ead pointed one of her knives at him. Most Knights of the Body wore close helms outdoors, and the voice beneath this one was muffled. “Come no farther,” she said. “Who are you?”
“Sir Grance Lambren.”
“Take off your helm.”
“Peace, Mistress Duryan. I recognize his voice,” Lievelyn said. “It is not safe for Sir Grance to remove his helm.”
“Ros—” Sabran was straining to reach her Chief Gentlewoman. “Aubrecht, carry her, please.”
Ead looked for Margret and Katryen, but they were nowhere to be seen. Linora lay in her lake of blood, eyes glazed in death.
Lievelyn gathered Roslain into his arms and followed Sir Grance Lambren, who was rushing Sabran away. Roundly cursing Lievelyn for his trust, Ead chased after them. The other Knights of the Body strove to join their queen, but they were overwhelmed.
How had someone orchestrated such a swarm?
She caught up to Sabran and Lievelyn just as Lambren was leading them around a corner, out of sight of Berethnet Mile. He took them through an overgrown charnel garden on Quiver Lane, to a sanctuary that had fallen into ruin. He shepherded his royal charges inside, but when Ead reached the doors, he barred her way.
“You ought to find the other ladies, mistress.”
“I will follow the queen, sir,” Ead said, “or you will not.”
Lambren did not move. She tightened her grip on her knives.
“Ead.” Sabran. “Ead, where are you?”
The knight was as a statue for a moment longer before he stood aside. Once Ead had passed, he sheathed his sword and bolted the doors behind them. When he removed his helm, Ead beheld the ruddy face of Sir Grance Lambren. He shot her a look of intense dislike.
The interior of the sanctuary was as wild as the charnel garden. Weeds fingered through the shattered windows. Roslain lay on the altar, still but for the rise and fall of her breast. Sabran, who had covered her with her own cloak, stood beside her with outward composure, holding her limp hand.
Lievelyn paced back and forth, his face pinched. “Those poor souls outside. Lady Linora—” Blood smeared his cheek. “Sabran, I must return to the street and assist Captain Lintley. You stay with Sir Grance and Mistress Duryan.”
At once, Sabran went to him. “No.” She grasped his elbows. “I command you to stay.”
“Mine is as good a sword as any,” Lievelyn told her. “My Royal Guard—”
“My Knights of the Body are also outside,” Sabran cut in, “but if we die, their labors to protect us will be in vain. They will have to think of us as well as themselves.”
Lievelyn framed her face in his hands.
“Sweeting,” he said, “I will be all right.”
For the first time, Ead saw how deeply in love with Sabran he was, and it shook her. “Damn you, you are my companion. You have shared my bed. My flesh. My—my heart,” Sabran snapped at him. Her face was taut, her voice ragged. “And you will not leave our daughter fatherless, Aubrecht Lievelyn. You will not leave us here to mourn you.”
His face twitched from one expression to another. Hope kindled a light in his eyes.
“Is it true?”
Holding his gaze, Sabran took his hand in hers and guided it to her belly.
“It is true,” she said very softly.
Lievelyn released a breath. A smile pulled at his mouth, and he stroked a thumb over her cheek.
“Then I am the most fortunate of all princes,” he whispered. “And I swear to you, our child will be the most beloved princess who ever lived.” Breathing out, he gathered Sabran to his chest. “My queen. My blessing. I will love you both until I am worthy of my good fortune.”
“You are already worthy.” Sabran kissed his jaw. “Do you not wear my love-knot ring?”
She set her chin on his shoulder. Her hands stroked up and down his back, and her eyes fluttered shut as he touched his lips to her temple. Whatever tension had been there was erased. A flame pressed into nonexistence as the rift between their bodies closed.
Fists hammered on the doors.
“Sabran,” a voice called. “Majesty, it’s Kate, with Margret! Please, let us in!”
“Kate, Meg—” Sabran pulled away from Lievelyn at once. “Let them in,” she barked at Lambren. “Make haste, Sir Grance.”
Too slow, Ead heard the trick. It was not Lady Katryen Withy behind that door. It was an imitation. The mockery of a mimic.
“No,” she said sharply. “Stop.”
“How dare you countermand my orders?” Sabran rounded on her. “Who gave you authority?”
She was flushed with anger, but Ead kept her nerve. “Majesty, it is not Katryen—”
“I think I should know her voice.” Sabran nodded to Lambren. “Let my ladies in. Now.”
He was a Knight of the Body, so he obeyed.
Ead wasted no time. One of her knives was already slicing through the air when Lambren unlocked the doors and someone crashed into the sanctuary. The intruder avoided whirling death with one deft turn, fired a pistol at Lambren, then pointed it at Ead.
Lambren collapsed with a peal of armor on stone. The bullet was buried between his eyes.
“Don’t move, Ersyri,” a voice said. The pistol smoked. “Put down that knife.”
“So you can kill the Queen of Inys?” Ead remained still. “I would sooner you kept that pistol on my heart—but I suspect you only have one bullet, else all of us would be dead.”
The cutthroat gave no answer.
“Who sent you?” Sabran squared her shoulders. “Who conspires to end the bloodline of the Saint?”
“The Cupbearer wishes you no ill, Your Majesty, except when you do not listen to reason. Except when you lead Inys down paths it should not tread.”
Cupbearer.
“Paths,” the woman continued, her voice muffled by the plague mask, “that will lead Inys toward sin.”
As the pistol snapped toward the royals, Ead threw her last knife. It struck the cutthroat through the heart just as the pistol fired.
Sabran flinched. Ead closed the space between them and felt for moisture on her bodice, sick with dread, but there was no blood. The gown was still pristine.
Behind them, Aubrecht Lievelyn dropped to one knee. His hands were at his doublet, where darkness was spreading.
“Sabran,” he murmured.
She turned.
“No,” she rasped. “Aubrecht—”
Ead watched, as if from a great distance, as the Queen of Inys ran to her companion and lowered him to the floor with her, gasping out his name as his heart’s blood soaked into her skirts. As she held him close and pleaded with him to stay with her, even as he slipped away. As she doubled over him, cradling his head. As he grew still.
“Aubrecht.” Sabran looked up, her eyes overflowing. “Ead. Ead, help him, please—”
Ead had no time to go to her. The doors opened again, and a second cutthroat stumbled into the sanctuary, heaving. At once, Ead divested the dead Lambren of his sword and pinned the cutthroat to the wall.
“Take off your mask,” she bit out, “or I swear to you, I will take off the face beneath it.”
Two gloved hands revealed a pale countenance. Truyde utt Zeedeur stared at the lifeless High Prince of Mentendon.
“I never meant for him to die,” she whispered. “I only wanted to help you, Your Majesty. I only wanted you to listen.”
27
East
Niclays Roos was conniving. And it was a plan so dangerous and unflinching that he almost wondered if he really had come up with it, eternal coward that he was.
He was going to make the elixir and buy his way back to the West if it killed him. And it very well might. To escape Orisima for good, and to breathe life back into his work, he needed to take a risk. He needed what Eastern law had denied him.
He needed blood from a dragon, to see how gods renewed themselves.
And he knew just where to start.