Her hair was unbound, parted like drapes where her shoulders peeked through.
“I never thanked you. For everything you did in Quiver Lane,” she said. “Pained though I was, I did notice how well you fought to protect me.” She lifted her chin. “Was it you who slew the other cutthroats? Are you the watcher in the night?”
Her expression was impenetrable. Ead wanted to do as she had resolved—tell the truth—but the risk was too great. If word got back to Combe, she would be forced out of court.
“No, madam,” she said. “Perhaps they could have protected Prince Aubrecht, as I could not.”
“It was not your duty to protect the prince,” Sabran said. Her profile was half shadow and half gold. “It is my fault that Aubrecht is dead. You told me not to open that door.”
“The cutthroat would have found a way to him, that day or another,” Ead said. “Somebody paid Bess Weald handsomely to ensure Prince Aubrecht died. His fate was sealed.”
“That may be true, but I should have listened. You have never deceived me. I cannot ask Aubrecht for his forgiveness, but … I will ask yours, Ead Duryan.”
It took effort to hold her gaze. She had no idea just how greatly Ead had deceived her.
“Granted,” Ead said.
Sabran released her breath through her nose. For the first time in eight years, Ead felt a stab of remorse for the lies she had told.
“Truyde utt Zeedeur must pay the price for her treachery, no matter her youth,” Sabran stated. “By rights I should demand that High Princess Ermuna sentences her to death. Or perhaps you would prefer me to offer mercy, Ead, since you find its taste so comforting.”
“You must do as you will with her.”
In truth, Ead did not want the girl dead. She was a dangerous fool, and her stupidity had caused a slew of deaths, but she was seventeen. There was time for her to make amends.
Another silence passed before the queen turned to face her. This close, Ead could see the thick black rings that surrounded her irises, dark against their startling green.
“Ead,” she said, “I cannot speak with Ros or Kate of this, but I will speak with you. I feel that you will think no less of me. That you will … understand.”
Ead interlaced their fingers.
“You can always speak freely to me,” she said.
Sabran shifted closer. Her hand was cold and delicate, the fingers bare without their jewels. She had buried her love-knot ring in the Sunken Gardens to mark a place for a memorial.
“You asked me, before I took Aubrecht to consort, if I wanted to wed,” she said, almost too softly to hear. “I confess now, to you alone, that I did not. And … still do not.”
The revelation hung between them. This was dangerous talk. With the threat of invasion, the Dukes Spiritual would soon be exhorting Sabran to take another companion, even with the heir inside her.
“I never thought I would say those words aloud.” Her breath verged on a laugh. “I know that Inys faces war. I know that Draconic things are waking the world over. I know that my hand would strengthen any of our existing alliances, and that the other countries of Virtudom were brought into the fold through the sacred institution of companionship.”
Ead nodded. “But?”
“I fear it.”
“Why?”
Sabran was still for a time. One hand sat on her belly, while Ead kept hold of the other.
“Aubrecht was kind to me. Tender and good,” she finally said, voice low in her throat, “but when he was inside me, even when I found pleasure in it, it felt—” She closed her eyes. “It felt as if my body were not wholly my own. It … still feels that way now.”
Her gaze dipped to the barely visible bump, swathed by the silk velvet of her nightgown.
“Alliances have ever been forged and strengthened through royal marriages,” she said. “While Inys has the greatest navy in the West, we lack a well-trained standing army. Our population is small. If we are invaded, we will need as much support as we can muster … but each nation in Virtudom will consider itself duty-bound to defend its own shores first. A marriage, however, would come with legal stipulations. Guarantees of military support.”
Ead kept her silence.
“I have never had any great inclination toward marriage, Ead. Not the sort of marriage those of royal blood must make—born not of love, but fear of isolation,” Sabran murmured. “Yet if I refrain, the world will stand in judgment. Too proud to wed my country to another. Too selfish to give my daughter a father to love her if I should perish. This is how I will be seen. Who would rise in defense of such a monarch?”
“Those who call her Sabran the Magnificent. Those who saw her vanquish Fyredel.”
“They will soon forget that deed when enemy ships darken the horizon,” Sabran said. “My blood cannot deter the armies of Yscalin.” Her eyelids were sinking. “I do not expect you to say anything to comfort me, Ead. You have let me unburden myself, even though my fears are selfish. The Damsel has granted me the child I begged of her, and all I can do is … quake.”
Even though a fire roared in the hearth, gooseflesh flecked her skin.
“Where I come from,” Ead said, “we would not call it selfish to do as you have done.”
Sabran looked at her.
“You have just lost your companion. You are carrying his child. Of course you feel vulnerable.” Ead pressed her hand. “Childing is not always easy. It seems to me that this is the best-kept secret in all the world. We speak of it as though there were nothing sweeter, but the truth is more complex. No one talks openly about the difficulties. The discomfort. The uncertainty. So now you feel the weight of your condition, you believe yourself alone in it. And you have turned the blame upon yourself.”
At this, Sabran swallowed.
“Your fear is natural.” Ead held her gaze. “Let no one convince you otherwise.”
For the first time since the ambush, the Queen of Inys smiled.
“Ead,” she said, “I am not quite sure what I did without you.”
31
East
White River Castle was named not for a river, but for the moat of seashells that surrounded its grounds. Behind it was the ageless Forest of the Wounded Bird, and beyond that, the bleak and brutal Mount Tego. A year before their Choosing Day, all apprentices had been challenged to climb to the top of that peak, where the spirit of the great Kwiriki was said to descend to bless the worthy.
Of all the apprentices from the South House, Tané alone had made it to the summit. Half-frozen, beset with mountain sickness, she had crawled up the last slope, retching blood on to the snow.
She had not been human in that final hour. Just a paper lantern, thin and wind-torn, clinging to the flickering remnants of a soul. Yet when there was no more to climb, and she had looked up and seen nothing but the terrible beauty of the sky, she had found the strength to rise. And she had known the great Kwiriki was with her, within her.
At this moment, that feeling had never felt so far away. She was the tattered lantern again. Barely alive.
She was not sure how long they had kept her in the jailhouse. Time had become a bottomless pool. She had lain with her hands cupped over her ears, so all she could hear was the sea.
Then other hands had loaded her into a palanquin. Now she was escorted past a guardhouse, into a room with a high ceiling and walls painted with scenes from the Great Sorrow, and then on to a roofed balcony.
The Governor of Ginura dismissed her soldiers. She stood tall, her gaze crisp with distaste.
“Lady Tané,” she said coolly.
Tané bowed and knelt on the mats. The title already sounded like something from another life.
Outside, a sorrower called out. Its hic-hic-hic, like a grizzling child, was said to have driven an empress mad. Tané wondered if it would break her, too, if she listened hard enough.
Or perhaps her mind was already lost.
“Several days ago,” the Governor said, “a prisoner incriminated you in a most serious crime. He was smuggled into Seiiki from Mentendon. In accordance with the Great Edict, he was put to death.”
A head on the gate, hair stiff with blood.
“The prisoner told magistrates in Cape Hisan that when he arrived here, a woman found him on the beach. He described the scar beneath her eye.”
Tané pressed her clammy palms to her thighs.
“Tell me,” the Governor continued, “why an apprentice with a spotless record, who was raised from nothing, who was given the rare opportunity to be god-chosen, would risk everything—including the safety of every citizen of this island—by doing this.”
It took Tané a long time to find her voice. She had left it in a bloodstained ditch.
“There were whispers. That those who broke seclusion would be rewarded. Just once, I wanted to be fearless. To take a risk.” She sounded nothing like herself. “He … came out of the sea.”
“Why did you not report it to the authorities?”