Now his heart was pounding like a tabor.
“Although the legend has survived,” Laya said, “no one has ever been able to find Komoridu. For centuries, the scroll containing its story was kept on Feather Island. Someone stole it from the sacred archives and gave it to the Golden Empress … but it soon became apparent that part of it was missing. A part she believes is vital.”
Niclays was as raw as if he had been struck by lightning.
My aunt received it from a man who told her to carry it far from the East and never bring it back.
“Yes. You brought it to her.” Seeing his astonished expression, Laya smiled at him. “The final piece of the puzzle.”
The puzzle.
Jannart.
A sound grumbled through the belly of the ship. The Pursuit listed, shunting Niclays against Laya.
“Is it a storm?” he asked, his voice a notch higher than usual.
“Shh.”
The next sound was an echo of the first. Frowning, Laya got to her feet. Niclays rubbed some feeling back into his legs and followed. The Golden Empress was on the quarterdeck.
They were at the threshold of the Abyss, the place where even dragons feared to go, where the water deepened from green to black. And not a ripple marred the surface.
Within this impossible sea, every star, every constellation, every fold and spiral of the cosmos was reflected. As if there were two firmaments, and their ship was a ghost ship, adrift between worlds. The sea had turned itself to glass, so the heavens might finally look upon themselves.
“Did you ever see such a thing?” Niclays murmured.
Laya shook her head. “This is no natural thing.”
Not a single wave broke against the fleet. Each ship was as steady as if it were on land. The crew of the Pursuit stood in restless silence, but Niclays Roos was tranquil, entranced by the vision of the double universe. A balanced world, like the one described in the Tablet of Rumelabar.
What is below must be balanced by what is above, and in this is the precision of the universe.
Words that no one living understood. Words that had made Truyde send her lover across the sea with a plea for help that would go unheard. A lover who must now be dead.
Voices shouted in myriad languages. Niclays staggered back as spray exploded over the deck, drenching his hair in hot water. His moment of calm dissolved.
Bubbles swarmed around the hull. Laya clutched his arm. She ran with him to the nearest mast and seized the ropes.
“Laya,” he called to her, “what is happening?”
“I don’t know. Hold on!”
Niclays blinked away salt water, gasping. He shouted out as water roiled into the fleet, destroying a rowing boat and sweeping pirates off the decks. Their shrieks were lost to a sound he thought at first was thunder.
And then, as the sea crested the side of the Pursuit, it appeared. A mass of red-hot scale. Niclays stared in disbelief at the tail that ended in cruel spikes, at the wings that could have bridged the River Bugen. Amid the roar of the sea and the howl of the wind, a High Western swooped low over the fleet and screamed in triumph.
“MASTER,” it screamed. “SOON. SOON. SOON.”
36
West
The nightingales had forgotten how to sing. Ead lay on her side on the truckle bed, listening to Sabran breathe.
Oftentimes since the wyrm had come, she had drowned in dreams of what had happened that night. How she had carried Sabran to the Royal Physician. The hideous barb he had drawn from her belly. The blood. The cloth-wrapped form they had carried away. Sabran unmoving on the bed, looking as if she were on her bier.
A breeze wafted through the Great Bedchamber. Ead turned over.
Though she had watched Doctor Bourn and his assistants to ensure they first boiled everything that touched Sabran, it had not been enough. Inflammation had taken root. Fever had ravaged her, and she had lain on the brink of death for days—but she had fought. She had fought for her life like Glorian Shieldheart.
In the end, she had clawed herself from the edge of the grave, drained in body and soul. Once her fever had broken, the Royal Physician had concluded that the barb he had pulled from her had come from the High Western. Fearful that it might have given her the plague, he had sent for a Mentish expert in Draconic anatomy. What she had concluded was the unutterable.
The Queen of Inys did not have the plague, but she would never bear a living child.
Another draft rushed into the room. Ead rose from bed and shut the window.
Stars dotted the midnight sky. Beneath them, Ascalon flickered with torchlight. Some of its people would be awake now, praying for protection from what the commons were calling the White Wyrm.
They did not carry the same knowledge that haunted the Dukes Spiritual and the Ladies of the Bedchamber. Aside from the Royal Physician, only they knew the most dangerous secret in the world.
The House of Berethnet would end with Sabran the Ninth.
Ead trimmed the wick on one of the candles and lit it again. Since the White Wyrm had come, Sabran had only grown more fearful of the dark.
Fragments of historical evidence from the world over agreed that there had been five High Westerns. There were likenesses of them in the caves of Mentendon and the bestiaries made after the Grief of Ages.
According to that evidence, none of those High Westerns had possessed green eyes.
“Ead.”
She glanced over her shoulder. Sabran was a silhouette behind the see-through drapes around her bed.
“Majesty,” Ead said.
“Open the window.”
Ead placed the candle on the mantelpiece. “You will catch a chill.”
“I may be barren,” Sabran bit out, “but until I breathe my last, I am your queen. Do as I say.”
“You are still healing. If you perish from cold, the Principal Secretary will have my head.”
“Damn you, obstinate bitch. I will have your head myself if you do not do as I command.”
“By all means. I doubt I will have much use for it once it has bid my neck farewell.”
Sabran twisted to face her.
“I will kill you.” The cords in her neck were straining. “I despise all of you, overweening crows. All any of you think about is what you can peck from me. A pension, estates, an heir—” Her voice broke. “Damn you all. I would sooner throw myself off the Alabastrine Tower than I would swallow another spoonful of your pity.”
“Enough,” Ead snapped. “You are not a child. Cease this wallowing.”
“Open the window.”
“Come and open it yourself.”
Sabran let out a small, dark laugh. “I could have you burned for this insolence.”
“If it rouses you from that bed, I would gladly dance upon the pyre.”
The clock tower chimed once. Shuddering, Sabran lapsed back into the pillows.
“I was meant to die in childbed,” she whispered. “I was meant to give Glorian life. And yield my own.”
Her breasts had leaked for days after her loss, and her belly was still round. Even as she tried to heal, her own body kept opening the wound.
Ead lit two more candles. She pitied Sabran, so much so that she thought her ribs would break apart with it, but could not pander to her fits of self-hatred. Berethnet sovereigns were prone to what the Inysh called grievoushead—periods of sadness, with or without a discernible root. Carnelian the Fifth had been known as the Mourning Dove, and it was rumored at court that she had taken her own life by walking into a river. Combe had charged the Ladies of the Bedchamber with ensuring Sabran did not wander down the same path.
To be a moth on the window of the Council Chamber tonight. Some of the Dukes Spiritual would be arguing that the truth should never come out. Padding under gowns. An orphan child with black hair and jade eyes. Some of the council might contemplate such notions, but most of them would not brook the idea of bowing to anyone but a Berethnet.
“I was certain—” Sabran clenched her fists in her hair. “I must be beloved of the Saint. I drove away Fyredel. Why am I abandoned now?”
Ead forced down a surge of guilt. Her warding had fed into the lie.
“Madam,” she said, “you must maintain your faith. It does not do to dwell on—”
Another joyless laugh interrupted her. “You sound like Ros. I do not need another Ros.” Sabran tightened her hands. “Perhaps I should think of lighter things. Ros would tell me so. What shall I think of, Ead? My dead companion, my barren womb, or the knowledge that the Nameless One is coming?”
Ead made herself kneel and stoke the fire.
Sabran had spoken little for days, but what she had said had been meant to hurt. She had barked at Roslain for being too quiet. She had taunted the maids of honor when they served her meals. She had told a page to get out of her sight, reducing her to tears.
“I will be the last Berethnet. I am the destroyer of my house.” She gripped the sheets. “This is my doing. For spurning the childbed for so long. For trying to avoid it.”
Her head dropped forward.