“Lost, are you?”
A knife was in her grasp before she knew it, and she spun, poised to throw. A woman held up her hands.
“Easy.” She wore a wide-brimmed hat. “Easy.”
“Who are you, Yscal?”
“Estina Melaugo. Of the Rose Eternal.” The woman cocked an eyebrow. “You’re a little too late to board a ship.”
“So I see. The boat is yours, I presume.”
“It is.”
“Will you take me?” Ead sheathed her knife. “I seek passage to Zeedeur.”
Melaugo looked her up and down. “What do I call you?”
“Meg.”
“Meg.” Her smile said she knew full well it was an alias. “From your filthy cloak, I’d say you’ve been riding hard for a few days. Not much sleep, either, by the looks of you.”
“You would ride hard if the Night Hawk wanted your head.”
Melaugo grinned, showing a tiny gap between her front teeth. “Another enemy of the Night Hawk. He ought to start paying us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing.” Melaugo motioned to the horizon. “The ship is out there. I’d usually expect coin for safe passage—but perhaps, with so many wyrms in the sky, we should all be kinder to each other.”
“Soft words for a pirate.”
“Piracy was more of a necessity than a choice for me, Meg.” Melaugo eyed Valour. “You can’t take that horse.”
“The horse,” Ead said, “goes where I go.”
“Don’t make me leave you behind, Meg.” When Ead kept her hand on Valour, Melaugo folded her arms and sighed. “We’ll have to bring the ship in. The captain will expect compensation for that, if not for you.”
Ead tossed her the purse. Inysh money would be useless in the South.
“I take no charity, pirate,” she said.
It would not take long to reach Mentendon. Ead lay in her berth and tried to sleep. When she did, she was pierced by unquiet dreams of Sabran and the faceless Cupbearer. When she did not, she padded to the deck and gazed at the crystal stars above the sails, letting them calm her mind.
The captain, Gian Harlowe, stepped from his cabin to smoke his pipe. This was the man who had loved the Queen Mother, according to rumor. Dark eyes, a stern mouth, pockmarks on his brow and cheeks. He looked as if he had been carved by the sea wind.
Their gazes met across the ship, and Harlowe nodded. Ead returned the gesture.
At first light, the sky was a smear of ash, and Zeedeur was on the horizon. This was where Truyde had spent her childhood, where she had first conceived her perilous ideas. It was here that the death of Aubrecht Lievelyn had been written in the stars.
Estina Melaugo joined Ead at the bow.
“Be careful out there,” she said. “It’s a hard ride from here to the Ersyr, and there are wyrms in those mountains.”
“I fear no wyrm.” Ead nodded to her. “Thank you, Melaugo. Farewell.”
“Farewell, Meg.” Melaugo pulled down the brim of her hat and turned away. “Safe travels.”
Flanked by the sea and the River Hundert, the Port of Zeedeur was shaped like an arrowhead. Canals hatched the northern quarter, lined with elegant houses and elm trees. Ead had passed through the city only once before, when she and Chassar had sailed for Inys. Here the houses were built in the traditional Mentish style, with bell gables. The crocketed spire of the Port Sanctuary reached up from the heart of the city.
It was the last sanctuary she would see for some time.
She mounted Valour and spurred him past the markets and book peddlers, toward the salt road that would lead her to the capital. In a few days, she would be in Brygstad, and then she would be on her way to the Ersyr—far away from the court she had deceived for so long. From the West.
And from Sabran.
III
A Witch to Live
The bay-trees in our country are all withered,
And meteors fright the fixèd stars of heaven.
—William Shakespeare
38
East
A bell rang full-throated every morning at first light. On hearing it, the scholars of Feather Island folded away their bedding and proceeded to the bathhouse. Once they had washed, they would eat together, and then, before the elders woke, they would have an hour for prayer and reflection. That hour was her favorite time of day.
She knelt before the image of the great Kwiriki. Water trickled down the walls of the underground cavern and dripped into a pool. Only a lantern fended off the dark.
This statue of the Great Elder was not like those she had prayed before in Seiiki. This one showed him with parts of some of the forms he had taken in his lifetime: the antlers of a stag, the talons of a bird, and the tail of a snake.
It was some time before Tané became aware of the clunk of an iron leg on rock. She rose to see the learnèd Elder Vara standing at the entrance to the grotto.
“Scholar Tané.” He inclined his head. “Forgive me for disturbing your reflection.”
She bowed in return.
Elder Vara was thought by most of the residents of Vane Hall to be an eccentric sort. A thin man with weathered brown skin and crow footprints around his eyes, he always had a smile and a kind word for her. His chief duty was to protect and manage the repository, but he also acted as a healer when the need arose.
“I would be honored if you would join me at the repository this morning,” he said. “Someone else will see to your chores. And please,” he added, “take your time.”
Tané hesitated. “I am not permitted in the repository.”
“Well, you are today.”
He was gone before she could answer. Slowly, she knelt again.
This cavern was the only place where she could forget herself. It was one of a honeycomb of grottos behind a waterfall, shared between the Seiikinese scholars on this side of the isle.
She fanned out the incense and bowed to the statue. Its jewel eyes glinted at her.
At the top of the steps, she emerged into daylight. The sky was the yellow of unbleached silk. She picked her way barefoot across the stepping stones.
Feather Island, lonely and rugged, lay far away from anywhere. Its steep cliff faces and ever-present hood of cloud presented an imposing front to any ship that dared come near. Snakes lazed on its stony beaches. It was home to people from all over the East—and to the bones of the great Kwiriki, who was said to have laid himself to rest at the bottom of the ravine that divided the island, which was called the Path of the Elder. It was also said that his bones kept the island wreathed in fog, for a dragon continued to attract water long after its death. It was why Seiiki was so misty.
Seiiki.
Windward Hall stood on Cape Quill to the north, while Vane Hall, the smaller—where Tané had been placed—was set high on a long-dead volcano, surrounded by forest. There were ice caves just behind it, where lava had once flowed. To get between the hermitages, one had to take a rickety bridge across the ravine.
There were no other settlements. The scholars were alone in the vastness of the sea.
The hermitage was a puzzle-box of knowledge. Each new piece of wisdom was earned with understanding of the last. Ensconced in its halls, Tané had learned first about fire and water. Fire, the element of the winged demons, required constant feeding. It was the element of war and greed and vengeance—always hungry, never satisfied.
Water needed no coal or tinder to exist. It could shape itself to any space. It nourished flesh and earth and asked for nothing in return. That was why the dragons of the East, lords of rain and lake and sea, would always triumph over the fire-breathers. When the ocean had swallowed the world and humankind was washed away, still they would abide.
A fish-hawk snatched a bitterling from the river. A chill wind soughed between the trees. The Autumn Dragon would soon return to her slumber, and the Winter Dragon would wake in the twelfth lake.
As she stepped on to the roofed walkway that led back to the hermitage, Tané wrapped her cloth hood over her hair, which she had cut short before she had left Ginura, so it grazed her collarbones. Miduchi Tané had long hair. The ghost she had become did not.
After reflection, she would usually sweep the floors, help gather fruit from the forest, clear the graves of leaves, or feed the chickens. There were no servants on Feather Island, so the scholars shared the menial duties, with the young and strong-bodied taking the most. Strange that Elder Vara had asked her to come to the repository, where the most important documents were kept.
When she had arrived on Feather Island, she had taken to her room and lain there for days. She had not eaten a morsel or spoken a word. They had stripped her of her weapons in Ginura, so she had torn herself apart within. All she had wanted was to mourn her dream until she breathed no more.