The orange tree.
It reached up from the heart of the Lasian Basin, larger and more beautiful than she had dreamed it in Inys. White flowers dotted its branches and the grass. Around it lay the Vale of Blood, where the Mother had vanquished the Nameless One. Ead released her breath.
She was home.
The underground chambers came to an end in this valley. Only these rooms—the sunrooms—had the privilege of looking over it. The Prioress had honored her by allowing her to rest in one. They were usually reserved for prayer and childbirth.
Three thousand feet of unbroken water thundered from high above. That was the roar she had heard. Siyāti uq-Nāra had named the falls the Wail of Galian to mock his cowardice. Far below her, the River Minara crashed through the valley, feeding the roots of the tree.
Her gaze flitted over its labyrinth of branches. Fruit was nestled here and there, rutilant upon the bough. The sight dried her mouth. No water could sate the thirst that throbbed inside her.
As she returned to her chamber, she stopped and pressed her brow against the cool, rose-colored stone of the doorway.
Home.
A low growl lifted the hairs on her nape. She turned to see a full-grown ichneumon in the doorway.
“Aralaq?”
“Eadaz.” His voice was low and stony. “You were a pup when I last saw you.”
She could not believe the size of him. Once he had been tiny enough to fit in her lap. Now he was massive and deep-chested, standing a head taller than she was. “So were you.” Her face softened into a smile. “Have you been guarding me all day?”
“Three days.”
The smile faded. “Three,” she murmured. “I must have been more exhausted than I thought.”
“You have dwelt for too long without the orange tree.”
Aralaq padded to her side and nosed her hand. Ead chuckled as he rasped his tongue over her face. She remembered him as a squeaking bundle of fur, all eyes and snuffles, tripping over his long tail.
One of the sisters had found him orphaned in the Ersyr and brought him to the Priory, where she and Jondu had been charged with his care. They had fed him on milk and scraps of snake meat.
“You should bathe.” Aralaq licked her fingers. “You smell like camel.”
Ead tutted. “Thank you. You have a certain pungent aroma of your own, you know.”
She took the oil lamp from her bedside and followed him.
He led her through the tunnels and up flights of steps. They passed two Lasian men—Sons of Siyāti, who attended on the sisters. Both dipped their heads as Ead passed.
When they reached the bathhouse, Aralaq nudged her hip.
“Go. A servant will take you to the Prioress after.” Golden eyes looked solemnly at her. “Tread lightly around her, daughter of Zāla.”
His tail swept in his wake as he left. She watched him go before stepping through the doorway, into a candlelit interior.
This bathhouse, like the sunrooms, was on the open side of the Priory. A breeze swirled the steam on the surface of the water, like spindrift on the sea. Ead set the oil lamp down and shrugged off her robe before descending into the pool. With each step, it carried away the sand and dirt and sweat, leaving her sleek and new.
She used ash soap to lave her skin. Once she had got the sand from her hair, she let the heat soothe her travel-weary bones.
Tread lightly.
Ichneumons did not give careless warnings. The Prioress would want to know why she had been so insistent upon staying in Inys.
You must always stay with me, Ead Duryan.
“Sister.”
She turned her head. One of the Sons of Siyāti was in the doorway.
“The Prioress bids you join her for the evening meal,” he said. “Your garments await you.”
“Thank you.”
In her chamber, she took her time dressing. The garments that had been left for her were not formal, but they befitted her new rank as a postulant. An initiate when she had left for Inys, she had now completed an assignment of consequence for the Priory, making her eligible to be named a Red Damsel. Only the Prioress could decide if she was worthy of this honor.
First was a mantelet of sea silk, which shone like spun gold and covered her to the navel. Next came an embroidered white skirt. A glass band encircled one wrist—the wrist of her sword hand—and strings of wooden beads hung about her neck. She left her hair loose and damp.
This new Prioress had not seen her since she was seventeen. As she poured some wine to nerve herself, she caught sight of her reflection in the flat of her eating knife.
Full lips. Eyes like oak honey, brows set low and straight above them. Her nose was slim at the bridge, broad toward the end. All this she recognized. Yet now she saw, for the first time, how womanhood had changed her. It had tempted out her cheekbones and pared away the rounds of youth. There was a gauntness about her, too, from the kind of starvation only warriors of the Priory understood.
She looked like the women she had longed to be when she was growing up. Like she was made of stone.
“Are you ready, sister?”
The man was back. Ead smoothed her skirt.
“Yes,” she said. “Take me to her.”
When Cleolind Onjenyu had founded the Priory of the Orange Tree, she had abandoned her life as a princess of the South and disappeared with her handmaidens into the Vale of Blood. They had named their haven in defiance of Galian. At the time of his coming, knights of the Isles of Inysca had said their vows in buildings called priories. Galian had planned to found the first Southern priory in Yikala.
I shall found a priory of a different sort, Cleolind had said, and no craven knight shall soil its garden.
The Mother herself had been the first Prioress. The second was Siyāti uq-Nāra, from whom many of the brothers and sisters of the Priory, Ead included, claimed descent. After the death of each Prioress, the next one would be chosen by the Red Damsels.
The Prioress was seated at a table with Chassar. Upon seeing Ead, she rose and took her by the hands.
“Beloved daughter.” She placed a kiss on her cheek. “Welcome back to Lasia.”
Ead returned the gesture. “May the flame of the Mother sustain you, Prioress.”
“And you.”
Hazel eyes took her in, noting the changes, before the older woman returned to her seat.
Mita Yedanya, formerly the munguna—the presumed heir—must now be in her fifth decade. She was built like a broadsword, wide in the shoulder and long in the body. Like Ead, she was of both Lasian and Ersyri descent, her skin like sand lapped by the sea. Black hair, now threaded with silver, was pierced with a wooden pin.
Sarsun chirruped a greeting from his perch. Chassar was midway through a concoction of yogush and braised lamb. He stopped to smile at her. Ead sat beside him, and a Son of Siyāti set a bowl of groundnut stew before her.
Platters of food circled the table. White cheese, honeyed dates, palm-apples and apricots, hot flatbread crowned with pounded chickpeas, rice tossed with onion and plum tomato, sun-dried fish, steaming clams, red plantain split and spiced. Tastes she had craved for nearly a decade.
“A girl left us, and a woman returns,” the Prioress said as the Son of Siyāti served Ead as much food as he could fit on her plate. “I am loath to hurry you, but we must know the circumstances under which you left Inys. Chassar tells me you were exiled.”
“I fled to escape arrest.”
“What happened, daughter?”
Ead poured from a jug of date-palm wine, giving herself a few moments to think.
She began with Truyde utt Zeedeur and her affair with the squire. She told them about Triam Sulyard and his crossing to the East. She told them about the Tablet of Rumelabar and the theory Truyde had drawn from it. A story of cosmic balance—of fire and stars.
“This may have weight, Prioress,” Chassar said thoughtfully. “There are times of plenty, when the tree gives freely—we are in one now—and periods where it offers less fruit. There have been two such times of scarcity, one of them directly after the Grief of Ages. This theory of a cosmic balance does something to explain it.”
The Prioress seemed to contemplate this, but did not voice her thoughts.
“Continue, Eadaz,” she said.
Ead did. She told them about the marriage, and the murder, and the child, and the loss of it. About the Dukes Spiritual and what Combe had implied about their intentions toward Sabran.
She left out some things, of course.
“Now she is unable to conceive, her legitimacy is under threat. At least one person in the palace, this Cupbearer, has been trying to murder her, or at least frighten her,” Ead finished. “We must send more sisters, or I believe the Dukes Spiritual will move toward the throne. Now they know her secret, she is at their mercy. They could use it to blackmail her. Or simply usurp her.”
“Civil war.” The Prioress pursed her lips. “I told our last Prioress that this would happen sooner or later, but she would not hear it.” She cut into a slice of muskmelon. “We will meddle no more in Inysh affairs.”
Ead was sure she must have misheard.