The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos)
The Priory of the Orange Tree: Part 6 – Chapter 69

Far away, beyond the Abyss, the shores of Seiiki called to her. She had dreamed for days of its plum rain, its black sand, the kiss of its sun-warmed sea on her skin. She missed the scent of sinking incense and the fog that crowned the mountains. She missed walks through the cedar forests in the depths of winter. More than any of that, she missed her gods.

It was the second day of spring, and Nayimathun had not come. Tané had known it would take time for her to fly again, but if she had reached the sea, it would have helped to knit the wound. That left the possibility that she had never got there. That the mages had hunted down and butchered her.

Let go of your guilt now, rider.

She wanted to obey, but her mind would not. It picked at her old wounds until they bled again.

A knock interrupted her pacing. She found Ead outside, hair sparkling with raindrops.

In the cabin, Tané lit what was left of the tallow candle. “How do you feel?” Ead asked, shutting the door behind her.

“Stronger.”

“Good. Your siden has settled.” Ead met her gaze. “I just wanted to check you were all right.”

“I am fine.”

“You don’t look it.”

Tané sat on her berth. She wanted to pretend otherwise, but she felt as if she could speak her mind around Ead.

“What if we fail?” she asked. “What if we cannot use the jewels as Cleolind and Neporo did?”

“You have the blood of Neporo, and weeks of practice to commend you.” The smile was brief. “Whatever happens, I think we will have Ascalon, Tané. I think we will be able to defeat him for good.”

“Why?”

“Because sterren calls to sterren. When we use the jewels, they will cry out to Kalyba. I imagine they have been calling to her ever since the two of us began to use them.” Her face was hard. “She will come.”

“I hope you are right.” Tané toyed with a tress of her own hair. “How are we to defeat her?”

“She is very powerful. Ideally, both of us will avoid single combat with her. But if it comes to that, I have a theory,” Ead said. “Kalyba draws her ability to change shape from star rot, and her stores of it must be low. Taking a form that is not her own drains it, and the more she changes forms, I suspect, the worse the drain. Forcing her to change shape many times may weaken her. Trap her in one shape.”

“You do not know this for sure.”

“No,” Ead admitted, “but it is all I have.”

“How comforting.”

With another smile, Ead sat on the chest at the end of the bed.

“One of us must wield Ascalon. Drive it into the Nameless One,” she said. “You were exposed to the sterren in the rising jewel for years. The sword may answer more willingly to your hands.”

It took Tané a moment to understand. Ead was offering an artefact she had fought to obtain, a keystone of her religion, to a dragonrider. Someone she should still, by rights, consider an enemy.

“Princess Cleolind used it first,” Tané said, after a hesitation. “One of her handmaidens should wield it now.”

“We cannot quarrel about this. He must die tomorrow, or he will destroy us all.”

Tané glanced down at her hands. Stained with the blood of her closest friend. Unworthy of Ascalon.

“If there is opportunity,” she said, “I will take it.”

“Very well.” Ead smiled a little. “Goodnight, rider.”

“Goodnight, slayer.”

The door shut out an icy gust of wind.

Outside, the stars were bright above the Abyss. The eyes of dragons fallen and unborn. Tané asked them now for one more boon. Let me do what I must, she prayed, then let me ask no more.

The Reconciliation was a colossal man-of-war. Except for the Rose Eternal, which had been lost in the East, it was the largest and best-armed ship in the Inysh navy.

In the royal staterooms, Ead lay beneath a pile of fur coverlets. Sabran drowsed beside her. It was the first time in days that she had looked peaceful.

Ead nestled into the bedding. The cruel sister had left an imprint somewhere inside her, and it chilled her to the bone.

Tomorrow night, they would be in sight of the other ships. The thought of seeing Loth again was not quite enough to stop the ache in her chest when she thought of his sister. Margret would be in Nzene by now.

Before they had left Ascalon, the Southern rulers had asked Sabran to send willing Inysh with healing skills to the Spindles. Though she was a Lady of the Bedchamber, Margret had asked Sabran for her leave to answer the call. I’ll only get in the way on the ship, she had told her. I cannot use a sword, but I can mend the wound it leaves.

Ead had expected Sabran to deny the request, but she had finally held Margret tightly and ordered her to be safe, and to return. In another break with protocol, she had commanded Sir Tharian Lintley to escort his betrothed and lead the Inysh soldiers. Even her Captain of the Knights of the Body could not protect his queen from the Nameless One. Lintley had not left her willingly, but he could not refuse an order.

Sabran stirred. She looked over her shoulder as Ead pressed a kiss to it.

“You said once that you would take me away,” Sabran said softly. “Somewhere.”

Ead traced the high slope of her cheekbone. Sabran turned to face her.

“I want you to,” she continued. “One day.”

Sabran slid a leg over hers. Ead drew her in, so they shared their warmth.

“We said our duties would be done,” Ead murmured, “but we both knew it was an airy hope.” She sought her gaze. “You are a beloved queen, Sabran. A queen Inys needs. You cannot give up your throne tomorrow, whether or not the Nameless One falls. And I cannot give up on the Priory.”

“I know.” Sabran shifted closer. “Even as we both whispered in the snow, I knew. We are both wed to our callings.”

“We will replace a way,” promised Ead. “Somehow.”

“Let us not think of the future this night,” Sabran said softly. “It is not yet dawn.” She cupped Ead’s face with a faint smile. “We still have time for airy hopes.”

Ead touched their brows together. “Now it is you who speaks the comely words.”

It was a distraction, but Ead welcomed it. As the candle burned to nothing, she slid her fingers between their bodies, and Sabran kissed her with abandon and tenderness by turns.

Soon they would face the Nameless One. In the light-headed comfort of their joining, with Sabran in her arms and her flesh ablaze with desire, Ead let herself forget it. The arch in her back brought them closer together. Closer to that elusive somewhere. She quaked at the gentle touches on her skin, unable to foresee them in the darkness, and savored the shivers that coursed through Sabran as she gave them in return.

After, they both lay still, intertwined.

“You can light another candle,” Ead said to her. “Light does not keep me awake.”

“I do not need it.” Sabran slid a hand to Ead’s nape. “Not with you.”

Ead tucked her head under Sabran’s chin and listened to her heartbeat. She prayed that sound would never cease.

It was still pitch-black when she woke in the same position, to knocking on the cabin door.

“Your Majesty.”

Sabran reached for her bedgown. At the door, she conferred in a low voice with one of her Knights of the Body.

“The crew has rescued someone from the water,” she said to Ead when she returned.

“How could anyone possibly have swum this far into the Abyss?”

“He was in a rowing boat.” She lit a new candle. “Will you come with me?”

Ead nodded and rose to dress.

Six Knights of the Body led them across the Reconciliation to the captain’s cabin. At present, it was occupied by one man.

Someone had wrapped a coverlet around him. He was pallid and clammy, wearing a travel-soiled Lacustrine tunic, with a head of gray hair, matted with salt water. His left arm was missing below the elbow. From the smell, the loss was recent.

He looked up with bloodshot eyes. Ead recognized him at once, but it was Sabran who spoke first.

“Doctor Roos,” she said, and her voice was ice.

Sabran the Ninth. Thirty-sixth queen of the House of Berethnet. Close to a decade of despising her from afar, and now here she was.

Beside her was the person he had been sent here to kill.

During his days at court, she had been known as Ead Duryan. An Ersyri with a relatively minor position in the Upper Household. Clearly not so minor now. He remembered her eyes, dark and piercing, and the proud way that she held herself.

“Doctor Roos,” Sabran said.

She might have been addressing a rat.

“Your Majesty,” Niclays said, his own voice dripping with disdain. He bent his head in a bow. “What a very great pleasure to see you again.”

The Queen of Inys took the seat on the other side of the table.

“I am sure you remember Mistress Ead Duryan,” she said. “She is now known as Dame Eadaz uq-Nāra, Viscountess Nurtha.”

“Lady Nurtha,” Niclays said, inclining his head. He could not imagine what this young chamberer had done to acquire such high titles.

She remained standing, arms folded. “Doctor Roos.”

Her face betrayed none of her feelings toward him, but he suspected, from the way she took an almost protective stance beside Sabran, that they were not particularly warm.

Niclays tried not to meet her gaze. He could mask his intentions well enough, but something about her eyes made him think that they could see right through him.

The blade was cold in his palm. Kalyba had warned him that Ead Duryan was much faster than an ordinary woman, but she would also have no idea that he was carrying something that could harm her. He must strike hard and fast. And with the wrong hand.

Sabran placed her hands on the table, fingertips just touching. “How did you come to be this far into the Abyss?”

Now for the lie.

“I was trying, madam,” he said, “to escape from the exile you imposed on me.”

“You believed you could cross the Abyss in a rowing boat.”

“Desperation will drive any man to folly.”

“Or woman. Perhaps that explains why I engaged your services all those years ago.”

One corner of his mouth crooked up. “Your Majesty,” he said, “you impress me. I had not thought that one heart could hold such rancor.”

“My memory is long,” Sabran said.

He was sick with hatred. Seven years of imprisonment in Orisima meant nothing to her. She would still deny him a return to Mentendon, all because he had embarrassed her. Because he had made a queen feel small. He saw it in those ruthless eyes.

Kalyba could make them weep. The witch had promised that the death of Ead Duryan would break Sabran Berethnet and, once she was broken, Kalyba would give her to the Nameless One. As he looked at her, Niclays wanted it. He wanted to see her suffer. To be sorry. All he need do was kill her lady-in-waiting and take the white jewel she carried.

Kalyba would resurrect him if the guards ran him through. He would be allowed to return to Mentendon not only with riches, but with Jannart. She would give Jannart back to him.

If he did not do as she said, Laya would die.

“I want you to know something, Sabran Berethnet,” Niclays whispered. The pain in his arm was making his eyes water. “I loathe you. I loathe every lash of your eyes, every finger on your hands, and every tooth in your mouth. I loathe you to the very marrow of your bones.”

Sabran met his gaze without flinching.

“You cannot fathom the depth of the enmity I have felt for you. I have cursed your name with every sunrise. The thought that I might one day create the elixir of life, then deny it to you, has driven my every action. All I longed to do was thwart your ambition.”

“You will not speak to Her Majesty in this manner,” one of her shining knights interrupted.

“I will speak to Her Majesty however I please. If she wants me to stop, let her stop me herself,” Niclays said curtly, “rather than letting her metal-clad manikin do it for her.”

Still Sabran said nothing. The knight in question looked at her before desisting, tight-lipped.

“Years I spent on that island.” Niclays spoke through gritted teeth. “Years on a scrap of land clinging to Cape Hisan, watched and mistrusted. Years of walking the same few streets, aching for home. All because I had promised you a gift that had never been given, and you, the Queen of Inys, were naïve enough to swallow it whole. Yes, I deserved chastisement. Yes, I was a cur, and a year or two away might have done me good. But seven . . . by the Saint, madam, death by burning would have been a mercy in comparison.”

His hand clenched around the blade so hard that his nails bit into his palm.

“I could forgive your theft of my money. I could forgive your lies,” Sabran whispered, “but you preyed on me, Roos. I was young and afraid, and I confided my deepest fear to you. That fear was something I concealed even from my Ladies of the Bedchamber.”

“And that warrants seven years in exile.”

“It warrants something. Perhaps I will apologize when you consent to make even the slightest reparation for your lies.”

“I wrote to you, groveling,” Niclays spat, “after Aubrecht Lievelyn refused to allow me to return home. He was so desirous of your sacred cunt that he prized it over—”

Sabran stood, her face bloodless, and every partizan in the room snapped toward his chest.

“You will not speak of Aubrecht Lievelyn again,” she said, deadly soft, “or I will have you thrown off this ship in pieces.”

He had gone too far. The Knights of the Body wore no visors indoors; he could see the shock written on their faces, a disgust that ran far deeper than it would at a crude insult.

“He’s dead,” Niclays deduced. “Isn’t he?”

The silence confirmed it.

“I received no letter.” Sabran kept her voice low. “Why not disclose its contents to me now?”

He chuckled darkly. “Oh, Sabran. Seven years have not changed you. Shall I tell you why I am really here?”

The blade was ice in the heat of his hand. Behind Sabran, Ead Duryan was none the wiser. Just one lunge, and he could get it into her throat after all. He could hear Sabran scream. Watch that mask of a face crack open.

That was when the door swung open, and none other than Tané Miduchi strode into the cabin.

His jaw dropped. The Knights of the Body crossed their partizans in front of her at once, but she shoved against them, looking more than ready to claw his throat open.

“You cannot trust this man,” she barked at Sabran. “He is a blackmailer, a monster—”

“Ah, Lady Tané,” Niclays said dryly. “We meet again. The strings of our fates appear to be tangled.”

In truth, he was shocked to see her. He had assumed that she had drowned, or that the Golden Empress had hunted her down. What she was doing with the Queen of Inys was beyond him.

“I let you live on Komoridu,” she hissed at him, “but no more. You always come back. Like a weed.” She wrestled against the Knights of the Body. “I will gut you with my own blade, you soulless—”

“Wait.” Ead grasped her shoulder. “Doctor Roos, you said you would tell us why you were really here. I recommend you do so now, before your trail of destruction catches up with you.”

“He is here to do us ill, for his own gain,” Miduchi said, staring him out. “He always is.”

“Then let him confess it.”

Miduchi shrugged off her hand, but stopped pushing against the guards. Her narrow shoulders heaved.

Niclays sank back into his seat. His arm was full of fire. His head throbbed.

“The Miduchi is right,” he said, between heavy breaths. “I was sent here by some . . . sorceress, or shape-shifter. Kalyba.”

Ead turned sharply to face him. “What?”

“Damned if I knew such things existed, but I suppose I should stop being surprised at this rate.” A stab of pain in his stump. “In telling you this, I condemn a friend to death.” His jaw trembled. “But . . . I think that friend would want me to do this.”

He removed the shard of metal and laid it on the table. One of the Knights of the Body made toward it, but Ead warded him away with one hand.

“Kalyba gave it to me. It was sh-she who left me in the boat. She told me I was to reach the ship to get close to you, Lady Nurtha,” Niclays said. “To d-drive this into your heart.”

“A sterren blade,” Ead said, eyeing it. “Like Ascalon. Not large enough to use against the Nameless One, but it would have pierced my skin well enough.” Her gaze flicked up. “I can only assume she fears me more than she did before. Perhaps she has heard the jewels calling.”

“Jewels.” Niclays raised his eyebrows. “You have them both?”

With a nod, Ead sat beside Sabran.

“The Witch of Inysca is persuasive,” she said to him. “She must have promised you all the riches you desired. Why confess?”

“Oh, she offered me something far greater than riches, Lady Nurtha. Something for which I would gladly sacrifice what little wealth remains to me,” Niclays said, with a bitter smile. “She showed me the face of my only love. And she promised to return him to me.”

“And yet you do not do her bidding.”

“Once,” he said, “I would have. If she had not worn his face—if she had only promised that I would see him again—I might well have become her little homunculus. But seeing him . . . I was repulsed. Because Jannart—” The name snared in his throat. “Jannart is dead. He chose the manner of his death, and by resurrecting him like that, Kalyba dishonored his memory.”

Ead watched him.

“I am an alchemist. All my life, I believed that the end goal of alchemy was the glorious transformation of imperfection into purity. Lead into gold, disease into wellness, decay to eternal life. But now I understand. I see. Those were false destinations.”

His professor had been right, as always. She had often said that the true alchemy was the work, not its completion. Niclays had thought it was her way of comforting those who never made any progress.

“Sounds foolish, I know,” he continued. “Like the ravings of a madman . . . but it was just what Jannart always knew, and what I failed to see. For him, the pursuit of the mulberry tree in the East was his great work. He had the final piece, but not the rest.”

“Jannart utt Zeedeur,” Ead said softly.

He looked at her through burning eyes. “Jannart was my midnight sun,” he rasped. “The light I have followed. My grief drove me to Inys, and that step took me to the East. There, I tried to finish his work in the hope that it would bring me closer to him. By doing all this, I completed, unbeknownst to me, the first stage of alchemy, of my work. The putrefaction of my soul. With his death, my work began. I faced the shadows in myself.”

Nobody moved or spoke. Ead was looking at him with a strange expression. Something like pity, but not quite. Niclays pressed on, trying not to notice the burning in his brow. He was on fire, body and mind.

“So you see,” he said, “the work lies in myself. I fell into shadow, and now I must rise, so I might be a better man.”

“That would take a long time,” the dragonrider said.

“Oh, it will,” Niclays agreed, fevered as much by excitement as the wound, “but that is the point. Don’t you see?”

“I see that you are raving mad.”

“No, no. I am approaching the next stage of transmutation. The white sun. The cleansing of impurities, the illumination of the mind! Any fool could tell that nothing can bring Jannart back,” Niclays ploughed on, “so I will resist Kalyba. She represents my past impurities, the one who comes to undo my progress and return me to my old instincts. To earn the white sun, I will give you the key to destroying all darkness.”

“Which is?” Ead said.

“Knowledge,” he finished, triumphant. “The Nameless One has a weakness. The twentieth scale of his chest armor is the one that Cleolind Onjenyu damaged all those years ago. She failed to hit the mark, but perhaps she opened the door. A door into his armor.”

Ead studied his face, her eyes narrowed a little.

“You can’t trust him,” Miduchi said. “He would sell his soul for a handful of silver.”

“I have no soul to sell, honored Miduchi. But I may yet earn one,” Niclays said. Saint, he was hot. “You see, Jan did leave someone behind, someone who I still care for. Truyde utt Zeedeur, his granddaughter. I want to be what he was to her, and to do that, I must be better. I must be good. And this is the way.”

He finished, staring around in wall-eyed excitement, but all was still. Sabran lowered her gaze, and Ead closed her eyes for a moment.

“She is still in Inys. A maid of honor.” As Niclays looked between them, his smile faded. “Isn’t she?”

“Leave us,” Sabran said to her Knights of the Body. “Please.”

They obeyed their queen.

“No,” Niclays whispered, trembling. “No.” His voice cracked. “What did you do to her?”

“It was Igrain Crest.” It was Ead who spoke. “Truyde plotted with her companion, Triam Sulyard, to bring about a reunion between East and West. She staged an assault on Queen Sabran, which Crest infiltrated to cause the death of Aubrecht Lievelyn.”

Niclays tried to take it in. Truyde had never expressed strong political views, but when he had last seen her, she had been no more than ten years old.

As he listened, numbness enveloped him. His ears rang. Everything turned dark at the corners, and a chain twisted around him and cut away his breath. By the time Ead had finished speaking, he could no longer feel anything but the dull throb at the end of his arm.

The fires within him had suddenly died. The shadows had returned.

“You left her in the Dearn Tower.” He forced it out. “She should have been sent to Brygstad and tried fairly. But no. You drew it out, just as you did to me.” A tear seeped into the corner of his mouth. “Her bones lie on one side of the world, and Triam Sulyard’s on the other. How much suffering might have been avoided if they had felt safe enough to broach their ideas with you, Sabran, rather than take matters into their own hands.”

Sabran did not look away.

“It is not only you who seeks a white sun,” she said.

Slowly, Niclays rose. Cold sweat dotted his brow. The pain in his arm was now so great, he could hardly see.

“Is Crest dead?”

“Yes,” Sabran said. “Her reign in the shadow of the throne is at an end.”

It should comfort him. Perhaps one day it would. But it would not bring her back.

He pictured Truyde, the granddaughter he had never and would never have. Her eyes and freckles had come from her mother, but her red hair, that had been a gift from her grandsire. All gone. He remembered how her face had lit up when he had visited the Silk Hall, and how she had run to him with her arms full of books and begged him to help her learn from them. Everything, she had said. I want to know everything. Above all things, it was her bright mind, ever-curious, that had made her most like Jannart.

“High Princess Ermuna has extended you an invitation to return home,” Sabran said quietly. “She seeks no permission from Inys, and even if she had, I have no further quarrel with it.”

It was all he had wanted to hear for seven years. Victory had never tasted so much like ashes.

“Home. Yes.” A hollow laugh escaped him. “Take my gift of knowledge. Destroy the Nameless One, so there might be other children who strive to change the world. And then, I pray you, Your Majesty, leave me to my shadows. I’m afraid they are all I have left.”