The Priory of the Orange Tree

by Samantha Shannon

  It was unusual for any soldier of the land army to set foot in Salt Flower Castle. “It is the middle of the night.” Tané tried to sound imperious. “Who summons me, honorable soldier?”

  “The honored Governor of Ginura.”

  The most powerful official in the region. Chief magistrate of Seiiki, responsible for administering justice to those of high rank.

  Tané was suddenly aware of every drop of blood in her veins. Her body felt untethered from the ground, and her mind gleamed with terrible possibilities, the foremost being that Roos had already gone to the authorities. Perhaps it was best to go softly, to play innocent. If she ran now, they would consider it an admission of her guilt.

  Nayimathun would be back soon. Whatever happened, wherever she was taken, her dragon would come for her.

  “Very well.”

  The soldier relaxed his stance. “Thank you, Lady Tané. We will send your servants to help you dress.”

  Her attendants brought her uniform. They lifted the surcoat on to her shoulders and tied a blue sash around her waist. As soon as she was dressed and they turned their backs to leave, she took a blade from under her pillow and slipped it into her sleeve.

  The soldiers escorted her down the corridor. Every time her left foot touched the floor, pain arrowed up her calf. They took her through the near-deserted castle, into the night.

  A palanquin awaited her at the gateway. She stopped. Every instinct was telling her not to get inside.

  “Lady Tané,” one of the soldiers said, “you cannot refuse this summons from the honored Governor.”

  Movement caught her eye. Onren was returning to the castle with Kanperu. Seeing Tané, they strode toward her.

  “As a member of Clan Miduchi,” Tané said to the soldier, emboldened, “I believe I can do as I choose.”

  Deep in the eyeholes of his mask, his gaze flickered.

  Onren and Kanperu had reached her now. “Honorable Tané,” the latter said, “is something wrong?”

  His voice was a rasp and a ring. A sword eased from its scabbard. Faced with two more riders, the soldiers shifted their weight.

  “These soldiers wish to take me to White River Castle, honorable Kanperu,” Tané said. “They cannot tell me why I am summoned.”

  Kanperu looked at the captain with a rimple in his brow. He was almost a head taller than all the soldiers. “By what right do you summon a dragonrider without warning?” he asked. “Lady Tané is god-chosen, yet you take her from this castle as though she were a thief.”

  “The honored Sea General has been informed, Lord Kanperu.”

  Onren raised her eyebrows. “Indeed,” she said. “I will be sure to confirm that with him when he returns.”

  The soldiers said nothing. Casting them a stern look, Onren took Tané aside.

  “You must not worry,” she said quietly. “It will be some trivial matter. I’ve heard the honored Governor likes to make her authority known even to Clan Miduchi.” She paused. “Tané, you look unwell.”

  Tané swallowed.

  “If I am not back within the hour,” she said, “will you send word to the great Nayimathun?”

  “Of course.” Onren smiled. “Whatever it is will soon be resolved. See you tomorrow.”

  Tané nodded and tried to smile back. Onren watched as she climbed into the palanquin, as it left the castle grounds.

  She was a dragonrider. There was nothing to fear.

  The soldiers carried her through the streets, past the evening market, and under the season trees. Laughter rolled from crowded taverns. It was only when they passed the Imperial Theatre that Tané realized they were not going to White River Castle, where the honored Governor of Ginura lived. They were heading into the southern outskirts of the city.

  Fear clenched her chest. She reached for the door of the palanquin, but it was bolted from the outside.

  “This is not the right way,” she called. “Where are you taking me?”

  No answer.

  “I am a Miduchi. I am the rider of the great Nayimathun of the Deep Snows.” Her voice cracked. “How dare you treat me in this way.”

  All she heard was footsteps.

  When the palanquin finally stopped, and she saw where they were, her stomach dropped. The door unlocked and slid open. “Honored Miduchi,” one of the soldiers said, “please follow me.”

  “You dare,” Tané whispered. “You dare bring me to such a place.”

  A rotten smell curdled in her nostrils, sharpening her fear. She had squandered her opportunity to run. Even a dragonrider could not fight all the sentinels here, not without a sword, and in any case, there was nowhere to go. She got down from the palanquin and walked, chin raised, side throbbing with every step, hands clenched.

  They could not have brought her here to kill her. Not without a trial. Not without Nayimathun. She was god-chosen, protected, safe.

  As the soldiers led her toward Ginura Jailhouse, the hum of insects snatched her gaze upward. Three flyblown heads, bloated with decay, watched the street from the gate above.

  Tané stared at the freshest of them. The thatch of hair, taut with blood, the tongue puffy in death. His features had already slackened, but she recognized him. Sulyard. She tried to keep her grip on her composure, but her spine tightened and her stomach churned and her mouth turned dry as salt.

  She had heard that far away in Inys, where the water ghost had come from, people gathered in public to witness executions. Not so in Seiiki. Most of the city was unaware that in the grounds of the jailhouse, a young woman of seventeen was on her knees by a ditch, her arms roped behind her back, waiting for the end. Her long hair had been shaved away.

  The soldiers marched Tané toward the prisoner and held her in place. An official was speaking, but she could not hear through the swash of blood in her ears. The woman had looked up at the sound of footsteps, and Tané wished she had not, for she knew her.

  “No,” Tané said, voice cracking. “No. I order you to stop this!”

  Susa stared back at her. Hope had rushed into her eyes, but now grief quenched it.

  “I am god-chosen,” Tané screamed at the executioner. “She is under my protection. The great Nayimathun will bring the sky down on your heads for this!” He might as well have been made of stone. “It was not her. It was me. It is my fault, my crime—”

  Susa shook her head, lips quivering. Rain beaded on her lashes.

  “Tané,” she said thickly, “look away.”

  “Susa—”

  Sobs clotted in her throat. It was a mistake. Stop this. Fingertips bit into her arms as she struggled, all her self-possession gone, more and more hands grasping her. Stop this. All she could see was Susa as a child, crowned with snowflakes, and her smile when Tané had taken her hand.

  The executioner raised his sword. When the head rolled into the ditch, Tané slid to her knees.

  I will always keep you safe.

  When the dragonrider did not arrive at the beach at the agreed-upon time, Niclays generously assumed that she had been unavoidably delayed and made himself comfortable. He had brought with him a satchel containing some of his books and scrolls, including the fragment Truyde had given him, which he perused by the light of an iron lantern.

  His pocket watch was open beside him. The clock—the modern symbol of the Knight of Temperance. A symbol of regulation, measurement, restraint. It was the virtue of dullards, but also of scholars and philosophers, who believed it encouraged self-examination and the pursuit of wisdom. Certainly it was the closest of the Six Virtues to rational thought.

  It should have been his patron virtue. Instead, on his twelfth birthday, he had chosen the Knight of Courage.

  His brooch now rusted somewhere in Brygstad. He had torn it off the day he was exiled.

  An hour passed, and then another. The truth was indisputable.

  Lady Tané had called his bluff.

  The promise of dawn was on the horizon. Niclays snapped his watch shut. There went his chance of
a glorious return to Ostendeur with a freshly brewed elixir of life.

  Purumé and Eizaru would be horrified if they knew what he had asked the dragonrider to do. It made him no better than a pirate, but creating the damned elixir was the only way he would ever get home, his only potential sway with the royal houses over the Abyss.

  He sighed. To save Sulyard, he needed to tell the Warlord about Tané Miduchi and her crime against Seiiki. It was what he would have done at once, were he a better man.

  As he trudged back up the beach, he stopped. For a moment, he thought the stars had been rubbed out. When he looked harder, and made out the flicker of light, he froze.

  Something was descending.

  Something vast.

  It moved as if it were sinking through water. A banner of scarred, iridescent green. A bladder-shaped organ dominated its head, glowing lambent blue. The same glow throbbed under its scales.

  A Lacustrine dragon. Niclays watched hungrily as it landed on the sand, graceful as a bird.

  A great weathered rock hunched like a shoulder from the sand. He retreated behind it, never taking his gaze off the dragon. From the way it turned its head, it was looking for something.

  Niclays hunkered down and blew out his lantern. He watched as the creature snaked toward the shore, closer to his hiding place. The creature spoke.

  “Tané.”

  Its massive front legs waded into the sea. Niclays was almost near enough to touch one of its scales. The key to his work, almost at his fingertips. He stayed crouched beneath the rock, craning his neck to look. Its eyes were pinwheels.

  “Tané, the boy is dead,” it said in Seiikinese. “So is your friend.” It bared its teeth. “Tané, where are you?”

  So this was her beast. The dragon sniffed, its nostrils flaring.

  That was when a blade chilled his throat, and a hand covered his mouth. Niclays made a muffled sound.

  The dragon jerked its head toward the rock.

  Niclays trembled. He heard nothing of his own body, not his heartbeat or his breath, but he could picture the sword at his throat in meticulous detail. A curved blade. An edge sharp enough to spill his life if he moved a fraction of an inch.

  A hiss came through the night. Then another.

  And another.

  The dragon let out a snarl. Claw rang against rock, like sword on sword.

  Black smoke consumed the beach. The smell of it was acrid, like burning hair and brimstone. And gunpowder. Firecloud. Abruptly Niclays was wrenched to his feet—then he was stumbling through the billows of smoke, choking on them, hauled by a figure shrouded in cloth. The sand slithered beneath his feet, sending each footstep awry.

  “Wait,” he panted at his captor. “Wait, damn you—”

  A tail lashed out of the smoke and caught him a terrific blow in the gut. He was thrown back on to the sand, where he lay, benumbed and winded, his eyeglasses dangling off one ear.

  He drifted, drunk on the black cloud. It rushed into his nostrils and plumed out again.

  A mournful sound, like a dying baleen. A thud that shook the earth. He saw Jannart walking barefoot on the beach, a faint smile on his lips. “Jan,” he breathed, but he was gone.

  Two booted feet pressed into the sand.

  “Give me a reason,” a voice said in Seiikinese, “and I may not gut you.” A bone-handled knife flashed in front of him. “Do you have something to offer the Fleet of the Tiger Eye?”

  He tried to speak, but his tongue felt bee-stung. Alchemist, he wanted to say. I am an alchemist. Spare me.

  Someone lifted his satchel. Time splintered as scarred hands rummaged through his books and scrolls. Then the hilt of the knife clipped his temple, and a dark wave swept away his cares.

  30

  West

  Truyde utt Zeedeur was imprisoned in the Dearn Tower. Under threat of the rack, she had confessed to many crimes. After the royal visit had been announced, she had approached a playing company called the Servants of Verity, a so-called masterless troupe, bereft of the patronage of a noble and treated as vagabonds by the authorities. Truyde had promised her own patronage, and money for their families, in exchange for their help.

  The staged attack had been intended to convince Sabran that she was in mortal danger, both from Yscalin and the Nameless One. Truyde had meant to use it as grounds to petition her to open negotiations with the East.

  It had not taken much wit to piece together what had happened next. Those with true hatred toward the House of Berethnet had infiltrated the performance. One of those—Bess Weald, whose home in Queenside had been stuffed with pamphlets written by doomsingers—had murdered Lievelyn. Several innocent members of the Servants of Verity had also been slain in the fray, along with a number of city guards, two of the Knights of the Body, and Linora Payling, whose grief-stricken parents had already come for her.

  Truyde might not have meant to kill anyone, but her good intentions had been for naught.

  Ead had already written to Chassar to tell him what had happened. The Prioress would not be pleased that Sabran and her unborn child had come so close to death.

  Briar House was draped in the gray samite of mourning. Sabran shut herself into the Privy Chamber. Lievelyn was laid in state in the Sanctuary of Our Lady until a ship arrived to bear him home. His sister Ermuna was to be crowned, with Princess Bedona as heir apparent.

  A few days after Lievelyn had been taken, Ead made her way to the royal apartments. Usually the early morning was peaceful, but she could not shake the tension in her back.

  Tharian Lintley had watched her take four lives during the ambush. He must have realized she was trained. She doubted anyone else had seen in that bloody clash, and it was clear Lintley had not reported her affinity for blades, but she intended to keep her head down.

  Easier said than done as a Lady of the Bedchamber. Especially when the queen had also seen her kill.

  “Ead.”

  She turned to see a breathless Margret, who caught her by the arm. “It’s Loth,” her friend whispered. “He sent me a letter.”

  “What?”

  “Come with me, quick.”

  Heart pounding, Ead followed her into an unused room. “How did Loth get a letter past Combe?”

  “He sent it to a playwright Mama supports. He managed to pass it to me during the visit to Ascalon.” Margret withdrew a crumpled note from her skirts. “Look.”

  Ead recognized his writing at once. Her heart swelled to see it again.

  Dearest M, I cannot say much for fear this note will be intercepted. Things are not as they seem in Cárscaro. Kit is dead, and I fear Snow is in danger. Beware the Cupbearer.

  “Lord Kitston is dead,” Ead murmured. “How?”

  Margret swallowed. “I pray he is mistaken, but . . . Kit would do anything for my brother.” She touched the handstamp. “Ead, this was sent from the Place of Doves.”

  “Rauca,” Ead said, stunned. “He left Cárscaro.”

  “Or escaped. Perhaps that was how Kit—” Margret pointed to the last line. “Look at this. Did you not say the woman who shot Lievelyn invoked a cupbearer?”

  “Yes.” Ead read the note again. “Snow is Sabran, I assume.”

  “Aye. Loth used to call her Princess Snow when they were children,” Margret said, “but for the life of me, I cannot understand this web of intrigue. There is no official cupbearer to the queen.”

  “Loth was sent to find Prince Wilstan. Wilstan was investigating the death of Queen Rosarian,” Ead said under her breath. “Perhaps they are connected.”

  “Perhaps,” Margret said. Sweat dewed her brow. “Oh, Ead, I want so badly to tell Sab he is alive, but Combe will find out how I got the note. I fear to close that door to Loth.”

  “She is mourning Lievelyn. Do not give her false hope that her friend will return.” Ead squeezed her hand. “Leave the Cupbearer to me. I mean to root them out.”

  With a deep breath, Margret nodded.

  “Another letter from Papa, too.” Sh
e shook her head. “Mama says he is becoming agitated. He keeps saying he has something of the utmost importance to impart to the heir to Goldenbirch. Unless Loth returns—”

  “Do you think it is the mind fog?”

  “Perhaps. Mama says I should not indulge it. I will go back soon, but not yet.” Margret tucked the letter into her skirts. “I must go. Perhaps we could meet for supper.”

  “Yes.”

  They parted ways.

  It had been a terrible risk for Loth to send that note. Ead meant to heed his warning. Sabran had come all too close to death in the city, but never again.

  Not on her watch.

  The pregnancy was making Sabran sick. Roslain was up with the lark to hold back her hair while she retched over a chamberpot. On some nights, Katryen would sleep beside them on a truckle bed.

  Still only a handful of people knew about the child. Now was not the time, in these early days of mourning.

  Each day, the queen would emerge from the Royal Bedchamber, where she had spent her wedding night, looking more careworn than the day before. Each day, the shadows below her eyes seemed grimmer. On the rare occasions she talked, she was curt.

  So when she spoke one evening without being coaxed, Katryen almost dropped her embroidery.

  “Ead,” the Queen of Inys said, “you will be my bedfellow this night.”

  At nine of the clock, the Ladies of the Bedchamber disrobed her, but for the first time, Ead also changed into her nightgown. Roslain took her to one side.

  “There must be light in the room all night,” she told her. “Sabran will be afraid if she wakes in darkness. I find it easiest to keep a candle burning on the nightstand.”

  Ead nodded. “I will make sure.”

  “Good.”

  Roslain looked as if she wanted to say more, but refrained. Once the Royal Bedchamber was secure, she shepherded the other ladies-in-waiting out and locked the doors.

  Sabran was recumbent in the bed. Ead climbed in beside her and drew the coverlet over herself.

  For a long time, they were silent. Katryen knew how to keep Sabran in good spirits, while Roslain knew how to counsel her. Ead wondered what her role ought to be. To listen, perhaps.