The Priory of the Orange Tree

by Samantha Shannon

  Another man poured Loth a cup of pale wine.

  “The Priory, Your Excellency?” Loth asked, perplexed.

  “You are in the Priory of the Orange Tree, Lord Arteloth. In Lasia.”

  Lasia. Surely not. “I was in Rauca,” he said, still more perplexed. “How is that possible?”

  “The ichneumon.” Chassar poured himself a drink. “They are old allies of the Priory.”

  Loth was none the wiser.

  “Aralaq found you in the mountains.” He put down his cup. “He summoned one of the sisters to collect you.”

  The Priory. The sisters.

  “Aralaq,” Loth repeated.

  “The ichneumon.”

  Chassar sipped his drink. Loth noticed for the first time that a sand eagle was perched nearby, its head cocked. Ead had praised these birds of prey for their intelligence.

  “You look confused, Lord Arteloth,” Chassar said lightly. “I will explain. To do that, I must first tell you a tale.”

  This was the strangest greeting in the world.

  “You know the story of the Damsel and the Saint. You know how a knight rescued a princess from a dragon and took her away to a kingdom across the sea. You know that they founded a great city and lived happily ever after.” He smiled. “Everything you know is false.”

  It was so quiet in the room that Loth heard the sand eagle ruffle its feathers.

  “You are a follower of the Dawnsinger, Your Excellency,” he finally said, “but I ask that you not blaspheme in front of me.”

  “The Berethnets are the blasphemers. They are the liars.”

  Loth was stunned into silence. He had known Chassar uq-Ispad was an unbeliever, but this came as a shock.

  “When the Nameless One came to the South, to the city of Yikala,” Chassar said, “High Ruler Selinu attempted to placate him by organizing a lottery of lives. Even children were sacrificed if their lot was drawn. His only daughter, Princess Cleolind, swore to her father that she could kill the beast, but Selinu forbade it. Cleolind was forced to watch as her people suffered. One day, though, she was chosen as the sacrifice.”

  “This is as the Sanctarian tells it,” Loth said.

  “Be silent and learn something.” Chassar selected a purple fruit from the bowl. “On the day that Cleolind was meant to die, a Western knight rode through the city. He carried a sword named Ascalon.”

  “Precisely—”

  “Hush, or I will cut out your tongue.”

  Loth closed his mouth.

  “This gallant knight,” Chassar said, voice soaked in disdain, “promised to kill the Nameless One with his enchanted sword. But he had two conditions. The first was that he would have Cleolind as his bride, and she would return to Inysca with him as his queen consort. The second was that her people would convert to the Six Virtues of Knighthood—a code of chivalry that he had decided to turn into a religion, with himself as its godhead. An invented faith.”

  To hear the Saint described like some roaming madman was too much to bear. Invented faith, indeed. The Six Virtues had been the code all Inysh knights had lived by at that time. Loth opened his mouth, remembered the warning, and shut it again.

  “Despite their fear,” Chassar continued, “the Lasian people did not want to convert to this new religion. Cleolind told the knight as much and refused both his terms. Yet Galian was so overcome with greed and lust that he fought the beast nonetheless.”

  Loth almost choked. “There was no lust in his heart. His love for Princess Cleolind was chaste.”

  “Try not to be irritating, my lord. Galian the Deceiver was a brute. A power-hungry, selfish brute. To him, Lasia was a field from which to reap a bride of royal blood and adoring devotees of a religion he had founded, all for his own gain. He would make himself a god and unite Inysca under his crown.” Chassar poured more wine while Loth seethed. “Of course, your beloved Saint fell almost instantly with a trifling injury and pissed himself. And Cleolind, a woman of courage, took up his sword.

  “She followed the Nameless One deep into the Lasian Basin, where he had made his lair. Few had ever dared enter the forest, for its sea of trees was vast and uncharted. She tracked the beast until she found herself in a great valley. Growing in this valley was an orange tree of astonishing height and untold beauty.

  “The Nameless One was wrapped like a snake about its trunk. They fought across the valley, and though Cleolind was a powerful warrior, the beast set her afire. In agony, she crawled to the tree. The Nameless One crowed in triumph, certain of his victory, and opened his mouth to burn her once more—but while she was beneath the branches, his fire could not touch her.

  “Even as Cleolind wondered at the miracle, the orange tree yielded its fruit. When she ate of it, she was healed—not only healed, but changed. She could hear the whispers in the earth. The dance of the wind. She was reborn as a living flame. She fought the beast once more and plunged Ascalon beneath one of his scales. Grievously injured, the Nameless One slithered away. Cleolind returned in triumph to Yikala and banished Sir Galian Berethnet from her land, returning his sword to him so he would never come back for it. He fled to the Isles of Inysca, where he told a false version of events, and they crowned him King of—”

  Loth slammed his fist down. The sand eagle shrieked in protest.

  “I will not sit at your table and listen to you sully my faith,” Loth said quietly. “Cleolind went with him to Inys, and the Berethnet queens are their descendants.”

  “Cleolind cast away her riches,” Chassar said, as if Loth had not spoken, “and journeyed back into the Lasian Basin with her handmaidens. There, she founded the Priory of the Orange Tree, a house of women blessed with the sacred flame. A house, Lord Arteloth, of mages.”

  Sorcery.

  “The Priory’s purpose is to slay wyrms, and to protect the South from Draconic power. Its leader is the Prioress—she who is most beloved of the Mother. And I’m afraid, Lord Arteloth, that this great lady believes you may have murdered one of her daughters.” When Loth looked blank, Chassar leaned forward, his eyes intent. “You were in possession of an iron box that was last held by a woman named Jondu.”

  “I am no murderer. Jondu was captured by the Yscals,” Loth insisted. “Before she died, she entrusted the box to the Donmata of Yscalin, who gave it to me.” He groped for the back of the chair and stood up. “She begged me to bring it to you. You have it now,” he said, desperate. “I must leave this place.”

  “So Jondu is dead. Sit down, Lord Arteloth,” Chassar said coolly. “You will stay.”

  “So you can insult my faith still further?”

  “Because whomsoever seeks the Priory can never leave its walls.”

  Loth turned cold.

  “This is a difficult thing to tell you, Lord Arteloth. I am acquainted with your lady mother, and it pains me to know that she will never see her son again . . . but you cannot leave. No outsider may. There is too great a risk that you could tell someone about the Priory.”

  “You—” Loth shook his head. “You cannot— this is madness.”

  “It is a comfortable life. Not as comfortable as your life in Inys,” Chassar admitted, “but you will be safe here, away from the eyes of the world.”

  “I am the heir to Goldenbirch. I am a friend to Queen Sabran the Ninth. I will not be mocked like this!” His back hit the wall. “Ead always said you were a man of good humor. If this is some jest, Your Excellency, say it now.”

  “Ah.” Chassar sighed. “Eadaz. She told me of your friendship.”

  Something shifted inside Loth. And, slowly, he began to understand.

  Not Ead, but Eadaz. The feeling of sunlight. Her secrets. Her obscure childhood. But no, it could not be true . . . Ead had converted to the Six Virtues. She prayed at sanctuary twice a day. She could not, could not be a heretic, a practitioner of the forbidden arts.

  “The woman you knew as Ead Duryan is a lie, Arteloth. I devised that identity for her. Her true name is Eadaz du Zāla uq-Nāra, and sh
e is a sister of the Priory. I planted her in Inys, on the orders of the last Prioress, to protect Sabran the Ninth.”

  “No.”

  Ead, who had shared his wine and danced with him at every Feast of Fellowship since he was two and twenty. Ead, the woman his father had told him he should marry.

  Ead Duryan.

  “She is a mage. One of the most gifted,” Chassar said. “She will return here as soon as Sabran births her child.”

  Every word drove the knife of betrayal deeper. He could take no more. He pushed through the curtain and blundered into the passages, only to come face to face with the woman in green. And he saw, then, that she was not holding an oil lamp.

  She was holding fire.

  “The Mother is with you, Arteloth.” She smiled at him. “Sleep.”

  33

  East

  They were ensconced in the highest room of Brygstad Palace, where they often stole a night alone when the High Prince was away. The walls were hung with tapestries, the window clammy with the heat of the fire. This was where the royals would give birth. Beneath a starry vault.

  On other nights, they would abscond to the Old Quarter, to a room Jannart held at an inn called the Sun in Splendor, which was known for its discretion. It sheltered many lovers who had fled from the laws of the Knight of Fellowship. Some, like Jannart, were locked in marriages they had not chosen. Others were unwed. Others had fallen for people who were far above or below their station. All loved in a way that would see them pay a price in Virtudom.

  That day, Edvart had set off with half the court, his daughter, and his nephew to the summer residence in the Bridal Forest. Jannart had promised Edvart they would join him soon to hunt the fabled Sangyn Wolf that stalked the north of Mentendon.

  Niclays had never been sure if Edvart knew the truth about his relationship with Jannart. Perhaps he had closed his eyes to it. If the matter became public, the High Prince would have no choice but to banish Jannart, his closest friend, for breaking his vow to the Knight of Fellowship.

  A log collapsed in the fire. Beside it, Jannart was poring over his manuscripts, which were fanned across the rug in front of him. For the past few years, he had forsaken his art to pursue his passion for history. He had always been troubled by the calamitous loss of knowledge in the Grief of Ages—the burning of libraries, the destruction of archives, the irrevocable ruin of ancient buildings—and now that his son, Oscarde, was taking on some duties in the duchy, he could finally lose himself in knitting the holes in history together.

  Niclays lay naked in the bed, gazing at the painted stars. Someone had gone to a great deal of effort to make them mirror the true sky.

  “What is it?”

  Jannart had not even needed to look up to know something was wrong. Niclays heaved a sigh. “A wyvern on the edge of our capital should dampen even your spirits.”

  Three days before, two men had ventured into a cave west of Brygstad and happened upon a slumbering wyvern. It was well known that Draconic beings had found places to sleep all over the world after the Grief of Ages, and that if you looked hard enough in any country, you might be able to find one.

  In the Free State of Mentendon, the law declared that, if discovered, these beasts should be left alone on pain of death. There was an ubiquitous fear that waking one could wake others—but these men had thought themselves above the law. Drunk on dreams of knighthood, they had drawn their swords and tried to kill the beast. Not best pleased with the rude awakening, it had eaten its attackers and clawed its way out of the cave in a fury. Too listless from its sleep to breathe fire, it had still managed to maul several residents of a nearby town before some brave soul put an arrow through its heart.

  “Clay,” Jannart said, “it was two arrogant boys playing the fool. Ed will ensure it does not happen again.”

  “Perhaps dukes are naïve to such things, but there are arrogant fools the world over.” Niclays poured himself a glass of black wine. “There was an abandoned mine not far from Rozentun, you know. Rumor had it among children that there was a cockatrice in there that had laid a clutch of golden eggs before it went to sleep. A girl I knew broke her back trying to get to it. A boy got himself lost in the darkness. He was never found. Arrogant fools, both.”

  “It amazes me that after all these years, I am still learning things about your childhood.” Jannart arched an eyebrow, mouth quirked. “Did you ever seek the golden clutch?”

  Niclays snorted. “The notion. Oh, I tiptoed to the entrance once or twice, but the love of your life was an abject coward even as a boy. I fear death too much to seek it.”

  “Well, I can only be grateful for the softness of your spine. I confess to fearing your death, too.”

  “I remind you that you are two years my senior, and that the arithmetic of death is against you.”

  Jannart smiled. “Let us not speak of death when there is still so much life to be lived.”

  He stood, and Niclays drank in the powerful delineation of his body, sculpted by years of fencing. At fifty, he was as striking as he had been on the day they had first met. His hair reached his waist, and it had darkened over time to a rich garnet, silvered at the roots. Niclays still had no notion of how he had held on to this man’s heart for all these years.

  “Very soon, I mean to whisk you away to the Milk Lagoon, and there we shall live without name or title.” Jannart climbed onto the bed, hands on either side of Niclays, and kissed him. “Besides, you are likely to die before me at this rate. Perhaps if you would stop cuckolding me with Ed’s wine—” His hand snuck toward the glass.

  “You have your dusty books. I have wine.” Chuckling, Niclays held it out of reach. “We agreed.”

  “I see.” Jannart made another, half-playful swipe for it. “And when did we agree this?”

  “Today. You may have been asleep.”

  Jannart gave up and rolled onto the bed beside him. Niclays tried to ignore the tug of remorse.

  They had quarreled about his weakness for wine many times over the years. He had curbed his drinking enough to stop him losing hours of memory, as he often had in his youth, but his hands shook if he went too long without a cup. Jannart seemed too weary of the subject to fight him on it these days. It hurt Niclays to disappoint the one person who loved him.

  Black wine was his comfort. Its thick sweetness filled the hollow that opened whenever he looked at his finger, empty of a love-knot ring. It blunted the pain of living a lie.

  “Do you really think the Milk Lagoon exists?” he murmured.

  A place of lore and lullaby. The haven for lovers.

  Jannart circled his navel with one finger. “I do,” he said. “I have gathered enough evidence to believe it existed before the Grief of Ages, at least. Ed has heard that the remaining scions of the family of Nerafriss know where it is, but they will tell only the worthy.”

  “That rules me out, then. You had better go alone.”

  “You are not getting away from me that easily, Niclays Roos.” Jannart shifted his head closer, so their noses brushed. “Even if we never find the Milk Lagoon, we can go elsewhere.”

  “Where?”

  “Somewhere else in the South, perhaps. Anywhere the Knight of Fellowship has no sway,” Jannart said. “There are uncharted places beyond the Gate of Ungulus. Perhaps other continents.”

  “I’m no explorer.”

  “You could be, Clay. You could be anything, and you should never think otherwise.” Jannart rolled a thumb over Niclays’s cheekbone. “If I had convinced myself I was no sinner, I would never have kissed the lips I longed to kiss. The lips of a man with rose-gold hair, whose birth, by the laws of a long-dead knight, made him unworthy of my love.”

  Niclays tried not to stare like a fool into those gray Vatten eyes. Even now, after all these years, looking at this man took his breath away.

  “What of Aleidine?” he said.

  He tried to sound curious rather than sour. It was difficult for Jannart, who had spent decades steali
ng between companion and lover, at great risk to his standing at court. Niclays had no such care. He had never wed, and nobody had tried to force him.

  “Ally will be fine,” Jannart said, even as his brow crinkled. “She will be the Dowager Duchess of Zeedeur, wealthy and powerful in her own right.”

  Jannart cared about Aleidine. Even if he had never loved her as companions loved, they had fostered a close friendship in their thirty-year marriage. She had handled his affairs, carried his child, run the Duchy of Zeedeur at his side, and throughout it all, she had loved him unconditionally.

  When they left, Niclays knew Jannart would miss her. He would miss the family they had made—but in his eyes, he had given them his youth. Now he wanted to live out his last years with the man he loved.

  Niclays reached for his hand, the one that bore a silver love-knot ring.

  “Let’s go soon,” he said lightly, to distract him. “Hiding like this is beginning to age me.”

  “Age becomes you, my golden fox.” Jannart kissed him. “We will be gone. I promise.”

  “When?”

  “I want to spend a few more years with Truyde. So she has some memory of her grandsire.”

  The child was only five years old, and already she would leaf ham-fisted through whatever tome Jannart set in front of her, bottom lip stuck out in determination. She had his hair.

  “Liar,” Niclays said. “You want to make sure she carries on your legacy as a painter, since Oscarde has no artistic skill.”

  Jannart laughed richly. “Perhaps.”

  They lay still for a while, fingers intertwined. The sunlight washed the room in gold.

  They would be alone together soon. Niclays told himself that it was true, as he had every day for year after year. Another year, perhaps two, until Truyde was a little older. Then they would leave Virtudom behind.

  When Niclays turned to look at him, Jannart smiled—that roguish smile that teased at one corner of his mouth. Now he was older, it made his cheek crease in a way that somehow only served to make him more beautiful. Niclays raised his head to meet the kiss, and Jannart cradled his face in both hands as if he were framing one of his portraits. Niclays drew a line down the white canvas of Jannart’s stomach, making his body arch closer and quicken. And even though they knew each other by heart, the strength of this embrace felt new.