The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)

by Samantha Shannon

“I masked my anger with my father all my life,” he said softly. “I learned to smile as he sneered at my poetry. As he called me a hedonist and a milksop. As he cursed his lack of other heirs, and cursed my poor mother for not giving them to him.” He breathed in.

“You helped me to do that, Loth. For as long as I had someone I could be myself with, I could bear to be someone else with him.”

“I do not sleep because I am not only afraid of the monsters at my door, but also of the monsters my own mind can conjure. The ones that live within.”

“In darkness, we are naked. Our truest selves. Night is when fear comes to us at its fullest, when we have no way to fight it,” Ead continued. “It will do everything it can to seep inside you. Sometimes it may succeed—but never think that you are the night.”

Only after the third year had he understood that the tiny house on the edge of the world was to be his final resting place. That was when he had stopped dreaming of discovery, and had dreamed only of home. Now he could feel his old curiosity in the world awakening.

To her, science was the greatest sin of all, anathema to virtue.

It was difficult to imagine that most of this city had burned down in the Great Sorrow five centuries ago.

“Due to various disagreeable circumstances, I have some respite from Orisima,” Niclays said in Seiikinese. “The honored Governor of Cape Hisan decided to send me here to be placed under house arrest.”

Virtudom does not hold with heresy, or with the knowledge of heretics.”

“Be ready. They say it is like a reef of sea flowers. Beautiful, but everything you touch will sting.”

“We are going to meet the one who plotted the murder of Queen Rosarian.”

“A flesh king rules as the puppet of a wyrm. A title Fýredel hopes to bestow on every ruler in the world.” The Donmata walked around the bed. “Father has a rare form of the Draconic plague. It allows Fýredel to . . . commune with him, somehow. To see and hear into the palace.”

“The cupbearer,” he said. Loth stared. The position of cupbearer had been defunct for centuries. The gown would have been planted in the Privy Wardrobe. The Mistress of the Robes at the time had been Lady Arbella Glenn, and she would never have hurt her queen.

“Forgive my lord father.” The Donmata gazed soullessly at the Flesh King. “I would say that he is not himself, but I think he is as much himself as he has ever been.”

His mother, Lady Annes Beck, had been with the Queen Mother when she died. Now he understood why neither she nor Sabran had ever been able to utter a word to him about the day Rosarian had been laced into that lovely gown. Why Lady Arbella Glenn, who had loved her like her own child, had never uttered a word again.

“Not all evil comes from wyrms.”

“Yscalin does not deserve this, but my father does. He deserves to look as corrupt on the outside as he always was within.”

I watched him destroy the Six Virtues. I watched the plague awaken and spread among my people. And my home became my prison.”

“Despite appearances, I am still faithful to the Saint. And he needs us now, Lord Arteloth.”

He had misjudged the Donmata Marosa. She was a true woman of Virtudom, imprisoned in the shell of a home she must once have loved.

Close to the twelfth hour, when the song of the tree crickets was swelling outside, she was still awake, reading.

“You seem to think that if you are not made a rider tomorrow, it will not be through any fault of yours,” she heard herself say. “I have worked every day and night during our time here. You, in the meantime, have shown no respect. You arrive late to your trials, in front of the Miduchi. You spend your nights in taverns when you ought to be practicing, then wonder why you fight poorly against your opponent. Perhaps that will be the reason that you do not become a rider.”

“Your eyes were bloodshot that morning. They still are. You stayed up all night practicing.” “Of course I did.” “And you resent me because I didn’t.” Onren shook her head. “Balance is necessary in all things, Tané—it does not equate to disrespect.

A sunshower. A good omen.

A night rainbow burned against the smoky purple of the sky, daubed across the horizon in intensities of red.

Cold scale brushed her fingers. She dared not look. She must. When she did, two eyes, as bright as fireworks, stared back from the face of a Lacustrine dragon.

The Draconic plague was inside him. One touch to the brow of the Flesh King, a prickle in his hand, and an hourglass had turned over in his mind. Soon enough, the fine grains of his sanity would begin to course between his fingers.

You will not die alone in this place.”

Marosa Vetalda, Donmata of Yscalin, imprisoned in her tower.

“I never wanted an adventure,” Loth said wearily. “Not even one. At this moment, I want to be at Briar House with a cup of mulled wine, preparing to walk my queen to the altar.”

It was customary for the vows to be taken at midnight, during the new moon, for it was in the darkest hours that companionship was needed most. And a dark hour it was. Never in Berethnet history had a marriage come so soon after a burial.

It was traditional in Inys for the closest friends of the betrothed to lead them into the state of companionship.

Moments in, and someone had already called the Mother a heretic.

“I take you now as my companion.” She slid the ring onto his forefinger. Gold, reserved for sovereigns. “My friend, my bedfellow, my constant partner in all things.” Pause. “I swear to love you with my soul, defend you with my sword, and give nobody else my favor. This I vow to you.”

The Arch Sanctarian clearly meant for an heir to be baked into existence like a loaf of bread.

After a long moment, during which she reflected on whether this was a wise decision, Ead took out the rose she had cut that afternoon and tucked it behind the pillow on the right side of the bed. The pillow embroidered with the Berethnet badge. Let her have sweet dreams tonight, at least.

“Yes, Your Majesty. You looked magnificent.” “Do I not still?” She asked it lightly, but Ead heard the trace of doubt in her voice. “You are always beautiful, madam.” Ead worked the hook free and slipped the jewels from about her throat. “But in my eyes . . . never more so than you are now.”

A furrow had appeared in her brow. The same furrow that had been there when she had described her nightmare. Ead found herself wanting to smooth it.

For the first time, she saw Sabran Berethnet for who she was beneath the mask: a young and fragile woman who carried a thousand-year legacy on her shoulders. A queen whose power was absolute only so long as she could produce a daughter. The fool in Ead wanted to take her by the hand and get her away from this room, but that fool was too much of a coward to act. She left Sabran alone, like all the others had.

“He might be the very picture of a lambkin,” Ead said, “but monsters often have soft faces. They know how to mask themselves.” She looked them both in the eye. “We will watch her. We will listen well. Remember why we wear blades as well as jewels.”

“Ros,” she said, “when Kate returns, bid her go back to the Lord Chamberlain. She will tell him that Mistress Ead Duryan has been raised to the position of Lady of the Bedchamber.”

When he had the strength, he forced himself to arrange the firewood and kindling he had gathered. He struck the flint and blew, urging the flame to grow. Then, steeling his nerves, he set about excoriating the ewe. When he had skinned his first animal on the third night, he had vomited and sobbed himself hoarse. Now his hands were well versed in the motions of survival.

Ever since his hands had flushed, his dreams had left him drenched in sweat. He dreamed of Kit, entombed in bloodstained glass, trapped forever between one world and the next. He dreamed of Sabran in her childbed, dying, and his being powerless to stop it. And he dreamed, inexplicably, of the Donmata Marosa dancing in Ascalon, before she had been yoked to her tower, at the mercy of the manikin her father had become.

Let him die here if he must, but he would take this monster with him.

He tried, as a sob heaved through him, to cling on to a kernel of joy. The first memory that came to him was the day Margret was born, and how lovely she had been, with her huge eyes and tiny hands. His dances with Ead at every Feast of Fellowship. Hunting from dawn until dusk with Sabran. Sitting in the Royal Library with Kit, reading his poems back to him.

Against all odds, he looked upon the Desert of the Unquiet Dream.

Sabran was a queen, born with the expectation that the world had a duty to provide what she wanted, when she wanted it—but she could not command her own womb to bear fruit.

She would not indulge Sabran in this. Katryen and Roslain told Sabran what she wished to hear, but Ead was resolved to tell her what she needed to know. Sabran had never been a patient woman. She soon became reluctant to join her companion at night, staying with her ladies to play cards into the small hours.

She knew Sabran would sometimes lie in bed for hours, held there by a sorrow that ran in her bloodline.

Glorian had come to power on the day Fýredel slew her parents. The war had been unexpected, but Glorian Shieldheart had not balked. She had married the elderly Duke of Córvugar and betrothed their unborn child to Haynrick Vatten of Mentendon, all while leading the defense of Inys. On the day her daughter was born, she had taken the babe onto the battlefield to show her armies that there was hope. Ead could not decide if that was madness or mettle.