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

by Samantha Shannon

“The Lady of the Woods was never known to be here, to my knowledge,” she said. “Her haithwood is in the north, close to Goldenbirch, where the Saint was born. The only time anyone enters it is to make pilgrimage in the spring.”

A prince seeking her counsel. How things had changed.

“Alas that children cannot be called into being merely by our wishing hard enough for them.

Sabran refused to hunt with hounds. They were bound to kill their quarry cleanly, or not at all.

They broke from the forest and thundered across the grass. Soon Ead was neck and neck with the queen, and they were breathless with laughter, neither able to gain on the other. With her wind-spun hair and eyes bright from the hunt, Sabran Berethnet looked almost carefree—and for the first time in years, Ead felt her own cares lifted from her shoulders. Like seeds from a dandelion clock.

Reading that message had filled her with both sorrow and relief. An opportunity to go home had presented itself to her on a platter—yet here she was, by choice, in the same place she had longed for years to escape. On the other hand, this meant her years at court would not go to waste. She would be able to see Sabran through her childing. In the end, it mattered not how long she stayed. It was her destiny to take the red cloak. Nothing would alter that.

Ead nodded. The feeling in her chest had already dulled, but it had left a nameless shadow in her.

Ead and Margret made sympathetic noises as Katryen lamented the loss of her secret admirer, whose love letters had stopped coming.

A household that large seemed excessive. Then again, everything in Inys was excessive.

“what would happen if Her Majesty had a son?” Katryen tilted her head at that. “I suppose it would not matter,” she mused, “but it has never happened, not in all Berethnet history. Clearly the Saint meant for this isle to be a queendom.”

Her counsel had not been strong enough. She should have done more to hammer the danger into that copper saucepan of a head. He was a fool, and so was Sabran. Fools in crowns.

She was no diviner, but anyone with half a wit could see that this would end in blood.

Niclays might have been touched had he considered any of them friends, or been interested in their regards, warm or otherwise.

There must be some political reason that the new High Prince was wary of provoking Sabran. At least he was courteous, and willing to return to the matter if Niclays could find some way of pacifying Her Acrimony. Or Lievelyn himself. Even he might be tempted by the elixir of life.

believe I have a theory & am certain the significance of a certain object has been overlooked. Will you write with all you know of the Tablet of Rumelabar? Have you an answer to its riddle?

He ought to feel shame for enjoying himself while the boy rotted in jail, especially when he believed that Niclays was finishing his quest for him.

What is below must be balanced by what is above, and in this is the precision of the universe. Fire ascends from the earth, light descends from the sky. Too much of one doth inflame the other, and in this is the extinction of the universe.

Fire ascends from the earth. Wyrms, perhaps. The Nameless One and his followers were said to have come from the Womb of Fire in the core of the world. He underlined again. Light descends from the sky. The meteor shower. The one that had ended the Grief of Ages, weakened the wyrms, and granted strength to the Eastern dragons. Too much of one doth inflame the other, and in this is the extinction of the universe. A warning of disparity. This theory posited the universe as yoked to the balance of fire and starlight, weighed on a set of cosmic scales. Too much of either would tip them. The extinction of the universe. The closest the world had ever come to ending was the arrival of the Nameless One and his followers.

Black hair was wrapped into a knot at the crown of her head. She wore pleated trousers, a tunic of deep blue silk, and a velvet surcoat. A fine sword hung at her side. When he saw the sheen on the tunic, Niclays was unable to stop his mouth popping open. Unless he was mistaken, that was watersilk. Erroneously named—it was not a silk at all, but hair. The manehair of dragons, to be precise. It repelled moisture like oil. The woman took a step toward him. Her face was angular and brown, her lips chapped. Dancing pearls adorned her throat. But what seared itself into his memory, in the few moments their gazes held, was the scar. It whipped across her left cheekbone before curling toward the corner of her eye. Exactly like a fishhook.

There was a rawness in her eyes that spoke of disturbed nights.

Tané Miduchi was, without question, the woman Sulyard had seen on the beach. Her scar betrayed her. She had brought an outsider into Cape Hisan on that fateful night and then handed him over to a musician, who was now languishing in prison. Or headless.

Miduchi had hidden Sulyard in Orisima—isolated from the rest of the city—so as not to disturb the ceremony. She had put her ambition above the law.

He did love the delicious onset of a good idea.

Her mind kept returning to that Ment in the street, and the way he had stared at her. As if he had recognized her.

Talking had been hard at first. Nayimathun would not hear of Tané using the sort of respectful language that befitted a god. They were to be as kin, she said. As sisters. Anything else, and they would not be able to fly together. Dragon and rider had to share one heart.

“In the village I was born in, they say stars are the spirits of people who fled from the Nameless One. They climbed up ladders and hid in the heavens to await the day when every fire-breather lies dead in the sea.” “Villagers can be wiser than scholars.”

“Starlight,” she said, “is what birthed us. All dragons of the East came first from the heavens.”

“The comet ended the Great Sorrow, but it has come to this world many times before,” Nayimathun said. “Once, many moons ago, it left behind two celestial jewels, each infused with its power. Solid fragments of itself. With them, our ancestors could control the waves. Their presence allowed us to hold on to our strength for longer than we could before. But they have been lost for almost a thousand years.”

“Almost a thousand years ago, a human used them to fold the sea over the Nameless One,” she said. “That was how he was defeated. After that, the two jewels passed out of history, as if they never were.”

As she dressed, she concealed her blades. Two went beneath her skirts, another she tucked behind her stomacher, a fourth into one of her boots. The ornamental dagger carried by all Ladies of the Bedchamber was the only one she could display.

A sword-shaped brooch was pinned to her bodice. She alone, in all Virtudom, took the Saint himself as her patron.

The queen studied her face. Then, quite unexpectedly, she took her by the hand. “Tell me, Ead,” she said, “how is it you always know what to say to comfort me?”

“Just one last touch,” she said, and slipped a necklace around Sabran’s throat. Graduated sapphires and pearls, and a pendant shaped like a seahorse. “You remember.” “Of course.” Sabran traced the pendant, her expression distant. “My mother gave it to me.”

The royal procession stopped outside the Sanctuary of Our Lady, which was believed to house the tomb of Cleolind. (Ead knew that it did not.)

“I don’t see Lady Truyde,” she said to Katryen. “She has a headache.” Katryen pursed her lips. “A fine day for it.”

Sabran stood like one stricken by a thunderbolt. Ead watched her take it all in. Since the day she was crowned, she had hidden in her palaces. She had forgotten what she was to her people. The living embodiment of hope. Their shield and their salvation.

“I confess,” she said, “that I am not much like you. I have been impatient and arrogant. For too long I forswore my duty to this realm, refusing to gift unto my people a princess, and instead sought errant means of prolonging my own life.”

No woman should be made to fear that she was not enough.

The gallant knight was gone, replaced by a man who had been hand-picked to protect the Queen of Inys. The next attacker stopped in her tracks, and when Lintley bore down on her, she turned and fled. A musket fired and blew her guts across the cobblestones.

A preternatural calm descended on Ead. As she drew two blades, she forgot that Ladies of the Bedchamber were not educated in combat. She let fall the cloak of secrecy she had worn for all these years. All she knew was her duty. To keep Sabran alive. The war dance was calling to her. As it had the first time she had hunted a basilisk. Like wind on fire, she flashed into the next wave of attackers, wheeling her blades, and they fell dead around her.

Too slow, Ead heard the trick. It was not Lady Katryen Withy behind that door. It was an imitation. The mockery of a mimic.

Two gloved hands revealed a pale countenance. Truyde utt Zeedeur stared at the lifeless High Prince of Mentendon. “I never meant for him to die,” she whispered. “I only wanted to help you, Your Majesty. I only wanted you to listen.”

He could see her eyes now, and they cut deeper than her blade.

“So,” she said, “you are threatening me.” She withdrew the knife. “But not to save Sulyard. You use the suffering of others for your own gain. You are a servant of the Nameless One.”

No. She would not do what Roos wanted. She would go to the Sea General and confess what she had done. It would cost her Nayimathun and her place among the riders. It would cost her everything she had worked for since she was a child—but it was what she deserved, and it might save her only friend from the sword.

Tané could not disobey a god. Her body was a vessel of water, and all water was theirs.

Here, she was no longer Lady Tané of Clan Miduchi, or anyone at all. She was faceless in the gloaming. A breath of wind over the sea. This was what her death would feel like. Jeweled turtles would come to escort her spirit to the Palace of Many Pearls, and her body would be given to the waves. All that would be left of it was foam.

“No, child of flesh. You are my rider, sworn to me before the sea. And you are right that you cannot be forgiven,” Nayimathun said, “but only because there was no crime.” Tané stared up at her. “There was a crime.” Her voice quaked. “I broke seclusion. I hid an outsider. I disobeyed the Great Edict.” “No.” A hiss echoed through the cave. “West or East, North or South—it makes no difference to the fire. The threat comes from beneath, not from afar.” The dragon lay flat on the ground, so her eyes were as close as possible to Tané. “You hid the boy. Spared him the sword.”

“That is not the question you must ask. You must ask what we must do.”

He took in the unfamiliar bed, piled with bolsters and corncockle silk, and wanted nothing but to sleep. Instead, he went to his knees beside the window, and he wept for Kitston Glade.