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July 7 - July 12, 2021
Thinking of Kit split his chest open. Grief was a swallet in him, draining all good thoughts.
The fall had kindled the pain in her shoulder, and in her left side, where her old scar was.
Her side ached as if a horse had kicked it. Even as she succumbed to sleep, it was throbbing, like a second heart.
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
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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.
Truyde utt Zeedeur was imprisoned in the Dearn Tower. Under threat of the rack, she had confessed to many crimes.
There is no official cupbearer to the queen.”
“Another letter from Papa, too.” She 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.
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. Or to tell her the truth. Perhaps that was what Sabran valued most.
“Was it you who slew the other cutthroats? Are you the watcher in the night?”
“That may be true, but I should have listened. You have never deceived me. I cannot ask Aubrecht for his forgiveness, but . . . I will ask yours, Ead Duryan.” It took effort to hold her gaze. She had no idea just how greatly Ead had deceived her.
In truth, Ead did not want the girl dead. She was a dangerous fool, and her stupidity had caused a slew of deaths, but she was seventeen. There was time for her to make amends.
“You asked me, before I took Aubrecht to consort, if I wanted to wed,” she said, almost too softly to hear. “I confess now, to you alone, that I did not. And . . . still do not.”
“Yet if I refrain, the world will stand in judgment. Too proud to wed my country to another. Too selfish to give my daughter a father to love her if I should perish. This is how I will be seen. Who would rise in defense of such a monarch?”
“Childing is not always easy. It seems to me that this is the best-kept secret in all the world. We speak of it as though there were nothing sweeter, but the truth is more complex. No one talks openly about the difficulties. The discomfort. The uncertainty. So now you feel the weight of your condition, you believe yourself alone in it. And you have turned the blame upon yourself.”
“There were whispers. That those who broke seclusion would be rewarded. Just once, I wanted to be fearless. To take a risk.”
“He seemed like a message. Sent from the gods.” She could hardly speak. “I was too fortunate. All my life, the great Kwiriki was too good to me. Every day, I have waited for his favor to disappear. When the outsider came, I knew it was time. But I was not ready. I had to . . . sever his connection to me. Hide him away until I had what I wanted.”
She had thought she would beg or weep or ask forgiveness, but in the end, she felt nothing.
It had been a far-off nightmare in Inys. A fireside story for dark nights. Now he knew what all the world had faced in the Grief of Ages. He knew why the East had locked its doors.
This must be where the ambassador lived, though it was nothing like the place Ead had described growing up in. No open-air walkways or striking views of the Sarras Mountains. Just alcoves here and there, each framing a bronze statuette of a woman holding a sword and an orb.
“I did vouch for you,” was the reply, “but no. This is not my estate, and the remedy you took was not mine. In the spirit of Ersyri hospitality, however, you may call me Chassar.”
“You are very lucky to be at this table,” Chassar said. “Few men seek the Priory and live to see it.”
The Priory. The sisters.
“Everything you know is false.”
“Be silent and learn something.”
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.”
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.
“Because whomsoever seeks the Priory can never leave its walls.”
“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.”
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 she is a sister of the Priory. I planted her in Inys, on the orders of the last Prioress, to protect Sabran the Ninth.”
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.
He had always been troubled by the calamitous loss of knowledge in the Grief of Ages—the
“Perhaps dukes are naïve to such things, but there are arrogant fools the world over.”
“Let us not speak of death when there is still so much life to be lived.”
“If I had convinced myself I was no sinner, I would never have kissed the lips I longed to kiss.
There existed a realm between dreaming and waking,
the fragment that was never supposed to have come back to the East.
Prince Aubrecht was dead, but by gifting them the next ruler of Virtudom, he had bought them another generation of safety from the Nameless One.
The life of the child took precedence over that of the mother, since there was no evidence that the women of the House of Berethnet could conceive more than once. Little wonder Sabran had been withdrawn of late.
“She pushes too hard,” she said softly, once the doors were shut. “I never saw, when I was younger. I revered her too much to see how much she hates to be denied.”
“My will was not always what it is now. Once I was as molten glass, yet to be spun into shape. I sense I have taken a shape she mislikes.”
There were six historical names for Berethnet monarchs, Sabran and Jillian being the most popular. “Sylvan. After Sylvan-by-the-River,” the queen said, “where her lord father died.” That name was not one of them.
Ead watched it all with weary detachment. Soon the Prioress would call her home. Part of her longed to be among her sisters, united with them in praise of the Mother. Another part wanted nothing but to remain. She had to crush it.
“Whether there is a queen in Inys or a sun in the sky, he will rise.”
“The Tablet of Rumelabar speaks of a balance between fire and starlight. Nobody has ever been able to interpret it. Alchemists and scholars have theorized that the balance is symbolic of the worldly and the mystic, of anger and temperance, of humanity and divinity—but I think the words should be taken literally.”
your determination to make it truth does not mean it is so.”
fire did ascend from the earth—through wyrms, and through the orange tree. Mages ate of its fruit, becoming vessels of the flame. Had the Southerners of ancient times known some truth that had disappeared from history?
“I resent . . . my unborn child. An innocent.”
Whether I live or die in childbed, I will be cast aside. Like an eggshell.”
“There will be fools and flatterers,” Ead said, “who forsake your side to fawn over a newborn. Let them. See them for what they are.” She kept Sabran’s gaze prisoner. “I told you fear was natural, but you must not let it consume you. Not when there is so much at stake.”
