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July 7 - July 12, 2021
Mita deserved a cruel death for what she had done to Zāla, but Ead would not deliver it to her. She would not debase herself by murdering a sister.
“Our religions are intertwined. Both oppose the Nameless One.” “You never believed in the Saint. Well,” he corrected himself, “you did. But you think he was a brute and a craven who tried to press a country into accepting his religion.” “And demanded to marry Princess Cleolind before he would slay the monster, yes.”
“I did it to survive.” When he still refused to look at her, she said, “I confess I am what you would call a sorceress, but no magic is evil. It is what the wielder makes it.”
Whether there is a queen in Inys or a sun in the sky, he will rise.”
Her feelings had come like a flower on a tree. A bud, gently forming—and just like that, an undying blossom.
I saw that despite everything, some part of her was self-made. This part, small as it appeared at first, was forged in the fire of her own strength, and resisted her cage. And I understood . . . that this part was made of steel. This part was who she truly was.” She held his gaze. “She will be the queen that Inys needs in the days that are to come.”
The Little Shadow-girl walked from her place of exile and sank her hands into the earth. The comet ended the Great Sorrow, but it has come to this world many times before. Once, many moons ago, it left behind two celestial jewels, each infused with its power. Solid fragments of itself.
That even if it took her until her dying day, she would find Nayimathun, free her from captivity, and make her a gift of this jewel. Even if it took her a lifetime, she would reunite the dragon with what had been stolen.
Ead kept watch beside him. Already she looked a little less alive than she had in Lasia.
Ead had said nothing at the sight. Only turned an open hand toward the five ships at anchor—and fire, born of nothing, had roared up their masts.
“All of us have shadows in us,” he said. “I accept yours.” He placed a hand over her ring. “And I hope you will also accept mine.”
“There was no official religion, but from what little the records tell us, the commons saw the hawthorn as a sacred tree.”
Whittling Sabran down to her last nerve. Making her afraid to sleep in the dark. Taking a loved one for each of her sins.
Yet he knew she had burdened Sabran in the four years of her minority. Even before that, when she was a young princess, Crest had hammered into her a need for temperance, for perfection, for devotion to duty. During those years, Sabran had not been permitted to speak with any children but Roslain and Loth, and Crest had always been near at hand, watching her.
“I have not left,” she said. “All I do, I do for the Mother. To glorify her name.” She closed her eyes. “But I hope—I pray—that my path will bend southward again someday.”
One was unrecognizable. Little more than a skull. The other had been tarred and parboiled, but the features slumped with decay. Ears and nose leaking rot. Flies on pallid skin. He might not have recognized her if not for the hair. Long and red, streaming like blood. “Truyde,” Ead breathed.
“Why would she have murdered Lady Truyde?” “To silence her. Only Truyde, Sabran, and myself knew that Bess Weald worked for someone called the Cupbearer. And Combe,” she added, after a moment. “Crest is covering her spoor. My head would have been up there, too, sooner or later, if I had not left court.”
Perhaps nothing he had thought about this court had been true. Or perhaps this was a test of faith.
She had hoped not to kill anyone in the palace. If there had been more time, Ead might have candled the man.
Once, you would have seen Combe’s retainers strutting about in his livery, Margret had told her, as if their first loyalty were not to their queen.
“Where is Combe in all this?” “The Night Hawk took wing a few days ago. Stillwater and Fynch, too. I have no idea whether it was of their own volition.”
“You told me we would meet again.” Ead held her close. “I did not want to make you a liar.”
“Not all fire is to be feared,”
“Meg—” A muffled oath. “Margret, you must leave. Crest has had me locked in.” She clicked her tongue. “That sounds like a reason to get you out, fool, not to leave.”
“If you think a handful of traitors will keep me from her side,” came her immediate answer, “you are sorely mistaken.” Then, softer, “I can do this alone.”
The Gallery of the Blood Royal was empty. She strode past the portraits of the women of the House of Berethnet. Painted green eyes seemed to follow her as she approached the stair. There were differences between the queens—a curl to the hair, a dimple, a well-defined jaw—but each of them looked so much like the others, they might all have been sisters.
“I am Lord Arteloth Beck, who was banished from Inys for loyalty to the crown.” Loth strode to the middle of the Sundial Garden as he bellowed over the clangor of blades. “Igrain Crest has turned against our queen. She allows her retainers to wear her colors and carry arms. She spits at the Knight of Fellowship by allowing her servants to fight like hounds at court. These are traitorous actions!” He sounded like a man reborn. “I urge you, in fellowship and faith, to rise for Her Majesty,” he shouted. “Help us reach the Queen Tower and assure her safety!”
“Ead Duryan, yield your weapons!” She could not candle all of them. Blood it would have to be.
Death came for them like a desert wind. Her blades were as red as the cloak she had forsworn. And when the dead lay at her feet, she looked up, tasting iron, hands gloved in wetness.
“I am not in her shadow. I am her shadow. And that,” Roslain bit out, “has been my privilege.”
“Ead.” Fingers came to her face. Ead pressed the icy hand to her cheek. “No. You are another dream. You come here to torment me.” Sabran turned away. “Leave me in peace.”
“The High Sea Guard suspects the Fleet of the Tiger Eye is holding a dragon hostage. It seems they intend to keep it alive . . . to guarantee them safe passage through any waters they desire. A sinister new tactic, to hold our gods as leverage.”
There is scant record of the celestial jewels—which were sometimes called the tide jewels or wishing jewels—but you may examine what little there is.”
And surely a celestial jewel—if that was what had been stitched into Tané, like a pattern into cloth . . . Surely that could set a dragon free.
“When history fails to shed light on the truth, myth creates its own.”
“Scholar Ishari,” Tané echoed. Her stomach knotted. “Is she . . . in the hermitage?” “Sadly, the learnèd scholar was injured in the attack while trying to save the documents. She died of her pains.”
Ishari had taken but nineteen years, and most of them had been spent preparing for a life she had never been given a chance to lead.
Majesty, I address you once again. Neporo is in mourning, for her friend, the sorceress from across the sea, is dead. It was the two of them who, using the two objects I described in my last missive—the waning jewel and the rising jewel—caused the great chaos in the Abyss on the third day of spring. The body of the Lasian sorceress will now be returned to her country, and Neporo bids twelve of her subjects escort it, along with the white jewel the sorceress often wore at her breast. Since His Augustness, the great Kwiriki in his mercy has arranged us this opportunity, I will endeavor to do as
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Nelda Stillwater, Lemand Fynch, and the Night Hawk had arrived at court not long after, each with an affinity of retainers in tow. They had claimed to be coming to liberate the queen from Crest, but Sabran had ordered them all locked away until she could unravel the truth.
Sabran had remained defiant. Even while she was too weak to feed herself. Even when Crest had shut her up in darkness.
“I had no idea what to believe. Now, when you return to me, you are drenched in blood and have left a pile of bodies higher than a horse behind you. You are no lady-in-waiting.”
“An enchanted orange tree.” Sabran let out a huff of laughter. “Next you will tell me pears can sing.” “Does the Queen of Inys mock what she does not understand?”
“If Sabran the First was not born of Cleolind,” she said eventually, “and I am not saying I believe it, Ead—then who was her mother? Who was the first Queen of Inys?” “I don’t know.”
“And stole the recognition for the latter from Princess Cleolind, yes.”
“Fair roses have grown from twisted seeds.”
“So,” she said, “it is as my ancestor said. That when the House of Berethnet ends . . . the Nameless One will return.” “It has naught to do with you,” Ead said. “Or your ancestors. Most likely Galian made the claim to consolidate his new-found power, and to make himself a god in the eyes of his people. He fed his descendants to the jaws of his lie.”
“Barren.” A thin smile. “We must think of a different word for it, I think. That one makes me sound like a field stripped of its crop. A waste with nothing left to give.”
“Once, however, I heard Crest arguing with Roslain, saying that the Oath of Relinquishment would make her queen some day, and her daughter after that, and that she was an ingrate for resisting. And Ros— Ros said she would die before she took the throne from me.”
“If it please you, I have come to ask you some questions.” “I will answer for what I have done,” Crest said, “only in Halgalant.” “You will not see the heavenly court,” Loth said quietly. “So let us begin here.”
