The Principal Secretary kept a well-ordered study on the floor below the Council Chamber. His lair, some called it, though the room was almost disappointing in its mundanity. A far cry from the splendor Combe must enjoy in his ancestral home of Strathurn Castle.
The corridor leading to it had been lined with retainers. All of them wore the brooch of the Knight of Courtesy, with the wings that marked them as servants of her bloodline.
“Mistress Ead Duryan, Your Grace.” Lintley bowed. “A Lady of the Bedchamber.”
Ead sank into a curtsy.
“Thank you, Sir Tharian.” Combe was writing at a table. “That will be all.”
Lintley closed the door behind him. Combe looked up at Ead and removed his spectacles.
The silence continued until a log crumbled into the fire.
“Mistress Duryan,” Combe said, “I regret to inform you that Queen Sabran no longer requires your services as a Lady of the Bedchamber. The Lord Chamberlain has formally discharged you from the Upper Household and revoked its associated privileges.”
Her neck prickled.
“Your Grace,” she said, “I was not aware that I had given Her Majesty any offense.”
Combe dredged up a smile. “Come, now, Mistress Duryan,” he said. “I see you. How clever you are, and how you loathe me. You know why you are here.” When she said nothing, he continued: “This afternoon, I received a report. That you were in . . . an inappropriate state of undress last night in the Great Bedchamber. As was Her Majesty.”
Even as the feeling drained from her legs, Ead kept her composure.
“Who reported this?” she asked.
“I have eyes in every room. Even the royal apartments,” Combe said. “One of the Knights of the Body, dedicated as he is to Her Majesty, nonetheless reports to me.”
Ead closed her eyes. She had been so drunk on Sabran that her caution had failed her.
“Tell me, Combe,” she said, “what can it possibly matter to you now what happens in her bed?”
“Because her bed is the stability of this realm. Or the undoing of that stability. Her bed, Mistress Duryan, is all that stands between Inys and chaos.”
Ead stared him out.
“Her Majesty must wed again. To give the impression that she is trying to conceive the heir that will save Inys,” Combe continued. “It could buy her many more years on the throne. As such, she cannot afford to make lovers of her ladies-in-waiting.”
“I suppose you summoned Lord Arteloth like this,” Ead said. “In the dead of night, while Sabran slept.”
“Not in person. I am fortunate to have a loyal affinity of retainers, who act on my behalf. Still,” Combe added wryly, “reports of my night-time arrangements have flourished. I am aware of my name at court.”
“It suits you.”
The fireplace flickered to his right, casting the other side of his face into shadow.
“I have rid the court of several people in my years as Principal Secretary. My predecessor would pay off those she wanted gone, but I am not so wasteful. I prefer to make use of my exiles. They become my intelligencers, and if they provide what I require, I may invite them home. Under circumstances that benefit us all.” Combe clasped his thick-knuckled fingers. “And so my web whispers to me.”
“Your web has whispered lies before. I have known Sabran in body,” Ead said, “but Loth never did.”
Even as she spoke, she began to calculate her way out. She had to reach Sabran.
“Lord Arteloth was different,” Combe conceded. “A virtuous man. Loyal to Her Majesty. For the first time, I was pained by what I had to do.”
“Forgive me if I find my compassion wanting.”
“Oh, I expect no compassion, mistress. We who are the hidden dagger of the crown—the rack-masters, the rat-catchers, the spies, and the executioners—do not often receive it.”
“And yet,” Ead said, “you are a descendant of the Knight of Courtesy. That sits oddly on you.”
“By no means. It is my work in the shadows that allows courtesy to maintain its face at court.” Combe observed her for a few moments. “I meant what I said to you at the dance. You had a friend in me. I admired the way you ascended without treading on others, and how you comported yourself . . . but you crossed a line that cannot be crossed. Not with her.” He looked almost sorry. “I wish it were otherwise.”
“Strip me from her side, and she will know. And she will find some means to be rid of you.”
“I hope you are mistaken, Mistress Duryan, for her sake. I fear you misjudge how fragile her rule has become now there is no hope of an heir.” Combe held her gaze. “She needs me more than ever. I am faithful to her for her qualities as a ruler, and for the legacy of her house, but some of my fellow Dukes Spiritual will not brook her on that throne. Not now she has failed in her chief duty as a Berethnet queen.”
Ead kept her expression carefully blank, but a wardrum beat within her breast. “Who?”
“Oh, I have my suspicions as to who will act first. I mean to be her shield in the days to come,” Combe said. “You, unhappily, do not factor into my plans. You threaten them.”
Perhaps they will not even wait for me to die before the infighting begins.
“Falden,” Combe said, louder, “would you come in?” The door opened, and one of his retainers entered. “If you would be so kind as to see Mistress Duryan to the coach.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
The man took Ead by the shoulder. As he steered her toward the door, Combe said, “Wait, Master Falden. I have changed my mind.” His face was expressionless. “Kill her.”
Ead stiffened. At once, the retainer grabbed her by the hair and pulled, baring her throat to his blade.
Heat flared in her hands. She twisted the arm that held her, and in a welter of limbs, the retainer was on the floor and crying in agony, his shoulder thrust out of the joint.
“There,” Combe said softly.
The retainer panted, clutching his arm. Ead looked at her hands. Reacting to a threat, the very last of her siden, her deepest reserve, had forced itself to the surface.
“Lady Truyde spread rumors of your sorcery some time ago.” Combe took in the glow in her fingertips. “I ignored them, of course. The jealous spite of a young courtier, no more. Then I heard of your . . . curious skill with blades during the ambush.”
“I taught myself to protect Queen Sabran,” Ead said, outwardly calm, but her blood hammered.
“So I see.” Combe sighed through his nose. “You are the watcher in the night.”
She had revealed her true nature. There could be no return from this.
“I do not believe in sorcery, Mistress Duryan. Perhaps it is alchemy in your hands. What I do believe is that you never came here out of a desire to serve Queen Sabran, as you claimed. More likely Ambassador uq-Ispad placed you here as a spy. Even greater reason for me to send you far away from court.”
Ead took a step toward him. The Night Hawk did not move or flinch.
“I have wondered,” Ead said, her voice low, “if you are the Cupbearer. If you arranged those cutthroats to come . . . to frighten her into marrying Lievelyn. If that is why you want to be rid of me. Her protector. After all, what is a cupbearer but a trusted servant to the crown, who at any moment could poison the wine?”
“How easy it would be for you to lay the blame for all ills at my doorstep,” he murmured. “The Cupbearer is near at hand, Mistress Duryan. I have no doubt of that. But I am only the Night Hawk.” He sat back. “A coach is waiting at the palace gates.”
“And where will it take me?”
“Somewhere I can keep a sharp eye on you. Until I have seen where the pieces fall,” he said. “You know the greatest secret in Virtudom. One wag of your tongue could bring Inys to its knees.”
“So you will silence me with incarceration.” Ead paused. “Or do you mean to be rid of me on a more permanent basis?”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “You wound me. Murder is not courteous.”
He would keep her somewhere where neither Sabran nor the Priory would be able to find her. She could not get into that coach, or she would never see daylight again.
This time, many pairs of hands were on her. The light waned from her fingers as they escorted her out.
She had no intention of letting Combe lock her away. Or ending her with a knife to the back. As they left the Alabastrine Tower, she slipped a hand beneath her cloak and unlaced her sleeves. The retainers marched her toward the gates of the palace.
Quick as an arrow, she pulled her arms free of her gown. Before the retainers could snare her, she had vaulted over the nearest wall, into the Privy Garden. Shouts of surprise went up.
Her heart battered her ribs. A window was open above her. The Queen Tower was smooth-walled, impossible to climb, but woodvines snaked up it, thick enough to take her weight. Ead hooked her foot on to a knotted vine.
Wind blew her hair across her eyes as she ascended. The woodvines creaked darkly. A slender vine snapped between her fingers, and her belly tightened, but she snatched for a new handhold and pressed on. Finally, she slid through the open window, landing in silence.
Into the deserted corridors. Up the stairs to the royal apartments. Outside the darkened Presence Chamber stood a line of armed retainers in black tabards. Each tabard was embroidered with the twin goblets of the Duchess of Justice.
“I wish to see the queen,” Ead said breathlessly. “At once.”
“Her Majesty is in bed, Mistress Duryan, and night duty has begun,” a woman answered.
“Lady Roslain, then.”
“The doors to the Great Bedchamber are locked,” was the curt reply, “and will not be unlocked until morning.”
“I must see the queen,” Ead cut in, frustrated. “It is a matter of the utmost importance.”
The retainers exchanged glances. Finally, one of them, visibly irritated, took a candle and walked into the dark.
Heart thumping, Ead gathered her breath. She hardly knew what she would say to Sabran. Only that she had to make her aware of what Combe was doing.
A blear-eyed Roslain appeared in her bedgown. Strands of hair escaped her braid.
“Ead,” she said, her voice taut with impatience, “what in the world is the matter?”
“I need to see Sabran.”
Lips pinched, Roslain took her aside.
“Her Majesty has a fever.” She looked grim. “Doctor Bourn says that bed rest will resolve it, but my grandmother has stationed her retainers here for additional protection until she is well. I will stay to nurse her.”
“You must tell her.” Ead grasped her arm. “Roslain, Combe is sending me into exile. You need to—”
“Mistress Duryan!”
Roslain flinched. Retainers wearing the winged book were at the end of the corridor, led by two Knights of the Body.
“Seize her,” Sir Marke Birchen shouted. “Ead Duryan, you are arrested. Stop at once!”
Ead flung open the nearest door and rushed into the night.
“Ead,” Roslain cried after her, horror-struck. “Sir Marke, what is the meaning of this?”
A line of balconies took Ead to another open door. She ran blindly through the corridors until she slammed through the door of the Privy Kitchen, where Tallys, the scullion, crouched in the corner, eating a custard tart. When Ead burst in, she gasped.
“Mistress Duryan.” She looked terrified. “Mistress, I was only—”
Ead raised a finger to her lips. “Tallys,” she said, “is there a way out?”
The scullion nodded at once. She took Ead by the hand and led her to a small door, hidden behind a drape.
“This way. The Servant Stair,” she whispered. “Are you leaving forever?”
“For now,” Ead said.
“Why?”
“I cannot tell you, child.” Ead looked her dead in the eye. “Tell no one you saw me. Swear it on your honor as a lady, Tallys.”
Tallys swallowed. “I swear it.”
Footsteps outside. Ead ducked through the door, and Tallys bolted it behind her.
She hurried down the stair beyond. If she was to leave the palace, she would need a horse and a disguise. There was one person left who might give them to her.
In her quarters, Margret Beck sat in her nightgown. She looked up with a gasp when Ead entered.
“What is the meaning of—” She stood. “Ead?”
Ead shut the door behind her. “Meg, I have no time. I must—”
Almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth, a metallic knock came, the sound of knuckles sheathed in a gauntlet.
“Lady Margret.” Knock. “Lady Margret, this is Dame Joan Dale, of the Knights of the Body.” Another knock. “My lady, I come on urgent business. Open the door.”
Margret motioned Ead toward her unmade bed. Ead pushed herself under it and let the valance fall behind her. She heard Margret walk across the flagstones.
“Forgive me, Dame Joan. I was sleeping.” Her voice was slow and hoarse. “Is something the matter?”
“Lady Margret, the Principal Secretary has ordered the arrest of Mistress Ead Duryan. Have you seen her?”
“Ead?” Margret sat down on the bed, as if stunned. “This is impossible. On what grounds?”
She was a consummate actor. Her voice wavered at the crossroads between shock and disbelief.
“I am not at liberty to speak with you further on the subject.” Armored feet crossed the room. “If you do see Mistress Duryan, sound the alarm at once.”
The Knight of the Body left, closing the door behind her. Margret slid the bolt across and drew the curtains before she hauled Ead from under the bed.
“Ead,” she whispered, “what in damsam have you done?”
“I stepped too close to Sabran. Just like Loth.”
“No.” Margret stared at her. “You used to tread so carefully in this court, Ead—”
“I know. Forgive me.” She extinguished the candles and stole a look between the curtains. Guards and armed squires were all over the grounds. “Meg, I need your help. I must return to the Ersyr, or Combe will kill me.”
“He wouldn’t dare.”
“He cannot let me leave the palace alive. Not knowing—” Ead faced her again. “You will hear things about me, things that will make you doubt me, but you must know that I love the queen. And I am certain she is in grave danger.”
“From the Cupbearer?”
“And her own Dukes Spiritual. I think they mean to move against her,” Ead said. “Combe has some part in it, I am sure. You must watch Sabran, Meg. Stay close to her.”
Margret searched her face. “Until you return?”
Ead met her expectant gaze. Any promise she made to Margret now, she might not be able to keep.
“Until I return,” she finally said.
This seemed to nerve Margret. Jaw set, she went to her press and tossed a woollen cloak, a ruffled shirt, and a kirtle on to the bed. “You won’t get far in all that finery,” she said. “Fortunate that we are the same height.”
Ead stripped to her shift and put on the new clothes, thanking the Mother for Margret Beck. Once the cloak was fastened and the hood up, Margret led her to the door.
“Downstairs is a painting of Lady Brilda Glade. There is a stair to the guardhouse behind it. From there, you can circle around the Privy Garden to the stables. Take Valour.”
That horse was her pride and joy. “Meg,” Ead said, grasping her hands, “they will know you helped me.”
“So be it.” She pressed a silk purse on Ead. “Here. Enough to buy you passage to Zeedeur.”
“I will remember this kindness, Margret.”
Margret embraced her, so tightly Ead could not breathe. “I know there is little chance of it,” she said thickly, “but if you should meet Loth on the road—”
“I know.”
“I love you like my own sister, Ead Duryan. We will meet again.” She pressed a kiss to her cheek. “May the Saint go with you.”
“I know no Saint,” Ead said honestly, and saw her friend’s confusion, “but I take your blessing, Meg.”
She left the chamber and made haste through the corridors, avoiding the guards. When she found the portrait, she descended the stair beyond and emerged in a passage with a window at its end. She hurdled through it and into the night.
Inside the Royal Mews, all was dark. Valour, a gift to Margret from her father for her twentieth birthday, was the envy of every rider at court. He filled the stall at eighteen hands. Ead placed a gloved hand on his blood-bay coat.
Valour snorted as she saddled him. If rumor had it true, he could outrun even Sabran’s horses.
Ead wedged her boot into the stirrup, mounted, and snapped the reins. At once, Valour wheeled out of his stall and charged through the open doors. They were through the gates of Ascalon Palace before Ead heard the cry, and by then there was no catching her. Arrows rained in her wake. Valour let out a whinny, but she whispered to him in Selinyi, urging him on.
As the archers stood down, Ead looked back at the place that had been her prison and her home for eight years. The place where she had met Loth and Margret, two people she had not expected to befriend. The place where she had grown to care for the seed of the Deceiver.
The guards came after her. They hunted a ghost, for Ead Duryan was no more.
She rode hard for six days and nights through the sleet, stopping only to rest Valour. She had to stay ahead of the heralds. If Combe had his way, they would already be taking word of her escape through the country.
Instead of taking the South Pass, she traversed country lanes and fields. The snow began again on the fourth day. Her journey took her through the bountiful county of the Downs, where Lord and Lady Honeybrook had their seat at Dulcet Court, to the town of Crow Coppice. She watered Valour and filled her wineskin before returning to the road under cover of darkness.
She focused on anything but Sabran, but even the swiftest riding left room for thoughts to prey. Now that she was sick, she was even more vulnerable than she had been before.
As Ead urged the gelding across a farmstead, she damned her own folly. The Inysh court had softened her heart.
She could not tell the Prioress how it had been with Sabran. Even Chassar might not understand. She hardly understood herself. All she knew was that she could not leave Sabran at the mercy of the Dukes Spiritual.
When dawn broke on the seventh day, the sea bruised the horizon. To the untaught eye, the cliffs simply fell away, land planing seamlessly into water. One could look at it and never imagine that a city stood between them.
Today, smoke betrayed its presence. A thick, dark cloud of it, billowing skyward.
Ead watched for a long moment. That was more than chimney smoke. She rode to the edge of the cliffs and surveyed the rooftops below.
“Come, Valour,” she murmured, and dismounted. She led him to the first set of steps.
Perchling was a mess. Cobblestones splashed with blood. Bone char and melted flesh, oily on the wind. The living wept over the remains of their loved ones, or stood in confusion. No one paid any mind to Ead.
A dark-haired woman was sitting outside the remains of a bakehouse. “You there,” Ead said to her. “What happened here?”
The woman was shivering. “They came in the night. Servants of the High Westerns,” she whispered. “The war machines drove ’em away, but not before they did . . . this.” A tear dripped to her jaw. “There will be another Grief of Ages before the year is out.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Ead said, too softly for her to hear.
She took Valour down the stair to the beach. Catapults and other artillery lay wrecked on the sand. Smoking corpses were littered here and there—soldier and wyrm, tangled in eternal battle, even in death. Cockatrices and basilisks were strewn about in grotesque contortions, tongues lolling, eyes pecked by gulls. Ead walked alongside the gelding.
“Hush,” she said when he whickered. “Hush, Valour. The dead have made their beds upon this sand.”
From the looks of things, all the Draconic creatures involved in this attack had been killed, either by the war machines or the sword. Sabran would know about it soon. Fortunate for her that her navy was stationed at ports all over Inys, or the whole fleet might have burned.
Ead crossed the beach. The wind blew down her hood, cooling the sweat on her brow. Perchling would ordinarily be full of ships, but each one had been set on fire. Those that were intact would need work before they could sail. Only a rowing boat looked untouched.
“Lost, are you?”
A knife was in her grasp before she knew it, and she spun, poised to throw. A woman held up her hands.
“Easy.” She wore a wide-brimmed hat. “Easy.”
“Who are you, Yscal?”
“Estina Melaugo. Of the Rose Eternal.” The woman cocked an eyebrow. “You’re a little too late to board a ship.”
“So I see. The boat is yours, I presume.”
“It is.”
“Will you take me?” Ead sheathed her knife. “I seek passage to Zeedeur.”
Melaugo looked her up and down. “What do I call you?”
“Meg.”
“Meg.” Her smile said she knew full well it was an alias. “From your filthy cloak, I’d say you’ve been riding hard for a few days. Not much sleep, either, by the looks of you.”
“You would ride hard if the Night Hawk wanted your head.”
Melaugo grinned, showing a tiny gap between her front teeth. “Another enemy of the Night Hawk. He ought to start paying us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing.” Melaugo motioned to the horizon. “The ship is out there. I’d usually expect coin for safe passage—but perhaps, with so many wyrms in the sky, we should all be kinder to each other.”
“Soft words for a pirate.”
“Piracy was more of a necessity than a choice for me, Meg.” Melaugo eyed Valour. “You can’t take that horse.”
“The horse,” Ead said, “goes where I go.”
“Don’t make me leave you behind, Meg.” When Ead kept her hand on Valour, Melaugo folded her arms and sighed. “We’ll have to bring the ship in. The captain will expect compensation for that, if not for you.”
Ead tossed her the purse. Inysh money would be useless in the South.
“I take no charity, pirate,” she said.
It would not take long to reach Mentendon. Ead lay in her berth and tried to sleep. When she did, she was pierced by unquiet dreams of Sabran and the faceless Cupbearer. When she did not, she padded to the deck and gazed at the crystal stars above the sails, letting them calm her mind.
The captain, Gian Harlowe, stepped from his cabin to smoke his pipe. This was the man who had loved the Queen Mother, according to rumor. Dark eyes, a stern mouth, pockmarks on his brow and cheeks. He looked as if he had been carved by the sea wind.
Their gazes met across the ship, and Harlowe nodded. Ead returned the gesture.
At first light, the sky was a smear of ash, and Zeedeur was on the horizon. This was where Truyde had spent her childhood, where she had first conceived her perilous ideas. It was here that the death of Aubrecht Lievelyn had been written in the stars.
Estina Melaugo joined Ead at the bow.
“Be careful out there,” she said. “It’s a hard ride from here to the Ersyr, and there are wyrms in those mountains.”
“I fear no wyrm.” Ead nodded to her. “Thank you, Melaugo. Farewell.”
“Farewell, Meg.” Melaugo pulled down the brim of her hat and turned away. “Safe travels.”
Flanked by the sea and the River Hundert, the Port of Zeedeur was shaped like an arrowhead. Canals hatched the northern quarter, lined with elegant houses and elm trees. Ead had passed through the city only once before, when she and Chassar had sailed for Inys. Here the houses were built in the traditional Mentish style, with bell gables. The crocketed spire of the Port Sanctuary reached up from the heart of the city.
It was the last sanctuary she would see for some time.
She mounted Valour and spurred him past the markets and book peddlers, toward the salt road that would lead her to the capital. In a few days, she would be in Brygstad, and then she would be on her way to the Ersyr—far away from the court she had deceived for so long. From the West.
And from Sabran.
