In an undercroft in Ascalon Palace, a murderer of hallowed blood awaited execution. Sabran, who had never shown bloodthirst in all the years Loth had known her, had decided she wanted Crest drawn and quartered, but the other Dukes Spiritual had counseled that her people would find it unsettling at such a fragile time. Best to make it quiet and quick.
After a night of pacing the grounds alone, Sabran had relented. The Cupbearer would face the block, and she would face it in private, with only a handful of witnesses.
Crest showed no remorse as she looked at those who had come to watch her die. Roslain stood to one side of the room, a mourning cap over her hair. Loth knew she was not grieving her grandmother, but the treachery that had stained their family name.
Lord Calidor Stillwater kept a comforting hand on her waist. He had ridden from Castle Cordain, the ancestral seat of the Crest family, to be with his companion in her hour of grief.
Loth stood close to them, arm in arm with Margret. Sabran was nearby, wearing the necklace her mother had given her for her twelfth birthday. It was not customary for royals to attend executions, but Sabran had thought it craven to do otherwise.
A low scaffold had been erected and draped with dark cloth. When the clock struck ten, Crest lifted her face into the light.
“I ask for no mercy, and make no apology,” she said. “Aubrecht Lievelyn was a sinner and a leech. Rosarian Berethnet was a whore, and Sabran Berethnet is a bastard who will never bear a daughter of her own.” She locked gazes with Sabran. “Unlike her, I did not fail in my duty. I served just punishment. I go willingly unto Halgalant, where the Saint will welcome me.”
Sabran did not rise to the taunt, but her face was utterly cold.
A cousin of Roslain, also in a mourning cap, divested Crest of her cloak and signet ring and tied the blindfold over her eyes. The executioner stood by, one hand on the haft of the axe.
Igrain Crest knelt before the block, straight-backed, and made the sign of the sword on her brow.
“In the name of the Saint,” she said, “I die.”
With those words, she lowered her neck into the divot. Loth thought once more of Queen Rosarian, and how her death had not been half as merciful.
The executioner swung up the axe. When it fell, so did the head of the Cupbearer.
No one made a sound. A servant lifted the head by its hair and held it out for the room to see. The hallowed blood of the Knight of Justice trickled down the block, and a servant collected it in a goblet. As the body was shrouded and removed from the scaffold, the Crest cousin walked to Roslain, who stepped away from her companion.
The signet ring would usually be placed on the right hand, but the bonesetter had splinted it. Roslain held out her left hand instead, and her cousin slid on the ring.
“Here is Her Grace, Lady Roslain Crest, Duchess of Justice,” the steward said. “May she be rightwise in her conduct, now and always.”
Igrain Crest was dead. Never again would the shadow of the Cupbearer darken the Queendom of Inys.
Sabran sat in her favorite chair in the Privy Chamber. A lantern clock ticked on the mantelpiece.
She had barely said a word since Ead had told her about Kalyba. Once the story was finished, she had asked to go inside, and they had spent the rest of the night sealed behind the drapes of her bed. Ead had held her in silence while she gazed up at the canopy.
Now she seemed fixated by her own hands. Ead watched her push at her knuckles, roll the pads of her thumbs on her fingers, and rub the polished ruby on her coronation ring.
“Sabran,” Ead said, “there is nothing of her power in you.”
Sabran clenched her jaw.
“If I have her blood, then I could wield the waning jewel,” she said. “Something of her lives in me.”
“Without star rot, or a fruit from the orange tree, you can use neither of the two branches of magic. You are not a mage,” Ead said, “and you are not about to turn into a wyrm.”
Sabran kept worrying at her skin with her fingernails. Ead reached to cover her hand.
“What are you thinking?”
“That I am likely a bastard. That I am descended from a liar and the Lady of the Woods—the same woman who took my child from me—and that no good house could be built on such a foundation.” Her hair was a curtain between them. “That everything I am is a lie.”
“The House of Berethnet has done many good things. Its origin has no bearing on that.” Ead kept hold of her hand. “As to your bastardry—it means your father is alive. Is that not good?”
“I do not know Gian Harlowe. My father, for all intents and purposes, was Lord Wilstan Fynch,” Sabran said quietly, “and he is dead. Like my mother, and Aubrecht, and the others.”
The grievoushead had her in its vise. Ead tried to knead some warmth into her hand, to no avail.
“I still do not understand why she put the barb in me.” Sabran brushed her belly with the other hand. “If she speaks true, then she loved her daughter, Sabran the First. I am her blood.” The barb itself had disappeared. According to the physician who had taken it, all that remained was a lock of hair.
“Kalyba is divorced from her humanity now. You are her blood, but the affinity is not strong enough for her to love you. All she wants is your throne,” Ead said. “We may never understand her. What matters is that she is in league with the Nameless One, and that makes her our enemy.”
A knock came at the door. A Knight of the Body entered in her silver-plated armor.
“Majesty,” she said, bowing, “a bird has just arrived from Brygstad. An urgent message from Her Royal Highness, High Princess Ermuna of the House of Lievelyn.”
She handed her the letter and left. Sabran broke the seal and turned to face the window as she read.
“What does she say?” Ead asked.
Sabran drew in a breath through her nose.
“The date is—” The letter fluttered to the floor. “The date is the third day of . . . this spring.”
And so the sandglass turned. Ead had expected the knowledge to fill her with dread, but part of her had already known.
The thousand years are almost done.
“Neporo and Cleolind must have bound the Nameless One six years after the Foundation of Ascalon.” Sabran placed her hands on the mantel. “We do not have long.”
“Long enough to cross the Abyss,” Ead said. “Sabran, you must send your ambassadors to the East with all haste to make the alliance, and I must go with them. To find the other jewel. At least then we could bind him again.”
“You cannot run blindly over the Abyss,” Sabran said, tensing. “I must write to the Eastern rulers first. The Seiikinese and the Lacustrine will execute any outsider who sets foot on their shores. I must seek their permission to land a special embassy.”
“There is no time for it. It will take weeks for a dispatch to get there.” Ead made for the door. “I will go ahead on a fast ship and—”
“Have you no care for your own life?” Sabran said hotly. Ead stopped. “I spent weeks believing you dead when you left Ascalon. Now you want to go across the sea without protection, without armor, to a place where you could face death or imprisonment.”
“I already did that, Sabran. The day I came to Inys.” Ead gave her a weary smile. “If I survived once, I can again.”
Sabran stood with her eyes shut, hands white-knuckled on the mantel.
“I know you must go,” she said. “To ask you to stay would be like trying to cage the wind—but please, Ead, wait. Let me arrange the embassy, so you have strength in numbers. Do not go alone.”
Ead tightened her grip on the door handle.
Sabran was right. A few days of waiting would be time lost in the East, but it might also save her head.
She turned back and said, “I will stay.”
At this, Sabran crossed the room, eyes full, and embraced her. Ead pressed a kiss to her temple and held her close.
Sabran had been dealt a cruel hand. Her Lady of the Bedchamber had died while she slept, her companion in her arms, her mother before her eyes. Her daughter had never drawn breath. Her father—if he had been her father at all—had perished in Yscalin, beyond her reach. Loss had dogged her all her life. Little wonder she was holding on so tightly.
“You remember the first day we walked together. You told me about the lovejay, and how it always knows its partner’s song, even if they have been long apart,” Ead whispered to her. “My heart knows your song, as yours knows mine. And I will always come back to you.”
“I will hold you to that, Eadaz uq-Nāra.”
Ead tried to memorize her weight, her scent, the precise tenor of her voice. To lock her into her memory. “Aralaq will stay to guard you. It is why I brought him here,” she said. “He is a surly creature, but loyal, and he can tear through a wyvern well enough.”
“I will take good care of him.” Sabran drew back. “I must meet with the remaining Dukes Spiritual at once to discuss the embassy. Once the rest of the Virtues Council arrives, I will put this . . . Eastern Proposal to them. If I show them the waning jewel, and explain the significance of the date, I am confident they will vote in my favor.”
“They will battle it to the end,” Ead said, “but you are golden-tongued.”
Sabran nodded, hard with resolve. Ead left her looking out over her city.
She walked down a flight of steps and into the open gallery below the Royal Solarium, where twelve small balconies spilled winter-flowering blossoms. As she strode toward the door to her own chamber, she heard a footstep behind her, soft as felt.
Silently, she turned. A Red Damsel stood in a beam of sunlight. At her lips was a blowpipe, whittled from wood.
The dart had punched through her shirt before Ead could take a breath. Death spread from its bite.
The floor met her knees with bone-jarring force. She lifted a shaking hand to her belly and felt the slender dart in it. Her killer caught and lowered her.
“Forgive me, Eadaz.”
“Nairuj,” Ead coughed out.
She had known this day would come. A sister of the Priory could avoid her wardings.
The molten glass was setting in her veins. Her muscles cramped around the dart, rejecting the poison. “You had the child,” she managed to say.
Ochre eyes looked down at her. “A girl,” Nairuj said, after a hesitation. “I did not want this, sister, but the Prioress commands that you are silenced.” Ead felt Nairuj twist the ring off her finger, the ring that had been her dream. “Where is the jewel, the white jewel?”
Ead could not reply. The feeling was already trickling from her. She had the curious sense that her ribs were disappearing. As Nairuj felt at her throat for the jewel, Ead gripped the dart in her belly and removed it.
She was so cold. All the fire in her was going out, leaving ashes in its wake.
“Nameless is—” Even breathing was agony. “Spring. The third d-day of spring.”
“What is this?”
Sabran. Fear strained her voice.
Nairuj moved like an arrow. Ead watched through watering eyes as her one-time sister pulled a band of silk across her mouth and vaulted over the nearest balustrade.
Footsteps clattered down the corridor. “Ead—” Sabran gathered her into her arms, gasping. “Ead!” Her features were bleeding together. “Look at me. Look at me, Ead, please. T-tell me what she did to you. Tell me which poison—”
Ead tried to speak. To say her name, just one more time. To say she was sorry to break her promise.
I will always come back to you.
Darkness closed around her like a cocoon. She thought of the orange tree. Not you. Ead. Please. The voice was fading. Please don’t leave me here alone. She thought of how it had been between them, from the candle dance to the first touch of her lips.
Then she did not think at all.
The sun was setting over Ascalon. Loth gazed through the window at the candlelit Alabastrine Tower, where the Virtues Council were debating the Eastern Proposal.
Ead lay on her bed. Her lips were as black as her hair, her corset unraveled to reveal a pinhole in her belly.
Sabran had not left her side. She was staring at Ead as if looking away would snap her fragile hold on life. Outside, Aralaq was prowling in the Privy Garden. It had taken a great deal of wheedling to convince him to leave for long enough for the Royal Physician to examine Ead and, even then, he had snapped his jaws when the man had tried to touch her.
Doctor Bourn moved like the hand of a clock around the sickbed. He measured her heartbeat, felt her brow, and studied the wound. When he finally took off his eyeglasses, Sabran raised her head.
“Lady Nurtha has been poisoned,” he said, “but by what, I cannot tell. The symptoms are like none I have ever seen.”
“The cruel sister,” Loth said. “That is its name.”
It was supposed to cause death. Once again, Ead had defied her fate.
The Royal Physician frowned at this. “I have never heard of such a poison, my lord. I do not know how to purge it from her.” He looked back at Ead. “Majesty, it seems to me that Lady Nurtha has been put into a deep sleep. Perhaps she can be woken from it. Perhaps not. All we can do is try to keep her alive for as long as we can. And pray for her.”
“You will wake her,” Sabran whispered. “You will find a way. If she dies—”
Her voice broke, and she held her head between her hands. The Royal Physician bowed.
“I am sorry, Your Majesty,” he said. “We will do our best for her.”
He retreated from the chamber. When the door closed, Sabran began to shiver.
“I was cursed in my cradle. The Lady of the Woods laid a hex upon my head.” She never took her eyes from Ead. “Not only is my crown lost, but my loved ones fall like roses in winter. Always before my eyes.”
Margret, who had been keeping watch on the other side of the bed, now went to sit beside her.
“Don’t think these things. You are not cursed, Sab,” she said gently, but firmly. “Ead is not dead, and we will not mourn her. We will fight for her, and for everything she believes in.” She looked at Ead. “But I tell you this—I will not marry Tharian until she wakes. If she thinks this foolishness will get her out of giving me away, she is sorely mistaken.”
Loth took the seat that Margret had left. He lifted his clasped hands to his lips.
Even when she had been bleeding in Lasia, Ead had never looked this vulnerable. All life and warmth had fled from her.
“I will go to the East.” His voice was hoarse. “No matter what the Virtues Council decides, I must go across the Abyss as your representative, Sabran. To broker an alliance. To seek out the other jewel.”
Sabran was silent for a very long time. Outside, Aralaq let out a chilling howl.
“I want you to go first to the Unceasing Emperor, Dranghien Lakseng,” Sabran said. “He is unwed, and consequently we have more to offer him. If he is convinced to join us, he may persuade the Warlord of Seiiki.”
Loth watched her, heartsore.
“I will send with you an entourage of two hundred persons. If you are to reach the Unceasing Emperor, you must display the might of the Queendom of Inys.” She met his gaze. “You will bid him meet us on the Abyss with his dragons on the third day of spring. There will not be time for you to come back, or to debate the terms in Inys. I trust that you will seal this alliance with our interests at heart, to achieve the outcome we desire.”
“I will, I swear it.”
It seemed to Loth that this room was already like a crypt. Shaking off the thought, he went to Ead and brushed a spiral of hair behind her ear. He would not permit himself to think that this was a farewell.
With dignity, Sabran rose from her chair.
“You promised you would return to me,” she said to Ead. “Queens do not forget promises made, Eadaz uq-Nāra.”
Her stance was rigid. Loth took her by the arm and guided her tenderly from the chamber, leaving Margret to her vigil.
He walked beside his queen. When they reached the end of the corridor, Sabran buckled at last. Loth wrapped her in his arms as she sank to the floor and sobbed as if her soul had been ripped out.
