Page 256 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

West

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.”

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