Page 80 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

A figure stood before the stained-glass window at the end of the sanctuary. She held a candle with a natural flame. When he was close enough to touch her, Loth broke the silence.

“Lady Priessa.”

“No, Lord Arteloth.” She lowered her hood. “You look upon a princess of the West.”

In the clean flame of her candle, her features were made plain to him. Brown skin and dark, heavy brows. An eagle nose. Her hair was black velvet, so long that it reached past her elbows, and her eyes were such a striking amber that they looked like topaz. The eyes of the House of Vetalda.

“Donmata,” Loth murmured.

She held his gaze.

The sole heir of King Sigoso and the late Queen Sahar. He had seen Marosa Vetalda once before, when she had come to Inys to celebrate the thousand-year anniversary of the Foundation of Ascalon. She had still been engaged to Aubrecht Lievelyn then.

“I don’t understand.” He tightened his grip on the candle. “Why are you dressed as your lady-in-waiting?”

“Priessa is the only person I trust. She lends me her livery so I can move about the palace undetected.”

“Were you the one who came to collect us from Perunta?”

“No. ThatwasPriessa.” When Loth started to speak, she held a gloved finger to her lips. “Listen well, Lord Arteloth. Yscalin does not only worship the Nameless One. We are also under Draconic rule. Fýredel is the true king of Yscalin, and his spies lurk everywhere. It was why I had to act the way I did in the throne room. It is all a performance.”

“But—”

“You seek the Duke of Temperance. Fynch is dead, and has been for months. I sent him to carry out a task for me, in the name of Virtudom, but . . . he never returned.”

“Virtudom.” Loth stared at her. “What do you want from me?”

“I want your help, Lord Arteloth. I want you to do for me what Wilstan Fynch could not.”

Summer was on its way out. A chill was on the breeze, and the days were growing shorter. In the Privy Library, Margret had shown Ead a knot of ladybeetles nestled in the scrollwork of a bookshelf, and they had known it was almost time to travel downriver.

A day later, Sabran had decreed that the court would move to Briar House, one of the oldest royal palaces in Inys. Built during the reign of Marian the Second, it sprawled in the outskirts of Ascalon and backed onto the ancient hunting ground of Chesten Forest. The court usually journeyed to it in the autumn, but since Sabran had elected to marry Lievelyn in its sanctuary, it would take up residence there earlier than usual.

The moving of the court was always a chaos of folding and packing. Ead had departed with Margret and Linora in one of many coaches. Their possessions, locked in trunks, had followed.

Sabran had ridden with Lievelyn in a coach with gilded wheels. As the procession trundled down Berethnet Mile—the sweeping thoroughfare that divided the capital—the people of Ascalon had waved and cheered for their queen and their soon-to-be prince consort.

Briar House was cosier than Ascalon Palace. Its windows were forest glass, its corridors laid with honey-colored stone in a checkered pattern, and its walls blackbrick, which held in warmth like nothing else. Ead liked it well.

Two days after the court had arrived, she found herself at a dance in the candlelit Presence Chamber. Tonight, the queen had told her chamberers and maids of honor to go and enjoy themselves while she played cards with her Ladies of the Bedchamber.

A viol consort played gentle music. Ead sipped her mulled wine. It was strange, but she was almost sorry that she was here, and not with the queen. The Privy Chamber at Briar House was inviting, with its bookshelves and fireplace and Sabran playing the virginals. Her music had grown melancholy as the days went by, her laughter tapering into silence.

Ead looked to the other side of the room. Lord Seyton Combe, the Night Hawk, was watching her.

She turned away as if she had not seen him, only for him to approach. Like a shadow crossing a patch of sunlight.

“Mistress Duryan,” he said. He wore a livery collar with a pendant shaped like a book of manners. “Good evening.”

Ead dipped a small curtsy and spruced her face into a mask of indifference. She could bite down her loathing, but she would give him no smiles. “Good evening, Your Grace.”

There was a long silence. Combe studied her with his peculiar gray eyes.

“I have a sense,” he said, “that you do not think well of me, Mistress Duryan.”

“I do not think of you often enough to have formed any opinion of you, Your Grace.”

The corner of his mouth flinched. “A fine hit.”

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