Page 87 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

The feeling did not last. The next morning, the chair-carriers began to complain about the owl-faced Ment they were lugging north, the spy of a prince who spat upon dragons, who must have the red sickness in his breath. Certain words were said in return, and from that point on, the jolting grew worse. The chair-carriers also began to sing about an insolent man no one liked, who was left crying on the side of the road for the mountain cats to take away.

“Yes, yes, very funny,” Niclays barked at them in Seiikinese. “Shall I sing about the four chair-carriers who fell down a cliff and into the river, never to be seen again?”

All that did was make them laugh.

Countless things went wrong following that incident. A handhold broke off the palanquin (“Great Kwiriki wash away this owl man!”) and they were forced to delay their journey while a carpenter was fetched to repair it. Once they were on their way again, the chair-carriers finally let Niclays sleep.

When he heard voices, his eyes cracked open. The chair-carriers were singing a lullaby from the Great Sorrow.

Hush, my child, the wind is rising.

Even the birds are quiet.

Stop your tears. The fire-breathers will hear us.

Sleep now, sleep, or you will see them coming.

Hold on to me and close your eyes.

There were cradle songs like this in Mentendon. Niclays strained his memory to when he was small enough for his mother to sit him on her lap and croon to him while his father drank himself into rages that had left them both quaking in fear of his belt. Fortunately, he had drunk himself into such a fury on one occasion that he had been good enough to stumble off a cliff, and that was the end of that.

For a time, all had been peaceful. Then was when Helchen Roos had convinced herself that her son would grow up to be a sanctarian and atone for the many sins of his father. She had prayed for that outcome every day. Instead, Niclays had become, in her view, a morbid hedonist who spent his time either slicing open dead bodies or tinkering with potions like a sorcerer, all while drinking himself sodden. (This was not, Niclays conceded, a baseless impression.) To her, science was the greatest sin of all, anathema to virtue.

Of course, she had still written to him at once when she had discovered his unexpected friendships with the Marquess of Zeedeur and Prince Edvart, demanding he invite her to court, as if the years she had tormented him about every facet of his existence were nothing. He and Jannart had made a sport out of finding ways to destroy her letters.

Thinking of that made him smile for the first time in days. The trill of insects in the forest sent him back to sleep.

After two more painful days, during which he thought he might die of the heat and boredom and confinement, the palanquin stopped. A bang on the roof shunted him from a doze.

“Out.”

The door slid open, letting in a glare of sunlight. Niclays got down blearily from the palanquin, straight into a puddle.

“Galian’sgirdle—”

One of the chair-carriers lobbed his cane after him. They hefted the palanquin on to their shoulders and turned back to the road.

“Hold a moment,” Niclays shouted after them. “I saidhold, damn you! Where am I to go?”

Laughter was his only reply. Niclays cursed, picked up his cane, and trudged toward the west gate of the city. By the time he reached it, the hem of his robe was soaked and sweat dripped down his face. He had expected soldiers, but there was nobody in armor to be seen. The sun burned on the crown of his head as he entered the ancient capital of Seiiki.

Ginura Castle was a behemoth. The white-walled complex bestrode a great hill in the middle of the city. A friend had told Niclays that the paths in its gardens were made of seashells, and its salt-water moat sparkled with fish, their bodies clear as crystal.

He walked past the bustling markets of what he assumed was Seabed Town, the outermost district of the city. Its stone-paved streets billowed with oil-paper umbrellas and fans and hats. This close to court, people wore cooler shades than they did in Cape Hisan—green and blue and silver—and their hair was waxed and wound into ostentive styles, adorned with sea-glass ornaments, salt flowers, and cowry shells. Robes here were slippery and lustrous, so when the wearer moved, they glistened in the sun. Niclays dimly remembered that it was the height of fashion in Ginura to appear as if you had just emerged from the sea. Some courtiers even oiled their eyelashes.

Necks were encircled by branching coral or tiny plates of steel arranged to look like overlapping fish scales. Lips and cheeks sparkled with crushed pearl. Most citizens were forbidden to wear dancing pearls, as they were symbols of the royal and god-chosen, but Niclays had heard that misshapen ones without a core were often powdered and sold to the wealthy.

In the shade of a maple, two women batted a featherball to one another. The sun sparkled on the canals, where merchants and fishers unloaded their wares from graceful cedar boats. It was difficult to imagine that most of this city had burned down in the Great Sorrow five centuries ago.

As Niclays walked, unease eclipsed his wonder. The chair-carriers, damn them to the Womb of Fire, had taken the letter from the Governor, along with all his other possessions. That meant he could now be mistaken for an outsider, and he could hardly go up to Ginura Castle to explain himself in this state. The sentinels would think him a cutthroat.

Still, he had no other choice. People were catching on to his presence. Nervous looks came at him from all directions.

“Doctor Roos?”

The voice spoke in Mentish. Niclays turned.

When he saw who had hailed him, he beamed. A fine-boned man in tortoiseshell eyeglasses was weaving his way through the crowd. His black hair, cut short, was gray at the temples.

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