Page 136 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

“They will soon forget that deed when enemy ships darken the horizon,” Sabran said. “My blood cannot deter the armies of Yscalin.” Her eyelids were sinking. “I do not expect you to say anything to comfort me, Ead. You have let me unburden myself, even though my fears are selfish. The Damsel has granted me the child I begged of her, and all I can do is … quake.”

Even though a fire roared in the hearth, gooseflesh flecked her skin.

“Where I come from,” Ead said, “we would not call itselfishto do as you have done.”

Sabran looked at her.

“You have just lost your companion. You are carrying his child. Of course you feel vulnerable.” Ead pressed her hand. “Childing is not always easy. It seems to me that this is the best-kept secret in all the world. We speak of it as though there were nothing sweeter, but the truth is more complex. No one talks openly about the difficulties. The discomfort. The uncertainty. So now you feel the weight of your condition, you believe yourself alone in it. And you have turned the blame upon yourself.”

At this, Sabran swallowed.

“Your fear is natural.” Ead held her gaze. “Let no one convince you otherwise.”

For the first time since the ambush, the Queen of Inys smiled.

“Ead,” she said, “I am not quite sure what I did without you.”

31

East

White River Castle was named not for a river, but for the moat of seashells that surrounded its grounds. Behind it was the ageless Forest of the Wounded Bird, and beyond that, the bleak and brutal Mount Tego. A year before their Choosing Day, all apprentices had been challenged to climb to the top of that peak, where the spirit of the great Kwiriki was said to descend to bless the worthy.

Of all the apprentices from the South House, Tané alone had made it to the summit. Half-frozen, beset with mountain sickness, she had crawled up the last slope, retching blood on to the snow.

She had not been human in that final hour. Just a paper lantern, thin and wind-torn, clinging to the flickering remnants of a soul. Yet when there was no more to climb, and she had looked up and seen nothing but the terrible beauty of the sky, she had found the strength to rise. And she had known the great Kwiriki was with her, withinher.

At this moment, that feeling had never felt so far away. She was the tattered lantern again. Barely alive.

She was not sure how long they had kept her in the jailhouse. Time had become a bottomless pool. She had lain with her hands cupped over her ears, so all she could hear was the sea.

Then other hands had loaded her into a palanquin. Now she was escorted past a guardhouse, into a room with a high ceiling and walls painted with scenes from the Great Sorrow, and then on to a roofed balcony.

The Governor of Ginura dismissed her soldiers. She stood tall, her gaze crisp with distaste.

“Lady Tané,” she said coolly.

Tané bowed and knelt on the mats. The title already sounded like something from another life.

Outside, a sorrower called out. Itshic-hic-hic, like a grizzling child, was said to have driven an empress mad. Tané wondered if it would break her, too, if she listened hard enough.

Or perhaps her mind was already lost.

“Several days ago,” the Governor said, “a prisoner incriminated you in a most serious crime. He was smuggled into Seiiki from Mentendon. In accordance with the Great Edict, he was put to death.”

A head on the gate, hair stiff with blood.

“The prisoner told magistrates in Cape Hisan that when he arrived here, a woman found him on the beach. He described the scar beneath her eye.”

Tané pressed her clammy palms to her thighs.

“Tell me,” the Governor continued, “why an apprentice with a spotless record, who was raised from nothing, who was given the rare opportunity to be god-chosen, would risk everything—including the safety of every citizen of this island—by doing this.”

It took Tané a long time to find her voice. She had left it in a bloodstained ditch.

“There were whispers. That those who broke seclusion would be rewarded. Just once, I wanted to be fearless. To take a risk.” She sounded nothing like herself. “He . . . came out of the sea.”

“Why did you not report it to the authorities?”

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