Page 138 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

Sudden pain clawed up his back. He turned on to his belly and vomited, and then it was upon him.

The bloodblaze.

It had been a far-off nightmare in Inys. A fireside story for dark nights. Now he knew what all the world had faced in the Grief of Ages. He knew why the East had locked its doors.

His very blood was boiling oil. He screamed into the darkness of his cauldron, and the darkness screamed back. A skep broke open somewhere inside him, and a swarm of enraged bees disgorged into his organs, setting them aflame. And as his bones cracked in the heat, as tears melted down his cheeks, all he desired in the world was to be dead.

A flash of memory. Through the crimson haze, he knew he must reach the pool he had seen and douse the fire within. He started to get up, moving as if on a bed of hot coals, but a cool hand graced his brow.

“No.”

A voice spoke, a voice like sunlight. “Who are you?”

His lips burned. “Lord Arteloth Beck,” he said. “Please, st-stay away. I have the plague.”

“Where did you find the iron box?”

“The Donmata Marosa.” He shuddered. “Please—”

Fear made him sob, but someone else was soon beside him, urging a jug to his lips. He drank.

When he woke next, he was in a bed, though still quite naked, in the same underground chamber as before.

It was a long time before he dared to move. There was no pain, and the red had vanished from his hands.

Loth made the sign of the sword over his chest. The Saint, in his mercy, had seen fit to spare him.

He lay still for a time, listening for footsteps or voices. At last, he stood on quaking legs, so weak his head swam. His bruises from the cockatrice were coated in ointment. Even the memory of the agony was draining, but some good soul had treated him and given him their hospitality, and he meant to be presentable when he greeted them.

He sank into the pool. The smooth floor was bliss against his weary soles.

He remembered nothing after his arrival in Rauca. A vague recollection of a market returned to him, and a sense of being on the move, and then the inn. After that, a void.

His beard had grown too thick for his liking, but there was no sign of a razor. When he was refreshed, he rose and drew on the bedgown that had been left on the nightstand.

He startled when he saw her. A woman in a green cloak, holding a lamp in her palm. Her skin was a deep brown, like her eyes, and her hair spiraled around her face.

“You must come with me.”

She spoke Inysh with a Lasian accent. Loth shook himself. “Who are you, mistress?”

“Chassar uq-Ispad invites you to his table.”

So the ambassador had found him, somehow. Loth wanted to ask more, but he had not the boldness in him to question this woman, who looked at him with a cool, unblinking gaze.

He followed her through a series of windowless passages, carved out of rosy stone and lit with oil lamps. This must be where the ambassador lived, though it was nothing like the place Ead had described growing up in. No open-air walkways or striking views of the Sarras Mountains. Just alcoves here and there, each framing a bronze statuette of a woman holding a sword and an orb.

His guide stopped outside an archway, which was hung with a translucent curtain.

“Through here,” she said.

She walked away, taking her light with her.

The chamber beyond the veil was small, with a low ceiling. A tall Ersyri man sat at a table. He wore a silver wrap around his head. When Loth entered, he glanced up.

Chassar uq-Ispad.

“Lord Arteloth.” The ambassador motioned to another seat. “Please, do sit down. You must be very tired.”

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