Page 148 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

Truyde swallowed the ale. “You know.” She wiped her mouth. “I will not tell you again.”

“You wanted Sabran to fear for her life. You wanted her to feel as if there were too many battles for her to fight alone. You imagined that this would cause her to seek help from the East,” Ead said. “Was it also you who let the cutthroats into Ascalon Palace?”

“Cutthroats?”

As a maid of honor, she would not have been told.

“Has someone tried to kill her before?” Truyde pressed.

Ead nodded. “Do you know the identity of this Cupbearer the shooter invoked?”

“No. As I told the Night Hawk.” Truyde looked away. “He says he will have the name from me, one way or another.”

Ead found that she believed in her ignorance. Whatever her faults, the girl did appear to want to protect Inys.

“The Nameless One will rise, as his servants have,” Truyde said. “Whether there is a queen in Inys or a sun in the sky, he will rise.” The chain had rubbed her ankle bloody. “You are a sorceress. A heretic. Doyoubelieve the House of Berethnet is all that binds the beast?”

Ead stoppered the wineskin and sat.

“I am not a sorceress,” she said. “I am a mage. A practitioner of what you might call magic.”

“Magic is not real.”

“It is,” Ead said, “and its name issiden. I used it to protect Sabran from Fýredel. Perhaps that will confirm to you that we are on the same side, even if our methods differ. And even if you are a dangerous fanatic whose folly killed a prince.”

“I never meant for him to die. It was all a masque. Wrong-headed outsiders poisoned it.” Truyde paused to cough pitifully. “Still, Prince Aubrecht’s deathdoesopen a new avenue for an Eastern alliance. Sabran could marry an Eastern noble—the Unceasing Emperor of the Twelve Lakes, perhaps. Give her hand and claim an army to kill every wyrm.”

Ead huffed a laugh. “She would sooner swallow poison than share a bed with a wyrm-lover.”

“Wait until the Nameless One shows himself in Inys. Wait until her people see that the House of Berethnet is built on a lie. Some of them must already believe it,” Truyde raised her eyebrows. “They have seen a High Western. They see that Yscalin is emboldened. Sigoso knows the truth.”

Ead held out the wineskin again.

“You have risked a great deal for this . . . belief of yours,” she said as Truyde swallowed. “There must be more to it than mere suspicion. Tell me what planted the seed.”

Truyde withdrew, and for a long time, Ead thought she would not answer.

“I tell you this,” she finally said, “only because I know no one will listen to a traitor. Perhaps it will plant a seed in you as well.” She curled an arm around her knees. “You are from Rumelabar. I trust you have heard of the ancient skystone tablet that was unearthed in its mines.”

“I know of it,” Ead said. “An object of alchemical interest.”

“I first read about it in the library of Niclays Roos, the dearest friend of my grandsire. When he was banished, he entrusted most of his books to me,” Truyde said. “The Tablet of Rumelabar speaks of a balance between fire and starlight. Nobody has ever been able to interpret it. Alchemists and scholars have theorized that the balance is symbolic of the worldly and the mystic, of anger and temperance, of humanity and divinity—but I think the words should be taken literally.”

“Youthink.” Ead smiled. “And are you so much cleverer than the alchemists who have puzzled over it for centuries?”

“Perhaps not,” Truyde granted, “though history boasts many so-called scholars of only middling ability. No, not cleverer . . . but more disposed to take risks.”

“What risk did you take?”

“I went to Gulthaga.”

The city that had once lain in the shadow of the Dreadmount, now buried under ash.

“My grandsire told us he was going to visit Wilgastrom,” Truyde said, “but he died of the Draconic plague, contracted in Gulthaga. My father told me the truth when I was fifteen. I rode to the Buried City myself. To see what had driven my grandsire there.”

The world believed that the late Duke of Zeedeur had died of the pox. Doubtless the family had been commanded to uphold the lie to avoid creating panic.

“Gulthaga has never been excavated, but there is a way through the tuff, to the ruins,” Truyde said. “Some ancient texts have survived. I found the ones my grandsire had been studying.”

---