Page 149 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

“You went to Gulthagaknowingthe Draconic plague was there. You are mad, child.”

“It is why I was sent to Inys. To learn temperance—but as you have seen, Mistress Duryan, Temperance is not my patron knight.” Truyde smiled. “Mine is Courage.”

Ead waited.

“My ancestor was Viceroy of Orisima. From her journals, I learned that the comet that ended the Grief of Ages—that came the hour the wyrms fell—also gave strength to the Eastern dragons.” Her eyes were bright. “My grandsire knew a little of the ancient language of Gulthaga. He had translated some of the astronomical writings. They revealed that this comet, the Long-Haired Star, causes a starfall each time it passes.”

“And what hasthisto do with anything else, pray tell?”

“I think it connects to the Tablet of Rumelabar. I think the comet is supposed to keep the fire beneath the world in check,” Truyde said. “The fire builds over time, and then a starfall cools it. Before it can grow too strong.”

“Yet it grows strong now. Where is your comet?”

“That is the problem. I believe that at some point in history, something upset the cycle. Now the fire grows too strong, too fast. Too fast for the comet to subdue it.”

“Youbelieve,” Ead said, frustrated.

“As others believe in gods. Often with less proof,” Truyde pointed out. “We were lucky in the Grief of Ages. The coming of the Long-Haired Star coincided with the rise of the Draconic Army. It saved us then—but by the time it comes again, Fýredel will have conquered humankind.” She grabbed Ead by the wrist, eyes flashing. “The fire will rise as it did before, when the Nameless One was born into this world. Until it has consumed us all.”

Her face was wrought with conviction, her jaw tight with it.

“That,” she finished, with an air of triumph, “is why I believe he will return. And why I think the House of Berethnet has naught to do with it.”

They locked gazes for a long moment. Ead pulled her wrist free.

“I want to pity you, child,” she said, “but I find my heart cold. You have fished in the waters of history and arranged some fractured pieces into a picture that gives your grandsire’s death some meaning—but your determination to make it truth does not mean it is so.”

“It ismytruth.”

“Many have died for your truth, Lady Truyde. I trust,” Ead said, “that you can live with that.”

A draft shivered through the arrow-slit. Truyde turned away from the chill, rubbing her arms.

“Go to Queen Sabran, Ead. Leave me to my beliefs, and I will leave you to yours,” she said. “We will see soon enough whose truth is correct.”

As she walked back to the Queen Tower, Ead winnowed her memories for the exact words that had been scored into the Tablet of Rumelabar. The first two lines eluded her, but she recalled the rest.

. . . Fire ascends from the earth, light descends from the sky.

Too much of one doth inflame the other,

and in this is the extinction of the universe.

A riddle. The sort of nonsense alchemists bickered over for want of anything more useful to do. Bored with her privileged existence, the girl had parsed her own meaning from the words.

And yet Ead found herself dwelling on it. After all, firedidascend from the earth—through wyrms, and through the orange tree. Mages ate of its fruit, becoming vessels of the flame.

Had the Southerners of ancient times known some truth that had disappeared from history?

Uncertainty threw shadows on her mind. If therewassome connection between the tree and the comet and the Nameless One, surely the Priory would know of it. But so much knowledge had been lost over the centuries, so many records destroyed . . .

Ead cast the thought aside as she entered the royal apartments. She would think on the girl in the tower no more.

In the Great Bedchamber, the Queen of Inys sat upright in her bed, nursing a cup of almond milk. As Ead sat beside the fire, braiding her hair, she felt Sabran’s gaze like the tip of a knife.

“You took their side.”

Ead stopped. “Madam?”

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