Page 180 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

it closed in clouds of salt and steam—it opens with a golden knife.

“Siyati uq-Nara once said that mage blood was golden, you see,” she said to Sarsun. “To possess a golden knife, I must draw blood with it.”

She would never have believed that a bird could look skeptical until she saw his face.

“I know. It isn’tactuallygolden.”

Sarsun bowed his head.

The engraved letters gradually filled, as if they were inlaid with ruby. Ead waited. When the blood reached the end of the final word, the riddlebox split down the middle. Ead flinched away, and Sarsun fluttered back to his perch as the box opened like a night-blooming flower.

In it was a key.

Ead took it from its bed of satin. It was the same length as her forefinger, with a bow shaped like a flower with five petals. An orange blossom. The symbol of the Priory.

“Faithless creature,” she said to Sarsun.

He pecked her sleeve and flew to the doorway, where he sat and looked at her.

“Yes?”

He gave her a beady-eyed stare, then took wing.

Ead shadowed him to a narrow door, down a flight of winding steps. She had a caliginous memory of this place. Someone had brought her here when she was very small.

When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she found herself in a vaulted, lightless room.

The Mother stood before her.

Ead lifted her lamp toward the effigy. This was not the swooning Damsel of Inysh legend. This was the Mother as she had been in life. Hair shorn close to her skull, an axe in one hand and a sword in the other. Her dress was made for battle, woven in the style favored by warriors of the House of Onjenyu. Guardian, fighter, and born leader—that was the true Cleolind of Lasia, daughter of Selinu the Oathkeeper. Between her feet was a figurine of Washtu, the fire goddess.

Cleolind had never been entombed in the Sanctuary of Our Lady. Her bones slept here, in her own beloved country, in a stone-built coffin beneath the statue. Most effigies lay on their backs, but not this one. Ead reached up to touch the sword before she looked at Sarsun.

“Well?”

He tilted his head. Ead lowered the lamp, searching for whatever she was meant to find.

The coffin was raised on a dais. At the front of this dais was a keyhole with a square groove around it. With a glance at Sarsun, who tapped his talon, Ead knelt and slid the key into place.

When it turned, sweat dampened her nape. She took a deep breath and pulled on the key.

A compartment slid out from beneath the coffin. Inside was another iron box. Ead rotated the orange-blossom clasp and opened it.

A jewel lay before her. Its surface was white as pearl, or fog trapped in a drop of glass.

Sarsun chirruped. Beside the jewel was a scroll the size of her little finger, but Ead hardly saw it. Entranced by the light that danced in the jewel, she reached out to catch it between her fingers.

As soon as she touched its surface, a scream leaped from her lips. Sarsun let out a scream of his own as Ead collapsed before the Mother, her fingers bound to the jewel like a tongue to ice. The last thing she heard was the skirr of his wings.

“Here, beloved.”

Chassar handed Ead a cup of walnut milk. Aralaq was lying across her bed, head on his front paws.

The jewel sat on the table. Nobody had touched it since Chassar, alerted by Sarsun and finding her insensible, had carried her back to the sunroom. Her fingers had only released it when she woke.

Now she held the translation of the scroll that had been in the box. The seal had already been broken. Written on brittle paper with an odd sheen to it, the scholars had deemed the message to be Old Seiikinese, interspersed with the odd word in Selinyi.

Hail honorable Siyati, beloved sister of long-honored and learnèd Cleolind.

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