Tané allowed her a moment. “Who is the Witch of Inysca?” she finally asked, quietly.
Ead closed her eyes.
“It is a long tale,” she said, “but if you wish, I will tell it to you. I will tell you everything that has happened to me over the last year. After your journey, you deserve the truth.”
While rain drizzled down the window, she did. Tané listened without interrupting.
She listened to Ead tell her the history of the Priory of the Orange Tree, and the letter she had found from Neporo. About the Witch of Inysca and the House of Berethnet. About the two branches of magic, and the comet and the sword Ascalon, and how the jewels fit into it all. A servant brought them hot wine while Ead talked, but by the time she was finished, both cups had turned cold, untouched.
“I understand if you find this difficult to believe,” Ead said. “It all sounds quite ridiculous.”
“No.” Tané released her breath for what felt like the first time in hours. “Well, yes, it does. But I believe you.”
She realized she was shivering. Ead flicked her fingers, and a fire sprang up in the hearth.
“Neporo had a mulberry tree,” Tané said, even as she took in this evidence of magic. “I may be her descendant. It is how I came to have the rising jewel.”
For a time, Ead seemed to digest this. “Is this mulberry tree alive?”
“No.”
Ead visibly clenched her jaw.
“Cleolind and Neporo,” she said. “One mage of the South. One of the East. It seems that history is to repeat itself.”
“I am like you, then.” Tané watched the flames dance behind a grate. “Kalyba also had a tree, and Queen Sabran is her descendant. Does that make us both sorceresses?”
“Mages,” Ead corrected, though she sounded distracted. “Having mage blood does not make you one. You must eat of the fruit to call yourself that. But itiswhy the tree yielded you a fruit in the first place.” She lowered herself on the window seat. “You said my sisters grounded your wyrm. It never occurred to me to ask how you reached Inys.”
“A great bird.”
Ead’s gaze snapped to her.
“Parspa,” she said. “Chassar must have sent her.”
“Yes.”
“I am surprised he trusted you. The Priory does not take kindly to wyrm-lovers.”
“You would not despise the Eastern dragons if you knew anything about them. They are nothing like the fire-breathers.” Tané stared her out. “I despise the Nameless One. His servants threw down our gods in the Great Sorrow, and I mean to throw him down in punishment for it. In any case,” she said, “you have no choice but to trust me.”
“I could kill you. Take the jewel.”
From the look in her eyes, she would do it. There was a knife in a sheath at her hip.
“And use both jewels yourself?” Tané said, undaunted. “I assume you know how.” She took her case from under the pillows and tipped the rising jewel into her palm. “I have used mine to guide a ship through a windless sea. I have used it to draw the waves onto the sand. So I know that it drains you—slowly at first, so you can bear it, like the ache from a rotten tooth. Then it turns your blood cold, and your limbs heavy, and you long only to sleep for years.” She held it out. “The burden must be shared.”
Slowly, Ead took it. With her other hand, she eased a chain from around her neck.
The waning jewel. A little moon, round and milky. The steady glow from a star was inside it, calm where its twin was always sparkling. Ead held one jewel in each palm.
“The keys to the Abyss.”
Tané felt a chill.
It seemed impossible that they had united them.
“There is a plan in place to defeat the Nameless One. I assume Loth told you.” Ead handed back the blue jewel. “You and I will use these keys to bind him forever in the deep.”