Page 315 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

Ead turned sharply to face him. “What?”

“Damned if I knew such things existed, but I suppose I should stop being surprised at this rate.” A stab of pain in his stump. “In telling you this, I condemn a friend to death.” His jaw trembled. “But . . . I think that friend would want me to do this.”

He removed the shard of metal and laid it on the table. One of the Knights of the Body made toward it, but Ead warded him away with one hand.

“Kalyba gave it to me. It was sh-she who left me in the boat. She told me I was to reach the ship to get close to you, Lady Nurtha,” Niclays said. “To d-drive this into your heart.”

“A sterren blade,” Ead said, eyeing it. “Like Ascalon. Not large enough to use against the Nameless One, but it would have piercedmyskin well enough.” Her gaze flicked up. “I can only assume she fears me more than she did before. Perhaps she has heard the jewels calling.”

“Jewels.” Niclays raised his eyebrows. “You have them both?”

With a nod, Ead sat beside Sabran.

“The Witch of Inysca is persuasive,” she said to him. “She must have promised you all the riches you desired. Why confess?”

“Oh, she offered me something far greater than riches, Lady Nurtha. Something for which I would gladly sacrifice what little wealth remains to me,” Niclays said, with a bitter smile. “She showed me the face of my only love. And she promised to return him to me.”

“And yet you do not do her bidding.”

“Once,” he said, “I would have. If she had not worn his face—if she had only promised that I would see him again—I might well have become her little homunculus. But seeing him . . . I was repulsed. Because Jannart—” The name snared in his throat. “Jannart is dead. He chose the manner of his death, and by resurrecting him like that, Kalyba dishonored his memory.”

Ead watched him.

“I am an alchemist. All my life, I believed that the end goal of alchemy was the glorious transformation of imperfection into purity. Lead into gold, disease into wellness, decay to eternal life. But now I understand. I see. Those were false destinations.”

His professor had been right, as always. She had often said that the true alchemy was the work, not its completion. Niclays had thought it was her way of comforting those who never made any progress.

“Sounds foolish, I know,” he continued. “Like the ravings of a madman . . . but it was just what Jannart always knew, and what I failed to see. For him, the pursuit of the mulberry tree in the East was his great work. He had the final piece, but not the rest.”

“Jannart utt Zeedeur,” Ead said softly.

He looked at her through burning eyes. “Jannart was my midnight sun,” he rasped. “The light I have followed. My grief drove me to Inys, and that step took me to the East. There, I tried to finish his work in the hope that it would bring me closer to him. By doing all this, I completed, unbeknownst to me, the first stage of alchemy, ofmywork. The putrefaction of my soul. With his death, my work began. I faced the shadows in myself.”

Nobody moved or spoke. Ead was looking at him with a strange expression. Something like pity, but not quite. Niclays pressed on, trying not to notice the burning in his brow. He was on fire, body and mind.

“So you see,” he said, “the work lies in myself. I fell into shadow, and now I must rise, so I might be a better man.”

“That would take a long time,” the dragonrider said.

“Oh, it will,” Niclays agreed, fevered as much by excitement as the wound, “but that is thepoint. Don’t you see?”

“I see that you are raving mad.”

“No, no. I am approaching the next stage of transmutation. The white sun. The cleansing of impurities, the illumination of the mind! Any fool could tell that nothing can bring Jannart back,” Niclays ploughed on, “so I willresistKalyba. She represents my past impurities, the one who comes to undo my progress and return me to my old instincts. To earn the white sun, I will give you the key to destroying all darkness.”

“Which is?” Ead said.

“Knowledge,” he finished, triumphant. “The Nameless One has a weakness. The twentieth scale of his chest armor is the one that Cleolind Onjenyu damaged all those years ago. She failed to hit the mark, but perhaps she opened the door. A door into his armor.”

Ead studied his face, her eyes narrowed a little.

“You can’t trust him,” Miduchi said. “He would sell his soul for a handful of silver.”

“I have no soul to sell, honored Miduchi. But I may yet earn one,” Niclays said. Saint, he was hot. “You see, Jan did leave someone behind, someone who I still care for. Truyde utt Zeedeur, his granddaughter. I want to be what he was to her, and to do that, I must be better. I must begood. And this is the way.”

He finished, staring around in wall-eyed excitement, but all was still. Sabran lowered her gaze, and Ead closed her eyes for a moment.

“She is still in Inys. A maid of honor.” As Niclays looked between them, his smile faded. “Isn’t she?”

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