The Priory of the Orange Tree

Loth recognizes Ead. He believes the Priory is drugging him and wants to contact Ead before he loses his mind. Meanwhile, Ead confronts Chassar over hiding Loth from her. Chassar updates her on Loth’s meeting with the Donmata. He also tells Ead that Mita is sending her to lands beyond the “Gate of Ungulus,” the farthest reaches of the South, to retrieve a wyrm egg laid by Valeysa the Harrower. Ead thinks Mita is sending her on the mission so that she will forget about Sabran and Inys. Chassar suggests that Ead may be able to escape the mission by becoming pregnant and offering Mita a child, but Ead balks at the suggestion. Ead is bitter, but Mita, who enters during the conversation, tells her she must obey orders.

Alone in her room, Ead’s thoughts turn to Inys and Mita’s refusal to save it. As she sips on wine, she recalls the twin goblets that symbolize the Knight of Justice and her bloodline in Inys. Ead realizes that goblets are also known as cups; thus, Igrain Crest, the Duchess of Justice, may be the Cupbearer. If so, Sabran is in great danger. Ead decides to leave the Priory on pain of exile to save Sabran. She dispatches Aralaq to find Loth and goes to retrieve the gem from Mita.

A series of earthquakes has rattled Feather Island. The day after, the tide brings in the body of a young Seiikinese dragon: a terrible sight and a sinister omen. It appears the sea has boiled the dragon to death, which signals great disturbance in the earth’s core. The Nameless One seems to be gathering power.

The surgeon, Doctor Purumé Moyaka, comes in to examine Tané’s childhood injury. Tané recognizes the surgeon’s name from her conversation with Niclays and is reluctant to let Purumé attend her, but she agrees for the sake of Vara. Purumé begins to operate on the injury, noticing a lump at the site. Just as she cuts into the lump, wyrms attack Feather Island. Vara instructs Tané, who is on painkillers, to hide in a cave nearby, but a groggy Tané falls down. The incision on her side opens and a jewel falls out. Tané seizes the gem as a wyrm lands in front of her. Instinctively, Tané holds out the gem to ward the wyrm off. White light explodes from the jewel, scalding the dragon, which then flies off with its flock. Bleeding and weak, Tané buries the gem in the courtyard for safekeeping. She sews her bleeding side shut.

Aralaq tells Ead that Mita has the gem on her person. Ead asks Aralaq to gather supplies and bring Loth to a cave from which they can leave the Priory. Ead also learns that the Priory has been feeding Loth an herb called “dreamroot,” which will soon make him forget all his past. She steals the dreamroot to drug Mita’s wine so she can collect the gem when Mita falls asleep. However, when Ead sneaks into Mita’s room, she finds Mita awake, having discovered Ead’s ruse. Mita and Ead fight with knives for the jewel. Mita reveals that she killed Ead’s birthmother, Zāla, because Zāla too wanted to defend the world beyond the South. Ead wins the fight and gets the jewel, but she is grievously injured in the process. She leaves Mita alive and goes to the cave where Aralaq and Loth are waiting.

Aralaq and Loth flee Lasia along with a wounded Ead, stopping on the way to get herbs to heal her injuries. Ead fears this will give the Red Damsels—who are pursuing Ead for treason—time to catch up. Soon enough, six Red Damsels, each riding an ichneumon, appear on their heels. Ead can see her friend Nairuj is one of the Damsels. At the same time, a flock of wyverns descends on them, burning one Red Damsel alive and wounding Nairuj. Ead kills the wyvern who attacked Nairuj, and Loth and Ead flee to Corvugar on Aralaq’s back.

After the wyrm attack, Tané retrieves the gem from where she buried it. She now understands that the gem is one of the celestial jewels she has read about in legends, a gem left behind by the comet that ended the “Great Sorrow”—the rise of the Nameless One. Tané vows that she will find Nayimathun and give her the celestial jewel.