Page 265 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

Loth held his own pistol with a firm hand. Melaugo had shown him how to prime and fire it.

Rain churned the sea around the boats. They rowed beneath a natural arch, toward a beach that sloped into steep foothills. As they drew closer to the shore, Harlowe raised his nightglass.

“People,” he murmured. “On the beach.”

He spoke to one of the gunners in another language. The woman took the nightglass from him and peered through it.

“This may be Feather Island, a sacred place, home to the most treasured documents in the East,” Harlowe translated. “Only scholars can set foot on it, and they won’t be well armed.”

“They are still bound by Eastern law.” Melaugo cocked her pistol. “We’re not privateers to them, Harlowe. We’re plague-ridden pirates. Like everyone else on these waters.”

“They may not adhere to the sea ban.” Harlowe glanced at his boatswain. “Do you have any better ideas, Estina?”

The gunner signaled for her to lower the weapon. Melaugo pursed her lips, but obeyed.

Three people waited for them on the shore. Two men and a woman in robes of darkest red, who watched them with guarded expressions.

Behind them lay what Loth thought, at first, was the wreckage of a ship. Then he saw that it was the skeleton of an enormous beast.

It was close to the length of the beach. Whatever it was that had died here had been larger than a baleen. Now it was picked clean, the bones iridescent under the moonlight.

Loth got out of the rowing boat and helped the other seafarers shove it on to the sand, shaking water from his eyes. Harlowe approached the strangers and bowed. They returned the gesture. He spoke to them for some time before returning to the scouting party.

“The scholars of Feather Island have offered us shelter for as long as the storm continues, and they permit us to collect water. They only have room for forty of us in their house, but they’ll let the rest of the crew sleep in their empty storehouses,” Harlowe shouted over the wind. “All of this is on the condition that we bring no weapons on to the island, and that we touch none of its residents. They fear we might carry the plague.”

“Bit late on the weapons front,” Melaugo said.

“I mislike this, Harlowe,” one of the Knights of the Body called. “I say we stay on theRose.”

“And I say otherwise.”

“Why?”

Harlowe turned those cold eyes on him with the lightest touch of contempt. With the storm raging around him, he looked like some chaotic god of the sea.

“I intended to renew our supplies in Kawontay,” he said, “but now the storm has blown us off-course, we will be out of food before we can get to it. Most of the water is befouled.” He took two hunting knives from their sheaths. “The crew won’t sleep on that sea, and I need them on their mettle. There will be a skeleton crew left on watch, of course—and if anyone else wishes to remain on theRose, I won’t stop ’em. Let’s see how long it takes them to decide that it isn’t worth drinking their own piss.”

Harlowe approached the strangers again and set the knives, and his pistol, on the sand at their feet. Melaugo clicked her tongue before emptying her clothes of an array of blades. The Knights of the Body laid down their broadswords in the same way a parent might lay down a newborn. Loth ceded his blades and the pistol. The scholars watched them in silence. When all were disarmed, one of the men walked away, and the scouting party followed him.

Feather Island loomed above them. Lightning bared the rough-hewn precipices, lushly green, of breathtaking height. The scholar led them from the beach, beneath another arch, to where a stair had been whittled into a cliff face. Loth craned his neck to see it climbing out of sight.

They were on that stair for a long time. Wind roared at their sides. Rain soaked their boots, making every step perilous. By the time they reached the top, Loth’s knees were ready to buckle.

The scholar led them over grass and under dripping trees, to a path lined with lanterns. A house was waiting for them, raised from the ground on a platform, with white walls and a tiled roof, supported by pillars of timber. It was like no dwelling Loth had ever seen. The scholar opened the doors and removed his shoes before entering. The newcomers did the same. Loth followed Harlowe into the cool interior of the building.

The walls were unadorned. Instead of carpets, there were sweet-smelling mats. A sunken hearth was surrounded by square cushions. The scholar spoke again to Harlowe.

“This is where we’ll stay. The storehouses are nearby.” Harlowe eyed the room. “As soon as the storm abates, I’ll see if I can’t persuade the scholars to sell us some millet. Enough to get us to Kawontay.”

“We can give them nothing in exchange,” Loth pointed out. “They might need the millet for themselves.”

“You’ll never be a seafarer if you think that way, my lord.”

“I don’t want to be a seafarer.”

“Of course you don’t.”

The dark was at its deepest. Tané watched the Inysh ship through the open windows of the healing room.

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