Page 270 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

East

When he woke, the cold was brutal, and the sky wore the sickly purple of dusk, casting everything into shadow. It took Loth a moment to realize he was bound.

Spray dampened his face. His head pounded horribly, and his senses were sludge.

He blinked the fur of exhaustion away. In the dim glow of the lanterns, he made out a figure at the helm of theRose Eternal.

“Captain Harlowe?”

No reply. When his vision sharpened, he saw that it was the woman from Feather Island.

No.

They had no time to go off-course. He struggled against his restraints, but there was enough rope around him to hang a giant. Beside him, Thim was also trussed to the mast. Loth nudged him with his shoulder.

“Thim,” he whispered.

The gunner did not answer. A bruise was forming on his temple.

Loth turned his head and took their captor in. She was about twenty, perhaps a touch younger, leanly built. Short black hair framed a tanned and windburned face.

“Who are you?” Loth called to her. His throat scorched with thirst. “Why have you taken this ship?”

She ignored him.

“I hope you realize that you have committed an act ofpiracy, mistress,” Loth bit out. “Turn back at once, or I shall take this as a declaration of war on Queen Sabran of Inys.”

Nothing.

Whoever this silent vagabond was, she had the other jewel. Fate had brought it into his path.

A hand-length case, painted with flowers, hung from a sash at her hip. That must be where she kept it.

Loth dozed for a time. Thirst and exhaustion pulled at him, and one side of his head was pounding. Sometime in the night, he blinked awake and found a gourd at his lips. He drank without question.

Thim, too, was now alert. The woman let him drink and spoke to him in a foreign tongue.

“Thim,” Loth muttered, “do you understand her?”

The other man was blear-eyed. “Yes, my lord. She’s Seiikinese,” he said slowly. “She asks how you know about the jewel.”

She stayed crouched in front of them, watching their faces. In the glow of the lantern she had brought with her, Loth could make out the scar on her cheek. “Tell her I know where its twin is,” he said. He looked the woman in the eye as Thim translated, and she replied.

“She says that if that is true,” Thim said, “you will be able to tell her what color it is.”

“White.”

When Thim conveyed the words to her, she leaned toward Loth and took hold of his throat.

“Where?” she asked.

So she did speak a little Inysh. Her voice was as cold as her cast-iron expression.

“Inys,” he said.

Her mouth pinched shut. A fine-cut mouth that looked as if it seldom smiled.

“You must give the jewel to me,” Loth beseeched her. “I have to take it to Queen Sabran, to reunite it with its twin. Together, they can be used to destroy the Nameless One. He will rise again soon, in a matter of weeks. He will come from the Abyss.”

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