Page 155 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

Niclays was as raw as if he had been struck by lightning.

My aunt received it from a man who told her to carry it far from the East and never bring it back.

“Yes. You brought it to her.” Seeing his astonished expression, Laya smiled at him. “The final piece of the puzzle.”

The puzzle.

Jannart.

A sound grumbled through the belly of the ship. ThePursuitlisted, shunting Niclays against Laya.

“Is it a storm?” he asked, his voice a notch higher than usual.

“Shh.”

The next sound was an echo of the first. Frowning, Laya got to her feet. Niclays rubbed some feeling back into his legs and followed. The Golden Empress was on the quarterdeck.

They were at the threshold of the Abyss, the place where even dragons feared to go, where the water deepened from green to black. And not a ripple marred the surface.

Within this impossible sea, every star, every constellation, every fold and spiral of the cosmos was reflected. As if there were two firmaments, and their ship was a ghost ship, adrift between worlds. The sea had turned itself to glass, so the heavens might finally look upon themselves.

“Did you ever see such a thing?” Niclays murmured.

Laya shook her head. “This is no natural thing.”

Not a single wave broke against the fleet. Each ship was as steady as if it were on land. The crew of thePursuitstood in restless silence, but Niclays Roos was tranquil, entranced by the vision of the double universe. A balanced world, like the one described in the Tablet of Rumelabar.

What is below must be balanced by what is above, and in this is the precision of the universe.

Words that no one living understood. Words that had made Truyde send her lover across the sea with a plea for help that would go unheard. A lover who must now be dead.

Voices shouted in myriad languages. Niclays staggered back as spray exploded over the deck, drenching his hair in hot water. His moment of calm dissolved.

Bubbles swarmed around the hull. Laya clutched his arm. She ran with him to the nearest mast and seized the ropes.

“Laya,” he called to her, “what is happening?”

“I don’t know. Hold on!”

Niclays blinked away salt water, gasping. He shouted out as water roiled into the fleet, destroying a rowing boat and sweeping pirates off the decks. Their shrieks were lost to a sound he thought at first was thunder.

And then, as the sea crested the side of thePursuit, it appeared. A mass of red-hot scale. Niclays stared in disbelief at the tail that ended in cruel spikes, at the wings that could have bridged the River Bugen. Amid the roar of the sea and the howl of the wind, a High Western swooped low over the fleet and screamed in triumph.

“MASTER,” it screamed. “SOON.SOON.SOON.”

36

West

The nightingales had forgotten how to sing. Ead lay on her side on the truckle bed, listening to Sabran breathe.

Oftentimes since the wyrm had come, she had drowned in dreams of what had happened that night. How she had carried Sabran to the Royal Physician. The hideous barb he had drawn from her belly. The blood. The cloth-wrapped form they had carried away. Sabran unmoving on the bed, looking as if she were on her bier.

A breeze wafted through the Great Bedchamber. Ead turned over.

Though she had watched Doctor Bourn and his assistants to ensure they first boiled everything that touched Sabran, it had not been enough. Inflammation had taken root. Fever had ravaged her, and she had lain on the brink of death for days—but she had fought. She had fought for her life like Glorian Shieldheart.

In the end, she had clawed herself from the edge of the grave, drained in body and soul. Once her fever had broken, the Royal Physician had concluded that the barb he had pulled from her had come from the High Western. Fearful that it might have given her the plague, he had sent for a Mentish expert in Draconic anatomy. What she had concluded was the unutterable.

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