Page 166 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

“Easy.” She wore a wide-brimmed hat. “Easy.”

“Who are you, Yscal?”

“Estina Melaugo. Of theRose Eternal.” The woman cocked an eyebrow. “You’re a little too late to board a ship.”

“So I see. The boat is yours, I presume.”

“It is.”

“Will you take me?” Ead sheathed her knife. “I seek passage to Zeedeur.”

Melaugo looked her up and down. “What do I call you?”

“Meg.”

“Meg.” Her smile said she knew full well it was an alias. “From your filthy cloak, I’d say you’ve been riding hard for a few days. Not much sleep, either, by the looks of you.”

“You would ride hard if the Night Hawk wanted your head.”

Melaugo grinned, showing a tiny gap between her front teeth. “Another enemy of the Night Hawk. He ought to start paying us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing.” Melaugo motioned to the horizon. “The ship is out there. I’d usually expect coin for safe passage—but perhaps, with so many wyrms in the sky, we should all be kinder to each other.”

“Soft words for a pirate.”

“Piracy was more of a necessity than a choice for me, Meg.” Melaugo eyed Valour. “You can’t take that horse.”

“The horse,” Ead said, “goes where I go.”

“Don’t make me leave you behind, Meg.” When Ead kept her hand on Valour, Melaugo folded her arms and sighed. “We’ll have to bring the ship in. The captain will expect compensation for that, if not for you.”

Ead tossed her the purse. Inysh money would be useless in the South.

“I take no charity, pirate,” she said.

It would not take long to reach Mentendon. Ead lay in her berth and tried to sleep. When she did, she was pierced by unquiet dreams of Sabran and the faceless Cupbearer. When she did not, she padded to the deck and gazed at the crystal stars above the sails, letting them calm her mind.

The captain, Gian Harlowe, stepped from his cabin to smoke his pipe. This was the man who had loved the Queen Mother, according to rumor. Dark eyes, a stern mouth, pockmarks on his brow and cheeks. He looked as if he had been carved by the sea wind.

Their gazes met across the ship, and Harlowe nodded. Ead returned the gesture.

At first light, the sky was a smear of ash, and Zeedeur was on the horizon. This was where Truyde had spent her childhood, where she had first conceived her perilous ideas. It was here that the death of Aubrecht Lievelyn had been written in the stars.

Estina Melaugo joined Ead at the bow.

“Be careful out there,” she said. “It’s a hard ride from here to the Ersyr, and there are wyrms in those mountains.”

“I fear no wyrm.” Ead nodded to her. “Thank you, Melaugo. Farewell.”

“Farewell, Meg.” Melaugo pulled down the brim of her hat and turned away. “Safe travels.”

Flanked by the sea and the River Hundert, the Port of Zeedeur was shaped like an arrowhead. Canals hatched the northern quarter, lined with elegant houses and elm trees. Ead had passed through the city only once before, when she and Chassar had sailed for Inys. Here the houses were built in the traditional Mentish style, with bell gables. The crocketed spire of the Port Sanctuary reached up from the heart of the city.

It was the last sanctuary she would see for some time.

She mounted Valour and spurred him past the markets and book peddlers, toward the salt road that would lead her to the capital. In a few days, she would be in Brygstad, and then she would be on her way to the Ersyr—far away from the court she had deceived for so long. From the West.

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