Page 184 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

The Golden Empress looked to Padar, who spread his own star charts on the floor. After studying them for a time, he took up the still-wet brush and joined some of the characters on the silk. Niclays flinched at the first stroke, then realized what was forming.

Constellations.

His heart pounded like an axe into wood. When Padar was finished, he set down the brush and considered.

“Do you understand it, Padar?” the Golden Empress asked.

“I do.” Slowly, he nodded. “Yes. Each pane shows the sky at a different time of year.”

“And this one.” Niclays pointed at the last pane. “What do you call that constellation?”

The Golden Empress exchanged a look with her navigator, whose mouth twitched.

“The Seiikinese,” she said, “call it the Magpie. The characters formulberry treeform its eye.”

From under the Magpie’s eye, go south and to the Dreaming Star, and look beneath the mulberry tree.

“Yes.” Padar strode around the table. “The book has given us a fixed point. Since the stars move each night, we must begin our course only when we are directly under the Magpie’s eye at the ninth hour of night, at the given time of year.”

Niclays could hardly keep still. “Which is?”

“The end of winter. After that, we must steer between the Dreaming Star and the South Star.”

A silence fell, taut with anticipation, and the Golden Empress smiled. Niclays distinctly felt his knees wobble, either with exhaustion or the sudden discharge of days of fear.

From the grave, Jannart had shown them the star they needed as their point of navigation. Without it, the Golden Empress would never have known how to reach the place.

There was that flicker of doubt again. Perhaps he should never have shown her. Someone had done their best to keep this knowledge from the East, and he had handed it to its outlaws.

“Yidagé, you spoke of a jewel.” Ghonra had a gleam in her eye. “A rising jewel.”

Laya shook her head. “A poetic description of a seed, I imagine. A stone that rises into a tree.”

“Or treasure,” Padar said. He exchanged a hungry look with Ghonra. “Buried treasure.”

“Padar,” the Golden Empress said, “tell the crew to prepare for the hunt of their lives. We make for Kawontay to replenish our provisions, and then we sail for the mulberry tree. Ghonra, inform the crews of theBlack Doveand theWhite Crow. We have a long journey ahead of us.”

The two of them left at once.

“Are—” Niclays cleared his throat. “Are you content with this solution, all-honored captain?”

“For now,” the Golden Empress said, “but if nothing waits at the end of this path, I will know who has deceived us.”

“I have no intention of deceiving you.”

“I hope not.”

She reached beneath the table and presented him with a length of what looked like cedar wood. “All of my crew bear arms. This staff will be yours,” she said. “Use it well.”

He took it from her. It was light, yet he sensed it could deliver a shattering blow.

“Thank you,” he said, and bowed. “All-honored captain.”

“Eternal life awaits,” she said, “but if you still wish to see the dragon, and to claim any part of it, you may go now. Perhaps it can tell us something else about the jewel inThe Tale of Komoridu, or the island,” she said. “Yidagé, take him.”

They left the cabin. The moment the door had closed behind them, Laya seized Niclays about the neck and embraced him. His nose smashed into her shoulder, and her beads dug into his chest, but suddenly he was laughing as hard as she was, laughing until he wheezed.

Tears seeped down his face. He was drunk on relief, but also the exhilaration of solving a puzzle. In all his years in Orisima, he had never found the key to the elixir, and now he had unearthed the path to it. He had finished what Jannart had started.

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