Page 185 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

His heart was swelling in his chest. Laya took his head between her hands and grinned in a way that lifted his spirit.

“You,” she said, “are a genius, Sea-Moon. Brilliant, just brilliant!”

The pirates were all over the decks. Padar roared his orders at them in Lacustrine. The stars shone bright in a clear sky, beckoning them toward the horizon.

“Not a genius,” Niclays admitted, weak-kneed. “Just mad. And lucky.” He patted her arm. “Thank you, Laya. For your help, and your belief. Perhaps we will both be supping on the fruit of immortality.”

Caution stole into her eyes.

“Perhaps.” Hitching up her smile, she placed a hand between his shoulders and guided him through the confusion of pirates. “Come. It is time you claimed your reward.”

In the deepest part of thePursuit, a Lacustrine dragon was chained from its snout to the end of its tail. Niclays had thought it magnificent when he first saw it on the beach. Now it looked almost feeble.

Laya waited in the shadows with him. “I must go back,” she said. “Will you be all right?”

He leaned on his new staff. “Of course. The beast is bound.” His mouth was dry. “You go.”

She gave the dragon a last glance before reaching into her coat. From inside, she drew a knife, sheathed in leather.

“My gift.” She held it out by the blade. “Just in case.”

Niclays took it. He had owned a sword in Mentendon, but the only time he had used a weapon had been in his fencing lessons with Edvart, who had always disarmed him in seconds. Before he could thank her, Laya was making her way back up the steps.

The dragon seemed asleep. A tangled mane flowed around its horns. Its face was wider than the serpentine heads of wyrms, and gaudier, with decorative frills.

Nayimathun, Laya had called it. A name with no clear origin.

Niclays walked toward the beast, staying away from its head. Its lower jaw was loose in sleep, showing teeth the length of a forearm.

The dome on its head was dormant. Panaya had told him about it, the night he had first seen a dragon. When it illuminated, that dome was calling to the celestial plane, lifting the dragon toward the stars. Unlike wyrms, dragons needed no wings to fly.

He had tried to rationalize it for weeks. Months. Perhaps the dome was a kind of lodestone, attracted to particles in the air or the cores of far-off worlds. Perhaps dragons had hollow bones, letting them ride the wind. That was the alchemist in him, theorizing. Yet he had known in his gut that unless he could split a dragon open, to see it through the lens of an anatomist, it would remain inexplicable. Magic, for all intents and purposes.

Even as he studied the beast, its eye snapped open and, in spite of himself, Niclays backed away. In the eye of this creature was a cosmos of knowledge: ice and void and constellation—and nothing close to human. Its pupil was as big as a shield, ringed with a blue glow.

For a long while, they stared at each other. A man of the West and a dragon of the East. Niclays found himself overwhelmed by the urge to fall to his knees, but he only gripped his cane.

“You.”

The voice was cool and susurrating. The billow of a sail.

“You are the one who bartered for my scale and blood.” A dark blue tongue flickered behind its teeth. “You are Roos.”

It spoke in Seiikinese. Each word was drawn out like a shadow at sunrise.

“I am,” Niclays confirmed. “And you are the great Nayimathun. Or perhaps,” he added, “not so great.”

Nayimathun watched his mouth as he spoke. On land, Panaya had told him, dragons heard as humans heard underwater.

“The one who wears the chains is a thousand times greater than the one who wields them,” Nayimathun said. “Chains are cowardice.” A rumble filled the cavernous hull. “Where is Tané?”

“Seiiki, I assume. I hardly know the girl.”

“You knew her enough to threaten her. To try to manipulate her for your own gain.”

“This is a cutthroat world, beast. I merely negotiated,” Niclays said. “I needed your blood and scale to carry out my work, to unlock the secret of your immortality. I wanted humans to have a chance of surviving in a world ruled by giants.”

“We tried to defend you in the Great Sorrow.” The eye closed for a moment, darkening their surroundings. “Many of you perished. But we tried.”

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