Page 263 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

“My lord, the captain said to stay in our cabins,” one of his bodyguards called after him.

“The Knight of Courage tells us to look death in the eye,” he answered. “I intend to obey.”

He sounded bolder than he felt.

When he emerged onto the deck, he could smell the storm. Wind roared into his eyes. His boots slid on the planks as he lurched toward one of the masts and embraced it, already soaked to the bone. Lightning splintered overhead and blinded him.

“Get back to your cabin, lordling,” Melaugo shouted. Black paint ran from her eyes. “You want to die out here?”

Harlowe stood on the quarterdeck, his jaw set tight. Plume was at the wheel. When theRosecrested a mountainous wave, the sailors cried out. One of the swabbers was pitched over the side, her scream lost to a thunderclap, while another slipped from his handhold and went slithering down the deck. The sails billowed and rattled, twisting the image of Ascalon.

Loth pressed his cheek against the mast. This ship had felt solid as they crossed the Abyss; now he felt its hollowness. He had survived the plague, glimpsed death in the eye of a cockatrice, but it seemed it would be in the waters of the East that he would perish.

Waves battered theRose Eternalfrom all sides as she crashed back down, soaking her crew. Water poured on to the deck. Rain pummeled their backs. Plume turned the wheel hard to port, but it was as though theRosewas taking on a life of her own.

The mast began to splinter. The wind was pulling it too hard. Loth made a break for the quarterdeck. Even if Harlowe was losing control of his ship, Loth felt safer with him than he did anywhere else. This was the man who had fought a pirate lord in a typhoon, who had weathered all the known seas of the world. As he ran, Melaugo screamed a word he couldn’t hear.

The rogue wave broke against the ship and took his feet from under him. His mouth and nostrils flooded. He was elbow-deep in water. Plume strained the wheel against it, but suddenly theRosewas almost on its side, and the tallest mast skirted the sea. As he slid across the deck, toward the waves, Loth scrabbled for a handhold and found the sinewy arm of the carpenter, who was clinging to the ratlines by his fingertips.

TheRoserighted herself. The carpenter released Loth, leaving him to cough up water.

“Thank you,” Loth choked out. The carpenter waved him off, panting.

“Land ahoy,” came a distant shout. “Land!”

Harlowe looked up. Loth blinked sea and rain from his eyes as lightning flashed again. Through a watery smear, he saw the captain open his nightglass and squint into it.

“Hafrid,” he bellowed, “what’s here?”

The cartographer shielded her face from the rain. “There shouldn’t be anything this far south.”

“And yet.” Harlowe snapped the nightglass closed. “Master Plume, get us to that island.”

“If it’s inhabited, they’ll put us all to the sword,” Plume shouted back.

“Then theRosewill live, and we’ll die faster than we will out here,” Harlowe barked at his quartermaster. His eyes were lit by a thunderstroke. “Estina, muster the crew!”

The boatswain took a pipe from a brass chain around her neck and pinched it between her teeth. A high-pitched trill rode the wind. Loth held on to the gunwale, water beading on his lashes, as Melaugo piped orders to the pirates. They danced to the tune of the whistle, scaling the ratlines and heaving at ropes while the ship keened beneath them. It was chaos to Loth’s eye—yet soon enough, the island was in sight, drawing closer by the moment. Too close. More whistles, and the courses were taken up.

TheRose Eternaldid not slow.

Harlowe narrowed his eyes. His ship kept carving its way toward the island, faster than ever.

“This is no natural thing. The tide shouldn’t be strong enough to reel us in.” His face tightened. “She’s going to run aground.”

As Loth wiped rain from his brow, a flash came from low down on the island. Bright as a mirror catching the sun.

“What in damsam is that?” Plume squinted as the moonburst of light came again. “Do you see it, Captain?”

“Aye.”

“Someone must be signaling us.” Melaugo clung to a dripping rope. “Captain?”

Harlowe kept his hands on the balustrade, his gaze on the island. Tines of lightning painted its heights.

“Captain,” the leadsman cried, “seventeen fathoms by the mark. We’re surrounded by reef.”

Melaugo went to the side and looked over. “I see it. Damsel save us, it’s everywhere.” She held on to the brim of her hat. “Captain, it’s almost like she knows her way. She’s missing it all by the skin of her barnacles.”

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