Page 274 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

Niclays stared at the fallen giant. The feeling bled from his legs. His lips began to shake, and his eyes grew hot.

He was here. At the end of the Way of the Outcasts. This was what Jannart had wanted to see, the secret he had died for. Niclays was standing in the realization of his dream.

His faithless dream.

The mulberry tree bore no flower or fruit. It looked almost grotesque in its mass, stretched beyond its natural proportions, like a body pulled upon a rack. Its trunk was as thick as a baleen. In death, its branches reached for the stars, as if they might hold out silver hands and help it stand again.

The Golden Empress walked slowly among its dead limbs. Laya took Niclays by the arm. He felt her shivering and found himself pressing his hand over hers.

“Yidagé, Roos,” the Golden Empress called, “come here.”

Laya closed her eyes.

“It’s all right.” Niclays kept his voice low. “She won’t hurt you, Laya. You’re too useful to her.”

“I have no wish to watch her hurt you.”

“I am deeply hurt by how little faith you have in my capacity for battle, Mistress Yidagé.” He held up his cane with a weak smile. “I can take them all with this, don’t you think?”

She choked back a laugh.

“There are words carved here,” the Golden Empress said to Laya, when they were near. “Translate them.”

Her face betrayed nothing. Laya let go of Niclays and stepped over a branch and crouched beside the trunk. One of the pirates handed her a torch, and she held it carefully toward the tree. The flames shed light on a cascade of carved words.

“Forgive me, all-honored Golden Empress, but I cannot translate this. Bits of it are familiar, but much of it is not,” Laya said. “I fear it is beyond the realm of my knowledge.”

“Perhaps I can.”

Niclays glanced over his shoulder. The Seiikinese scholar, the one who was never far from the Golden Empress, laid a withered hand on the trunk as if it were the earthly remains of an old friend.

“The torch, if you please,” he said. “This will not take long.”

There was no moonlight to betray the Western ship. From high in its yards, Tané watched the pirates go ashore.

TheRose Eternalwas anchored where the pirates could not see. After she had turned the ship southeast at the right moment, they had sailed until her nightglass revealed an island.

Elder Vara believed the rising jewel had come from here. Perhaps this place held the secret of why it had been in her side—or perhaps not. What mattered was Nayimathun.

The wind blew strands of hair across her face. She knew these ships from her days in the South House, where she had learned to identify the most notorious vessels in the Fleet of the Tiger Eye. Both carried the red sails of sickness. TheBlack Dove, which was half the length of thePursuit, was circling the island with its gun ports open.

Tané descended to the deck. She had freed her two captives so they might help her.

“You,” Tané said to Thim. “While I am gone, guard the ship.”

Thim watched her. “Where are you going?”

“To thePursuit.”

“They will tear you apart.”

“Help me survive, and I will see to it that you get to the Empire of the Twelve Lakes in one piece. Betray me, and I will leave you here to die,” Tané said. “The choice is yours.”

“Whoareyou?” Thim asked, frowning. “You fight better than any soldier. None of the crew stood a chance against you. Why were you drafted into the ranks of the scholars, and not the Miduchi?”

Tané handed him the nightglass.

“If they see you,” was all she said, “fire one of the cannons as a warning.”

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