Page 279 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

“They left guards!”

As she dropped to a lower scarp of rock, Laya grasped the dagger in her belt with one hand. “What?” she said, extending the other hand to him. “Do you think all this time on pirate ships has taught me nothing about fighting?”

Niclays hit the ground with knee-jarring force. Laya pulled him down against a tree.

They lay still in the hollow of the tree. His knees screamed, and his ankle throbbed. Three pirates ran past them. As soon as they had disappeared into the foliage, Laya was on her feet again, helping Niclays up.

“Stay with me, Old Red.” She kept a firm hold of his hand. “Come on. We’re going home.”

Home.

They forged on, slithering where the mud was slack, and running when they could. Before Niclays knew it, the beach was in sight. And there was the rowing boat, with only two guards.

They were going to make it. They would row northward until they reached the Empire of the Twelve Lakes, and from there they would cast off from the East once and for all.

Laya let go of his hand, drew her dagger, and ran across the sand, cloak billowing behind her. She was fast. Before she could strike at the first guard, hands fell upon Niclays. The pirates had caught up with them. “Laya,” he shouted, but it was too late. They had her. She cried out as Ghonra twisted her arm.

Padar forced Niclays to his knees. “Padar, Ghonra,” Laya pleaded, “don’t do this. We’ve known each other so long. Please, have mercy—”

“You know us better than that.” Ghonra wrenched the knife from her hand and held it to her throat. “I gave this blade to you,” she bit out, “as a kindness, Yidagé. Beg again, and it will have your tongue.”

Laya clamped her mouth shut. Niclays wanted desperately to tell her it was all right, to look away, to say nothing. Anything so they might not kill her, too.

His bladder was threatening to give out. Clenching every muscle in his body, he tried to divorce his mind from his flesh. To float away from himself, into memory.

He quaked as the Golden Empress, unperturbed by the fleeting chase, crouched in front of him. And he imagined himself as a notch on her arm.

And he realized.

He wanted to feel the sun on his face. He wanted to read books and walk through the cobbled streets of Brygstad. He wanted to listen to music, to visit museums and art galleries and theatres, to marvel at the beauty of human creation. He wanted to travel to the South and the North and drink in all they had to offer. He wanted to laugh again.

He wanted tolive.

“I brought my crew over two seas,” the Golden Empress said to him, so softly only he could hear, “for nothing but a story. They will need someone to blame for this disappointment—and I assure you, Master of Recipes, that it will not be me. Unless you would like Yidagé to take the fall on your behalf, it must be you.” She touched him under the chin with her knife. “They may not kill you. But I think you will be pleading for that mercy.”

Her face blurred. Close by, Ghonra gripped Laya by the throat, poised to spill her life.

“I can find some means of making it her fault.” The Golden Empress looked at her interpreter, who had sailed with her for decades, without remorse. “Lies cost nothing, after all.”

Once, Niclays had allowed a young musician to be tortured to spare himself the same fate. The act of a man who had forgotten how to serve anyone but himself. If he was to die with any pride, he would not let Laya suffer for him any more than she had already.

“You will do no such thing,” he said quietly.

Laya shook her head. Her face crumpled into a look of grief.

“Take him back to thePursuit, and tell the crew what we found.” The Golden Empress rose. “Let us see what they will—”

She stopped. Niclays looked up.

The Golden Empress dropped her blade. A curved sword was across her throat, and Tané Miduchi was standing behind her.

Niclays could hardly believe who he was seeing. He gaped at the woman he had tried to blackmail.

“You,” he stammered.

Wherever she had been, the last few months had not been kind to her. She was thinner, her eyes smeared with shadow. Fresh blood on her hands. “Give me the key,” she said in Lacustrine, her voice deep and thick with hatred. “The key for the chains.”

None of the pirates moved. Their captain was just as still, her eyebrows raised.

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