Page 30 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

She folded the letter. The Master of the Posts would read it on behalf of the Night Hawk, but he would see nothing but courtesies. Chassar would know the truth.

A knock came at the door.

“Mistress Duryan?”

Ead put on her bedgown and undid the latch. Outside was a woman wearing a badge shaped like a winged book, marking her as a retainer in the service of Seyton Combe.

“Yes?”

“Mistress Duryan, good evening. I have been sent to inform you that the Principal Secretary wishes to see you at half past nine tomorrow,” the girl said. “I will escort you to the Alabastrine Tower.”

“Just me?”

“Lady Katryen and Lady Margret were both questioned today.”

Ead’s hand tightened on the door handle. “It is a questioning, then.”

“I believe so.”

With the other hand, Ead drew her bedgown closer. “Very well,” she said. “Is that all?”

“Yes. Goodnight, mistress.”

“Goodnight.”

When the retainer walked away, darkness took back the corridor. Ead shut the door and set her brow against it.

She would have no sleep this night.

TheRose Eternalrocked on the water, tilted by the east wind. It was this ship that would bear them across the sea to Yscalin.

“This,” Kit declared as they walked toward it, “is a fine ship. I believe that I would marry this ship, were I a ship myself.”

Loth had to agree. TheRosewas battle-scarred, but very handsome—and colossal. Even on his visits to see the navy with Sabran, he had never laid eyes upon such an immense ship as this ironclad man-of-war. She boasted one hundred and eight guns, a fearsome ram, and eighteen sails, all emblazoned with the True Sword, the emblem of Virtudom. The ensign attested that this was an Inysh vessel, and that the actions of its crew, however morally dubious they might appear, were sanctioned by its monarchy.

A figurehead of Rosarian the Fourth, lovingly polished, gazed down from the bow. Black hair and white skin. Eyes as green as sea glass. Her body tapered into a gilded tail.

Loth remembered Queen Rosarian fondly from the years before her death. The Queen Mother, as she was known now, had often watched him at play with Sabran and Roslain in the orchards. She had been a softer woman than Sabran, quick to laugh and gamesome in a way her daughter never was.

“She’s a beauty, right enough,” Gautfred Plume said. He was the quartermaster, a dwarf of Lasian descent. “Not half as great a beauty as the lady who gifted her to the captain, mind.”

“Ah, yes.” Kit doffed his feathered hat to the figurehead. “May she rest forever in the arms of the Saint.”

Plume clicked his tongue. “Queen Rosarian had a merrow’s soul. She should have rested in the arms of the sea.”

“Oh, by the Saint, how beautifully put. Do merfolk really exist, incidentally? Did you ever see them when you crossed the Abyss?”

“No. Blackfish and greatsquid and baleens, I’ve seen, but nary the cap of a sea maid.”

Kit wilted.

Seagulls circled in the cloud-streaked sky. The port of Perchling was ready for the worst, as always. The jetties rattled under the weight of soldiers armed with long-range muskets. Row upon row of mangonels and cannon bursting with chainshot, interspersed with stone mantlets, stood grimly on the beach. Archers occupied the watchtowers, ready to light their beacons at thewhumpof wings or the sight of an enemy ship.

Above it, a small city teetered. Perchling was so named because it perched on two great shelves that jutted halfway down the cliffside, joined to the top of the cliff, and to the beach, by a long and drunken stair. Buildings huddled like birds on a branch. Kit had been amused by its precariousness (“Saint, the architect must have been wondrous deep in the cups”), but it made Loth nervous. Perchling looked as if one good squall would blow it clean into the sea.

Still he drank it in, committing it to memory. This might be the last time he looked upon Inys, the only country he had ever known.

They found Gian Harlowe in his cabin, deep in letter-writing. The man the Queen Mother had favored was not quite what Loth had imagined. He was clean-shaven, his cuffs starched, but there was a bitten edge to him. His jaw was set like a sprung trap.

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