Page 319 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

The wind howled against the sails. This was it. Clouds gathered above the ships. The Imperial Dragon called out to her brethren in the language of her kind. The Seiikinese dragons joined their voices to hers. Water bubbled on their scales. The mist grew thick as they brought the storm, and with it, their strength. As they took off from the sea, water streamed off them, soaking the humans below. Tané shook it from her eyes.

It happened so quickly. One moment, all was silent, save the rain.

Then, madness.

The first thing she thought was that the sun had risen, such was the light that ignited in the north. Then came a heat that sucked the breath from her. Fire exploded across the Seiikinese warshipChrysanthemum, moments before a second eruption tore through the fleet of the Northern king, and a full-throated roar announced the arrival of the enemy.

When the black High Western appeared, the downwind from its flight extinguished every lantern on every ship. “Fýredel,” someone bellowed.

Tané choked on the hot stench from his scales. Screams rang out. In the light from the fire, she saw Loth rushing Queen Sabran to her Knights of the Body and the Imperial Guard encircling the Unceasing Emperor before a shoulder slammed into her chest, knocking her flat.

A war conch sounded in the darkness. The riders disappeared with their dragons into the sea. Even as chaos sparked around her, Tané ached to be among them.

The black High Western circled the fleet. Its servants came tearing above the ships. They tangled with the Eastern dragons. Wings, endless wings, flocking like bats. Tails whipped lightning across the sky.

A wyvern flew straight at the mainmast of theReconciliation. It groaned and buckled, bringing down the highest sail. An agonized cry went up from the deck.

The sails of the iron-armoredChrysanthemumwere engulfed in flame. Tané ran with the crowd, pistol in hand. The force of the power inside her—her siden—throbbed in her blood like a second heartbeat.

A fire-breather landed in front of her. Bigger than a stallion. Two legs. A scarlet tongue rattled in its mouth.

Wyvern.

All her life she had prepared for this. It was what she had been born to do.

Tané took out the rising jewel. White light flared out of it, and the wyvern screamed in rage, shielding itself from the glow with its wing. She drove it back, away from the archers.

Another wyvern crashed down behind her, shaking the deck, eyes like live coals in its head. Caught between them, Tané stuffed the jewel back into its case with one hand and drew her Inysh sword from its scabbard with the other. The weight of it unbalanced her, and the first swing went wide, but the second found its mark. Red-hot blood spurted as the blade hewed through scale and flesh and bone. The wyvern struck the deck, headless, its body still thrashing.

And just for a moment, she saw Susa in that pool of blood, a head of dark hair rolling into a ditch, and she could not move an inch. The first wyvern vomited flame at her back.

She twisted just in time. Of its own accord, her hand flew up, and golden light discharged from her palms. The Draconic fire glanced off her, burning up the shoulder of her shirt and making her cry out as blisters formed, but the rest of the flames petered into the fog.

The wyvern cocked its head, pupils slitted, before it let out a hideous snarl and erupted with more blue-tinged fire. Tané backed away, sword at the ready. She needed a Seiikinese blade. No one could move like water with this dead weight in their hands.

Her enemy spat its fire in bursts. Rain hammered its hide. When it was close enough, Tané ducked a bite from its rotting teeth and slashed at its legs. Her next move was too slow—a burly tail snapped across her midriff, its spines just missing her. She went flying across the deck.

The sword clattered out of her hand just before she hit one of the masts and thumped down again, bashing her head. The shock of the impact held her in place. At least one of her ribs was cracked. Her back felt shredded. As the wyvern stalked toward her, nostrils smoking, a Seiikinese soldier thrust his blade into its flank. In the first moment of its rage, he circled the wyvern and aimed for its eye. It clapped its jaws over his leg and slammed him into the deck, over and over, back and forth, as if he were a scrap of meat. Tané heard his bones shatter, his screams bubbling away. The beast hurled what was left over the side.

A charred soldier lay nearby, clad in blue and silver armor. Tané took up a shield emblazoned with the heraldry of the Kingdom of Hróth and hefted it on to her left arm, clenching her jaw against the pain in her ribs. With her other hand, she lifted her bloody sword.

The heat from the fires drew sweat to the surface. The sword was slippery in her hand.

She was no longer aware of the other fire-breathers that flocked above the ships, tearing at sails and breathing great clouds of fire, or the soldiers battling around her. All she knew was the wyvern, and all the wyvern knew was her.

When it lunged for her, she rolled away from its bite and hurdled the tail that whipped toward her knees. Its lack of front limbs made it too cumbersome to fight at close quarters with something as small and quick as a human. This fiend had been bred for swooping and snatching. Like a bird of prey. As it pursued her, her sword gouged the wound the soldier had left. Her shield blocked a flame. The wyvern wrenched it out of her grip. She thrust the sword up, crunching through the underside of its jaw and deep into the roof of its mouth, and the fire in its eyes was extinguished. She backed away from the corpse.

The siden replenished her before exhaustion could set in. Nothing could touch her. Not even death. As the black High Western smashed down the mast of theWater Mother, Tané snatched up a fallen spear.

Her eyes ached. She could see the fire-breathers as if they were motes of dust in a sunray. With one swing of her arm, the spear flew at a bird-headed monster and impaled its wing, pinning it to its body. Flapping wildly with the other, it plummeted into the waves.

TheReconciliationhad pulled away from theDancing Pearl. So had theDefianceand theChrysanthemum. Their cannons were slanting upward. She heard the crump of a swivel gun before theReconciliationreleased everything it had. Chainshot swiveled skyward and snagged on wings and tails. A deafeningwhump-whumpbegan as the cannons fired. Crossbow bolts shivered from the Lacustrine ships, splinters of bronze catching the firelight. She could hear captains bellowing orders and pistols discharging from the decks of theDefianceand the twang of bowstrings across the fleet.

The clamor was too much. Her head was spinning. She was drunk on siden, seeing the whole battle like a vision.

A weapon. She needed another weapon. If she could reach theDefiance, she could find something. One step took her onto the gunwale, and she dived into the sea.

The quiet beneath the water cooled the fire within. She surfaced and swam hard for theDefiance. Nearby, one of the Ersyri ships had been overcome by flame, and it shed its crew from every side.

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