Page 323 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

A sliver of the comet.

Kalyba drew in a sharp breath. As she stared at the shard of metal in her breast, her hooded killer revealed her face.

“I do this for you.” Ead twisted the blade deeper. There was no malice in her expression. “I will take you to the hawthorn tree, Kalyba. May it bring you the peace you did not find here.”

Dark lifeblood flowed from the witch, down her breast and past her navel. Even immortals bled.

“Eadaz uq-Nara.” The name left her like a curse. “You are so very like Cleolind, you know.” Blood speckled her lips. “After all this time, I see her spirit. Somehow . . . she outlived me.”

As she sank over her mortal wound, the Witch of Inysca let out a scream. It echoed across the water, far into the Abyss. Ascalon fell from her hand, and Sabran seized it. At the last, Kalyba grabbed her by the throat.

“Your house,” she whispered to the queen, “is built on barren ground.” Sabran strained to break her grip, but her hand was a vise. “I see chaos, Sabran the Ninth. Beware the sweet water.”

Ead pulled her blade free, and more blood pulsed from Kalyba, like wine from a gourd. By the time she had fallen to the deck, her eyes were cold and dead as emeralds.

Sabran gazed in silence at the naked body of her forebear, one hand at her throat, where finger marks had already blossomed. Ead removed her cloak and covered the witch, while Tané picked up another sword.

A bell rang from the Inysh fleet. The sails of theDefiancestirred. Tané watched as the same wind set the Seiikinese flag aflutter. Even the cannon fire seemed to grow softer as a preternatural hush descended.

“This is it,” Ead said, her voice calm. “He is coming.”

In the sky, the fire-breathers moved the way starlings did, whirling in great clouds of wing. A dance of welcome.

In the distance, the sea exploded upward.

The waters of the Abyss convulsed. Shouts of panic spiked the night as waves crested the ships. Tané hit the gunwale as theDefiancelurched, unable to wrest her gaze from the horizon.

The eruption of water rose high enough to obliterate the stars. Amidst the chaos, a shape took form.

She had heard stories of the beast. Every child had grown up hearing about the nightmare that had crawled out of the mountain to ravage all the world. She had seen images of him, richly painted in gold-leaf and red lacquer, with blots of soot-ink where eyes ought to be.

No artist had captured the magnitude of the enemy, or the way the fire inside him made him smoulder. They had never seen it for themselves. His wingspan was the length of two Lacustrine treasure ships. His teeth were as black as his eyes. The waves crashed and the thunder rolled.

Prayers in every language. Dragons rising from the sea to meet their enemy, letting out haunting calls. Soldiers on theDefiancebrandished their weapons, and on theLord of Thunder, archers exchanged their arrows for longer ones, fletched with purple feathers. Poison arrows might fell a wyvern or a cockatrice, but nothing would get under those scales. Only one sword had a chance.

Ead retrieved Ascalon.

“Tané,” she shouted over the din, “take it.”

Tané took its weight in her clammy hands. She had expected it to be heavy, but it felt as if it could be hollow.

The sword that could slay the true enemy of the East. The sword that could earn back her honor.

“Go.” Ead gave her a push. “Go!”

Tané scraped up all her fear and crushed it into a dark place inside her. She made sure her borrowed sword was secure at her side. Then, keeping Ascalon in hand, she made for the closest sail. She scaled the battens, fighting through wind and rain, until she reached the top.

“Tané!”

She turned. A Seiikinese dragon with silver scales was rising from the waves.

“Tané.” The rider beckoned her. “Jump!”

Tané had no time to think. She threw herself from the beam, into nothing.

A hand sheathed in a gauntlet took hold of her arm and hauled her into the saddle. Ascalon almost slipped from her embrace, but she pinned it with her elbow.

“It’s been a while,” Onren called.

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