Page 48 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

She whirled toward the stair. Ead threw her knife.

Even in this state, she struck true. Truyde was pulled back with a strangled gasp, pinned by her cloak to the doorpost. Before she could escape, Ead was in front of her.

“My duty is to slay the servants of the Nameless One. I will also kill all those who threaten the House of Berethnet,” she breathed. “If you mean to accuse me of sorcery before the Virtues Council, I bid you find some way to prove it—and find it quickly, before I make poppets of you and your lover and stab them in the heart. Do you think that because Triam Sulyard is in the East, I cannot smite him where he stands?”

Truyde breathed hard through her teeth.

“If you lay a finger on him,” she whispered, “I will see you burn in Marian Square.”

“Fire has no power over me.”

She pulled the knife free. Truyde crumpled against the wall, panting, one hand at her throat.

Ead turned to the door. Her breath came swift and hot, and her ears rang.

She took one step before she fell.

10

East

Ginura was all that Tané had imagined. Ever since she was a child, she had pictured the capital in a thousand ways. Inspired by what she had heard from her learnèd teachers, her imagination had fashioned it into a dream of castles and teahouses and pleasure boats.

Her imagination had not failed her. The shrines were larger than any in Cape Hisan, the streets glistened like sand under the sun, and petals drifted along the canals. Still, more people meant more noise and commotion. Charcoal smoke thickened the air. Oxen pulled carts of goods, messengers ran or rode between buildings, stray hounds nosed at scraps of food, and here and there, a drunkard ranted at the crowds.

Andsuchcrowds. Tané had thought Cape Hisan busy, but a hundred thousand people jostled in Ginura, and for the first time in her life, she realized how little of the world she had seen.

The palanquins carried the apprentices deeper into the city. The season trees were as vivid as Tané had always been told, with their butter-yellow summer leaves, and the street performers played music that Susa would love. She spotted two snow monkeys perched on a roof. Merchants sang of silk and tin and sea grapes from the northern coast.

As the palanquins wound past canals and over bridges, people turned their backs, as if they were unworthy to look upon the sea guardians. Among them were the fish-people, as commoners disparagingly called them in Cape Hisan—courtiers who dressed as if they had just walked out of the ocean. Some of them were said to scrape the scales off rainbow fish and comb them through their hair.

When Tané saw Ginura Castle, her breath caught. The roofs were the color of sun-blanched coral, the walls like cuttlebone. It had been designed to resemble the Palace of Many Pearls, where the Seiikinese dragons entered their slumber each year and was said to bridge the sea and the celestial plane.

Once, in the days when they had possessed all their powers, the dragons had not needed a season of rest.

The procession came to a halt outside the Ginura School of War, where the sea guardians would be sorted for the last time. It was the oldest and most prestigious institute of its kind, where new soldiers lodged and continued their instruction in the arts of war. It was here that Tané would prove herself worthy of a place in Clan Miduchi. It was here that she would exhibit the skills she had honed since she was a child.

Thunder rumbled overhead. As she emerged from the palanquin, her legs buckled, sore from being scrunched up for so long. Turosa laughed, but a servant caught her.

“I have you, honored lady.”

“Thank you,” Tané said. Seeing that she was steady, he held an umbrella over her.

The first of the rain drenched her boots as she walked with the others through the gateway, drinking in the grandeur of its silver leaf and sea-blanched wood. Carvings of the great warriors of Seiikinese history clustered under its gable, as if hiding from the storm. Tané spotted the long-honored Princess Dumai and the First Warlord among them. Heroes of her childhood.

A woman was waiting for them in the hall, where they removed their boots. Her hair was sleeked into a coiffure.

“Welcome to Ginura,” she said in a cool voice. “You have the morning to wash and rest in your quarters. At noon, you will begin the first of your water trials. In that time, you will be observed by the honored Sea General, and by those who may yet be your kin.”

Clan Miduchi.Tané thrilled inside.

The woman led them deeper into the school, through courtyards and covered passageways. Each of the sea guardians was shown into a small room. Tané found herself installed on the upper floor, near the other three principal apprentices. Her room looked over a courtyard, where a fishpond was churned to bubbles by the downpour.

Her traveling clothes reeked. It had been three days since they had last stopped at a roadside inn.

She found a cypress bath behind a windwall. Scented oils and petals floated on the water. Her hair fanned out around her as she sank into it and thought back to Cape Hisan. To Susa.

She would be fine. Like a cat, Susa had a way of always landing on her feet. When they were young and Tané had still made frequent visits to the city, her friend would steal pan-fried lotus roots or salt plums, dashing away like a fox if she was spotted. They would hide somewhere and stuff themselves senseless, laughing all the while. The only time Susa had ever looked afraid was when Tané had first met her.

---