“Hafrid,” he bellowed, “what’s here?”
The cartographer shielded her face from the rain. “There shouldn’t be anything this far south.”
“And yet.” Harlowe snapped the nightglass closed. “Master Plume, get us to that island.”
“If it’s inhabited, they’ll put us all to the sword,” Plume shouted back.
“Then the Rose will live, and we’ll die faster than we will out here,” Harlowe barked at his quartermaster. His eyes were lit by a thunderstroke. “Estina, muster the crew!”
The boatswain took a pipe from a brass chain around her neck and pinched it between her teeth. A high-pitched trill rode the wind. Loth held on to the gunwale, water beading on his lashes, as Melaugo piped orders to the pirates. They danced to the tune of the whistle, scaling the ratlines and heaving at ropes while the ship keened beneath them. It was chaos to Loth’s eye—yet soon enough, the island was in sight, drawing closer by the moment. Too close. More whistles, and the courses were taken up.
The Rose Eternal did not slow.
Harlowe narrowed his eyes. His ship kept carving its way toward the island, faster than ever.
“This is no natural thing. The tide shouldn’t be strong enough to reel us in.” His face tightened. “She’s going to run aground.”
As Loth wiped rain from his brow, a flash came from low down on the island. Bright as a mirror catching the sun.
“What in damsam is that?” Plume squinted as the moonburst of light came again. “Do you see it, Captain?”
“Aye.”
“Someone must be signaling us.” Melaugo clung to a dripping rope. “Captain?”
Harlowe kept his hands on the balustrade, his gaze on the island. Tines of lightning painted its heights.
“Captain,” the leadsman cried, “seventeen fathoms by the mark. We’re surrounded by reef.”
Melaugo went to the side and looked over. “I see it. Damsel save us, it’s everywhere.” She held on to the brim of her hat. “Captain, it’s almost like she knows her way. She’s missing it all by the skin of her barnacles.”
Harlowe brazened out the island, his expression set. Loth searched his face for any sign of hope.
“Belay last order,” Harlowe commanded. “Let fall all anchors and douse all sails.”
“We can’t stop now,” Plume shouted to him.
“We can try. If the Rose runs aground, she’s finished. And that, I cannot allow.”
“We can avoid it. Risk the storm—”
“Even if we could somehow turn around in this reef, we’ll be blown farther south and becalmed when it’s done,” Harlowe barked. “Would you like to die that way, Master Plume?”
Melaugo traded a frustrated look with Plume before she relayed the command to the crew. Rope was hauled, the sails stowed. Seafarers clung to the yards above, boots planted on footropes, and heaved at the canvas with their bare hands. One of them was lashed off and slammed into the deck. Bone shattered. Blood mingled with seawater. With a calm that belied the chaos around him, Harlowe descended and took the wheel from his quartermaster.
Loth held on. All he could taste was salt. All he could feel was its burn in his eyes. When the first of the Rose’s anchors hooked into the seabed, the lurch seemed to unseat his organs.
The crew let fall the second anchor, then the third. Still they did not slow. The leadsman counted down the fathoms. Loth braced himself as three anchors towed in vain at the ship.
Thunder boomed. Lightning flashed. The final anchor plunged beneath the waves, but the sand was too close now, far too close to avoid. Harlowe kept hold of the wheel, his knuckles taut.
It was the reef or the beach. And Loth knew from the look in his eyes that Harlowe would not risk the destruction of the Rose by steering her into the teeth of the reef.
Melaugo let out a blast from her whistle. The crew abandoned their work and cleaved to what they could.
The man-of-war shuddered beneath them. Loth clenched his teeth, expecting to feel the hull being shredded. The quake went on for what seemed like eternity—and then, quite suddenly, the Rose was almost statue-still. All he could hear was the patter of rain against the deck.
“Six fathoms,” the leadsman said, panting.
A riotous cheer went up from the crew. Loth rose, his knees trembling, and joined Melaugo. When he saw the waves around them, still buoying the ship, he pressed his head into his hands and laughed as if he would never stop. Melaugo grinned and crossed her arms.
“There you are, lordling. You’ve survived your first storm.”
“But how did it stop?” Loth watched the sea lap at the hull. “We were going so fast . . .”
“Don’t give a fuck, myself. Let’s just call it a miracle—from your Saint, if you fancy.”
Only Harlowe seemed loath to rejoice. He looked up at the island with a flicker in his jaw.
“Captain.” Melaugo had noticed. “What is it?”
His gaze stayed on the island. “I have been a seafarer for many years,” he said. “Never have I felt a ship move as the Rose just did. As if a god had pulled her out of the storm.”
Melaugo seemed not to know what to say. She slapped her sodden hat over her hair.
“Find us dry powder and muster some scouts,” Harlowe said. “As soon as we’ve cleaned up Master Lark’s body, we need sweet water and food. I’ll take a small party ashore. Everyone else, including those in the Inysh retinue, should stay and help patch up the ship.”
“I should like to come with you. If I may,” Loth cut in. “Forgive me, Captain Harlowe, but after that experience, I have rather lost my sea legs. I would feel more useful on land.”
“I see.” Harlowe looked him up and down. “Do you know how to hunt, Lord Arteloth?”
“Indeed. I often hunted in Inys.”
“At court, I assume. And I imagine that was with a bow.”
“Yes.”
“Well, we’ve no bows here, I’m afraid,” Harlowe said, “but we’ll teach you how to use a pistol.” He clapped Loth on the shoulder as he passed. “I’ll make a pirate of you yet.”
The Rose Eternal was left anchored and with all sails furled, but the wind still swayed her dangerously. Loth climbed into a rowing boat with two of the Knights of the Body, who had both refused to carry pistols. Their swords were all they needed in a fight.
Loth held his own pistol with a firm hand. Melaugo had shown him how to prime and fire it.
Rain churned the sea around the boats. They rowed beneath a natural arch, toward a beach that sloped into steep foothills. As they drew closer to the shore, Harlowe raised his nightglass.
“People,” he murmured. “On the beach.”
He spoke to one of the gunners in another language. The woman took the nightglass from him and peered through it.
“This may be Feather Island, a sacred place, home to the most treasured documents in the East,” Harlowe translated. “Only scholars can set foot on it, and they won’t be well armed.”
“They are still bound by Eastern law.” Melaugo cocked her pistol. “We’re not privateers to them, Harlowe. We’re plague-ridden pirates. Like everyone else on these waters.”
“They may not adhere to the sea ban.” Harlowe glanced at his boatswain. “Do you have any better ideas, Estina?”
The gunner signaled for her to lower the weapon. Melaugo pursed her lips, but obeyed.
Three people waited for them on the shore. Two men and a woman in robes of darkest red, who watched them with guarded expressions.
Behind them lay what Loth thought, at first, was the wreckage of a ship. Then he saw that it was the skeleton of an enormous beast.
It was close to the length of the beach. Whatever it was that had died here had been larger than a baleen. Now it was picked clean, the bones iridescent under the moonlight.
Loth got out of the rowing boat and helped the other seafarers shove it on to the sand, shaking water from his eyes. Harlowe approached the strangers and bowed. They returned t
he gesture. He spoke to them for some time before returning to the scouting party.
“The scholars of Feather Island have offered us shelter for as long as the storm continues, and they permit us to collect water. They only have room for forty of us in their house, but they’ll let the rest of the crew sleep in their empty storehouses,” Harlowe shouted over the wind. “All of this is on the condition that we bring no weapons on to the island, and that we touch none of its residents. They fear we might carry the plague.”
“Bit late on the weapons front,” Melaugo said.
“I mislike this, Harlowe,” one of the Knights of the Body called. “I say we stay on the Rose.”
“And I say otherwise.”
“Why?”
Harlowe turned those cold eyes on him with the lightest touch of contempt. With the storm raging around him, he looked like some chaotic god of the sea.
“I intended to renew our supplies in Kawontay,” he said, “but now the storm has blown us off-course, we will be out of food before we can get to it. Most of the water is befouled.” He took two hunting knives from their sheaths. “The crew won’t sleep on that sea, and I need them on their mettle. There will be a skeleton crew left on watch, of course—and if anyone else wishes to remain on the Rose, I won’t stop ’em. Let’s see how long it takes them to decide that it isn’t worth drinking their own piss.”
Harlowe approached the strangers again and set the knives, and his pistol, on the sand at their feet. Melaugo clicked her tongue before emptying her clothes of an array of blades. The Knights of the Body laid down their broadswords in the same way a parent might lay down a newborn. Loth ceded his blades and the pistol. The scholars watched them in silence. When all were disarmed, one of the men walked away, and the scouting party followed him.
Feather Island loomed above them. Lightning bared the rough-hewn precipices, lushly green, of breathtaking height. The scholar led them from the beach, beneath another arch, to where a stair had been whittled into a cliff face. Loth craned his neck to see it climbing out of sight.
They were on that stair for a long time. Wind roared at their sides. Rain soaked their boots, making every step perilous. By the time they reached the top, Loth’s knees were ready to buckle.
The scholar led them over grass and under dripping trees, to a path lined with lanterns. A house was waiting for them, raised from the ground on a platform, with white walls and a tiled roof, supported by pillars of timber. It was like no dwelling Loth had ever seen. The scholar opened the doors and removed his shoes before entering. The newcomers did the same. Loth followed Harlowe into the cool interior of the building.
The walls were unadorned. Instead of carpets, there were sweet-smelling mats. A sunken hearth was surrounded by square cushions. The scholar spoke again to Harlowe.
“This is where we’ll stay. The storehouses are nearby.” Harlowe eyed the room. “As soon as the storm abates, I’ll see if I can’t persuade the scholars to sell us some millet. Enough to get us to Kawontay.”
“We can give them nothing in exchange,” Loth pointed out. “They might need the millet for themselves.”
“You’ll never be a seafarer if you think that way, my lord.”
“I don’t want to be a seafarer.”
“Of course you don’t.”
The dark was at its deepest. Tané watched the Inysh ship through the open windows of the healing room.
“They will be gone within a few days,” Elder Vara was murmuring to the other elders. “This storm will soon end.”
“Vara, they will empty our storehouses,” the honored High Elder said, in hushed and angry tones. “They number in the hundreds. We can survive on the fruits of the island for a time, but if they take the rice and millet—”
“They are pirates,” another elder cut in. “They may not be from the Fleet of the Tiger Eye, but there are only pirates in these waters. Of course they will take our food—by force, if necessary.”
“These are not pirates,” Elder Vara soothed. “Their captain says they come from Queen Sabran of Inys. They are bound for the Empire of the Twelve Lakes. I think, for the sake of peace, it would be best to help them on their way.”
“By risking the lives of our charges,” the same elder hissed. “What if they carry the red sickness?”
Tané was hardly listening to the squabble. Her gaze was on the storm-tossed sea.
The blue jewel was quiet in its prison. She kept it in a watertight lacquer case on her sash, always in reach.
“You are an utter fool,” the High Elder barked, drawing her attention back to the room. “You should have refused them shelter. This is sacred land.”
“We must show them a little compassion, Elder—”
“Try preaching compassion to the people who lost their lives, their families, when the red sickness came to the shores of the East.” The elder sniffed. “On your head be it.”
He swept out of the room, giving Tané a brief nod as he passed. The other elders followed. Elder Vara pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Do we have any weapons at all on this island?” Tané asked him.
“A handful under the floor in the dining hall, for use if the island is threatened by invaders. The elders, in that case, would secure the archives while the younger scholars fought.”
“We ought to keep them close. Most of the scholars are trained in the sword-way,” Tané said. “If these pirates try to rob us, we must be ready.”
“I have no wish to cause panic among the students, child. The outsiders will remain in the cliffside village. We are too high for them here.” He offered her a smile. “You have been a great help to me today, but the night is old. You have earned your rest.”
“I am not tired.”
“Your face tells me otherwise.”
It was true that there was cold sweat on her brow, and that shadow circled her eyes. She bowed and left the healing room.
The corridors of the house were empty. Most of the scholars knew nothing of the pirates, and slept with no cares in the world. Tané kept a hand at her side, close to the case.
It had not taken her long to understand the way her treasure worked. Every day, before reflection and after supper, she had climbed to the top of the dormant volcano, where rainwater pooled in the crater, and attuned herself to the vibrations of the jewel. She found an instinct, buried deep, that showed her how to will those vibrations outward—as if she had done this long ago, and her body was remembering.
At first, she had used the jewel to cast ripples. Next, she had folded an oil-paper butterfly and made it glide away from her. Then, under cover of darkness, she had started to sneak down to the beach.
Days it had taken her to lure in the surf. The tides were set in their ways.
Tané had watched a woman in Cape Hisan embroidering a robe once. The needle dipping in and out, drawing the thread behind it, colors blooming on the silk. Inspired by the memory, Tané had imagined the power in the jewel as a needle, the water as the thread, and herself as a seamster of the sea. Slowly, the waves had leaned toward her and wrapped themselves around her legs.
Finally, one night, the jewel as bright as lightning in her grasp, she had hauled the sea onto the beach until there was no sand. It had mystified the scholars before it ebbed away.
That effort had left her almost insensible. But she knew now what she and the jewel could do.
When she had seen the Western ship, embattled by the storm, she had run straight to the cliffs. The great Kwiriki had sent her an opportunity, and she was ready, at last, to seize it.
The sea had answered her willingly this time. Though the ship had strained against it, she had succeeded in guiding it past the coral reef. Now it was almost unguarded in the shallows.
It was time to make her escape. She had wasted away for too long in this place. And she knew exactly where she would go. To the island of the mulberry tree, where the Golden Empress was headed with Nayimathun in the belly of her ship.
Tané hu
ng her gourd of sweet water from her sash and made her way to the empty dining hall. The weapons were hidden beneath a floorboard, just as Elder Vara had said. She tucked the throwing knives into her sash, then took a Seiikinese sword and a dagger.
“I thought I might find you here.”
Tané stilled.
“I knew you would try to leave. I saw it in your eyes when I told you about the Fleet of the Tiger Eye.” Elder Vara kept his voice low. “You cannot master that ship alone, Tané. You would need a crew of hundreds.”
“Or this.”
She reached into her case and showed him the jewel, now dull. Elder Vara stared at it.
“The rising jewel of Neporo.” His gaze was reverent. “In all my years, I never thought—”
He could not finish. “It was sewn into my side,” Tané said quietly. “I have had it inside me my whole life.”
“By the light of the great Kwiriki. For centuries Feather Island guarded the star chart to Komoridu, the resting place of the rising jewel,” he murmured. “It seems it was never there.”
“Do you know where the island is, Elder Vara?” Tané rose. “I meant to search the seas until I found the Golden Empress, but I will have more chance if I know where she is going.”
“Tané,” Elder Vara said, “you must not go there. Even if you did meet the Fleet of the Tiger Eye, there is no surety that the great Nayimathun is still alive. And if she is, you cannot take on the might of the pirate army to reclaim her. You would die in the attempt.”
“I must try.” Tané offered a faint smile. “Like the Little Shadow-girl. I took heart from that story, Elder Vara.”
She could see the struggle in him.
“I understand,” he finally said. “Miduchi Tané died when her dragon was taken. Since then, you have been her ghost. A vengeful ghost—restless, unable to move forward.”
Heat pricked her eyes.
“Were I a younger or braver man, I might even have come with you. I would have risked anything,” he said, “for my dragon.”
Tané stared at him.
The Priory of the Orange Tree Page 64
