She handed him her nightglass. Niclays squinted into it.
An island. Unquestionably. A small one, almost certainly uninhabited, but an island nonetheless. He breathed out as he handed the nightglass back.
“I am glad to see it, all-honored Golden Empress,” he said frankly.
She beheld the island with a hunter’s intent. As she turned to one of her officers, Niclays glanced at the notches on her wooden arm.
“She’s signaling to the Black Dove to circle the island,” Laya murmured. “The High Sea Guard could still be on our tail. Or rumors could have reached another pirate ship of our quest.”
“Surely no pirate captain would be fool enough to confront a ship like this.”
“The world is full of fools, Niclays. And they are never more foolish than when they smell eternal life.”
Sabran could attest to that.
So could Jannart.
Niclays tapped his fingers on the gunwale. As the island came closer, his mouth turned dry as ashes.
“Come, Roos,” the Golden Empress said. Her voice was velvet soft. “You ought to share in the first spoils. After all, you brought us here.”
He dared not argue.
When they were anchored, the Golden Empress addressed her pirates. This island, she told them, was home to a bounty that would lay waste to their troubles. The elixir would make them all-powerful. They would be masters of the sea. Her people roared and stamped their feet until Niclays was brittle with fear. They might be triumphant now, but one sniff of failure, one whisper that they had come all this way for nothing, and their joy would turn to murderous ire.
A boat was readied for the scouting party. Laya and Niclays joined the twenty members of the crew, including the Golden Empress, who would set foot on the island before anyone else, and Ghonra, her heir. Though Niclays supposed she would never need an heir if they did find the elixir.
The rowing boat glided out of the shadow of the Pursuit. It soon became apparent to Niclays that what they could see of the island was only the pinnacle of it. Much of the rest had been claimed by the sea.
When they could go no farther, they left two of their number with the boat and waded the rest of the way. Niclays stepped onto dry land and wrung the water from his shirt.
This place might be his grave. He had imagined being folded into the dirt of Orisima. Instead, his bones would lie on a hidden island in the vastness of a far-off sea.
Drunkenness made him slow. When Ghonra looked over her shoulder and arched an eyebrow at him, he took a deep breath and trudged after her, up a hummock of slippery rock.
Their footsteps took them into the darkness of a forest. The only hint of civilization was the stone bridge they used to cross a stream. He made out a flight of steps, scarped into the rock. The Golden Empress was the first to mount it.
They climbed the stair for what seemed like hours. It snaked between endless maple and fir trees.
There were no dwellings here. No guardians of the mulberry tree. Just nature, given leave to run its course for centuries. Wasps droned and birds chirruped. A hart bounded across their path and back into the gloaming, startling half the pirates into drawing their swords.
Niclays panted. Sweat drenched his shirt. He mopped his brow fruitlessly as rivulets trickled down his brow. It had been a long time since he had exerted himself like this.
“Niclays,” Laya said under her breath. “Are you all right?”
“Dying,” he gritted out. “By the grace of the Damsel, I’ll expire before we reach the top.”
He only realized they had stopped when he walked headlong into Ghonra, who knocked him back with a pointy elbow to the gut. Legs trembling, Niclays looked up to behold a tree. A gnarled and ancient mulberry, larger than any tree he had ever laid eyes on.
Cut down.
Niclays stared at the fallen giant. The feeling bled from his legs. His lips began to shake, and his eyes grew hot.
He was here. At the end of the Way of the Outcasts. This was what Jannart had wanted to see, the secret he had died for. Niclays was standing in the realization of his dream.
His faithless dream.
The mulberry tree bore no flower or fruit. It looked almost grotesque in its mass, stretched beyond its natural proportions, like a body pulled upon a rack. Its trunk was as thick as a baleen. In death, its branches reached for the stars, as if they might hold out silver hands and help it stand again.
The Golden Empress walked slowly among its dead limbs. Laya took Niclays by the arm. He felt her shivering and found himself pressing his hand over hers.
“Yidagé, Roos,” the Golden Empress called, “come here.”
Laya closed her eyes.
“It’s all right.” Niclays kept his voice low. “She won’t hurt you, Laya. You’re too useful to her.”
“I have no wish to watch her hurt you.”
“I am deeply hurt by how little faith you have in my capacity for battle, Mistress Yidagé.” He held up his cane with a weak smile. “I can take them all with this, don’t you think?”
She choked back a laugh.
“There are words carved here,” the Golden Empress said to Laya, when they were near. “Translate them.”
Her face betrayed nothing. Laya let go of Niclays and stepped over a branch and crouched beside the trunk. One of the pirates handed her a torch, and she held it carefully toward the tree. The flames shed light on a cascade of carved words.
“Forgive me, all-honored Golden Empress, but I cannot translate this. Bits of it are familiar, but much of it is not,” Laya said. “I fear it is beyond the realm of my knowledge.”
“Perhaps I can.”
Niclays glanced over his shoulder. The Seiikinese scholar, the one who was never far from the Golden Empress, laid a withered hand on the trunk as if it were the earthly remains of an old friend.
“The torch, if you please,” he said. “This will not take long.”
There was no moonlight to betray the Western ship. From high in its yards, Tané watched the pirates go ashore.
The Rose Eternal was anchored where the pirates could not see. After she had turned the ship southeast at the right moment, they had sailed until her nightglass revealed an island.
Elder Vara believed the rising jewel had come from here. Perhaps this place held the secret of why it had been in her side—or perhaps not. What mattered was Nayimathun.
The wind blew strands of hair across her face. She knew these ships from her days in the South House, where she had learned to identify the most notorious vessels in the Fleet of the Tiger Eye. Both carried the red sails of sickness. The Black Dove, which was half the length of the Pursuit, was circling the island with its gun ports open.
Tané descended to the deck. She had freed her two captives so they might help her.
“You,” Tané said to Thim. “While I am gone, guard the ship.”
Thim watched her. “Where are you going?”
“To the Pursuit.”
“They will tear you apart.”
“Help me survive, and I will see to it that you get to the Empire of the Twelve Lakes in one piece. Betray me, and I will leave you here to die,” Tané said. “The choice is yours.”
“Who are you?” Thim asked, frowning. “You fight better than any soldier. None of the crew stood a chance against you. Why were you drafted into the ranks of the scholars, and not the Miduchi?”
Tané handed him the nightglass.
“If they see you,” was all she said, “fire one of the cannons as a warning.”
But Thim had realized. She watched the deference rise into his eyes. “You were Miduchi.” Thim studied her face. “Why were you banished?”
“Who I am and who I was are none of your concern.” She nodded to Loth. “You. Come with me.”
“Into the sea?” Loth stared at her. “We’ll freeze.”
“Not if we keep moving.”
“What do you mean to do on that ship?”
“Free a prisoner.”
Tané braced herself before she climbed down the side of the ship, shivering in the chill. Then she let go.
Her body plunged into darkness. The cold knocked the breath from her, bubbles exploding from her lips.
It was worse than she had expected. She had swum every day in Seiiki, whatever the season, but the Sundance Sea had never been this frigid. When she surfaced, her breath came in white puffs. Behind her, Loth made wordless sounds of discomfort. He was at the bottom of the slats.
“Just jump,” Tané forced out. “It will b-be over sooner.”
Loth squeezed his eyes shut, and his face took on the forbearance of a man who had consigned himself to death before he let go. He sank and surfaced in an instant, gasping.
“Saint—” His teeth chattered. “It’s f-freezing.”
“Then you will need to hurry,” Tané said, and swam.