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“No, you wouldn’t, Sorasa,” she said sharply, and the assassin flushed. “If anyone can find Corayne before the world ends, it’s you two.”

“If anyone can convince the Emperor to fight, it’s you.”

Another lie that only luck will make true, Sorasa thought.

“Quite a bit of pressure, that,” Sigil huffed.

Sorasa nodded, feeling the same weight across her own shoulders. The sea suddenly felt like open jaws, stretching in every direction. Sorasa hoped it did not snap shut on them all.

“It’s the road we chose,” she whispered. “When we chose Corayne. And all the rest of them.”

Wherever they may be, dead or alive.

Sigil scratched a hand over her scalp, setting her short black hair on end.

“Who knew I’d be glad I never killed the priest,” she said, incredulous.

“Good of him to finally pull his weight.”

Sorasa nodded, thanking the gods for Charlie’s quill and his far-flungletters, their truth written in lying ink. They were enough to give pause, to raise alarm. To turn eyes toward Galland and see the evil growing there. She hoped the letters reached every court upon the Ward, from Rhashir to Kasa to Calidon.

“I will see you again, Sorasa Sarn.”

Sigil’s whisper trailed, hanging between them.

“The iron bones of the Countless,” Sorasa murmured.

In the dim light, Sigil put a closed fist to her chest.

“Will never be broken.”

She could not bear to watch the Temur ship disappear into the horizon, and turned herself south, to the warmer wind blowing up from hotter lands. Sorasa inhaled slowly, as if she could taste the heat of Ibal, the sweet pang of juniper and jasmine. There was only salt, and the edge of smoke still clinging to her hair.

“And how do you intend to find my daughter?”

Meliz’s voice was not unlike Corayne’s, and it made Sorasa’s stomach flip. She turned in time to see the captain lean up against the ship’s rail, one hand planted on her hip.

Her stare was the same too. Sharp, piercing. And hungry.

Sorasa wanted nothing more than to escape below deck but stood her ground.

“The two most powerful people in the realm hunt your daughter,” she said. “They’ll find her for us.”

The captain tossed back her braid, sneering. “I am a pirate, not a gambler.”

“You’re a realist, as I am,” Sorasa shot back. “You see the world as it is.”

Meliz could only nod. Her sword still hung at her hip, and there wasanother dagger in her boot. She had a scar through one eyebrow, and far worse markings on her hands, from rope burn, sun damage, all manner of injury. Like Sorasa, she was a woman of the Ward, accustomed to danger and harder lives lived.

“That world no longer exists.” Sorasa leaned forward, bracing both elbows against the rail of the ship. “Spindles torn, monsters walk. And the worst monster of all controls the throne of Galland.”

“I’ve done what I can to slow them down,” Meliz muttered.

“There is more still to do,” Sorasa said sharply. “Where are you bound for?”

“Orisi, but we’ll take on supplies in Lecorra.”

An island city in Tyriot, weeks away. And before it, the capital of Siscaria?