“Arista’s not here to harm me. You’re not, are you?” she asked Ella, who shook her head. “There, you see? Now come here and join us. We have much to do.”

“Thrace.” Ella spoke, looking nervously at Modina. The empress raised a hand to stop her.

“The both of you need to trust me,” Modina said.

Amilia shook her head. “But how can I? Why should I? This—this woman—”

“Because,” the empress interrupted, “we have to help Arista.”

Amilia would have laughed at the absurdity if Modina had not looked so serious. In all the time she had taken care of her, Amilia had never seen her so focused, so clear-eyed. She felt out of her element. The hazy Modina was gone, but she was still speaking nonsense. She had to make her understand, for her own good. “Modina, guards are looking for this woman. They’ve been combing the city for days.”

“That’s why she’s going to stay here. It’s the safest place. Not even the regents will look for her in my bedroom. And it’ll make helping her that much easier.”

“Helping her? Helping her with what?” Amilia was nearly at the end of her own sanity just trying to follow this absurd conversation.

“We’re going to help her find Degan Gaunt, the true Heir of Novron.”

CHAPTER 14

CALIS

The port of Dagastan surprised first-time visitors from Avryn, who thought of everywhere else as less civilized or uncultured. Calis was generally held, by those who had never been there, to be a crude, ramshackle collection of tribal bands living in mud or wooden huts within a dense and mysterious jungle. It shocked most when they first laid eyes on the massive domes and elegant spires rising along the coast. The city was astonishingly large and well developed. Stone and gray-brick buildings sat densely packed on a graduated hillside rising from the elegant harbor that put Aquesta’s wooden docks to shame. Here four long stone piers stretched into the bay, along which stately towers rose at regular intervals, facilitating the needs of the bustling trade center. Masts of more than a hundred ships, nearly all of them exotic merchant vessels, lined the harbor.

Hadrian remembered the city the moment it came into view. The heat of the ancient stones, the spice-scented streets, the exotic women—all memories of an impetuous youth that he preferred to forget. He had left the east behind without regret, and it was not without reservations that he found himself returning.

No bells rang in the towers along the harbor as they entered. No alarm signaled as the bloodred sails of their Dacca-built tartane entered port. A pilot boat merely issued out and hailed them at their approach.

“En dil dual lon duclim?” the pilot called to them.

“I can’t understand you,” Wesley replied.

“What’s name of your vessel? And name of captain?” the pilot repeated.