Chapter 10: The Drowned Orchard

The Drowned Orchard lay two miles off the harbor mouth, where the sea had swallowed a valley.

At low tide the tops of the old apple trees broke the surface in rows, black and bare and hung with weed.

Ilsa had come here once before, in the spring of her twenty-third year.

This time she came a year early, in Bryn's fishing boat, with a sea emperor sitting calmly in the bow.

"You look pleased," Bryn muttered from the tiller.

"I'm going to enjoy this," said Ilsa.

A Hall barge was already anchored among the trees.

Three witnesses in grey robes stood on its deck with their notebooks.

Beside them stood Caldrion in a fresh white coat with a high collar, buttoned to his chin.

Tuva was at the rail beside him, in a dive-suit of oiled silk, looking small and furious.

"Sister!" Tuva called across the water.

"You can't be here."

"This is the Hall's expedition."

"Then the Hall can watch," said Ilsa.

The senior witness frowned and wrote something down.

Caldrion's gaze went past her to Oren.

He did not look at the Emperor for long.

"The Sacred Whale is too large to enter the orchard," he said, to the barge in general.

"My mage will descend alone."

"The old sources say the first core sleeps in the heart of the grove."

He had not told them how he knew that.

Ilsa did.

She had been the one who found it.

She stood up in the boat and shrugged off her coat.

"She'll die down there," Oren said quietly.

"Probably," said Ilsa.

"But I'm not going to let her."

She dived.

The sea took her in a cold clean rush, and the air-pocket closed around her head.

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