Most of their reduced crew was on deck, staring up where Paragon had pointed. Igrot’s infamous star had been branded deep in the bark of the near tree. Time had expanded the mark.

“Igrot’s biggest haul,” Paragon reminisced, “was when he took a treasure shipment meant for the Satrap of all Jamaillia. This was back in the days when the Satrapy sent a tribute ship once a year, to collect what was due him from his outlying settlements. Bingtown had put in Rain Wild goods, a rich haul of them. But en route to Jamaillia, the entire barge disappeared. None of it was ever seen again.”

“That was before my time, but I’ve heard of it,” Brashen said. “Folk said it was the richest load ever to leave Trehaug. Some treasure chambers had been unearthed. All of it was lost.”

“Hidden,” Paragon corrected him. He looked again to the lofty trees. Althea peered up at the dark mass, festooned with vines and creepers, perched high. It spanned the live branches of several trees.

Paragon’s voice was triumphant. “Didn’t you ever wonder why Igrot wanted a liveship? It was so he could have a place to hoard his trove, a place that no ordinary pirates could ever reach. Even if a member of his crew jabbered of where it was, robbers would need a liveship to recover it. He put in here, and his hearties traveled from my rigging to the trees. There they built a platform and hoisted the treasure up to it. He thought it would be safe forever.”

Brashen made a low sound. There was fury in his voice as he asked, “Did he blind you before or after he selected this place?”

The figurehead didn’t flinch from the question. “After,” he said quietly. “He never trusted me. With reason. I lost count of how many times I tried to kill him. He blinded me so that I could never find my way back without him.” He turned back to the awestruck crew on his deck and dropped Amber a slow wink. “He never thought that anyone might recarve me. Neither did I, back then. Nevertheless, here I am. Sole survivor of that bloody crew. It’s mine now. And hence, yours.” A stunned silence followed his words. No one spoke or moved.

The figurehead raised his eyebrows questioningly. “No one wants to reclaim it for us?” he asked wryly.

GETTING THEIR FIRST LOOK AT IT WAS THE EASY PART. RIGGING CATWALKS AND hoists through the trees to transport the stuff back to Paragon’s deck was the time-consuming part. Despite the backbreaking labor, no one complained. “As for Clef, you would think Paragon had planned this specifically to get him out of his lessons,” Brashen pointed out. As the ship’s nimblest rigging monkey, the boy had been freed from his lessons for this task.

“If he grins any wider, the top half of his head may come off,” Althea agreed. She craned her neck to see Clef. A heavy sack bounced on his back as he made his way back to the ship. Neither snakes nor swarming insects had dampened the boy’s enthusiasm for his rope-walking trips back and forth between ship and platform. “I wish he were a bit more cautious,” she worried. She, Brashen and several crewmen stood on a layered platform of logs. The vines had reinforced the old structure with their growing strength through the years, actually incorporating it into their system of tendrils and air roots. The chests and barrels that had held Igrot’s hoard had not fared as well. A good part of the day’s work had been repacking the spilled treasure into emptied food crates and casks. The variety of it astounded them. They had found Jamaillian coins and worked silver among the loot, a sure sign that Igrot had squirreled more than just the Rain Wild hoard here. Some of his booty had not survived. There were the long-moldered remains of tapestries and rugs, and heaps of iron rings atop the rotted leather that had once structured the battle shirts. What had survived far outweighed what had perished. Brashen had seen jeweled cups, amazing swords that still gleamed sharp when drawn from their filigreed scabbards, necklaces and crowns, statues and vases, game boards of ivory and marble with gleaming crystal playing pieces and other items he could not even identify. There were humbler items as well, from serving trays and delicate teacups to carved hair combs and jeweled pins. Among the Rain Wild goods was a set of delicately carved dragons with flakes of jewels for scales and a family of dolls with scaled faces. These last items Brashen was packing carefully into the onion basket from Paragon’s galley.

“I think these are musical instruments, or what is left of them,” Althea theorized.

He turned, stretching his back, to see what she was doing. She knelt, removing items from a big chest that had split its seams. She lifted chained crystals that tinkled and rang sweetly against one another as she freed them from their tomb and smiled as she turned to display them. She had forgotten that her hair was weighted with a net of jeweled chains. The motion caught glittering sunlight in her hair. She dazzled him. His heart swelled.