The Tide

Fourteen years after they sailed, twelve come home.

The ship that was built to be forgotten has crossed the great ocean the Ming never named. Behind the crew lie the island of the stone men, the voyaging peoples of the far islands, a reef with no gap and the clove islands at the edge of the world. Ahead lies a coast where the sea ban still holds.

Captain Chen Dinghai brings back the proof of what someone did to the Ming's charts, and the names of the Chinese who still wait on every coast for a ship. Waiting for him are a Guard officer who never closed the file, a silk merchant with a contract to keep, and a son who does not know his father is alive.

Then the news comes down the coast: the emperor has marched north against the Oirat, and at a post station called Tumu his army has been destroyed. As Esen's horsemen pour through the passes, the crew of the Biao Jiao Long carry their proof north to Beijing, to the minister Yu Qian and the walls he must hold. At the gate called Deshengmen, the tide of history is about to break.

The Tide is the final novel of The Eighth Voyage, a trilogy of the voyage the Ming tried to forget.