28. Twenty-eight
Chapter 28
When I suggested we ought to sleep in the boat, Oraik was horrified.
“In that tiny thing,” he said. I blinked at him, and his eyes widened. “If this is a seduction attempt, it’s the worst I’ve seen.”
“I—what? Of course it’s not,” I protested, shocked he’d be so absurd. But Oraik just interrupted, rambling.
“On the water. With no roof. No blankets. No pillow. Oh, dear. You’re worse than I thought.”
Frustration made my head feel like a tangle of sailing knots. I gripped my hands into fists and tried to keep my voice calm.
“Well, I don’t see a tavern and I haven’t got money for one anyways. It’s that, or the streets.”
Oraik groaned dramatically.
“ Please don’t make me take back what I said about you being a good captor.”
“You were living with pirates !”
“The pirates had houses with roofs. I demand that, at the very least.”
“Then get it yourself.” I’d lost all semblance of calm.
“Yes, I’d better. They’re more likely to say yes to me, anyways. Come on.” He ruffled my hair—I swatted at his hand, too annoyed to put up with physical touch—and stood.
Oraik was right about our odds. I hadn’t made any friends among the villagers. I hadn’t wanted to. And with the way I’d acted, it seemed like somewhat of a miracle that he still liked me.
I was nervous to return to the town square and walked a step behind Oraik, unsure what the festival would be like now. We’d lingered at the water for ages. He’d returned a few times to get more food and drinks, and spent so long on one of the trips that I think he might have danced again, which I couldn’t begrudge him.
The bonfire had reduced to only the height of my knees, and the crowd had thinned. It didn’t feel so overwhelming now as before. I followed Oraik around as he chatted and thanked different people. Then suddenly we were being ushered into one of the houses. In a great flurry of activity blankets and pillows were carried in and set on the tiled kitchen floor. I made sure to thank everyone profusely, but mostly they were paying attention to Oraik.
And then we were alone, bundled on the floor a foot from each other.
“I wish I could do something to thank them,” I whispered.
“What about a spell?” He rolled over to face me. “People pay good money for spellcraft, don’t they?”
“The thing is, I’m not a very good witch.” Saying it out loud felt like cracking my chest open and letting him look inside. But Oraik didn’t seem impressed.
“You saved me.”
“Barely.” I sighed, not realizing he’d finally admitted it out loud. “I had fortunate timing. I’m just not powerful enough.”
His response got lost in a yawn. Tomorrow would be better, I told myself. Tomorrow Kalcedon would be here.
We fell asleep. Sometime in the night Oraik rolled half on top of me, pinning my arm and breathing right against my cheek. I wormed free.
But I woke up to the feeling of a suffocating weight crushing me down to the ground again.
“Oraik,” I mumbled. I opened my eyes.
But Oraik lay two feet to my right. There was nothing on me except a thin blanket.
And a wall of magic.
It was dim out, first light at best, but I could see the shadowed fog above me descending slowly from the ceiling. I choked on air as panic slammed into me. Still senseless with sleep, all I knew was that we had to get out of there immediately.
“Oraik,” I yelped. He stirred, and I grabbed him by the shoulder. “Get up! Horns, get up!”
“I’m up,” he said, even though he wasn’t. I grabbed my bag, and then I grabbed him and started trying to drag him to the door. Obviously, I couldn’t; he was twice my size. But yanking on his arm had the desired effect after all, since he wrenched it free and then finally sat up, blinking.
By that point the fog was only a foot or two over my head, and still sinking slowly. I could see flickers in the darkness of other spells. All I knew was that we had to run, blindly if need be, dumb as a tuna racing from a fisherman’s net with no knowledge of the knives or fire that would await her if she failed.
“Come on,” I yelled. “Keep low!” He’d caught on to my panic by then. Oraik scrambled up and threw himself outside.
The fog was outside too, like a blanket sinking over the whole town. It was later in the morning than I’d thought: not dark because the sun was still under the horizon, dark because the sun was muffled.
“What’s happening?” Oraik said, spinning to look around.
“I don’t know. Come on. Don’t let it touch you,” I said. He bent over and we ran towards the docks, down the slope of the hill where the fog sat higher above our heads.
“We have to help them,” Oraik told me as we passed more houses, these ones low enough towards the water that the fog just clipped past their roofs.
“We can’t.”
“But—” his steps slowed. The idiot was actually thinking about it.
“It’ll be you they’re after,” I snapped. “We can help by leaving.”
The sky was brighter in front of us. The fog thinned by the beach, torn apart by the ocean wind. I didn’t slow down.
There was a huge ship in the distance, far enough out and so big that it seemed to sit on the line of the horizon. I squinted at the forest-green sails. Another ship further out was just a shadow.
“Colynes?” I asked, gasping for air as we reached the docks and slowed.
“I think so,” Oraik said. He was gasping for breath, too.
I weighed our odds for a moment. I didn’t trust a Colynes warship, but we couldn’t stay on land.
“We’ll keep as close to the coast as we can,” I said, mentally charting a route around Montay and, hopefully, to somewhere the fog hadn’t reached. “Come on.” There was a stitch in my side, but we managed the last dash to the little sailboat. I dumped my things and started to unwind the rope holding my boat to the dock.
“This doesn’t feel right,” Oraik said. He was standing, holding onto the mast and staring back at the town with a grim look on his face. “We should go back. We should—”
“We can’t ,” I told him. I almost had the boat free. I looked up to see whether the wind still kept the fog back.
It was a sight. The colorful little village was cloaked in shadow, as if night still lingered there. I thought about Cliantha, and the couple who’d let us sleep on their floor, and hoped the spell was not one of death.
Above the fog, two massive ravens circled like vultures above carrion.
“Strange,” Oraik said. “I could swear, I keep seeing those birds.”
One of the ravens screeched, a broken guttural call. They turned towards us, growing closer, larger.
And then they dove.