15. Fifteen
Chapter 15
“Meda,” a familiar voice said. “Meda, wake up. Curse it, Meda.”
I opened my eyes. The sun was hot and far too bright. Slowly I pushed myself up. My back hurt. The ground was hard. Stone. Was I sleeping outside? But my head had been resting on something softer. A man’s arm.
It came back to me far too fast, lashing through a throbbing, dizzying headache. Meeting Oraik. Drinking on the barges until I couldn’t walk straight. Rowing to shore. Falling asleep outside, on the rocks, instead of walking back to the city.
But it wasn’t Oraik talking to me. It was Kalcedon. When had he gotten there? I blinked up at him. Blue-gray, his face haunted, his eyes ringed from sleepless nights. Beautiful even at his worst.
There was a feather stuck to his shirt. As if he’d been flying again.
I inched away from Oraik and cleared my throat. The Wave Dancer was still beside us, pulled just out of reach of the tide. My clothes were mostly dry but crusted with salt and sand.
“Do you have any water?” I croaked hopefully.
Kalcedon didn’t respond right away. His chest swelled as he drew in a deep breath. I could see a storm brewing across his features.
Oraik blinked awake beside me. He looked calm for all of three seconds. Then his eyes widened into circles. He shrieked and grabbed my arm.
“Faerie!”
“It’s… oh, calm down.” A wave of nausea crashed over me, then subsided. I pulled my knees up to my chest and hiccupped.
Kalcedon gave Oraik a scowl, then turned the full force of his dark gaze on me. He opened his mouth. And then, he exploded.
“Ever loving mysteries, what in the Veiled God’s name are you doing out here, you abominable idiot?” His voice cracked with fury.
“Please stop yelling at me.”
“You know him?” Oraik asked, still panicked. “How? He must have—he came through, when the Ward…”
“ You ,” Kalcedon said. He stepped towards Oraik. The feather drifted off him in a puff of smoke.
“Me?” Oraik squeaked.
Now I was fully awake. Magic crackled off Kalcedon as he paced closer to Oraik. Closer to both of us, technically, but it was clear which one of us was his prey.
“ You ,” he repeated. “I don’t know who you are, or what you’re doing with Meda, but I swear to the unseen, if you’ve—”
“Calm down, Kalcedon. He’s a friend. We got stuck outside the chain. At night. Don’t blame him.”
“ That’s your Kalcedon? Him?” Oraik demanded.
“Oh, I do blame him. I’m going to skin him alive.”
“Meda? He’s a faerie.” Oraik stumbled to his feet, gold-ringed hands wheeling for balance. Upright, he towered over the gray-skinned witch in both height and brawn.
Kalcedon twisted his hands. I saw the sigil-backings Eldrezar and Pleizan before I realized he was about to slam Oraik twenty feet back with a wall of air. I batted my hand through the spell, grabbing at the magic. Kalcedon must not have really wanted a fight. He let me do it.
It’s too early in the morning for this nonsense, I thought. Well, or too soon after waking.
“Stop,” I said. “Both of you, calm down. There’s nothing to fight over.”
“Look at yourself,” Kalcedon hissed. “What were you thinking? Let me guess, you weren’t thinking. Typical. All the sense of a mule.”
“Don’t talk to her like that!”
“ Who in horns are you? ” Kalcedon closed the distance and glared up at Oraik. I saw his hands form into fists, and saw Oraik’s lip curl as he glared down at Kalcedon.
“ Enough ,” I yelled. “Both of you, stop .” They turned to look at me. I was reminded for a moment that I was a gnat compared to Kalcedon, and a beggar to Oraik’s fortune. But they were both focused on me now, and if I backed down, they’d probably go right for each other’s throats. I took a deep breath and shook my head.
Kalcedon clucked his tongue and threw his hands up, then took a step away from Oraik.
“I combed Rovileis scrying for you,” he said. “ All night, Meda. All night. I just kept seeing the places you’d been. Do you know how worried I was, you useless hag?”
Oraik flinched, and I held up a hand to him before he could come uninvited to my defense again.
“I’m sorry I worried you. I’m fine. Alright?”
“Let’s go,” Kalcedon said.
“In a moment. Give us some space.”
Kalcedon stared blankly at me for a moment. Then his eyes flicked up to Oraik. Kalcedon clenched his jaw, turned, and paced off down the beach. The rumble of power followed him like a small storm cloud.
I rubbed my forehead. Oraik was silent, staring moodily at the ground with his arms folded.
“Sorry about that.”
“You shouldn’t let him talk to you that way. I can’t believe you care for someone like… that .” He spat the word. I wasn’t sure if he was talking about Kalcedon’s temper or his ancestry, but it hardly mattered. I sighed.
“It’s just how he talks. Kalcedon and I, we have an understanding.”
“An understanding that he treats you like dung?”
“He’s a half-faerie. He can’t help how he is.”
“Can’t he? Sorry, but that’s fools-talk. It’s not an excuse.”
I shook my head. Oraik didn’t understand a thing about Kalcedon, and I wasn’t about to spend the whole day explaining.
“Listen. I can’t say last night was a good idea, or that I wanted to sleep on the ground…” I started. Oraik sighed heavily and rubbed a hand over his face. Tentatively, I reached out and patted his shoulder. “But without you, I would have been starving and sleeping on the street. If I ever have the chance to pay you back, I will.”
He frowned and squinted in the direction of Rovileis, the city hazily visible down the coast. He looked at the Wave Dancer , and then at me.
“You mean that?”
“Of course. Well, maybe not for everything on the barges. That was your idea. But at least for dinner, and the room I didn’t use.” In drunken idiocy, I’d spent the change from the inn on drinks rather than letting him pay and keeping it for necessities.
“Do me a favor, and we’ll call it even.”
“…What kind of favor?”
“There should be a ship from Colynes in the harbor. The Captain is Adaya Ozeri. Will you tell her I’m finding my own way home, and that I’ll meet her there?” He offered me a golden ring embossed with a dolphin.
His words sunk slowly into my addled brain. I gaped at him.
He didn’t look Colynes.
“That tal-rih is for you ?” I asked, unable to stifle the horrified expression crossing my face. I couldn’t reconcile silly, sheltered Oraik with the stories I’d heard about the blood-soaked kingdom. And his father was a ‘ government official ?’ What was that supposed to mean? Was that where Oraik got all his money, from the killings in Doregall? Had I spent the night drinking from blood-money?
“My father is from Colynes,” he said stiffly, and I knew he’d seen my expression and understood where it came from. “My mother was Doregi. I am Doregi. So will you do it? Will you tell Ozeri?”
A wealthy, sheltered man of about twenty, half Colynes and half Doregi, desperate to see a city he’d known every detail of but had never explored… the hostage prince, I realized slowly. Oraik was the hostage prince. The one Adaya Ozeri had come to trade a war criminal for, a decade after the Cachians had taken Oraik captive. Maybe I’d have known that already, if the spell hadn’t… if she hadn’t sent me out of the work room, that day.
I slowly reached out and took the ring from his fingers. “But you aren’t planning to sail, are you? Alone? In that rickety thing? Do you even know how?”
“I’ll row back to the barges and pay someone to take me.”
“Take you where? Please don’t be foolish. You’re going to get yourself killed.”
He shook his head and grinned. “I’ve avoided it so far, haven’t I? In any case, I’m in a mood to be foolish. It’s almost Laghek Day on Montay. Maybe I’ll see that and the central isles before I’m… well, you will tell her, won’t you? Only, maybe you could wait until afternoon, so I have a head start? And don’t mention Montay?”
“Alright,” I said softly. “I’ll tell her. Be careful.”
I extended a hand for him to shake. Oraik ignored it and grabbed me in a tight hug, crushing all the air out of my lungs.
“Thank you for being my friend,” he whispered in my ear. “May the Goddess keep you safe.” He let go abruptly and strode towards the shore, grabbing the Wave Dancer and dragging it behind him. I gaped at him, stunned at this sudden admission of heretical faith—he took being Doregi seriously, I supposed—so close on the revelation of his birth.
My heart ached. I’d liked Oraik, despite all odds. The farewell felt entirely too permanent.
I shook my head and watched him splash into the waves, then wandered over to Kalcedon, who stood scowling with his arms crossed twenty feet down the rocky beach.
“You look like a sea-hag,” he informed me sourly as I drew near. “And your breath stinks like wine.”
“Yes, I’m aware,” I said with a smile, raising a hand to my knotted, salt-crusted hair. Kalcedon bit his lip and deflated a little, the scowl softening as he looked me over. There was worry in his eyes, a hollowness that ached.
“You aren’t hurt?” His voice was low.
“Just a headache. I’m fine .” My hands were smarting from the rowing, but he was in a bad enough mood without me mentioning it.
“Good.” He sniffed and looked away. “So? Why did you leave?”
“The city?”
“ Home. ” He raised his eyebrows as he said the word, as if it were obvious. “Can we go back now? Did you do whatever you needed to do?”
I scratched my cheek.
“I’m not going back. I’m going to join the Temple.”
Kalcedon’s face shifted strangely, brow furrowed, mouth parted, eyes wide.
“They can’t want you,” he told me in flat disbelief.
“They asked me to figure out why the Ward came down,” I said defensively, hurting even though he was right.
“No they didn’t.” The look on Kalcedon’s face hadn’t changed.
“Yes, they did. They said if I could figure it out, they’d let me in.”
“You don’t stand a chance,” he growled. “This is idiotic. You don’t belong here, Meda. You’re barely a witch, no matter how brilliant you are. Come home .”
“Well.” I sighed, and met him in the eyes. “I’m going to try, either way. You can come if you want. Not that I need your help.”
Kalcedon glared at me. A long moment passed. His face wavered. Finally he snapped.
“ Fine . We’ll go see the Sable-Pall stone. As soon as you take a bath. You stink.”
I was too tired to ask him why he wanted to go to Sable-Pall. If I were thinking straight, I probably would have passed out from sheer excitement. There were seven stones holding up the Ward, and if Kalcedon thought a particular one had something to do with the fall, that was news . We were closer to Buis than Sable-Pall.
But just then, I only nodded. I was barely even listening.
“Sure. I need to talk to a woman at the harbor. And eat, and maybe nap. You have a few argor, right? I was robbed.” I stretched, twisting my shoulders one way and then the other to turn my aching spine. Kalcedon’s back jerked straight.
“You were—! Horns, Meda, how stupid do you have to be?”
My gaze flickered towards Oraik, wondering what he’d make of Kalcedon’s tone, and of the sacrilegious curse against the prince’s horned goddess. But Oraik was already offshore, through the wave-break and riding the swells against the tide.
“I guess I wasn’t paying close enough attention,” I told Kalcedon. “Now come on. It’s an hour’s walk and my head is killing me.”