16. Sixteen
Chapter 16
My mouth tasted like liquor and my head felt like a boulder. We’d walked a hundred yards toward the city when Kalcedon's magic rippled. He didn’t say anything as he twisted his fingers, but I felt my clothes smooth; felt the salt slide away from my hair. The pounding ache in my head lessened.
“Thanks,” I managed. Still silent, he lengthened his stride and overtook me.
See , I told Oraik silently in my head. He’s nice enough. Just not with his words .
An hour later, as the boatman had predicted, we entered the city. I couldn’t help but notice the stark difference between my walk the day before and my walk now. People veered away from us, giving Kalcedon dirty and frightened looks. One woman actually ran.
I looped my arm in with his, gritting my teeth against the softened burn of power flooding my veins. Kalcedon’s face jerked down, eyes wide and staring at where our bodies touched.
“They might not be so worried if it looks like we’re together,” I reasoned.
He wrenched his arm out of my grip.
“This city smells,” Kalcedon muttered. “I don’t see why you’d ever want to live here. It’s ugly and it’s too damnably hot.”
With that non sequitur, he stalked away from me and towards a door marked with the symbol for hospitality, shoulders stiff and long legs stalking like one of the tall marsh-birds of the south. I followed him into the inn and reassured the petrified woman inside that he had not come from the outlands across the Ward. Kalcedon paid for a pair of connecting rooms, cheaper by far than the overpriced tavern by the Temple gates.
I nearly fell asleep in my bath. It took a powerful effort, and a commitment to looking like a human instead of a sea-hag, to get myself clean. Despite Kalcedon’s spell earlier my clothes still smelled. I was too tired to open my bag and look for a change, so I just crawled naked under the sheets of the narrow bed and fell instantly asleep.
“Lunch. Get up,” Kalcedon said some indeterminate time later. He’d walked through the door connecting our rooms without bothering to knock.
I groaned, hugged the pillow to myself, and then remembered I wasn’t wearing anything. My eyes flew open. I grabbed the thin sheet, then relaxed as I realized it was already up to my neck. I still felt exposed. Kalcedon was staring.
“How long’s it been?” I asked. My voice sounded awful. The pillow beneath my head was still damp from my hair.
“Two hours. I’ll be in the commons.” His voice sounded strained.
I waited until I heard the door close, peeked to make sure he was really gone, and got out of bed. My head didn’t hurt anymore, though it spun a little. My mouth was dry. There was a cup of water next to me, and I drained it swiftly.
My satchel and all the clothing was clean and neatly folded on a chair. I could feel the faint traces of Kalcedon’s familiar magic clinging to the fabric.
My journal rested on top of the clothes. “ No, no, no, ” I gasped, grabbed it, and carefully inspected the pages. The side looked warped, the pages waving like the ocean itself. My transcriptions of Tarelay’s work were smudged but mostly legible.
Kalcedon’s magic lingered faintly here, too. I pressed my forehead to the cover and thanked him silently that it wasn't in worse condition.
Then I dressed, leaving my hair loose so it could finish drying, then padded down the steps of the inn. The common room was small and airy, with a window that pointed dully at the stone side of the building next to it. It looked completely unfamiliar even though we had arrived hours before. I’d been too dumb with exhaustion to take any details in.
The long table was empty except for Kalcedon. Sometime in the last two hours he’d acquired a cloak. Even though the hood was low over his face, his gray hands and his sharp jaw remained on display.
Two ceramic dishes and two cups waited on the table. Kalcedon was already eating from his.
I sat down and peered at the food, then made a face. It was one of my least favorite dishes.
“You’re eating rabbit?” It had been stewed with wine and onion, but the shape of the leg was unmistakable. “Did you finally realize all gardeners are oath-bound to hate them?”
“They don’t cook to order,” Kalcedon said, after swallowing. “Yes, I asked. This was all they had. It came with the room.” He ignored the face I made at him. I picked up the piece of crusty bread balanced on the edge of my plate gingerly, wincing a little as my blisters from rowing complained.
Kalcedon saw and held his hand out. Reluctantly I set the bread down and showed him my hands. He shook his head and signed a quick series of sigils.
“You forgot to limit it,” I warned. Kalcedon narrowed his eyes at me, but he added the quick jagged boundary before releasing the spell. Relief blossomed over my skin.
“Do it yourself next time. Doesn’t take much heat.” Kalcedon deftly picked his utensils back up.
“It wasn’t bothering me.” I didn’t tell him losing that much would have killed me.
“Still ought to care for yourself,” he lectured. I shrugged.
Kalcedon ate in silence for a minute as I shredded my bread and ate it piece by piece.
Finally, he set down his fork and knife. His eyes stayed on the food instead of looking up at me.
“So, that man this morning. Who was that?” His voice was carefully measured, but I knew Kalcedon well enough to hear the strain beneath it.
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous of Oraik.”
“Why would I be jealous?” Kalcedon snapped, with such disdain that I felt my cheeks flame in embarrassment. “I’m wondering why you were sleeping drunk on the beach with a man you don’t know.”
“It’s a long story,” I said. Kalcedon finally looked up at me. I buckled at the acid in his dark glare. “I didn’t have any money, remember? He took pity on me and invited me along. There are these boats, and it’s like a big kick, only we didn’t realize we couldn’t get back to the city after. Hence the beach.”
“I know what sin-boats are, Meda,” Kalcedon drawled. “What I don’t know is why you thought you had any business on one. Do you have any idea what could have happened to you? What if he wasn’t someone you could trust?”
“I’m not a child,” I told him airily.
“I know,” he growled. “But I can’t afford to lose you, so try not to act like one.” We ate in silence for a minute. I poked my fork around the plate, then finally braced myself to take a small bite of rabbit with a shudder. The thick, gloppy texture of the stew made my tongue revolt just as I knew it would. The taste of wine made my still-sensitive stomach complain too. I needed something simple. Eggs and flatbread, maybe.
“Can we get food somewhere else?” I begged as my stomach lurched.
“ I’m not made of money,” he said, in a tone so pointed I just knew he was talking about Oraik and all his gold rings. “You want to pick the food, don’t get robbed.” He picked up my plate and scraped the stew onto his own. “And I have another bone to pick with you.”
“Not a rabbit bone, I hope.”
He ignored my joke, and handed me his untouched piece of bread. I took it gratefully.
“Why did you take that bird? I found it in your things.”
She was the last thing I wanted to talk about, a subject I would gladly have avoided for days. Weeks. Years. I ground the knuckles of my left hand against my jaw for a moment.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just wanted… something. To keep her close.” I ripped off a tiny piece of bread.
“The blasted thing wasn’t yours to take.”
“Does it really matter? It’s not like…” I trailed off. Not like she cares, at this point, I’d almost said.
“I made it. For her. If you wanted a token, you…” he stopped abruptly and swallowed, then blinked and looked to one side. His reaction left an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach, and I felt my own eyes burning. I didn’t like the thought of Kalcedon in pain. I couldn’t imagine the size of his loss, the shape of it in his heart.
He just doesn’t want to be alone , the voice in my head said. Grief for his solitude. Not for Eudoria.
My voice was a whisper. “I didn’t know. You can take it back. I just thought it was hers. I’m sorry.” I would never have pictured Kalcedon carving anything. Nor enduring cuts and pain to give a bloodstained, ugly token to his teacher.
“You stole it, you carry it,” he muttered. “But be careful with it. And next time, ask, won’t you? Dung-brain.”
“Sorry,” I muttered again. I looked away, embarrassed at all the emotion on his face.
“Well. Fine.” He huffed and shook his head. “Alright. We’ll finish this, see the woman you need to see at the docks, and hire passage to Sable-Pall.”
“For the stone?” I asked. “Buis is closer.” I was glad the conversation was steering away from Eudoria. I didn’t want to think about Eudoria.
Kalcedon lifted his cup to his mouth. “Doubt you can see the phrasings on the Buis stone, though.” His voice was nonchalant, but his eyes watched me closely.
If I were taking a drink, I would have spat it out. If I were holding something, I would have dropped it. I half-collapsed forward, slapping my newly-healed hands down on the table and gaping at Kalcedon.
“ What ?”
“I scryed it,” he said. “I couldn’t get close, but there were marks on the inside. The stone’s cracked open.”
It would be difficult to hold a scrying spell next to one of the stones, where magic stood on edge and yearned for the obliterating Ward, where there were few watching eyes to ease the spell’s path.
“You saw the phrasing ?”
“Mhm,” he said. He smiled and took a sip of his drink.
“The Ward phrasing? Tarelay’s phrasing? ” I felt myself getting too loud, the kind of loud that always got me bad looks, but I couldn’t stop myself.
“Obviously.”
“Obviously? Obviously ?” I stood up, knocking back the bench, and grabbed two fistfuls of my own hair. To see the sigils that constructed the great Ward, the secret that the faerie Tarelay had crafted to keep his human lover safe from the Sorrowing Lord… I would have paid any price to take a look.
Well. Perhaps not any price. I exhaled through pursed lips as the initial jolt of excitement crashed into my wall of grief.
“Not that it matters. Nobody could possibly read it,” Kalcedon said.
“Just because you can’t.”
But how had the stone broken? That couldn’t have been good.
“Finish your food,” Kalcedon said. “I’m not wasting any more money on you.”
I shoved the remaining bread into my mouth.