23. Twenty-three
Chapter 23
I used every last coin of Kalcedon’s money to buy a little sailboat in the Olymrei harbor, a compass, and enough provisions for three days.
She was painted in stripes of green and blue and didn’t have a name on the side. I’d never owned my own boat, but as I set out on the water, I didn’t feel free or emboldened. I kept thinking about Kalcedon—where he was, how much heat he’d have left by the time he reached Buis, and what uncertain fate might await him there.
My eyes ached from lack of sleep. The scarf I’d used to tie my hair back from the wind couldn’t keep it entirely out of my face. The wind was stiff and stinging, the sea choppy and brisk. I was on my way to save a prince, armed with only a flicker of magic and a vague idea of where he’d gone.
I knew how to sail; anybody from Nis did. But I had never done this alone, not for more than an hour or two. By the end of day I felt half mad from the sound of the incessant billowing wind and the lash of waves and the cry of gulls, from being alone on the undulating and endless Etegen.
Then dark fell down across the sky, and the dozen stars above fluttered over the Ward. The vague smudge of moon glowed brightly. A stiff wind howled.
I dropped the sail and the anchor and lay on my back. There was a clack of something falling as I pulled my spare clothes from my bag to use as blankets. I rummaged for the sound and my fingers wrapped around the wooden lopsided bird Kalcedon had carved. Instead of putting it back, I held it to my chest.
Time had no meaning on the ocean at night. I whispered songs to myself and ran a hand across the wood of the ship, fighting against the primal terror rising in my bones. All that lay between me and the dark depths of the Etegen were a few planks of well-worked wood.
When my eyes closed I found myself thinking about Eudoria, and the tower. When this was over, I told myself, I’d go back, and I’d tell her…
I couldn’t tell her anything. How odd. It was like a missing tooth I kept expecting to find in my mouth. My heart still felt certain she was there, even as my brain reminded myself again, and again, that she had passed to another plane.
Then at last, after endless cycles of sleep and waking, the sun bled out onto the sky. I oriented myself back towards Montay, shook off my cold in the rising heat, and approached the forested coast.
Montay was larger than Rovileis, but less populated; there was no large city here. Only little pockets of towns and villages, like Nis-Illous.
Soon the hazy blue smudge of land turned green; then gained definition. It struck me as mad that I expected to find Oraik like this. If only Kalcedon were with me, though even then we’d have a mess of it. Scrying without a focus, like the hair we’d exchanged, or a clear idea of where you were meant to be looking, was a long, difficult process. Even Eudoria, such a master that the Temple used her rather than its own witches for much scry-work, could spend days or weeks hunting for someone before finding them.
In any case, I was alone. And Kalcedon was alone, too, headed towards whatever force was powerful enough to have broken Tarelay’s sigils open and spilled royal’s blood in secret.
I couldn’t think about that.
The Ward hadn’t fallen again, I told myself. That was a good sign. So I would do what I could to find Oraik, and if I failed, the prince would be no worse off than he’d been before. I turned north along the coast, for no better reason than the wind blew that way.
The first two harbors I passed were without promise. But fortune was with me. I reached a third just past noon. When I angled my boat closer to the shore to peer at the town between the trees, I spotted a familiar rickety boat with the name Wave Dancer painted on the side.
I furled my sail, and drifted in beside the Dancer. My jaw cracked with a yawn.
I was a little surprised to see Oraik’s crummy little boat there, of all places. As I stepped onto the dock I surveyed the village in front of me. Unlike the two sleepy towns I had passed before, the buildings here were poorly constructed, with gaps between the rotting slats and unevenly thatched roofs. There hadn’t been any boats at work outside their small harbor. I’d seen a larger ship, too big for a fishing town, but if it was a merchant vessel nobody was doing trade.
Two men lounged at the shore, passing a jug back and forth. One of them fiddled with a knife, spinning it around in his hand. The other gave me a sweeping up-and-down look as I walked closer.
“Is one of you the harbormaster?” I asked. Both men chuckled.
“Haven’ got one,” said the man with the knife. He had a missing tooth and patchy hair on his face. “I’ll watch your boat, darling. Needn’t even pay ‘n coin.” His unfamiliar accent sounded slurred to my ears, the same words I’d grown up knowing but the cadence entirely different from how we spoke on Nis.
My skin crawled as I eyed the man’s knife. What was Oraik doing in a place like this? Nonetheless I hoped he was here. If he’d sold or lost the Dancer , I was no closer to finding him.
“The owner of that boat, there—did you see him arrive?” I pointed at the Dancer .
“Sorry, sweetheart,” said the one who’d looked me over. He leaned back with a smirk. “You’ll have to settle for another man instead.”
I didn’t even waste my breath saying no. I just grimaced, shook my head, and headed past them into the town.
The street I walked down appeared to be the village’s only path. What’s more, it was strangely busy for such a quiet place. People lounged outside the buildings, playing dice and drinking on the stoops of the houses. They all looked well-armed. I saw knives on belts, knives sticking out of boots, and knives strapped to arms. As I walked past, I heard conversations dropping off, and felt their gazes lifting to study me.
An eerie quiet haunted the street.
It occurred to me that this wasn’t like any fishing village I’d been to. Please tell me I haven’t wandered into a pirate den, I thought uncomfortably. The feeling of being watched nagged at the back of my mind, and I glanced over my shoulder. Two men ambled up the street from the direction of the harbor. From my quick glance, I thought they were the same two I’d spoken with coming in. The only sound I heard were the distant waves, a trilling bug.
I approached the nearest woman, who was staring at me with pale blue eyes from beside the dice game she’d been playing.
“I’m looking for a friend,” I said bluntly. “Tall, brown, pretty. Curly hair to his shoulders. Perhaps twenty. Did someone like that turn up recently?”
She blinked at me without answering, then slowly smirked. I waited a moment, until my fear rose just too high for me to push it any further. The men were getting closer, and if I wasn’t careful I was going to end up penned in. I turned and spun away, and strode down the street, wondering if I ought to turn around and make a run for the harbor. Except I still didn’t know what had happened to Oraik.
A wave of magic hit me. I stumbled, exhaling hard, as the outland’s wild heat washed over my skin.
The stone. Kalcedon. My thoughts froze in terror.
Their eyes were still on me. But a man halfway down the street had jumped from the stoop of his house and clutched at his heart, marking him another witch.
Kalcedon . Was he dead, or captive, or had he just not reached Buis in time?
What if he was hurt somewhere?
I couldn’t do this. I wanted to go home. It was too much. I couldn’t.
My mind, overwhelmed, rejected its surroundings.
The houses around me were a blur, the silence of the town a roar.
Until.
“Wow, you’re good at that,” A familiar, unaccented voice said with a laugh, from a little ways off. I turned blindly towards the gap between two of the houses and stumbled through it to emerge on the other side.
Kalcedon , my head kept repeating. What if he was hurt?
The area past the house was uncultivated and wild. There I saw three strangers, well-armed men like the others in town… and Oraik. My head kept buzzing, nauseated and frantic.
The prince wore ratty clothes. His trousers were too small, coming down only midway on his calves, stretching tight around his thick thighs. The shirt had a blood-stained hole on the abdomen, as if whoever owned it before him had been gutted.
“Meda?” Oraik’s eyes found mine, his eyes bewildered over a frozen smile.
The other men had been occupied throwing knives at a half-dead tree, the tall kind of pine whose trunk extended some twenty feet before branching out. At the sound of Oraik’s voice one of them turned while throwing. The blade went wide, vanishing into the tangle of forest rather than plunging beside the other knives buried in the trunk. I saw a flash of gold on his fingers. The knife-thrower was wearing two rings that might have been Oraik’s.
“Friend of yours?” Someone said behind me. I turned to see the blue-eyed woman from the street lounging against the nearest house. I shuddered and pressed the knuckles of both hands against my jaw, taking a deep breath. I couldn’t calm down.
“What are you doing here?” Oraik said cheerfully as he closed the distance between us. He caught me up in a tight hug, then whispered “you need to go ” into my ear.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn't help the whimper that escaped my lips. Oraik’s grip around me was soothing, but the nightmare was still going.
We were surrounded by pirates. Another stone had broken. Kalcedon’s whereabouts were unknown. All we had to do was get back to the boat, I managed to tell myself. And yet telling my mind and telling my legs were two different things. I pulled back from Oraik and looked the way we needed to go.
“Come on,” the prince said, falsely cheerful. “I want to hear everything you’ve been up to.” He grabbed my hand and began to tow me towards the docks.
Our path was blocked, not just by the woman leaning against the house, but now by others behind her as well.
“Look at this little fish our luck brought in,” she said with a grin. “What’s in the bag, little fish?”
“I’d just like a moment to chat with my friend,” Oraik said cheerfully. She didn’t move. He turned and dragged me to the next gap between the houses. The men who’d been throwing knives gathered to block our way instead.
“Pardon me,” Oraik said. They started laughing and looking at each other.
The man wearing Oraik’s rings drew a knife. A big one. It didn’t look very clean. Then he reached forward and grabbed for my bag with a grin.
I didn’t want him touching the bag. I didn’t want him touching me.
I drew in a deep breath, and then my fingers twisted and spun. I didn’t even think about it. It just happened.
If I’d been thinking, I never in a million years would have chosen the spell that killed Eudoria. But it had been lingering beneath my skin for days, the fire sigil burning just out of my conscious reach. Now it erupted from my fingers, fueled by the outland burn of the breaking Ward. I shoved a ball of flame into the man’s chest, driving it in.
He screamed, a horrible sound. So did Oraik, though his was more of a startled yelp.
Witch , I heard someone yell.
There was no room to feel triumphant or even to feel afraid of the rest of them. As the fire left my fingers pins shot up my arms. The spell had swallowed most of what I had, and now a deep cold clawed at me like despair. Oraik grabbed my elbow and dragged me forward.
I ran with him. I could barely see where to put my feet. My head felt like one big scream.
We rushed through an opening onto the street, out of the wild behind the houses. There were shouts coming from behind us, but nobody grabbed me as I passed. For all they knew, I had other tricks left, though in truth I couldn’t have cast a single new thing. Then suddenly we reached the water.
“Come on,” Oraik said. He took me down to the dock to where my boat and Wave Dancer bobbed on the mooring. He looked over his shoulder, then at me in horror. The pirates had gathered and were heading towards us. Oraik cursed and started to climb into the Dancer .
I made a sound, not quite a word, and pointed. The Dancer was a rotting pile of wet wood compared to my little unnamed boat. He didn’t hesitate, and scrambled over to the one I was pointing at. I untied it with stiff and shaking hands. Oraik saw and helped.
We pushed off. I dropped the sail, turning it to catch the wind. My hands gripped the rope so tightly my joints hurt. I took one deep breath, then another, then a third. The wind snapped against me, feeling like claws on my face.
Oraik’s panic seemed to melt as the village shrank behind us. None of the pirates had followed, perhaps misjudging me as too dangerous to risk another confrontation with.
“Did you kill him?” he at last asked quietly.
I shook my head no. Then shrugged.
He rubbed his eyes. “So. You’re… a witch.”
I nodded and gripped the tiller tight. I braced myself for Oraik to hate me, but he didn’t mention anything about faerie blood. Instead, he changed the subject.
“Should I ask why you were following me?”
I closed my eyes and drew another deep breath. My head was calming, though in the space left by the panic I felt sheer, pure exhaustion.
“Because.” I took a deep breath. “You’re in danger.”
He only shrugged.
“I had it more or less covered,” Oraik said airily, and sniffed.
He didn’t realize I was talking about a new threat, but it annoyed me he couldn’t even acknowledge I’d saved him from the pirates.
“Did you? Nice clothes.”
“Yes, well, at least I look good in anything.”
“What were you doing there?”
Oraik sighed heavily, and waved a hand in the air.
“I paid a man to sail me to the festival. Then those pirates came out of nowhere. They killed him. Thank the mysteries, I managed to convince them I was a good-luck charm, and much more fun to keep alive.”
Only the cold reality of the situation kept me from laughing at his choice of strategy. I angled us south along the coast, wondering if we could hide in the wilderness of Montay or ought to pick a new island altogether, one where nobody had seen us. A glance over my shoulder confirmed we still weren’t being followed.
The magic in the air was already fading, faded, nearly gone. I could have used the burst of power to contact Kalcedon, if I hadn’t needed it to save our lives. Now all I could do was pray he was alive, and able to find me.
“Is that a town?” Oraik pointed at a smudge of color at the edge of Montay’s visible shore. “Let’s see if they’re celebrating.”
“We need to find somewhere quiet to hide out.”
“I’d rather not, thanks.” He said it with the same attitude as a man refusing a second piece of cake. Oraik lounged on the boat’s narrow bench, leaning one hand over to trail his fingers in the Etegen’s water.
I took a deep breath, nostrils flaring.
“Someone’s trying to bring down the Ward, and I think they’re going to murder you to do it.”
He chuckled, and stared at me in disbelief when I didn’t join. I stared back, my face unflinching. He waited, then grimaced when my expression didn’t break.
“Well, that’s not a story you hear every day.” He flicked the sea water off his hands.
“The stones are keyed to each family,” I told him. I had no energy for subtlety. “You’re the last Doregi royal. Aren’t you?” I saw his throat bob. I continued on. “They’ve done three of the stones already. So we need to hide.”
His hands tightened in his lap.
“Are you some sort of bounty hunter?”
“What? No. I’m trying to help.”
“I’m sorry, but I barely know you,” Oraik told me carefully. “It seems a little funny that the needy woman I found in the tavern is running around the isles killing people and spinning stories about the Ward.”
“ Needy ? I just saved your life! Twice, by the time I get you to safety!”
“Fair certain you kidnapped me.” He arched one eyebrow elegantly.
“Kidnapping? Do you want me to bring you back?”
“That depends. Am I free to get off where I like, or are you taking me somewhere against my will? Because your excuse is very pretty, but…” Oraik twirled one of his curls around a finger, but his shoulders and jaw were stiff.
“Horns,” I groaned.
“I would like to go to the next decent-sized village we pass,” Oraik said. He folded his hands primly in his lap. “On the off chance I haven’t missed all of Laghek Day—”
“That holiday about the fish? Really ?”
“I want to experience it. So please take me there, or else I will have to assume that you are , in fact, planning to sell me for ransom.”
“Oh, honestly. What will you do if I am? Jump overboard? Do you even know how to swim?”
“I will cease to consider you my friend,” he said, his voice grave.
“Horror of horrors,” I muttered. “People are looking for you. To kill you .”
“So you say,” he told me with studied weariness. “You’ve offered no proof.”
I knew I ought to ignore him and sail somewhere no other eyes would fall on us. But after a night’s poor sleep in the boat, the mind-numbing terror of facing the pirates, and the chill brought by the spell, I couldn’t bring myself to push any harder than I had. I knuckled my chin and tried to straighten out the sludge of my thoughts.
“ If I take you to see a town, will you agree to trust me? Will you let me get you to safety afterwards?”
“Hum.” He reached up and brushed his fingers along his hairline. “I will agree to consider it.”
I should have just ignored him and dragged him to safety, but, well, I was more exhausted than I’d ever been. A rest on land, without the sail or the sea to mind, did sound nice. Though ill feeling brewed in my gut, I nodded and reluctantly agreed to his terms.