34. Thirty-four
Chapter 34
The next morning was unpleasant. I was hungry, and stiff from sleeping on the deck without any comforts. Nestled between Oraik’s good shoulder and Kalcedon, I’d had a better situation than either of them: two warm sides against the night’s chill. It still wasn’t the same as a bed.
“What now?” Kalcedon asked as I quietly hauled the anchor up out of the water.
“We’ll make for Rovileis. But we’d better stock up first,” I answered. It might be a few days sailing, assuming I even pointed the little boat in the right direction.
“There must be somewhere around here that sells food,” Oraik said hopefully, despite the fact that our cove was no less wild by dawn than it had been by dark. “And a change of clothes.” He knelt at the edge of the deck, shirtless and bloody, swirling his tunic around in the sea. It was a hopeless fight, in my opinion; the garment was ruined.
“We’ll circle the island,” I agreed.
“Where are we? Degnac?” Oraik asked. He lifted his shirt and rolled it up, squeezing the salt water out.
“I think so.”
“Then why not head to Koraica? Temor is closer than Rovileis.”
“Because you’re being hunted,” Kalcedon practically growled. He was sitting as far across the boat as he could be from Oraik, leaning back against the wolf’s hull with his arms crossed. His eyes were half-closed, a permanent sneer on his lips.
“But the faerie sunk that ship,” Oraik said, responding to me without looking at Kalcedon. It took me a moment to realize he meant Kalcedon; wouldn’t even call him by his name. “Surely we can do as we like.”
“They weren’t working alone,” Kalcedon informed him.
“How does he know that?” Oraik said, talking, again, straight at me.
“Because their accomplice killed someone in Buis two days ago. No ship sails that fast, idiot. And at least one of them escaped yesterday.”
“Oh,” Oraik said. He glanced Kalcedon’s way, then quickly turned back to me again.
“It still doesn’t make sense. Why would Colynes want the Ward brought down?” I muttered angrily to myself. It was so foolish. They were as human as the rest of the Protectorate.
“Power,” Oraik said quietly. “Everyone turned against them, when they took Doregall. Maybe they were offered a deal.”
“But it’s stupid .”
“Stupid people are stupid,” Kalcedon agreed.
“Still. Couldn’t we hide somewhere? I don’t want to go back to the Temple,” Oraik muttered. He wrinkled his nose and dragged his wet, bloodstained shirt over his head. The sun was beginning to make things hot again. With the sea-wind, he’d dry off as soon as we left the cove.
“I don’t want to play nursemaid to your pathetic arse,” Kalcedon muttered. The half-faerie stood, making Oraik flinch, but all Kalcedon did was turn and lean his arms against the railing, staring at the isle instead of at the two of us.
“Now that we know who’s working with the outland fae, we know the Temple isn’t ,” I told Oraik. “Rovileis is the most protected place for you to be. We’ll find food, and then head that way.”
“And so I am a captive once more,” Oraik complained.
Kalcedon shook his head in exasperation.
“It’s not forever,” I told Oraik. “We’ll fix this eventually.”
We exited the cove, the wide ocean before us, capped by Montay’s hazy, distant forests. I turned us left along the coast of our isle, hunting for any signs of a village or town where we might find something to eat, or at least something to fish with. The tide was going out, and the wind with it. I let it pull us away from the shore, still in close enough sight to circle and hunt for somewhere to dock.
There was a pulse of something, in the water: raw power. The magic was formless, untamed. A strange, wild heat.
“What was that?” I twisted over my shoulder to look back at the stretch of ocean. Kalcedon moved along the edge of the boat towards the stern, dark eyes studying the horizon.
“What was what ?” Oraik wanted to know.
“I felt it before. When we escaped,” Kalcedon said.
“A tracker?”
“I’m not… it’s in the water.”
“Oh, I don’t like that,” Oraik muttered, and inched towards the center of the boat.
“I felt it yesterday too,” I admitted to Kalcedon. “Nothing came of it. We have to keep sailing.”
“That doesn’t seem wise,” Kalcedon murmured. He turned to look at me instead of at the sea.
“Well, what else is there? Go investigate?”
“We could go ashore, like sensible people,” Oraik said.
“There. It’s closer.” Kalcedon whipped back away from me. “It’s coming this way. Fast.”
A hum of power. Then nothing. A hum again, loud, right by us. And then absolute silence, the only power coming from Kalcedon, as if the magic were gone, or pulled tight. I squinted the way it had come from, wondering if someone were sending a tracking barb our way; perhaps a witch or a faerie under a concealment.
A massive shape erupted between us and the shore, rocking the boat violently. We flew back from Degnac. Oraik screamed.
The beast had slick skin and a heavy jaw. Its wide-set, glossy eyes regarded the boat like an inconvenient toy—or perhaps a snack. The eel-like head, as big as any of us whole, rose ten feet above the water on a thick and sinewy neck. Unfamiliar, untamed magic shimmered around it like a cloak.
“Holy horned Goddess,” the prince shrieked, and then repeated it again.
An empty water jug rolled across the deck. I went with it, sliding straight into Kalcedon, who was pressed to the railing. He straightened me with one arm, the fingers on his other hand already working towards the same spell he’d used time and again on the warship.
A fae beast. Drake. On this side of the Ward.
I dove for the ropes. Catching the wind, I spun us away from the isle and the beast. Land would be safer, but we couldn’t reach it without getting around the drake.
It lunged towards us as we fled, jaws snapping a foot away from the wood. Its mouth was full of rows upon rows of long, serrated teeth, each as long as a sword. A hot gust of breath that stank of rotting fish assaulted my nose.
Kalcedon’s attack hit. I could see the exact spot; his magic marred the skin of the drake just above its right eye, but seemed to have less effect than it had on the soldiers. The creature didn’t come to pieces.
It only roared, reared up high out of the water, and came crashing down flat like a falling tree. We tilted so hard water sloshed into the wolf’s hold. I nearly went over and had to grab the railing with my whole arm to keep from popping out of the boat like a mussel pried from its shell.
“Wind!” I yelled. Kalcedon formed another attack. “Wind, wind!”
“I don’t know how,” he snapped.
This was what we got, for Kalcedon’s reluctance to study. I shoved the ropes into Oraik’s hands and did it myself, grabbing a fistful of Kalcedon's power. As strong a wind as the wolf could handle punched straight into the sails, and we leapt further out to sea.
The beast was below water. Somewhere. It could come up beneath us, I realized. Was it worth turning around and heading towards Degnac? What if it blocked our way; what if I sailed straight into it?
A pulse of magic beneath the waves, thick and hot as soup. Kalcedon cursed. He roamed the rail of the ship, eyes hunting for his target.
Above us, the sky darkened and turned heavy as strange, bestial spell-work crackled in the air. The clouds drooped low. Each wave was taller than the last, a wind lashed slope we climbed up one side of only to plunge down the other. I took the ropes back. Oraik wasn't good enough to sail a storm.
We were approaching another wave when the drake’s face burst through it. I screamed so loud it felt like claws in my throat.
Kalcedon rammed a bolt of power straight into the thing’s mouth. The drake plunged straight down just in time for us to coast over its jaws. I was certain it would swallow the ship whole but we were on the downslope of the wave now, and onto the next.
“Don’t you know other spells?” I yelled. The wind howled furiously, snapping my hair into my face. A fat raindrop chose that moment to hit my forehead. “Put it to sleep!”
“Keep sailing,” he bellowed back.
“The storm’s bad. It’s moving fast.”
“What do we do?” Oraik was low in the wolf’s sloshing belly, one hand gripping the storage chest to keep him from sliding across deck with each wave’s buck. The other hand shielded his face as if to protect his eyes from the thickening rain.
“There!” I yelled, as something emerged from the water to our right—not a face this time, but what had to be the creature’s tail.
“Horns,” Kalcedon had time to snap, as he curled his hands into sigils and shoved too much power into a sleep-spell.
The tail smacked down. I felt a pulse of power again, but low, far beneath us and moving lower.
“I think it worked,” I said optimistically. Hoped might have been more accurate.
We hit the next swell at a bad angle. Foam and salt sea washed over the wolf, dragging us low under the water’s weight. The rain drove down, each drop like a stinging slash from the dark sky.
“The storm’s not lifting,” Kalcedon yelled.
“I’m not blind.” Whatever magic the creature had used was not so simply undone.
“We could try to clear it,” Kalcedon offered.
“You can’t even call a wind!” I shouted in disbelief.
“No, but you can,” he answered.
“We can’t waste your power. We might need it.”
“So, what, then?” Oraik asked cheerlessly. “Do we just drown?”
“We’ll go south,” I shouted. “To Temor. We might outrun it, headed that way. Start bailing.”
“Can’t we hold course to Rovileis?” Kalcedon asked. Oraik hunted down the bobbing water jug and started to scoop the sea back out.
“Not unless you fancy drowning. I can’t sail through this.”
Another swell rammed into the wolf, popping us up into the air before we crashed down to the other side of the wave.
I had no clue how far we were from land. Nothing was visible apart from the blue-black waves, frothy and tall as hills, beneath the charcoal green sky swirling ominously above. A rumble and crack snapped through the air. A bolt of lightning to the left illuminated the whole sky for one wretched moment.
“What can I do?” Kalcedon yelled.
The rain fell in earnest now, big drops of water smacking onto my head and hands. I squinted at him. The storm was loud, too; roaring waves, the snap of the sail.
“Come here,” I called. “Take the rope.” He dragged himself across the short deck. His fingers scraped against my palm as he wound the damp sail-rope around his arm. I could barely see through the haze of rain. The side of Kalcedon’s thigh burned tight against mine; shoulder to shoulder.
“What do I do?”
If we kept going as we were, we’d be dead before much longer. The wind was too strong and unpredictable.
“Reef the sail. Pull it in,” I yelled at the top of my lungs, my eyes fixed not on him but on the mast. A rope ran from there to the front of the ship. I grabbed the triangular storm jib from the chest and lurched forward across the heaving deck, bent half-over.
The small sail would allow me to keep control of the ship. Our only other option at this point was to lose the sails entirely and let the storm take us where it pleased.
I almost slid off the deck, but I managed to get the jib up. Then I crawled back to Kalcedon, wind howling in my face, to take the tiller. I had him grab onto it, too, so I could borrow his strength. Together we herded the boat over the next swell, and the next.