44. Forty-four
Chapter 44
The sea was terribly wide and terribly empty.
I sailed to where the warship had been, frantically hunting for even the faintest flicker of magic. But there was nothing, not in any direction. For all I knew the ship had sunk beneath the surface and slithered away like a sea-drake. All I could see were the waving grasses of the marsh, and the hazy cliffs of Nis-Illous.
A storm petrel flew overhead. I tracked it desperately, wishing it was larger and full of magic; a faerie in costume. But to all appearances it was just a dumb, stupid bird. Flying over a dumb, stupid sea. A sea that had swallowed the one person I cared most about in the world.
I screamed. I screamed as loud as I could, and I hoped the damned, horned, blasted faeries could hear me, and hear my rage.
They were idiots for leaving me alive, I thought, because I was going to hunt them all down and I was going to kill them and I was going to bring Kalcedon home. Except that I was just a powerless human.
And I didn’t even know which way they had gone.