Page 99 of Minor Works of Meda

“But there’s nothing behind it. Wait. That… flickering? I think it’s just sunlight.”

“It’s another warship,” Kalcedon insisted. “You don’t see it?”

But suddenly it was there. The concealment cloaking the ship fell away, leaving a strange vessel riding high on the water. It was a massive contraption, a bone-white ship with four masts as well as a row of oars. A long bowsprit bore a figurehead, its shape indistinguishable over the distance. It was too far away for me to feel anything from it, but it had to be fae. A chill trickled down my spine like sweat sliding over skin.

The Buis ship began to turn towards the sudden apparition. There was a distance between the two. The Buis ship fired its skein-bows, to little effect.

It was sinking, rapidly, without any clear reason why.

There was nothing terribly dramatic about it. No smoke, no fire. Just one ship appearing and the other sinking. It only took a few minutes for it to vanish under the waves. We stared in silence. It occurred to me that even if we stopped any more stones from falling, even if the Ward remained in place a hundred years longer, our world as we’d known it was over. There were faeries, and more than just a handful, inside the Ward.

“What in horns,” I said softly, after the final slip of the Buis ‘rih was gone from view.

The fae ship slowly turned, pointed towards us—or just to Koraica beyond. It vanished from view again, slipping into a shimmering veil of light.

“Is it coming this way?” I breathed.

“Going to Koraica. It must be. They would’ve scried us yesterday, with all the noise we made.”

I looked at him. Kalcedon had been unmasked since we left the harbor. Now he was frowning, his brow furrowed as he squinted in the direction we’d last seen the ship.

“But what if it’s not?” I whispered.

“Well, it’s not pointing to Rovileis. That’s the good news.” He glanced down at me. “Still. Maybe we’d better take the long route.”

We turned south, taking a curving path that bent towards Nis-Illous rather than the straight way to Rovileis city. Kalcedon wasn’t at full strength yet, but he had power to spare. I used it to call the strongest wind that I thought our sail could handle, knocking us far out of the way. If the outland warship followed us, we didn’t see it, though perhaps it was buried deep in another concealment.

By nightfall we had reached the uninhabited saltmarsh isles between Temor and Nis-Illous. Most of the isles flooded periodically with the tide, leaving only the highest strips of land visible. The tide was low now. We followed one of the winding, muddy channels to a stand of scruffy trees that would provide a little cover. Dropping the wolf’s anchor, we ventured up to the highest point of land.

A tiny bug droned right next to my ear. I hissed and swatted at it.

“Probably shouldn’t risk a fire,” Kalcedon said. “Just in case.” He didn’t need to say out loud that we still couldn’t be certain the ship was headed towards Koraica.

I was barely listening. I felt the sharp prick of a bite as another bug landed on my arm. With a frustrated noise I grabbed Kalcedon’s heat and snapped up a shield. He flinched at the feeling and looked at me in surprise.

“Bugs,” I told him, hands crabbed miserably into the spell. “Sorry I didn’t ask. There wasn’t time.”

He smiled crookedly. Kalcedon came to stand right in front of me. He raised his hands until they mirrored mine, then cautiously slid each of his fingers against my own, curling his hands into the spell’s pivots. I held my breath as the net of magic wavered, threatening to break. Kalcedon held steady.

“Make a real shield,” he told me gently. “One you don’t have to hold all night. I’ll keep this one going.”

Gratefully I slipped my hands free and went to work.

Chapter 43

At last, the first stirrings of dawn came. My body was stiff and achy from sleeping on the deck. I stretched, inhaling the smell of salt and decaying earth. Kalcedon was still asleep.

In the distance lay a hazy smear of cliffs I’d missed in the dark of evening. Nis-Illous, I thought, my heart tightening. For all I knew those were the cliffs by Eudoria’s cottage. We were close. Though we planned to go straight by it, I couldn’t help but study the cliff longingly. It was home. And a part of me, stupid and small and sorry, still believed Eudoria had just gone away. That she’d be back, someday. Maybe she was already, if we just walked through the front door…

There was magic in the air. Odd, unrefined, and faint. I blinked up overhead, clearing my tears as I studied the pale lights drawing close across the sky. These were the same faerie birds I’d seen with Kalcedon in Olymrei. As the sky brightened, they lowered themselves down to the marsh. They glimmered, I was certain, not just with magic but with starlight itself.

Curiosity got the better of me. I took off my shoes, tied my dress up at the knees to keep it from getting wet, and slipped off the boat to investigate. Though it meant leaving the shield, the bugs weren’t so bad if I didn’t stop moving.

I had to cross one of the grassy sandbars to reach the birds. It was impossible to tell where the shore lay through the plants. Every few steps my foot went through a brambly bit of ground to sink a few inches into the brackish water. The odd magic warmth of the starflits guided me on.

At last I found one. Its companions skittered away, breaking into flight as I approached, but one remained grounded. By the dawn light, it seemed less marvelous than it had in flight. The creature looked like a long, thin bird, its feathers a shimmering pearl. Its swan-like neck craned to watch me, but the starflit remained nestled between the saltmarsh grasses, blinking blearily at me.

I was only a few feet from it. But though the faerie bird shivered and twisted away from me, it didn’t otherwise move. I frowned and crouched, feeling the faint flicker of its magic.

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