Page 17 of Minor Works of Meda

“What?” Kalcedon said, his voice flat. His dark eyes looked sunken and exhausted.

Too long a list to name. Eudoria being gone. The tower being empty. A cairn of stones in what used to be wild land. A burned tree in what used to be a garden. And above it all, the Ward, our only safety, breaking.

“How could it give out like that? Is the whole thing failing?”

“Failing?” He mumbled. “It’s gone.”

“No, it’s not. Look. It only came down for a moment.” My head tilted back as I peered up at the sky. Sure enough, so far overhead it was barely visible, the faintest flickers of the Ward could be seen. That was good, since otherwise hordes of bloodthirsty, cruel faeries could tramp all over the Protectorate. But I had never realized the Ward could fail.

I wondered what they were saying about it at the Temple. If the scholars there already knew.

“Spells go wrong,” he mumbled.

“Not like that, they don’t. It’s self-sustaining. It’s not—”

“Enough.” His voice fell like a cleaver. I bowed my head, and reminded myself now was not the time. Kalcedon’s eyebrows furrowed as he stared moodily at the cairn.

My mind kept spinning. Either somebody had found a way to break the Ward, or Tarelay’s enchantment was finally coming to its end. Which was more likely of the two? My thoughts flickered to my own family, and then back to Kalcedon. He alone out of all of us might be safe if the fae Sorrowing Lord reclaimed the isles of the Protectorate. The rest of us would all probably die. Horribly.

But that wasn’t going to happen. The Ward had only been down for a minute. It had stood for over three hundred years, and surely it would last three hundred more. Perhaps the magic had just gotten too heavy. Under its oppressive, wild weight, that was easy to believe.

I watched Kalcedon press a kiss to his fingers, and touch his fingers against the cairn. His hand lingered there, a tenderer gesture than I think I’d ever seen from him.

We stood in silence until Kalcedon had finished. I followed him back into the tower, where he vanished into his room.

If Eudoria was gone, the tower belonged to Kalcedon. But where did that leave me? As Kalcedon’s student, or Kalcedon’s assistant? How could I remain in her tower if she wasn’t there anymore? Every stone, window, and book was a reminder; every room an empty shell. Her spirit would fill this place.

There was a world outside, a wide one; I needed answers and solitude.

I dragged my satchel out from under the bed. In went a bottle of hair oil, clothes, argit. The wooden bird, to remind me of Eudoria. My most recent journal and something to write with. I walked up to the workroom, wrote myself a recommendation, and sent it to the Temple at Rovileis, using the same spell by which she used to send her scrying reports. The wild magic fought more than Kalcedon’s ever had. I had to grit my teeth and strain to get the sigils right. But Eudoria had as good as said I belonged with the Order.

Kalcedon was still in his room; I could hear him on the other side. I knocked, twice, and called his name, but he didn’t answer.

Instead I left a note for him on the kitchen counter. Off to Rovileis. Don’t throw out my things. I paused with the reed above the paper, and wondered what would happen if the Ward broke again. What if Kalcedon was midway through a spell? What if Kalcedon…that was intolerable. Put limits on anything you cast, I added.

And then I left. The moment I reached the trailhead to Missaniech I turned to look at the tower, which seemed suddenly small and sad. I hefted my bag over onto the other shoulder. It was far too light. Some clothes and some money; was that really all I needed to leave Nis-Illous for the first time?

The wind rustled, bowing the overgrown bean plant and carrying the smell of rosemary to my nose. I breathed in deep and gave the tower and Kalcedon’s garden a final look.

“I’ll be back,” I whispered to him, even though he couldn’t hear me. I felt my throat closing up. I cleared it. “I will be back,” I said more firmly, before turning on my heel and setting off down the path to Missaniech village, to find somewhere in the world no spirit haunted.

Chapter 10

I grew up outside a village just like Missaniech. If I squinted I could be home at Zebitun, with the piles of nets by the cracked docks, the fish-wives with long daggers on their belts and husbands with babies on their hips. Just like home, the snaggle-toothed old grandmothers sat by the Etegen with their bitter wine, calling questions to the fish-craft as each came in or out, as if they themselves had been tasked to supervise the dance with the sea.

It was the sort of place that nobody ever moved to or from, unless, perhaps, you were marrying in from an identical town a few hours down the coast. Even my parents, whose pottery was good enough to be sold off-island, refused to leave the spit of land where they’d been born.

But now, finally, I was going to.

I walked straight through the village to the sea without greeting anybody. Three of the old women sat by the water, on rickety wooden stools that they probably brought down from their homes every day.

“When’s the next ship to Rovileis?” I asked. The Etegen beside us was covered in colorful boats, fishing-craft bobbing on the swells of the sea with nets and lines draped over the edges. The ships held sun-darkened women yelling and laughing at each other, some close enough for their calls to reach my ears, some far enough from shore that they were barely specks.

The old women craned their heads slowly to take me in: my dark tangled hair tied back with a blood-red scarf, the gray overskirt knotted on top of my sleeveless linen dress, the full leather bag over my shoulder.

“Eudoria’s girl?” one of them asked. Her skin was spotted with age and her knobby fingers clamped like claws around her wine-cup. “The Golden Hound won’t be in for a week.”

“Two weeks,” one of her companions said, a woman at least fifteen years younger with her hair shorn. One of her legs was propped awkwardly in front of her, the knee misshapen. This, I figured, was the reason she’d joined the ranks of old women already, despite still being of an age to ride the sea.

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