Page 36 of Minor Works of Meda

“When did he leave? From where? With whom?”

“I did what I agreed to. I have nothing else to tell you.”

“God-curst dung-blasted bloody tits,” Ozeri exploded.

I flinched and took a half-step back. The bellowed language was not only foul, which didn’t bother me, but loud, which did.

She leaned over the railing. “Luqa, Gona! Keep your cohort searching the city.” Ozeri spun on her heel and kept screaming. “Move out,” I heard her boom. “Get your dung-brained heads out your asses and haul those sails, now. Wolf-boats ready to drop when we clear the bay. We have a damned prince to catch.”

The soldiers performing their varied tasks fell to attention as she stormed down the ship’s deck. The gangway was hauled back onto the ship as sails dropped and ropes coiled.

“Prince?” Kalcedon muttered.

“These two?” a sailor asked.

“Throw them in the brig and get them talking,” Ozeri snapped. I gasped and looked at Kalcedon in alarm.

The nearest soldier grabbed him. Power rumbled around Kalcedon as he twisted his hands to shove the man clear across the deck. The war-witches rose, their own softer power gathering pathetically.

Kalcedon grabbed me around the waist and pushed me towards the gap in the railing where the platform had rested.

“Jump,” he commanded, and shoved me off before I had a chance to. With a yelp I plunged through the air and straight down into Rovileis bay. Cool, gem blue water rushed over me. I kicked back up towards the light and coughed when I surfaced. Blinking the stinging seawater from my eyes, I swam towards a dark smudge of dock. Kalcedon had jumped in after me. He grabbed me by the ankle and turned me, pushing me towards a different dock, one without Colynes sailors on it.

As I reached it, Kalcedon’s heat wrapped around me first, then his arm. The half-fae lifted me out of the water. I scrambled onto the wooden planks like a drowned cat, my waterlogged skirts twisted.

“Now I’m wet,” I complained, as I checked the clasp of my bag to make sure nothing had dropped. “Why’d you push me?”

“To get off the ship,” he gritted out as he hauled himself onto the dock as well. Ozeri was at the rail, staring at us. She turned away as the Cachian guards on the docks all trotted forwards to interrogate the Colynes soldiers who’d been left behind.

“You must have been insane, threatening them. Do you have any idea—?”

“I know exactly whose ship it was,” Kalcedon said coldly. “I ought to have sunk it to the bottom of the sea.”

I grabbed hold of his magic and dried us both off. Kalcedon didn’t protest. We stayed there, sitting at the edge of the dock, and watched the Colynes warship gather speed. Its sails billowed with magicked wind as it headed towards the wide mouth of the bay. Even though I barely knew Oraik, I couldn’t imagine him belonging there.

“You can’t be left alone,” Kalcedon muttered. I glanced his way, and he shook his head. “One night in the city, and you end up drunk with a Colynes. You’re lucky he didn’t chop your head off.”

“He’s more Doregi than Colynes,” I insisted. Then I shuddered. The Colynes king had married the last princess of Doregall. Then he’d killed her entire family. It was part of the horrible, bloody story between the two countries. Oraik was the last member of the once-proud Doregi line, a royal twice over, descendant of the conqueror and the conquered. What right did the Temple have to keep him hostage, then hand him right back to the father who’d killed his mother’s line?

“Colynes is Colynes,” Kalcedon said. “They’re probably behind this whole rotted muck with the Ward. If I hadn’t shown up, who can say what he would have done.”

We were still on the dock watching the Colynes ship sail away. One of the Cachian warships, anchored in the middle of the bay rather than docked at a pier, slowly began to turn. Its own sails puffed with magic as it trailed after the Colynes vessel.

“What’s that about?” I asked. Kalcedon squinted, then shrugged.

“Not our problem. Come on.”

Chapter 18

Timing was on our side. We found a ferryboat about to leave Rovileis for Sable-Pall, a far shorter journey than the one which had brought me from Nis-Illous. The ferry would dock at the isle’s south end, then travel on to the capital Olymrei, near the middle-coast. From there we’d have to find another boat to the northern region where the stone was located.

The broad, low-decked boat held a dozen other passengers. The ferrywoman tried to bar the gate when she saw us coming, but she didn’t get it closed in time. She quickly swung it back open, hands shaking, and I wondered if she was afraid Kalcedon would hurt her if she didn’t. Kalcedon tugged his new cloak tighter around him and bowed his head.

“He’s from here,” I told her bluntly. “Nis-Illous, his whole life.”

“Don’t waste your breath,” Kalcedon muttered to me.

We paid and moved off to the corner of the ship.

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