Page 54 of Minor Works of Meda

“Is one of you the harbormaster?” I asked. Both men chuckled.

“Haven’ got one,” said the man with the knife. He had a missing tooth and patchy hair on his face. “I’ll watch your boat, darling. Needn’t even pay ‘n coin.” His unfamiliar accent sounded slurred to my ears, the same words I’d grown up knowing but the cadence entirely different from how we spoke on Nis.

My skin crawled as I eyed the man’s knife. What was Oraik doing in a place like this? Nonetheless I hoped he was here. If he’d sold or lost the Dancer, I was no closer to finding him.

“The owner of that boat, there—did you see him arrive?” I pointed at the Dancer.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” said the one who’d looked me over. He leaned back with a smirk. “You’ll have to settle for another man instead.”

I didn’t even waste my breath saying no. I just grimaced, shook my head, and headed past them into the town.

The street I walked down appeared to be the village’s only path. What’s more, it was strangely busy for such a quiet place. People lounged outside the buildings, playing dice and drinking on the stoops of the houses. They all looked well-armed. I saw knives on belts, knives sticking out of boots, and knives strapped to arms. As I walked past, I heard conversations dropping off, and felt their gazes lifting to study me.

An eerie quiet haunted the street.

It occurred to me that this wasn’t like any fishing village I’d been to. Please tell me I haven’t wandered into a pirate den, I thought uncomfortably. The feeling of being watched nagged at the back of my mind, and I glanced over my shoulder. Two men ambled up the street from the direction of the harbor. From my quick glance, I thought they were the same two I’d spoken with coming in. The only sound I heard were the distant waves, a trilling bug.

I approached the nearest woman, who was staring at me with pale blue eyes from beside the dice game she’d been playing.

“I’m looking for a friend,” I said bluntly. “Tall, brown, pretty. Curly hair to his shoulders. Perhaps twenty. Did someone like that turn up recently?”

She blinked at me without answering, then slowly smirked. I waited a moment, until my fear rose just too high for me to push it any further. The men were getting closer, and if I wasn’t careful I was going to end up penned in. I turned and spun away, and strode down the street, wondering if I ought to turn around and make a run for the harbor. Except I still didn’t know what had happened to Oraik.

A wave of magic hit me. I stumbled, exhaling hard, as the outland’s wild heat washed over my skin.

The stone. Kalcedon. My thoughts froze in terror.

Their eyes were still on me. But a man halfway down the street had jumped from the stoop of his house and clutched at his heart, marking him another witch.

Kalcedon. Was he dead, or captive, or had he just not reached Buis in time?

What if he was hurt somewhere?

I couldn’t do this. I wanted to go home. It was too much. I couldn’t.

My mind, overwhelmed, rejected its surroundings.

The houses around me were a blur, the silence of the town a roar.

Until.

“Wow, you’re good at that,” A familiar, unaccented voice said with a laugh, from a little ways off. I turned blindly towards the gap between two of the houses and stumbled through it to emerge on the other side.

Kalcedon, my head kept repeating. What if he was hurt?

The area past the house was uncultivated and wild. There I saw three strangers, well-armed men like the others in town… and Oraik. My head kept buzzing, nauseated and frantic.

The prince wore ratty clothes. His trousers were too small, coming down only midway on his calves, stretching tight around his thick thighs. The shirt had a blood-stained hole on the abdomen, as if whoever owned it before him had been gutted.

“Meda?” Oraik’s eyes found mine, his eyes bewildered over a frozen smile.

The other men had been occupied throwing knives at a half-dead tree, the tall kind of pine whose trunk extended some twenty feet before branching out. At the sound of Oraik’s voice one of them turned while throwing. The blade went wide, vanishing into the tangle of forest rather than plunging beside the other knives buried in the trunk. I saw a flash of gold on his fingers. The knife-thrower was wearing two rings that might have been Oraik’s.

“Friend of yours?” Someone said behind me. I turned to see the blue-eyed woman from the street lounging against the nearest house. I shuddered and pressed the knuckles of both hands against my jaw, taking a deep breath. I couldn’t calm down.

“What are you doing here?” Oraik said cheerfully as he closed the distance between us. He caught me up in a tight hug, then whispered “you need to go” into my ear.

I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn't help the whimper that escaped my lips. Oraik’s grip around me was soothing, but the nightmare was still going.

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