Page 53 of Minor Works of Meda

And then he drew a knife. I jerked back with a yelp.

“Hold still.” Kalcedon said. Now he was scowling. “I’m not a good enough seer to find you otherwise, not when you could be anywhere in the whole damned Protectorate.” He sawed off a coil of my hair a little longer than his finger. Holding his knife in his mouth, he knotted it in the middle and tucked it into his pocket. Then he cut off a lock of his own hair, tied it, and handed it to me.

“Disgusting,” I told him, and reluctantly took it.

“Don’t risk your life over some Colynes prick. If you find him, hide somewhere nobody will see you.”

The more eyes were on us, the easier we’d be to scry—if whoever was responsible for this was hunting for Oraik. As I nodded, Kalcedon kept talking.

“And if that warship already found him, don’t you dare get involved. They have real witches.”

“So what? I’m a real witch,” I muttered.

“Just don’t die, idiot,” Kalcedon growled. “Promise me that.”

He reached out and slowly rested his fingers against my cheek. Kalcedon's touch blistered through me. My eyes fluttered closed. He withdrew.

When I looked again, Kalcedon was midway in transformation, shifting to a form I could not follow. He slipped through the window, and spread his wings wide on the wild Etegen breeze.

Chapter 23

I used every last coin of Kalcedon’s money to buy a little sailboat in the Olymrei harbor, a compass, and enough provisions for three days.

She was painted in stripes of green and blue and didn’t have a name on the side. I’d never owned my own boat, but as I set out on the water, I didn’t feel free or emboldened. I kept thinking about Kalcedon—where he was, how much heat he’d have left by the time he reached Buis, and what uncertain fate might await him there.

My eyes ached from lack of sleep. The scarf I’d used to tie my hair back from the wind couldn’t keep it entirely out of my face. The wind was stiff and stinging, the sea choppy and brisk. I was on my way to save a prince, armed with only a flicker of magic and a vague idea of where he’d gone.

I knew how to sail; anybody from Nis did. But I had never done this alone, not for more than an hour or two. By the end of day I felt half mad from the sound of the incessant billowing wind and the lash of waves and the cry of gulls, from being alone on the undulating and endless Etegen.

Then dark fell down across the sky, and the dozen stars above fluttered over the Ward. The vague smudge of moon glowed brightly. A stiff wind howled.

I dropped the sail and the anchor and lay on my back. There was a clack of something falling as I pulled my spare clothes from my bag to use as blankets. I rummaged for the sound and my fingers wrapped around the wooden lopsided bird Kalcedon had carved. Instead of putting it back, I held it to my chest.

Time had no meaning on the ocean at night. I whispered songs to myself and ran a hand across the wood of the ship, fighting against the primal terror rising in my bones. All that lay between me and the dark depths of the Etegen were a few planks of well-worked wood.

When my eyes closed I found myself thinking about Eudoria, and the tower. When this was over, I told myself, I’d go back, and I’d tell her…

I couldn’t tell her anything. How odd. It was like a missing tooth I kept expecting to find in my mouth. My heart still felt certain she was there, even as my brain reminded myself again, and again, that she had passed to another plane.

Then at last, after endless cycles of sleep and waking, the sun bled out onto the sky. I oriented myself back towards Montay, shook off my cold in the rising heat, and approached the forested coast.

Montay was larger than Rovileis, but less populated; there was no large city here. Only little pockets of towns and villages, like Nis-Illous.

Soon the hazy blue smudge of land turned green; then gained definition. It struck me as mad that I expected to find Oraik like this. If only Kalcedon were with me, though even then we’d have a mess of it. Scrying without a focus, like the hair we’d exchanged, or a clear idea of where you were meant to be looking, was a long, difficult process. Even Eudoria, such a master that the Temple used her rather than its own witches for much scry-work, could spend days or weeks hunting for someone before finding them.

In any case, I was alone. And Kalcedon was alone, too, headed towards whatever force was powerful enough to have broken Tarelay’s sigils open and spilled royal’s blood in secret.

I couldn’t think about that.

The Ward hadn’t fallen again, I told myself. That was a good sign. So I would do what I could to find Oraik, and if I failed, the prince would be no worse off than he’d been before. I turned north along the coast, for no better reason than the wind blew that way.

The first two harbors I passed were without promise. But fortune was with me. I reached a third just past noon. When I angled my boat closer to the shore to peer at the town between the trees, I spotted a familiar rickety boat with the name Wave Dancer painted on the side.

I furled my sail, and drifted in beside the Dancer. My jaw cracked with a yawn.

I was a little surprised to see Oraik’s crummy little boat there, of all places. As I stepped onto the dock I surveyed the village in front of me. Unlike the two sleepy towns I had passed before, the buildings here were poorly constructed, with gaps between the rotting slats and unevenly thatched roofs. There hadn’t been any boats at work outside their small harbor. I’d seen a larger ship, too big for a fishing town, but if it was a merchant vessel nobody was doing trade.

Two men lounged at the shore, passing a jug back and forth. One of them fiddled with a knife, spinning it around in his hand. The other gave me a sweeping up-and-down look as I walked closer.

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