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The wind was dying down now as well. She could open her eyes fully. To the east, she saw nothing but darkness. She wondered where Soraya was now. How far had she traveled? Had she been successful? Had she been the one to light the flame at the harbor? Or was it the scholars themselves, angry to discover a warehouse full of blank pilfered texts? Or was it, as history would later argue, Julius Caesar setting fire to his own fleet?

One thing that could not be argued about: the city was burning. To the west, where Alexandria would be waking in a few hours, the sky throbbed with an ominous orange glow. Bits of black ash, carried out to sea by the wind, hung suspended in the air.

She gripped the wand inside her pocket and tried to conjure a spark. It fizzled almost immediately, but at least she could feel that something was there. The wards were weakening.

But there was something unfamiliar about the magic itself. It didn’t feel quite the same. Her conjuring skills felt flabby, her innate powers weak. She’d always considered herself quite proficient. But was she still? Or had years of working for the Society made her lazy? As the director she never had to budget her energy. She’d never had to worry about making a mess or cleaning up. She had cleaners and assistants, preppers and testers. No spell was too costly and no ingredient too precious for the Director of the Society for the Protection of Natural Magic. She’d long enjoyed the privilege of the Society’s considerable weight behind every working.

Her teeth chattered as she struggled to shake off the remnants of the ship’s wards. Her own personal magic, without any extra credit, was rusty.

I’ve grown soft.

She raised the binoculars that were strung around her neck, searching for something, any bit of wreckage she might swim to before The Tufan went down. She swept the glasses across the horizon, west to east, and east to west. Then she searched north to south and back. She found nothing. The items that had been blown off the decks must have sunk straight to the ocean floor.

The smoke from the fires in Alexandria became more visible as the sky grew lighter. A dark column of ash rose against the breaking clouds. She watched as the evidence of Callimachus’ theft disappeared. Everything the corrupt scholar had taken over the past two centuries. The public would mourn the loss of the library, never realizing that the souls of all those scrolls and codices were already long gone. They were all in the atlas now. And the atlas was safe with Soraya.

She swept the glasses to the eastern horizon again. Something was moving in the smoke and mist. Coming toward her. She kept the binoculars trained on it. The shape materialized. It was a small vessel, not much bigger than the tender boat, powered by a single sail. It seemed to be fighting both wind and water. The bow lifted with the peak of every wave, only to slam down into the basin that preceded the next. It tacked left and right to gather what wind it could, moving forward resolutely, fighting its way toward her.

Amrita couldn’t tell if it was friend or foe. But it was something. Someone. Her hope returned. She tried her wand again. This time the spark lasted longer.

She lifted the binoculars again, spinning the tiny wheel between the two eyepieces to sharpen the focus. The figure at the stern was large and broad. He was standing at the rudder and leaning into the wind.

Her heart skipped a beat.

Even before she could see his face, she knew. She knew him by the set of his shoulders. Those strong, steady, dependable shoulders! His head was turned away from her, though. He was looking for her in the wrong direction.

She lowered the binoculars and gripped the wand a third time. She held on to it and breathed slowly to gather her strength. She willed her magic to work for her again, and her alone. Thirty-seven years. She had given the Society so much of her life. And her work had given her life shape and meaning. She didn’t have regrets. She had done so many things worth doing. She still believed that. But she could see now that the work had also been a crutch. It had been easier to serve as part of a system than to face the world alone. Systems did not leave. Systems did not choose someone else.

Systems did not sail a small boat across ancient oceans to find you.

She raised the binoculars again. He was much closer now. But still looking the wrong way.

She pulled herself upright against the mast and closed both hands around her wand.

Systems could not sustain her. But true love could. Still holding on with both hands, she raised the wand over her head.

This time a jet of fire erupted from the tip of her wand like a blowtorch. It shot up into the sky and lit the water all around her.

“Buffalo!” Amrita screamed his name into what was left of the wind.

Buffalo Westabrook brought his boat to the side of the sinking ship with far more skill than she would have expected from a man who loathed the sea.

When he was close enough to make out his features, her heart ached at the sight of him, so weathered and salt-rimmed. His hair was long and he’d grown a beard. He was also considerably thinner than when she had last seen him in the library. And he seemed to be unmistakably, undeniably overjoyed with relief at the sight of her.

“You traded your binoculars.” She laughed, untying the ropes that bound her to the mast. When he angled the boat close enough to reach out, he plucked her off the deck.

“At the port. I needed a boat more than I needed binoculars. How did you get them?” He looked at her. “And are you all right?”

“I’ve been better,” she said honestly. “I’ve also been worse.”

Soon she was sitting in the stern of the smaller boat with Buffalo’s cloak wrapped round her shoulders, racing away from the sinking ship. The wind was in their favor now that they’d turned around.

“How did you find me,” she asked.

“I’ve been following you the whole time,” Buffalo answered. “The whole time, since you were kidnapped by that wretched godforsaken pirate.”

“She wasn’t so bad in the end.” Amrita smiled.

“She?” Buffalo raised an eyebrow.