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It took Niko three days to find a ship willing to carry him out into the Pebbled Sea on what, more than once, he heard referred to as a hopeless mission, but he was persistent and eventually found someone more interested in the money he offered than the likelihood of success or the safety of their ship in the still-dangerous winter seas. He had woken every morning since learning of the Third Ship Kisubo's departure (and laid awake many nights, too) listening for that dreaded winter storm that would spell out the end of the girl he was sure still clung to life in the wreckage of her ship, but the storm never came. As each day of grace passed, he became increasingly frantic that he had to find her, and soon.
He was fairly certain that Captain Moodie was a pirate, or at the very least engaged in some very unsavoury business practices, but as the third day of Niko's time in Hajra closed, Niko passed along a pouch of Emelan gold and ignored the flash of greed on the captain's face as he accepted it and assured Niko that they would leave the following morning.
The first mate, a man by the name of Ferrick, was the one to greet Niko on the dock.
"Master Goldeye..." Ferrick looked over at his ship quickly. "You know, no matter what happens the Captain is going to be keepin' the money you gave him an', well, even if they followed the normal shipping routes – which you can't be sure of with these Trader types – they could have been blown miles off'n their course."
Niko wiped a hand wearily across his forehead. He appreciated the warning, but he had run out of options and he would do what he needed to do, now. "I know the odds. I will try, anyway," he said as he walked up the plank and onto Captain Moodie's Setting Sun.
Niko thought hard as he stood on the deck, waiting for the tides to turn and the ship to undertake the journey from the harbour. There was very little chance that they would find the girl by chance, but there had to be something he could do. He filtered through the spells he knew, trying to find one that he could modify to help in this situation.
If he had seen the girl once he could have tracked her – at great expense to himself, of course, but it would have been possible. His visions of her now would be useless; there was no way to distinguish her spot of the ocean from the rest that surrounded her. She was one tiny needle in a huge haystack and her time was nearly up and there was nothing he could do?
"Master Goldeye, we're underway."
Niko looked up from the ocean, startled. Ferrick stood nearby and the Setting Sun was, indeed, underway.
I'm never going to find her, he thought. But at least I will have tried.
"I need a mirror," he told the first mate curtly. As one of the crew ran to fetch him one, he turned back to the ocean and prepared himself for the magical workings that were ahead of him.
Pushing his doubts aside was the hardest part of the first step of his search. He concentrated on the now-familiar image of the Third Ship Kisubo, trying to track its course as it left the fifth dock and sailed out of the harbour bay.
A vision of the ship as it left the harbour, still in sight of the towers on the shoreline gave him enough of a reference for him to estimate its direction and when they left the harbour, he was able to confirm with the helmsman that it had taken the usual shipping route. He put away the mirror as they sailed out into open water; it would do little good, now, to see the ship without the chance of comparing its direction with a point on land.
And, if he was right, this magic was going to take all of his concentration.
His head began to pound lightly in anticipation.
Stop that, he thought. I have yet to do anything.
He loosened the tight hold his hands had on the railing in front of him and looked out at the ocean. The sky was deep, almost-black cloud cover, and the rolling waves reflected that, turning the sea around them an iron grey. Combined, his surroundings seemed to close around Niko and the Setting Sun like a cage.
Falling into his meditative breathing, Niko closed his eyes, concentrating on the magic he was forming. He had two bottles of oil in a pouch at his waist. Using the rose oil, he drew a circular symbol in the middle of his forehead, and dabbed it on each eyelid. Putting that back in the pouch without opening his eyes, he opened the other jar. He caught the scent of lemon extract as the breeze blew over the jar as he drew a second symbol over the rose oil on his forehead. This connected to a line over his eyebrows and connected to other runes for concentration on each temple.
Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes into a blaze of magic.
His headache – waiting on the edges of his concentration – erupted into full force. Blinking as his eyes watered, Niko continued the meditative breathing and pushed the pain down into a hidden space in his brain. Able to concentrate, Niko focused on orienting himself to the sudden shift in his vision.
Instead of trying to rely on scrying, which would show him the girl without any point of reference, Niko had enhanced his far-sight spell in order to pick up any movement in the distance. Far-sight was a limited talent and, outside of academia, was mostly useless. If there were any obstacles in the direct line of sight, the view would be as completely blocked as if the mage was blindfolded, making it impossible to use unless one was standing in a tower or on walls such as those at Winding Circle, or found himself looking for something in the distance when he was at sea.
Combined with the concentrating essence in the lemon oil and the runes he had used with that, the sight was useless for detail or fine-tuning, but Niko didn't need anything other than a direction of travel towards the ruins of a storm-savaged ship. All he needed was speed and the ability to guide the ship in the correct direction, and –
"Master Ferrick," Niko said, pointing without looking away from the distance blotch of colour on an otherwise consistent blue-grey of the ocean. He felt the ship adjust to his direction and he watched as the distant shape grew nearer.
He adjusted the direction of the course only a few times as the daylight dimmed and they sailed closer to what Niko fervently hoped was the Third Ship Kisubo. Finally, terrified that they would overrun the wreckage if they continued sailing into the night, Niko wiped the symbols from his face and waited for his sight to adjust back to normal while the first mate Ferrick called men's name for the anchor watch. Niko heard the sails being adjusted and the splash of the anchor falling into the sea.
"I've had the men bring her to. We have the bearing now, Master Goldeye," Ferrick said as he met the mage on deck. "We'll be able to continue on this way tomorrow at first light. Then we'll see if your ship is out there."
"It is out there," Niko said, his voice quiet with exhaustion. "I am just not sure whether the most precious of its cargo is lost yet."
Ferrick lowered his voice. "If you're lookin' to recover something valuable from the wreckage, you'll want to not let the crew or captain know of that, Master Goldeye."
Niko smiled slightly. "Don't worry about that. It is not that sort of treasure." Making his way unsteadily to the cramped cabin he had been allowed for this voyage, Niko laid on the cot and tried to rest while the night passed slowly.
He must have managed some small portions of sleep, because the Setting Sun felt like it was soon awake and underway. Niko dragged himself back on the deck and got himself out of the way as sailors hurried to arrange the sails and ropes in the complex patterns that controlled the ship. Happy that he was expected to do nothing, Niko found a place by the front of the ship and added his eyes to those watching for wreckage ahead. Long before he spotted the signs of the remains of the ship, the man perched on the mast had called a warning and the ship came alive once more as men hurried to prepare a longboat for a small crew to approach.
Niko's first good look at the last of the Third Ship Kisubo took place as the longboat was lowered into the water with its final splash. There was little left to view; most of the ship had dispersed on the currents or sunk into the ocean's depths. From this distance, there was no way to distinguish between the shapes to see whether or not there was a girl survivor among the floating debris. There was no movement, though, no matter how long Niko stared.
Finally, one of the sailors interrupted his guard and he followed him to the edge of the ship. Taking a deep, steadying breath, Niko lowered himself over the side of the deck and made his way, ungracefully, down the rope ladder and into the longboat. With some help from the crew, he was settled into a seat at the front, away from the oars that would propel them in their search of the wreckage.
Niko turned himself forward, blinking as sea spray stung his eyes as they made their painfully slow progress towards the Trader ship. Finally, they rose to the top of a wave and the wreckage was laid out before them. Niko scanned the floating wood and canvas desperately. There was no one. He could see no one.
"Ahoy!" he called out as their ship dipped into the trough of the swell and the wreckage was lost from sight. Nothing answered him but the steady, unforgiving crash of the waves.