We made it in under two hours.

  Without a complaining Touched or a one-legged human we could run as fast as we could through the trees. We had to dodge a lot of underbrush, but I understood how Fyga was able to vanish so fast. It felt exhilarating to run that fast and feel the wind in my face. I almost forgot about why we were running.

  We didn’t talk the entire time. Val let me lead, since I had an idea of where we were going, though to be honest, all she had to look for was the burned out place connected to the shore.

  Once we got where we could see the water, Val slowed down and took out her sword.

  I pushed against one of the pine trees as I stopped. “You’re taking out your sword?”

  Val raised an eyebrow. “If they're friendly, they won’t care that we’re being vigilant. But if they’re not…” She let the rest of the sentence hang in the air.

  Considering I’d already thrown fireballs at them and Fyga had killed a third of them, drawing my weapons shouldn't have felt as wrong as it did. I couldn’t shake the feeling that my sword shouldn’t be in my hands. These were allies of the Bokor, we should be working with them, not preparing to kill them.

  The nightmare of standing before the Council and having them pronounce me an enemy flashed in front of my eyes. The disappointment on Master Bran’s face was the worst part of that. I was glad that Touched needed very little sleep, because I knew that scene waited for me every time I closed my eyes.

  I had to prove to the Bokor that I was still on their side and that I could be useful. But the interaction with the sailors so far hadn’t been a good step in that direction. If they were real, we needed to mend that, otherwise we’d have Bokor Assassins chasing us.

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  “Which way?” Val walked onto the beach and looked north, then south.

  “Um…” I took a deep breath as I followed her onto the sand. I could see what I thought was the end of the island to the north, but there was a lot of sand and water, so I couldn’t be sure.

  “I think it’s that way.” I pointed south. We’d been near the southern tip when we saw the ghost ship, so the store house should be just south of the middle of the island.

  “You think?” Val took a few steps through the sand, then walked back into the treeline. “You’re horrible at directions.”

  “Well, I…” I couldn’t think of a good comeback. I’d walked all over the peninsula and the flatland to the north. Master Bran talked about navigating by the stars, but it was light out, so that wasn’t an option.

  The Bokor sheathed her sword and took off again. As fast as we were going, we could probably run the length of the island in two hours. It shouldn’t take too long to find the burned out spot.

  The thing that bothered me was that I had set fire to a decent patch of the woods. I’d expected that Val would have to use her water magic to get through a wildfire, but I didn’t even see smoke. My worst fear concerning the storehouse was that the sailors were able to put out the fire and clean out the food stored there. Just one of those barrels of grain would feed everyone for three months and there had been bags and crates as well. We needed that food to protect the few survivors that we had.

  My mind started playing out things I could have done to get to it sooner, things I could have done to keep Fyga from getting shot. Things I could have done…

  I pushed the thoughts out of my mind. Ever since I’d been given this mission, death had followed me. There were plenty of things that I could have done differently in the past, but I had no way of knowing how things were going to turn out. Thinking about it now was only going to ensure that I made another mistake.

  I focused on the woman running in front of me. I wasn’t going to let the survivors down.

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