The Girl from Everywhere (2 page)

“Making it work is
your
job, Captain,” I said. “Until you teach me how to Navigate, of course.”

Although he made no answer, he stared at me a while longer before he spun on his heel and went to his cabin. Suddenly I was aware of the eyes of the crew, but when I turned around, Bee seemed very interested in the river ahead, and Rotgut was studiously cleaning his fingernails. Only Kashmir caught my eye. “And
you
,” I said.

“Me? What did I do,
amira
?”

“I was this close to getting the bird seller to take my price,” I said, but his grin widened; I wasn’t fooling him.

“Even if that’s true, you said it yourself. The English took all the gold. I was just doing a little redistribution.”

“It’s still wrong to steal, Kashmir.”

“What else should I have done?”

“Maybe leave the bird?”

He looked at me sideways with a twinkle in his eye. “Come,
amira
. You were thrilled when I put it in your hands.”

“That’s because cure-alls are rare in mythology, outside of healing springs. Not because I think we’ll actually get to use it.”

“The captain thinks we will. And you know how he is.”

“And how is that?”

Kashmir pursed his lips. “Very difficult to refuse.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “No argument there,” I said softly, staring at the water of the Hooghly. It was the color of bile. “Is the cargo secure?”

“You mean the tigers?” There was a lilt in his voice.

“Yes, the tigers, in all their fearful symmetry.” The big cats had been delivered to the ship in flimsy bamboo cages; Kash and Bee had been the ones brave enough to wrestle the cages into the hold. I actually was impressed, but with Kashmir it was usually best not to let it show.

“Last I checked, they were sleeping like kittens,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a gold watch to check the time. Then he tilted it; water ran out from under the face. “Well. They should be fine all the way to New York.”

“Where did you get that?”

“Ah. This?” He looked at me from under his brows; if I hadn’t known better, I’d have said he was embarrassed. “He
shouldn’t have called me a half-caste.”

I gritted my teeth. “You can’t blame that on the captain’s orders.”

“No, I can’t. This was just for me.”

“You know, if I had your morals, I could solve all my problems.”

He shrugged one shoulder and slipped the watch back into his pocket. “If I had your problems, I could afford to have better morals. I’m going to get another shirt. You have ten seconds to stop me. No?”

He went below, leaving me at the bow. We sailed past the tumbled ruin of Fort William, where the East India Company claimed a hundred English prisoners had perished due to Indian savagery in the dungeon called the Black Hole of Calcutta. Downstream of the city, fishermen pulled
illish
from the turgid river and children swam naked at the
ghats
. I piled my hair atop my head in an effort to cool down, but the breeze licked the back of my neck, hot as a giant’s breath.

Kashmir was right about the captain; when he wanted something, he did not stop until he had it. No matter what it cost. No matter who it hurt.

And what he wanted more than anything was to return
to Honolulu, 1868. That’s why he needed the map now on offer at Christie’s auction house, and the money to win it.

The captain had never bothered investing in stocks, or betting on sports, or even opening a checking account. Slate spent much more time thinking about the past than the future, and it was always a scramble for money whenever he remembered it was useful.

So I’d plotted a route, pulling the maps from his collection. Cash for tigers was not the simplest course I might have charted, but I’d wanted to see as much as I could before the auction. After all, if Slate was right about the map of Hawaii, I might never go anywhere else again.

My mind skittered away from the thought. It was pointless—no, foolish to worry; none of his Honolulu maps had ever worked. Better to concentrate on the task—and the journey—at hand.

As it was, I planned to exchange our cargo for U.S. currency when we reached our next destination, where the leader of a Chinese gang had a soft spot in his heart—and cold hard cash in his pocket—for the big cats. According to the newspaper clippings I’d read, he’d been known for using them to dispose of rivals.

After that, Slate could easily bring us to the auction in
2016; fifty-one years prior, the captain had been born in New York, and his erstwhile home awaited him just beyond the edge of every map he Navigated. The year 2016 was long after the gang leader had been killed in a shoot-out, but with the map from 1981, it should have been a simple matter for the captain to steer the
Temptation
through two centuries, from the Bay of Bengal to the waters of the Atlantic off the coast of Long Island. After all, though he wouldn’t call it home, he knew the city well.

Which is why it surprised me when the map of 1981 failed.

We were sailing toward the edge of the map of Calcutta under a sky so starry it looked sugared; the night would never be as beautiful after the Industrial Revolution.

Those stars dimmed as we slipped into the Margins of the map, the slender threshold between one place and the next, where India in 1774 ran out and the next shore appeared. Mist rose around us like the souls of drowned sailors, and the only sound was the muted hollow music of waves moving along the hull. Everything seemed calm, but the seas in the Margins were unpredictable—the currents mercurial and the winds erratic—and passage was always rougher the farther afield we traveled. And, very rarely, there were ghost ships in the fog,
captained by those who had found the way in, but not the way out. I rubbed some warmth into my bare arms.

“Are you all right,
amira
?”

I made a face and nodded toward the mist. “The Margins always reminds me of purgatory. The place between worlds.”

Kashmir’s brow wrinkled. “Isn’t purgatory supposed to be hotter?”

“That’s St. Augustine’s version. This is more like the Asphodel Meadows in Homer. Although with fewer bloodthirsty ghosts.”

Kashmir laughed. “Ah, yes, of course. I must catch up on my reading.”

“Well, I’m sure you know where my books are if you ever want to steal them.” I grinned as I turned back to the helm; just as quickly, the smile fell away. Slate had taken the wheel to steer us toward the far-off shore only he could see . . . but his face was full of frustration. He swung his head back and forth, he gripped the wheel, he leaned forward as if to get a closer look—but it was clear he couldn’t see our destination.

The ship rolled on the swells, and bronze light flickered in the fog, followed by the low grumble of thunder. Rain pelted the sails and the mist writhed in a sudden gust. In the crow’s nest above our heads, Rotgut cursed; he must have
been swaying like a metronome.

New York should not have been difficult, not like this. “What’s wrong, Captain?”

“I don’t know!” Slate wrenched the wheel starboard, trying to take us around, but the waves were pushing hard to port. Near the prow, Bee tensioned the halyard on the jib, the bell at her waist swinging as she moved.

The
Temptation
groaned, and the ship shuddered as a swell hit, followed by another high enough to send spray over the rail. Kashmir caught my arm and pulled me close to the mast. I held on, keeping clear of the boom; my fingers found the rough splinters of the bullet hole. A breaker washed the deck, the cold sea soaking my feet.

“Slow down,” Slate said. “I need more time!”

Kashmir sprang into action, racing up the stairs to the quarterdeck and grabbing the sea anchor. I followed on his heels and helped heave it off the stern. As the canvas caught our wake and dragged, another swell hit broadside and jolted us hard enough to rattle my teeth. This time Kashmir stumbled; I took his hand and grabbed the rail, bracing for the next wave, but it never came. The sea stilled once more as we ran right off the edge of the map.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

MAP TO COME

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

T
he black water faded to blue, and I blinked in the sudden light of dawn—no, sunset. A breeze snapped in the netting and swirled through the mist, pulling it aside like a curtain to reveal, in the distance, the glittering glass skyline of New York City. The twin towers were nowhere to be seen—this was not the eighties, but I didn’t need to see the shore to know it. The captain swore and slammed his fist down on the wheel, stalking away and back, pacing like a tiger himself. This was Slate’s native time and place: late May 2016, within sight of the southern tip of Manhattan.

This was also where the auction would be held, in three days’ time, whether or not we had the money to win it.

Little bubbles of hope, like sea foam in my stomach. If we missed the auction because he failed to Navigate, it
would be his fault, not mine. And I would be safe, at least for a little while longer.

The dark sea had calmed, and we floated like a leaf on a pond. I peeled my fingers off the rail, and off Kashmir’s wrist. He glanced at me, but I spread my hands. “The map looked fine to me,” I said, my voice soft, but the captain whirled around as though I had shouted an accusation.

“Maybe you didn’t look hard enough,” he said.

I met his eyes. “Hand drawn. Good detail. Dated. And new to us,” I said, ticking the four points off on my fingers. No matter how detailed a map, once we’d visited, we couldn’t go back, and Slate didn’t always remember where he’d been or what he’d done. Still, I’d only just bought the map, so I knew for certain he’d never used it.

“And yet it’s a dead ender!”

“So what went wrong?”

He snorted. “Nice try, Nixie.”

I threw my hand in the air. “Figure it out yourself, then.”

“You sure you don’t have any ideas?” the captain said, taking a slow step toward me, then another. “I know you’ve been nervous about going to Honolulu.”

His doubt stung. I knew my worth lay in my abilities, my knowledge, the way I could chart a course. Without that, I
was little more than ballast. I felt my face redden; out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bee and Kashmir watching. “Don’t blame me for your failures, Slate.”

He glared at me another moment, then returned to the wheel, gritting his teeth and squeezing with white knuckles as though willing us into the right decade. But to no avail. The fog did not rise, the wind did not drop, and the shoreline stayed stubbornly constant.

Bee approached me so I could hear her soft question; sweat or sea spray gleamed on her scarred brow. “If 1981 won’t work, do you know another map to try? One where we can trade tigers for dollars?”

I pressed my fingers to my temple, trying to call up everything I’d ever read; not an easy task. “I suppose . . . someone in Rome might buy them for the Colosseum, but even if the captain could go back that far, we’d probably lose money overall.”

Slate threw me a disapproving look. “On top of it being inhumane.”

“As opposed to selling them to the yakuza in Chinatown?” Kashmir said with a grin.

“If a man kills a tiger, that’s inhumane,” Slate muttered. “If a tiger kills a man, that’s just inhuman.”

“The gang was the White Tigers, actually,” I said. “The yakuza are Japanese.”

“What’s the currency in ancient Rome,
amira
? Is it gold?”

“Not most of it,” I said. “But the coins themselves are quite valuable.”

“We’d have to find a new buyer,” Slate reminded me. “My coin guy died two years ago.”

“How hard could that be?” I said.

“The auction’s on my timeline,” the captain said. “We’ve only got three days.”

“Two now,” Kashmir corrected him.

“Then you think of something!” I glared at them both.

A roar drifted up from the hold; it was a curious sound, like whale song. The captain swore again and left the helm, jogging down the stairs from the quarterdeck and into his cabin, slamming the door behind him. I ran my hands through my hair. As first mate, Bee took his place, but for a moment, my fingers itched to take the wheel. Could I do what the captain had not?

“You didn’t do anything?” Kashmir said to me.

“What?”

“To the map.”

I blinked. “No! If I had a mind to sabotage a map, there are better candidates.”

“Ah.” He leaned against the rail, tilting his head to study me. “So,” he said. “What makes you nervous about Honolulu?”

Turning to face the water, I frowned at the waves. “It’s complicated.”

“I haven’t got anywhere else to be.”

My fingers tapped an idle beat on the metal rail; the brass was cool under my palms. Kashmir was the only person aboard the ship who did not know every detail of the circumstances of my birth, and I was reluctant to surrender the strange, small bliss I had in his ignorance. Kash was the most confident person I knew; would he even understand how scared I was? Or worse—might he fear for me, too? Still, at this juncture, even if I didn’t tell him, he would know soon enough. But how to explain? I’d never told the story before.