The Pirate's Wish (30 page)

I wanted to hit him.

“You can come too,” Naji added, turning to Marjani. “If you’re truly concerned about Ananna’s safety–”

“That wouldn’t be wise,” Marjani said quietly. Behind her, the crew shuffled and mumbled to each other. She was probably right. Captain and first mate disappearing beneath the waves with a bunch of talking sharks? Hell, I’d be hightailing it out of here too.

Frothy bubbles appeared on the surface of the water, followed by a low whining noise that reminded me of the Hariri clan and their machines. I yanked out my knife. The boat began to rock.

“All hands to stations!” Marjani screamed. “Keep her steady!”

The crew scrambled to attention.

Sea foam sprayed over the railing. Naji stepped in front of me.

Ha, I thought. Showing me how safe it is.

And then there was a hiss like the biggest snake you ever heard, and a big glass box erupted out of the sea, showering the
Nadir
with water and sea foam. Me and Naji and Marjani were soaked through.

For a minute the box floated in the open ocean, glittering a little in the sunlight. Then the top of it popped open.

“Naji of the Jadorr’a!” shouted the shark, who’d showed back up without his sentries. “You and one other must come inside the transport.”

Naji pressed himself against the railing. “Will we be able to breathe?” he asked.

The shark nodded. “We tested it on air-breathers. There are some among our number.”

Naji turned to me. “Air-breathers,” he said.

“Does he mean other humans? Cause I don’t breathe water.”

“I doubt it. There are certain sea creatures who only live half in the water.” His eyes sparkled. The closest he ever came to smiling. I figured he’d gone and lost his mind. “Please, Ananna,” he said. “Come with me.”

“Course I’m gonna come with you.” I eased my knife back into my belt. “Just don’t expect me to be happy about it.”

“Me, neither,” Marjani said. “If you let her die, I’ll kill you.”

We were both soaked already, so me and Naji just dove into the water and swam over to the box. My heart pounded the whole time, cause I couldn’t quite shake the notion that the Hariris or the Mists were behind this somehow. Plus the thing kept hissing and groaning and the water around it bubbled like it was boiling.

Once we climbed in, I had Marjani toss me my gunpowder. That left me a couple of shots on my pistol, plus my sword and my knife, and Naji’s sword and knife and his magic too.

The lid lowered down onto the box.

“You want to kill me.” My voice echoed weirdly against the glass walls.

“I want no such thing.”

“You know what’s going on, then.” I looked at him. “But you won’t tell me.”

“I honestly don’t. Which you know, because…” He tapped his head.

“Still like hearing you say it out loud.”

There was a big hiss and the box began to lower into the water. I braced my hands against the glass and waited for the water to come rushing in and drown us. It didn’t. Just slapped against the outside of the box, blue and green and filled with sunlight.

“I have my intuition,” Naji said. “It’s surprisingly fine-honed.”

I thought about all the times he’d known the Mists was trying to seduce me. All the times he showed up at the last minute to save me from more worldly deaths. All the times he knew exactly what to say to piss me off.

His intuition. Yeah, I guess I could give him that.

We sank lower and lower. The water got darker and the air got colder, but at least we could still breathe. The shark swam alongside us.

“It didn’t strike you as weird they wouldn’t tell you what’s going on?”

Naji glanced at me. “It’s a little strange,” he said. “But not nearly as strange as a talking shark.”

I sighed.

Deeper and deeper. It was dark as night now, no sunlight to speak of, just the endless black press of the ocean.

And then a light glimmered off in the distance, tiny and bright.

“What’s that?” I asked, leaning forward. I was afraid to touch the walls of the box, afraid they’d shatter into a thousand pieces.

The light brightened and expanded.

It swelled, looking for all the world like the moon on a cloudy night. A big bright circle amidst all that watery darkness.

The box hissed and screeched.

And then we got close enough and I could see – it wasn’t just a ball of light.

It was a city.

“Kaol,” I said, my words forming white mist on the glass. Even Naji wasn’t so unconcerned no more. He pressed his hands against the side of the box, his eyes growing wider and wider.

The box slipped through the water, churning up bubbles behind us. I could see the buildings were made out of broken-up shells and something rough like sand and what looked to be glass. A fuzzy algae that glowed like a magic-cast lantern grew over everything, hanging off the edges of buildings like moss. And the buildings didn’t look like the buildings anywhere on land, cause they twisted and curled out of the ground like seabones, and they merged together and split apart without no definite order. Sea creatures flitted past us, some of ’em wrapped in strips of seaweed that fluttered out behind ’em, and some of ’em were decked out in the same shell armor as the sharks.

Naji and me didn’t say a word to each other. I got flashes of his thoughts: wonder, confusion, a little bit of fear. Or maybe it was my thoughts. They were all mingled together.

The box came to a tunnel, encased in shining shells, with words spelled out across the top in a language that didn’t look nothing like anything I’d seen before. The tunnel sucked us down to a sort of dock, and the box lifted up, water streaming over the sides. We weren’t underwater no more.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

The box lid hissed open. Air rushed in, damp and musty.

Naji looked at me and I looked at him, and then he climbed out.

“It’s fine!” he said. “There’s air, a place to stand–”

“I can see that,” I snapped, since I could spot him, a little wavy from the cut of the glass, but definitely standing. I climbed out, too, though I kept one hand on my pistol as I did so.

We stood in a hallway as big and empty as the desert. It was all made out of glass, too, except this one didn’t flood with sunlight and rainbows. It didn’t flood with anything, thank Kaol, although every time I thought about all that ocean water crushing in on us I took to shaking.

Naji and me stood on the platform and waited. Our box bobbed in the strip of water that flowed in through an opening in the wall, and I could feel the magic sparking around us.

A shark’s fin appeared in the water. Part of me wanted to grab for Naji’s hand, but I grabbed for my pistol instead.

A shark lifted his head up out of the water. It wasn’t the same one that brought us down, and he wasn’t wearing no armor, neither, just a circlet of seabone around his neck.

“Follow me,” he said. “Along the walkway.”

I couldn’t stand it no more: I took Naji’s hand in mine. Like a little kid, I know, but swords and pistols can’t save you from drowning.

Naji dipped his head politely and together we followed along with the shark, our footsteps bouncing off the glass. When we came to the end of the hallway, the shark said, “You may open the door. Preparations have been made for your arrival.”

I murmured an old invocation to the sea, one Mama’d taught me years ago, while Naji pushed open the door.

No water. Just air.

It opened up into a big round dome, the way I’d always imagined a nobleman’s ballroom to look. Only the floor opened up here, too, a ring of cold dark seawater. The shark’s head popped up.

“Our soothsayer will be here soon,” he said. He disappeared into the darkness.

“What do they need a soothsayer for?” I muttered.

Naji wrapped his arm around my waist and buried his face in my hair. I was too startled to react, so I just stood there and let him touch me. “Thank you for coming with me,” he whispered, and his gratitude rushed into my thoughts, turning all my fear into a weird sort of happiness.

“Thank you?” I laughed. “I thought this was proof that it wasn’t dangerous.”

“That too.”

It’s funny, cause even though we were at the bottom of the ocean with only a layer of glass between us and the deep, I still couldn’t get enough of his hands on me. I leaned against him, his body warm and solid and reassuring, and thought about giving him my blood the day of the battle. It wasn’t so bad, being in his head now and then. It was the whole reason I knew he cared about me.

Water spilled across our feet.

“Naji of the Jadorr’a!” The voice boomed through the big empty room. “Is this your companion?”

I pulled away from Naji. An octopus bobbed in the water, its tentacles curling around the edges of the floor, its skin a rich dark blue, bright against the water’s black. He wore a row of small white clam shells strapped to one tentacle.

“Yes,” said Naji. “This is Ananna of the
Tanarau
.”

“Of the
Nadir
,” I corrected.

The octopus heaved itself out of the water. “How lovely to meet you. My name is Armand II, and I saw you,” he turned to me, “in my visions as well, in the swirls and mysteries of the inks.” He looked at me expectantly.

“Uh, that’s good.”

“I’m afraid the King of Salt and Foam is not a two-way creature, like myself.” Armand lurched forward, dragging across the floor, his legs coiling and uncoiling. “But we have made preparations.”

He opened up one of the clam shells and pulled out a pair of glass vials filled with a dark, murky liquid. “It will not harm you,” he said.

I got this slow sinking of dread, but Naji took one of the vials and held it up to the light. He opened it up and sniffed. Looked at me.

“It’s water-magic,” he said.

“So? You’d expect sand-magic down here?”

Naji brushed his hand against my face, his touch gentle, almost as soft as a smile. “Forgive her,” he said, turning to Armand. “Her profession requires a certain amount of wariness.”

“As does yours, I imagine.”

Naji looked at the vial again. “Less than you might think.”

“What’s it gonna do to us?”

“You will be able to breathe water,” Armand said.

I frowned. Of course. And Naji was right; that was old sea-magic, the sort of thing Old Ceria would know how to do. It wasn’t impossible. It was dangerous, I suppose, but then, so’s all magic. So’s cutting open your arm and giving your blood to the man you love.

“I’ll give it a shot,” I said. I took off my shoes and my coat, though I figured I shouldn’t meet the King of Salt and Foam, whoever he was, in my underwear. I left my pistol cause there was no point having it underwater. Then I took the vial from Armand, unscrewed the lid, and shot the stuff back like it was rum. Immediately my lungs started burning, and I gasped and choked and clawed at my throat. Naji pushed me in the water.

Release.

The water filled up my lungs and then pulsed out though gills that appeared on my neck. The lights from the city swirled and bled into one another, bled into the darkness of the sea.

It was beautiful. And I’d never even have to come up for air.

Another muffled splash and then Naji was beside me, barefoot and coatless, his hair drifting up in front of his eyes. I laughed, bubbles streaming silvery and long between us, and for the first time in a long time I wished I could do sea-magic myself, so I could swim through the water undeterred by breath, and Naji could come with me, and we could swim and play and entwine ourselves together.

“This way,” Armand said, graceful now that he was underwater. He propelled himself forward, toward the blur of lights, and Naji and me followed with slow easy breast strokes.

The King of Foam and Salt held court in a big curling palace that looked like more bones. Everything glowed with the light of that weird algae.

I’ve never been to court before. In Jokja Queen Saida didn’t hold court, just met with petitioners in her sun room. Court’s an Empire thing, and the Empire don’t like pirates. But I bet the Emperor’s court had nothing on the Court of the Waves.

It was full up with all manner of sea life, rows of little clams and a whole school of flickering fish that turned to us like one person when we swam in. There were big sharp-toothed predators and slippery sparking eels and the rows of shark sentries, swimming ceaselessly in circles around the room.

And then there was the King.

He wasn’t like any fish I ever saw. He reminded me of the manticore, cause he had a long curling shark’s body and the wide graceful fins of a manta ray and the spines of a saltwater crocodile, all topped up with a human face with pale green-gray skin and flat black eyes and hair like strips of dark green seaweed.

He was coiled around a hunk of coral when we swam in, and as we approached he rose up in the water, his full length taller than any human man. Naji stopped and bowed his head best he could in the water. I figured I should do the same.