The Pirate's Wish (9 page)

“Hey, sun girl, you know this one?” Esjar asked.

“Sure do. It’s got a dance that goes with it. I can show you if you want.” When Esjar nodded, I stood up and held out my hands. He laughed and grabbed both of them and I pulled him to his feet.

I looked over at Naji, trying to be casual about it. He was frowning at us.

Least your head ain’t hurting no more, I thought bitterly.

I led Esjar to the center of the deck and showed him the basic steps. In truth, I didn’t know the dance all that well – I’d watched people do it whenever I made port in Lisirra with Mama and Papa, and I’d followed along with the steps once or twice. But I knew enough to show Esjar: mirrored steps, back, right, forward, swinging your hips all the while. He took to it quickly enough, and we swung over the deck, laughing and whirling while the rest of the crew stomped out a beat.

When the song ended, the crew burst into applause, and Esjar pulled me into him and kissed me.

It surprised me, but I liked it, too, and I kissed back, tasting the sea salt on his lips. Part of me wanted to see how Naji was reacting, but part of me just wanted to kiss Esjar until the sun came up.

We pulled apart. I couldn’t help myself this time, and I glanced over at Naji, who was watching us with his face shrouded in shadows.

Then the crew started another Empire song, and Esjar whooped and pulled me into the dance again, and for the first time in months, it was almost like Naji didn’t exist.

The next morning, I got a couple of water rations from the galley and then headed down to the brig, where I found the manticore, curled up in the corner and mewling like a kitten.

“I brought you some water,” I said.

“I want meat, girl-human!”

“You’ll have meat tonight.” I picked the lock with my knife and let myself in, skirting around the neat pile of crushed pig bones. The crew kept some livestock on board, and they gave her the bits nobody wanted to eat, plus fish, which she apparently ate despite claiming it wasn’t food. “Once me and Marjani have our own boat I’ll make sure you get real food.”

“Manflesh?” Her head perked up. Her face was dirty, her mane matted even though I’d worked through the tangles a few days earlier. The sight of her twisted my stomach.

“I’ll see what I can do. Here.” I dumped the water in her bowl and she knelt down and lapped at it. I sat beside her, stroking her side, listening to the
drip drip
of seawater coming through the boards.

Footsteps on the stairs. I prayed to Kaol that it wasn’t Naji.

Marjani’s head appeared in the doorway. “Brought you something,” she said. “Oh, Ananna, you’re down here.”

“Where else would I be?”

She shrugged, then grinned at me. She had a burlap sack with her, the bottom stained red. The manticore lifted up her head and sniffed.

“Animal meat,” she grunted.

“Yeah, well, I keep hoping some of those barbarians’ll hack each other to bits, but they just… don’t.” Marjani pushed open the cell and dumped out the contents of the burlap sack: fish heads and a pair of shriveled up old pig’s feet, more than a little moldy.

“Best I could do,” Marjani said.

The manticore returned to her water.

Marjani gestured for me to get out of the cell. I sighed, patted the manticore’s shoulder, and stood up. I knew the manticore would eat the food Marjani brought her, but she’d only do it alone. Pride. And I couldn’t much blame her.

“Heard you had a good time last night,” Marjani said.

“Yeah? Who’d you hear that from?”

“Half the crew. And Naji,” she added, giving me this disapproving look I didn’t like one bit.

I wasn’t gonna ask her what he said. I wasn’t going to ask her if he seemed angry about it or annoyed or sad. Mostly cause if she told me he didn’t care, I was pretty sure I might die.

“We just danced,” I said.

Marjani laughed. “And kissed. A couple times.” She paused. “Do you know how to make the moon tonic? The cook should have all the ingredients.”

I blushed and nodded. Mama had shown me how to mix it up when I turned fifteen.

“I doubt he’ll know what you’re making,” she added gently. “The cook isn’t exactly well informed on the matters of women.”

“I told you, I don’t need it! We didn’t do anything!”

“For the future, then.” She smiled. “Anyway, that’s not actually what I need to talk to you about.” She peered out the brig doorway, and then turned back to me. “Those… people… who are after Naji. They’re here.”

My stomach turned to ice, but then I realized we were still sailing along, no magic erupting out behind us, no soldiers of the Mists crawling over the deck. But Marjani looked skittish, almost scared. I grabbed her by the hand and led her over to the bench built into the wall.

“What happened?” I said. “Tell me everything.”

She took a deep breath. “I was in the navigation room last night, checking our progress. Alone. And then all of sudden this woman was in there with me. I didn’t hear the door. She was just…
there
.” Marjani shivered.

“Echo,” I said.

“What?”

“That’s her name. She was kind of smoky, right? Like she’s not quite in this world?”

Marjani frowned. “Sort of. When I refused to take her Naji, she fought me.”

“What! You mean she could touch you?”

“Yeah. Can she not touch you?” Marjani tilted her head, studying me, like she was trying to work out all the pieces.

“No, she can’t–” And then I remembered the charm around my neck. “Oh,” I said. “You don’t have Naji’s protection.”

“Protection?”

I lifted my charm out from shirt collar and showed it to her. “I can’t take it off,” I said. “It’ll flare up Naji’s curse otherwise. But whenever I’m wearing it, she can’t touch me.” I slipped it back inside my shirt. “I’ll tell him to make you one, once we get to land. We probably don’t have the ingredients on the boat.”

“I’d like that.” Then Marjani gave me a quick, nervous smile. “Although I did beat her back easily enough last night. I don’t think she was expecting me to be carrying a loaded pistol.”

“You killed her?” I thought of the lone pistol shot I’d been given when the
Ayel’s Revenge
captain marooned me and Naji on the Isles of the Sky. I’d used it to start a fire that went out in the rain. If only I’d saved it–

“No, she billowed out like dust and disappeared.” Marjani sighed. “Why the hell are they coming after me? You’ve got the curse, so you’re at least…
magically
tied to him.” She looked at me closely then. “And maybe more than magically, right?”

I looked down at my lap. “That ain’t important. They’re after you because you know him. They can’t get to him, see, because he’s hidden himself with his magic–”

“So they go after the next best thing. I get it.” Marjani shook her head. “He just keeps bringing around trouble, doesn’t he? The magic onboard the
Ayel’s Revenge
, and now this.” She laughed.

I couldn’t disagree with her. “He’s nothing but trouble,” I said. “Although he was trying to save the ship, during that mess with the
Ayel’s Revenge
. He just did it in a… Naji way.”

Marjani laughed at that. But when her laughter faded she took on a serious, intense expression.

“How dangerous do you think she is?” she asked. “Without the protection charm.”

It was a reasonable question, and I wanted more than anything to give Marjani a reasonable answer. But I didn’t have one. I’d never fought Echo. She whispered pretty words in my head and I had to remind myself where my loyalties lay. Maybe they were misplaced, setting ’em with Naji.

“She’s dangerous when she talks,” I finally said. “Cause it ain’t death she’s dealing. If a pistol shot’ll send her away, that should be enough to keep you safe until landfall. But just – be careful if she tries to talk to you.”

Marjani looked at me for a long time. “I understand,” she said. Then: “I’ll let you know if I see her again.”

“Have you told Naji about this?”

Marjani shook her head. “I wanted to hear what you had to say about it. Naji’s a little…” She waved her hand through the air like she could catch the right word. “A little intense. He reminds me of the academics I met at university. So focused. You can see the bigger picture.”

I beamed at that.

“I should still mention it to him though, shouldn’t I?” Marjani ran her hands over her hair. “It’s got me spooked, I have to admit.”

“I’ll go with you,” I said, even though I didn’t particularly want to see him just yet. “We can ask him about the protection spell too.” I stood up and turned to wave goodbye to the manticore. She’d fallen asleep. “And if you want me to go to the navigation room with you, next time, I can do that too.”

“Thanks.” She grinned at me, although I could see a bit of nervousness in her eyes.

CHAPTER FIVE

I was up in the rigging a week later when the alarm went up. Somebody’d spotted a ship.

I immediately slid down a nearby rope and scurried down below to grab my sword out from the little corner where I’d stashed it. The quartermaster had given it to me when we first boarded, but I never liked carrying a sword around when I was working the ropes.

Marjani was up at the helm, talking to the first mate, her arms crossed over her chest, her expression serious. The ship was a flurry of men and their swords and pistols as the crew scrambled for their battle stations. Somebody was pounding on the drum, and cannons were wheeling across deck. The ship was a bright smear of red and gold on the horizon. The colors of the Empire.

Naji appeared beside me, and put his hand on my arm. I jumped and yanked it away.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Are we under attack?”

Marjani called us over to the helm, waving her arm wide. “It’s an Empire sloop,” she shouted over the din of battle preparations. “We’re gonna have to fight for her.”

Naji gave me a sideways glance and set his face in stone.

“I don’t need your protection,” I told him.

Naji frowned and didn’t say anything. Marjani jumped down from the stern deck and pulled out her own sword and her pistol and nodded at me. “Captain’s lending us Tavin, Ajim, and Gorry,” she said. “And his weapons. Otherwise, we got to take the ship ourselves.”

It’s best to take a ship without violence. You ride on board with your fiercest looking men, fire off a couple of shots, hold a knife to the captain’s throat. But you don’t kill nobody. Merchants’ ships are the easiest for that. The crew don’t value their cargo more than their lives.

But this wasn’t a merchant ship, it was Empire standard, and I could bet they were loading up their cannons and singing their battle songs as we waited. I bet they had their blood-drop battle flags raised and at the ready. Empire soldiers ain’t no merchants. They’ll die for their ship.

And then I had an idea.

“I’ll be back,” I told Marjani. “I ain’t running. Just… I’ll be back.”

“No!” she said. “They’ll be here–”

“Give me five minutes,” I said. “I’ll be back.”

And then I took off, scrambling down the ladder to get to the brig.

The manticore was pacing in her cell, tail curling and uncurling. She looked up at me when I came in, her face wan and pale.

“I got somebody you can eat,” I said.

Her lips sneered back. “Don’t lie to me, girl-human.”

“I ain’t lying,” I said. “I got lots of somebodies, in fact. We’re about to board an Empire sloop, to take her. There’ll be fighting, but–”

She ran her tongue over her lips, though I could tell from the darkness in her eyes she still didn’t believe me.

“I’m gonna let you out,” I said. “But you gotta swear – swear on our friendship, and I know we got one – that you’ll only go after a man in Empire uniform. You know what that looks like?”

She shook her head. Her teeth were like daggers.

“Red,” I said. “They wear red with a gold snake on the chest. Tie up their hair in red scarves. You got that? A man’s got on red and gold, you can eat him.”

“If you are lying to me,” she said. “I will fill you full of poison and drop you to the bottom of the sea.”

“Fair enough.” I yanked out my knife and picked the lock on her gate, swung it open. She bounded out, snarling and hissing, and then stopped right beside the doorway. She looked at me over her shoulder.

“Once I have eaten,” she said, “You may ride me. For your battle.”

“Fine.” I pushed her toward the doorway. I didn’t have the heart to tell her sea-battles don’t work that way.

We ran side by side through the lower decks, men screeching and drawing swords as we passed. “She ain’t gonna hurt you!” I shouted, waving my pistol around, afraid somebody was gonna shoot her before we got to battle. “She’s got a taste for Empire men!”

As many ice-islanders were in that crew, I figured they’d like the sound of that, and it didn’t take long before the crew was cheering us instead of shrinking from us, calling out they hoped she’d rip them Empire scummies to pieces and eat their intestines. I blamed the battle fever. Sends men into such a frothing rage they forget to be scared of a manticore.