The first impossible task.
"Besides," he said, "the Mists would have snatched you up the moment I left. Even if you didn't give in," and he looked away from me as he said this, "even if you weren't tied to me because of the curse, they would have used you. Somehow."
The warmth in my heart froze over.
"I can take care of myself," I snapped.
Naji fed another stick into the fire.
"I bet I can get us off this island."
Naji didn't say anything.
"Any Confederation baby knows how to build a signal fire," I went on. "I would have done it sooner but I figured we should get your curse cured first."
"And we still haven't done that."
I glared at him. "You know how to do it now. It just ain't anything we can do on the island. We'll have to build a bonfire on the beach," I said. "And feed it green wood so it'll let off plenty of smoke."
"It's going to be difficult to keep a beach fire burning here," Naji said. "Because of the storms."
"Long as we keep the fire going in here, we can relight it."
"That's not very efficient." He sighed. "I know a way, but–"
"A way to what? To keep it burning?" I looked at him. "Then why haven't you done it? Why didn't you do it as soon as they told you they wouldn't rescue us?"
The look he gave me was sharp as his sword.
"Kaol," I said. "You like it here, don't you? You like cold rainy islands half out of the world. No wonder you're an assassin."
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Then he said, "Scars don't spontaneously emerge overnight, Ananna. They come from somewhere."
It took me longer than it should've to figure out what he was getting at.
"Oh," I said. "Oh, then you don't have to… I can just relight the fire–"
Naji stood up and brushed past me. He stuck a stick into the hearth and yanked it back out with a spray of ash and sparks.
"It's fine," he said, in a voice that suggested it wasn't.
"Naji–"
He walked out of the shack, and for a moment I sat there, not knowing if he wanted to be left alone. The wind picked up and knocked tree branches against the side of the shack, and I thought about how if it wasn't for me he'd be off the island right now, back in the dry fragrant heat of Lisirra. And then I wondered what exactly had happened when he got his scars, if he'd had someone to help him when it all went wrong.
I threw my coat around my shoulders and ran down to the beach.
Naji was set up a ways down from the shack. The bit of fire was smoldering on top of the sand, and Naji was tossing driftwood into a big pile. I gathered up some pine needles from the forest's edge and added them to the driftwood.
Naji looked at me but didn't say nothing, and I didn't say nothing to him.
With the two of us working together, it didn't take long for us to get a good-sized pile. I picked the hearthfire up off the sand. Naji jerked his head toward the woodpile, and I dumped the fire onto it. The pine needles curled up and blackened and turned to ash.
"Stand back," Naji said, his voice a surprise after us working in silence for so long.
He pulled out his knife and pushed up the sleeve of his robe. His scars glowed faintly, tracing paths up and down his arm, undercutting the glow of his skin. He closed his eyes and took to chanting and dug the knife into his skin. The fire brightened, turned a gold color I ain't never seen in fire before. I felt something tugging at the edge of my thoughts, trying to drag me closer–
Blood dripped off Naji's arm, splattered across the beach. He caught some of the drops with his free hand. His chanting sounded like it was coming from a thousand voices at once. I wanted to be closer to the fire but I knew I needed to do what he said and stay back.
And then he flung the blood into the flames and there was this noise like a sigh and the fire erupted out so hot and bright that I fell backward onto the beach. It was still bright gold, and figures were entwined in the flames, swirling and dancing, and Kaol help me but I could feel their desperation, like if they stopped dancing my whole world would end.
Naji grabbed me by the arm and yanked me to my feet. He left a smear of blood on the sleeve of my coat.
"Stay away from it," he said. "This is not a cooking fire."
"What'd you do?" I asked.
"Gave myself a headache," he snapped. "From putting you in danger."
I almost said, It's just a fire but the firelight caught on his scars and I thought better of it.
I glanced over at the fire, golden light and dancing bodies, and thought about the assassin stories Papa always told me. How there was no way to defeat them, no way to intimidate them. Funny how wrong stories can be.
Naji led me up the beach, one hand gripping my upper arm. Anytime I tried to look back at the fire he jerked me forward again. When we got far enough away from it he dropped his hand and stopped on the beach. The seawind blew his hair away from his face, revealing the dark lines of scars. The dark sand stirred around our feet. It was almost the same color as the sky.
"Marjani will be back for us," I said. "I know it."
Naji sighed and folded his arms over his chest. "And what does it matter?" he asked.
"It matters a whole hell of a lot–"
"For you," he said. "I'll still have this curse, whether Marjani comes for us or not. Whether anyone comes for us."
"It'll still matter to me! I'm as much cursed as you are! I have to follow you around and I can't do anything that I want to do. Can't set up shop on a pirate's island, can't work the rigging on a Confederation ship."
He didn't answer.
"And it's not really impossible anyway," I said. "Isn't that what the wizard was getting at? You just have to complete those three tasks…"
Naji turned to me, and I was expecting fury but all I got was this look of sadness that made my heart clench up. "The tasks are impossible," he said. "That's where the name comes from. Three impossible tasks, one impossible curse."