Naji scowled and didn’t say nothing.
“I do not like this friend-girl-human,” the manticore said.
“Well, she’s the one with the boat.” I stopped in front of Marjani. “We got dried caribou to give to the crew.”
“They’ll like that. Half of them are from the ice-islands.”
I carried my stuff up to the beach’s edge, next to the place where Marjani had thrown her rope. Something about the edge of the island made me dizzy, like it was the place where the world cut off.
I peered down. A rowboat bobbed in the water. I tied me and Naji’s clothes up together and tossed them down, then tossed down the caribou meat too. Both landed right in the middle of the boat. A useful trick, Papa’d told me when he taught me. Never know when you’ll need to toss something.
“Are we gonna climb down?” I asked.
“I can’t climb,” the manticore said.
“I’ll take you.” Naji cut across the beach. “All of you,” he added, when the manticore opened her mouth.
I remembered the day we arrived on the island, how close he pressed me into his chest. And it was weird, cause the last thing I wanted in the world was for him to hold me – but at the same time, it was the only thing.
Instead, he asked me if my hand hurt.
“What?”
“Your hand. That you burnt last night.”
Thinking about it made my skin tingle, but it didn’t hurt none at all. “No, it doesn’t. Told you it was fine.”
Naji gave me a hard look. I stared back long as I could.
“I’ll bring the manticore and Marjani down to the boat one at a time,” he said. “Don’t start rowing out to the ship yet.”
“I know that.”
Another dark look and then:
“Don’t leave me on the island, either. You know what would happen if I stepped out of the shadows on that ship. The crew won’t trust that sort of magic. I’d be tossed overboard.”
“I ain’t gonna leave you!” It took every ounce of willpower not to smack him hard across the face. “I ain’t cruel, Naji. I ain’t you.”
He glowered at me. I glowered right back.
“Good,” he said, and then he grabbed me by my uninjured hand and the darkness came in.
Marjani’s ship was a big Qilari warship called Goldlife, and it didn’t belong to Marjani but to a skinny, mean-looking captain named Chijal who had a jagged white scar dividing his face clean in half. Nobody so much as glanced at Naji’s face when they hauled the rowboat up on deck – and though she didn’t say nothing I had a feeling Chijal was the reason Marjani had bartered her way onto this particular ship.
The crew was rowdy and loud, drunker as a group than the crew on the Revenge, and even more lewd. The first day I had to hold my knife to some guy’s throat to keep him from grabbing at me.
When night fell, and we’d cleared out of sight of the Isles of the Sky, Marjani took me and Naji down to the brig. Nobody was down there on account of the manticore, though she seemed more preoccupied with trying to lick every spot of brig-sludge off her coat.
“Girl-human!” she bellowed when I dropped off the ladder. “I demand my release at once!”
I pressed my hands against the bars. I felt sorry for her, I really did, but even I wasn’t about to let her free on a ship full of men.
“If I let you out, you’ll eat half the crew,” I said. “And a ship this size, we need ’em to get you back to the Island of the Sun.”
She pouted.
“Yes,” said Marjani. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
I turned to look at her. Somebody’d strung up a trio of magic-cast lanterns that swayed with the rhythm of the boat, casting liquid shadows across Marjani and Naji.
“We’re not going to the Island of the Sun,” I said.
The manticore hissed. So did Naji.
“You realize that manticore wishes to eat me, correct?” he said, sounding like snakes.
“No, we definitely are dropping off the manticore,” said Marjani.
The manticore hissed again, and I turned and shushed her.
“We’re just not doing it with this boat.”
Me and Naji both stared at Marjani, and she gave us this wry little smile.
“This is about that favor you want from us, isn’t it?” Naji asked.
“It won’t be difficult,” she said. “Certainly not for you…” she looked at me when she said that bit. “The Goldlife crew are gonna help us steal a merchant ship, and then we’re gonna sail her into Bone Island and get her a crew.”
“And then you’ll take me home?” the manticore asked. “Will you cure the Jadorr’a’s curse first?”
Nobody answered her.
“Who’s gonna captain?” I asked. “One of Chijal’s men?” The thought of it turned my stomach. The officers were just as loutish as the crewmen.
“Oh, absolutely not,” said Marjani. “We’ll captain her. Me and you together.”
Naji looked relieved, but I just stared at her.
“That’ll never work,” I said. “Ain’t no man’ll sail under a woman–”
Marjani held up one hand. “That’s why I needed both of you.”
“No,” said Naji. “Absolutely not.”
I looked from him to Marjani and back again, and in those sliding soft shadows I saw her plan taking shape: put Naji in some rotted old Empire nobility cloaks and he’d look the part of captain sure enough. A mean one, too, what with the scar.
“You won’t actually captain anything,” I said. “Right? We’ll use him to book a crew.”
“Exactly,” said Marjani. “Captain Namir yi Nadir. I started spinning tales about him while I was looking for a ship to bring me out here.”
“What!” Naji asked. “Why?”
“So men’ll want to sail with you,” I told him. “What kinda captain is he?” I grinned. “Brutal and unforgiving, always quick to settle a dispute with the sharp end of a blade? Knows how to whisper the sea into a fury anytime a man disobeys him? A real monster of a captain, right?”
Naji was glaring at me, his eyes full of fire. Seeing him angry like that soothed the hurt inside me. Not a whole lot, mind, but enough that some of the sting disappeared.
“Of course not,” Marjani said. “I want men to sail with us, not fear us.” She turned to Naji. “I put out stories about you sacking the Emperor’s City with a single cannon and a pair of pistols and another one about you seducing a siren before she could sing you to your death.”
The anger washed out of Naji’s face. “And people believed that?”
“People’ll believe anything, the story’s good enough. I also put out word that you pay your men fair, you offer cuts of the bounty even to the injured, and you’ll sail with women.”
“I do all that?” Naji frowned. “I’m not even a pirate.”
“No, you’re an assassin,” I said.
The anger came back again, just a flash across his eyes, but it was enough.
Marjani gave me a look that told me to cut it out.
“All of this is moot until we get a ship,” she went on. “So Ananna, I’d like to see you arm yourself with more than a pistol and a knife. Naji…” She gave him a half smile. “Well, your Jadorr’a skills may be required.”
Naji scowled.
“This is the only way we’ll be able to complete the rest of the tasks,” Marjani said, and my face went hot, cause I knew then that he’d told her everything, about the curse’s cure and my kiss. “You’ll never be able to convince Chijal to do it, that’s for certain.”
And then she walked out of the brig before Naji had a chance to answer.
We sailed for four days and didn’t see another soul, just the gray expanse of sea and sky. It was colder on the boat than it had been on land, the wind sharp against the skin of my hands and face, like it could flay it from my bones. One of the crewmen, a boy from the ice-islands named Esjar who had white-yellow hair and looked about my age, gave me a pair of sheepskin gloves.
“For the lady,” he said, with this weird flourish I realized was meant to be an Empire bow.