Naji looked up at me from across the table. I turned away.
“Gero!” Queen Saida called out. A man in bronzed armor detached himself from the wall and bowed. “I know you heard the question. No need to pretend in front of me. What do you remember about the ships that stole the starstones?”
Gero nodded again before he started speaking. “They were Confederation, my Light,” he said.
“I still don’t know what that means.”
“Confederation pirates sail under common laws, although individual ships and fleets remain independently captained,” Gero said, which wasn’t quite true, but I didn’t feel like correcting him. “I don’t remember the flag, however. I’m sorry. It wasn’t one I recognized.”
“Who would you recognize?” I asked.
Gero turned to me. “The Lao clan,” he said. “And the Shujares. The Hariris. The Liras.”
The clans most prone to attacking the Free Countries.
“That at least narrows it down,” I said. “Thanks.”
The guard kinda squinted at me then, like he wanted to say something about me recognizing all those pirate clans. But he didn’t. He just turned to Queen Saida and bowed and then pressed back against the wall.
“Well,” said Queen Saida. “I’m truly sorry that wasn’t more helpful.” She looked at Naji while she spoke. “I’ll see if I can find out more information for you, and when you make sail, I’ll lend you some ships and crew from my own fleet.”
“Saida, you don’t have to–” Marjani leaned forward over the table and pressed her hand against Queen Saida’s arm.
Queen Saida held up her own hand. “Of course I don’t have to,” she said. “It’s not a matter of what I have to do; it’s a matter of what I want to do.”
“Thank you, my Light,” murmured Naji. He dipped his head, and emotion flickered through me – despair, creeping in like the cold northern sea, and anger like the fury of the Empire sun. Not my emotions at all.
He was in my head or I was in his: it didn’t matter. I saw past his blank assassin’s face, and I knew his hopelessness.
CHAPTER TWELVE
For the next few days, I hardly saw Marjani at all; she spent all her time with the queen, or shunted off in the queen’s apartments on the edge of the garden, doing Kaol knows what. I realized pretty quick that I was the one who was gonna have to check on the boat.
Naji went with me, dressed like a Jokja nobleman save for the scarf wrapped around his face. I hadn’t told him I was planning on going; he just showed up at my room and said, “You know how much it hurts me for you to wander off on your own.”
“Only if I’m in danger.”
He didn’t have anything to say to that, but there was no point in fighting with him. I didn’t say a word to him as we walked through the city.
The Nadir was still docked at port, Kaol be praised, and she didn’t look too worse for wear, neither. A handful of men were sitting around on the deck playing dice when me and Naji came on board. Fewer than I would’ve liked.
“Where’s the rest of you?” I asked.
“Whoring,” one of the men said. It was Jeric yi Niru. He squinted up at me. “Have you found the starstones yet? Given both of your life’s light is intact, I would assume no.”
I scowled at him. “She don’t got ’em. Got nicked by some Confederation pirates a while back. We’ll be setting after the stones once we know more.”
“Ah,” said Jeric yi Niru, giving me that smug nobleman’s smile of his. “What is it with pirates? Does the threat of death engender an item with more value?”
“You’re the one that joined up with the Empire navy. You tell me about threat of death.”
The rest of the men laughed. Jeric frowned at me and then nodded at Naji. “The captain’s look never suited you,” he said. “I like this better.”
“So do I.” Naji’s voice was cold and mean, an assassin’s voice, and it shut up Jeric yi Niru fast. The other men stopped smirking, too.
I made a quick check of the boat and her stores – some of the rum was missing, and half the bottles of ahiial had been drained and piled up in a corner of the galley. The crew worked fast. But all the weapons were in the hold, and the chest of pressed copper and silver that’d been on board when we took the ship was locked away in the captain’s quarters, protected not just with steel chains but with a bit of Naji’s magic as well.
I slumped down on the captain’s bed so I could listen to the waves slapping up against the ship’s side. There’s something about a boat that ain’t moving. It feels empty. Hollow. Almost better to be on land.
Naji appeared in the doorway. He slid the mask away from his face but didn’t bother to come any closer.
I got flashes of things in my head as he stared at me – worry about the starstones, some dull ache I now understood was part of the curse – and I rubbed at my eyes until they went away.
“Cut it out,” I said.
“Cut what out?”
“Letting me see your thoughts.”
“I’m not letting you. You just can. I explained this–”
“Well, stop it!” I scowled. “Is it gonna be like this for the rest of my life?”
“I told you it would. Don’t you ever listen?”
He sounded like Mama for a minute there, scolding me for not being able to work magic proper.
“Apparently not,” I said, which is what I always told Mama when she asked me. Then: “You’re scared about the starstones.”
I wanted to see if it would bother him, me knowing what he was thinking. The way it bothered me. But he just gazed at me across the captain’s quarters and said, “Yes. The task’s impossible for a reason.”
There was this silence after he spoke, a place where I should’ve said, “The other one wasn’t.” But I kept my mouth shut.
“It has occurred to me,” Naji said, “and to the members of the Order I’ve spoken to, that the only way to escape the curse may be to die.” He shrugged. “And if that’s what I have to do–”
A coldness struck me in my heart, a hand come out to squeeze the life away from me. Naji felt it too. I could see it in on his face, the way his expression softened as he looked at me. It pissed me off. I didn’t want to care if he lived or died.
“We should get back,” I muttered, and I pushed past him and made my way back on deck.
We stayed in Arkuz for near a month, waiting for Queen Saida’s messengers to bring word of the starstones. One day I finally went to see her in her sun room, surrounded by guards and nobles and Marjani.
“Not yet,” she said, courteous and smiling. Marjani gazed at me apologetically. She looked different in a noblewoman’s clothes, her hair woven with ribbons and shells, her eyes lined with pale green powder. Like a right princess.
“You’ll be the first to know as soon as I hear something,” Queen Saida said. She took one of my hands in her own. Her skin was soft as silk. “I have twenty of my best men out looking for those stones.”
“You know I can captain the ship myself,” I said. “And leave Marjani here.”
Marjani jerked her head up toward me but didn’t say nothing. Queen Saida gave me a long, appraising look.
“I don’t lie,” she said. “My best men are looking for the stones.”
That made me blush. She didn’t even sound angry or nothing. Just a little disappointed in me, like I’d reminded her I wasn’t a noble after all. And it actually made me feel kinda bad.
Afterward, I wandered around the gardens, sneaking past the guards and servants and ladies sitting in the sun. I could hear birds singing to one another out in the jungle. You wouldn’t think you were in the city, there in the palace gardens.
I found a shady spot beneath some flowering bushes to sit and think. I was tired of hanging around Arkuz, waiting for something to happen. We were losing crewmen, too. You stay in a place long enough, they start thinking they like that place better. Especially a place like Arkuz. I couldn’t much blame them.
/> The thing was, I didn’t know if I wanted to find the starstones, not if it meant Naji would die. And the third task, the one about life coming out of violence – that didn’t even make any sense. Knowing magicians, it was probably just some roundabout way of saying he had to kill himself on the starstones.
Ananna, you think too much about things that don’t concern you.
I yelped and scrambled out from under the bushes, my knees and hands covered in dirt. Nobody was about but a sleepy-looking guard leaning up against his spear.
Stop worrying about me.
It was Naji’s voice, and it was coming from inside my head.
“Naji!” I whispered. “I told you to stay out of my head!”
He didn’t answer. I clenched my eyes shut and concentrated real hard, and I saw a window looking out over the jungle, and a bed draped with sheer curtains. He was in his room.
I stalked out of the garden and into the palace and right up to his room and pounded on his door until he answered.
“Ananna,” he said. “Always nice to see you in person.”
“Stay out of my head!” I shouted. I launched myself at him, aiming both of my hands for his chest, figuring I could at least topple him over. He grabbed me by the waist and swung me off to the side.
“You’re such an ass,” I told him.
He laughed. “Why? Because you couldn’t knock me down?”
“Cause you tossed me around like a rag doll. Good thing I didn’t have my pistol on me.”
“Yes,” he said. “Good for us all.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“I did want to tell you,” he said, his voice serious and eyes bright, which made me want to punch him, “that I do appreciate your concern for me–”
“What concern?” Even though I knew he knew.
“Thinking you could set sail on your own and find the starstones for me – I’m sure there’d be a great sea battle involved, lots of cannon fire and swords and whatnot.”
“Isn’t that what you want?”
“Don’t be absurd. You couldn’t even imagine the headache it would give me–” He stopped. “Actually maybe you could now. You haven’t been in sufficient danger for us to find out.”
“That ain’t what I meant. You want the starstones. So you can touch ’em and kill yourself and not have to deal with me no more.”
Naji blinked at me. “No,” he said. “That isn’t what I want at all.”
I could tell he meant it, his sincerity hanging over me like a storm cloud, but whatever it was he did want I couldn’t see.
Off in the corner of the room, I heard this soft thumping noise, like a rug being beaten. And when I tore my gaze away from Naji I actually screamed, Kaol help me, cause standing next to the open window was the biggest damn bird I’d ever seen.
It let out a big screeching caw.
“The hell is it?” I shouted, going for my knife. Naji didn’t move.
“An albatross.”
“A what?” But I knew it was a seabird, one of the big white ones Qilari sailors think signal luck – good or bad, I can never remember.
“There’s something tied to its foot.” Naji leaned forward and snatched something from the side of the bird’s leg. It was a little mother-of-pearl tube with a glass stopper. Naji pulled out the stopper and then drew out a second tube, this one made of paper. The bird cawed again and flapped its wings, stirring up the hot humid air.
“You think it’s for the queen?” I asked.
“The Jokja don’t communicate via albatross,” Naji said.
The bird cawed again. Then it pecked at Naji’s hand, the one holding the paper. Naji frowned.
Another caw.
“It wants you to read it,” I said.
The bird lifted up its wings and hopped on the bed.
“See!”
Naji gave me a dark look, but he unrolled the paper, smoothing it out along his thigh. The writing on it was curved and ornamental, decorated with drawings of seashells and ocean waves. I leaned over his shoulder to read.
We hope this message reaches you with ease, Naji of the Jadorr’a. I am the Scrivener of the Court of the Waves and am writing to you at the behest of the King of Salt and Foam. The King would like to speak to you personally as soon as possible. He extends an invitation for you to visit the Court of the Waves. Regards, Jolin I.
“What?” I said. “The Court of the Waves? The hell is that?”
“I don’t know.” Naji slid the map out of the mother-of-pearl tube and unfurled it. The bird cawed – the sound of it made me jump – and then flapped its wings and lifted up into the air and out the window. I watched the bird fly away for a moment before turning back to the map. It showed the western stretch of the Green Glass Sea between the Island of the Sun, where the manticores live, and the Empire continent. There was a place marked in the middle of the water.
The mark was labeled: “We shall post sentries to help you find your way.”
“This is very strange,” Naji said.
“I don’t trust it.”
Naji frowned. “I don’t either. I shall ask the Order about it. Perhaps that will give us some insight.”
I didn’t think the Order had much of value to say on anything, given its track record, but I knew Naji was gonna do it regardless. Still, I studied the map, tracing my finger across its width. I thought about staring at the maps onboard the Nadir, navigating our path to the Island of the Sun–
“This mark is where we fought the Hariri clan.” A coldness gripped my blood, and the scar on my stomach ached.
“How can you possibly tell?”
“Cause I’m the damned navigator. And I know–”
“Ananna,” Naji said gently. “The Hariris are dead. I killed them.”
I pushed the map away. My hands were shaking. “We shoulda checked that bird,” I said. “I bet it was metal, like those machines they’ve got…” And the more I thought about it the more convinced I was that the feathers had glittered in the sun, and it had left a streak of smoke as it flew off into the air.
Naji set the map and note on the bed and pressed his hand against my shoulder. I barely felt it. “You know I’m not going to put you in danger,” he whispered.
But this wasn’t danger; it was fear. It was the memory of a bullet tearing into my gut. It was Mistress Hariri laughing in the moments before I almost died – before I would’ve died, if Naji hadn’t been around. If he hadn’t decided I was worth saving.
When we finally made sail, a week later, it wasn’t to chase after starstones or to return to the place where I’d nearly died. It was to visit the Aja Shore, down on the southern tip of Jokja. Queen Saida’s idea.
She and Marjani sailed out on this lovely schooner, the wood painted orange and marigold and pink, the sails dyed the color of grass. It looked like a floating garden. Queen Saida, always gracious, offered me and Naji a spot on board, but I wasn’t skipping town without the Nadir.
“Good,” Marjani said when I told her, though she seemed distracted. We were ambling around the perimeter of the palace, next to the fence that kept the jungle from pushing in on the royal lands. “I really didn’t want to leave her here.” She crossed her arms over her chest, and all the bangles on her wrists tinkled like bits of glass. “You can captain her, if you’d like.”
“What?” I stopped. “She’s your boat!”
“We captured her with your manticore,” Marjani said. “She’s as much yours as she is mine.”
“I can’t captain a boat.”
Marjani glanced at me over the top of one bare shoulder. “Of course you can,” she said. “If I can do it, you can do it.”
“You’re smarter than me.”
“Smarter doesn’t necessarily make a good captain.” She shrugged. “Clever does. And you’re plenty clever.”
I didn’t know what to say. All my life I’d wanted to captain a ship, but lately it hadn’t seemed that important to me anymore. I was distracted by that bird and its map an
d its weird note, afraid the Hariris weren’t really dead. And I was afraid Naji would be, if we ever found the starstones.
“Besides,” said Marjani. “It’s just along the coast. A day and a half’s journey. Think of it as practice.”
Practice. Ha! Well, maybe I’d take off with her boat and her crew, see how she liked it then. Not that I knew where I’d go.
I ain’t no mutineer. But I toyed with the thought for a few seconds anyway, the way I toyed with handing Naji over to the Mists. And I felt just as guilty about it afterward.
“We’re leaving at dawn tomorrow morning,” she said. “Saida really does want you to come. Naji too. She likes talking to him.”
Naji and Saida had swapped magic stories at dinner, spells gone wrong and so on – she said she didn’t know much about magic if you asked, though that was a right lie from hearing the way she talked. Naji stuck to discussing earth-magic. I wondered what Queen Saida would think if he told her about me spilling my blood on the deck of the Nadir so we could win the fight against the Hariri clan. Probably wrinkle her nose and reach for a piece of flatbread.
So that was how I came to captain the Nadir for a day and a half. Wasn’t much to it, of course, cause we just followed behind Queen Saida’s queen ship, the colors bright against the blue sky and the blue water. Crew was lazy on account of the smooth waves and the favorable winds. I wandered up and down the deck shouting every insult and curse word I knew, the way Papa always did, trying to get ’em off their asses.
“First mate!” Jeric yi Niru called out while I was making one of my rounds. I stopped and glared at him. He was up in the rigging.
“What do you want?” I shouted. “If you say the word starstone to me, I swear on Kaol and her watery birthbed that I will shoot you in the heart.” And I pulled out my pistol like I meant to use it.
Jeric yi Niru laughed and came dropping down to deck on a line of rope. “You sound like an Empire captain,” he said. “They like to threaten the lives of their crew too.”
I shoved my gun back into the waistband of my pants. “What is it?” I asked.
“The crew,” he said. “I want to apologize for them. You dragged them away from one of the wealthiest cities in the world. The dice houses here–” He shook his head in fake disbelief. I wanted to hit him. “And the women.”