“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 tha
t, 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.
Marjani glared at me when we got up on deck.
“I was really hoping that’s not what you were going to do,” she said.
“She’s starving,” I told her. “You expect me to keep her locked away while we’re piling up dead men out here?”
Marjani crossed her arms in front of her chest.
“It’s an Empire ship! They won’t come peaceful and you know it.”
She did know it. She nodded at me, and then turned to Naji, started telling him the protocol for boarding a ship. He stared at her, face blank.
I wondered if he was as scared as I was.
The manticore growled. “Where are the red-and-gold men?” she asked me, her breath hot against the side of my neck.
“There.” I pointed out to sea with my sword. The Empire ship was coming closer, her red bow veering in for us. Dots of light flashed on her deck. Empire swords.
“We’re gonna board her,” I added, cause I figured the manticore was wondering.
And then Marjani’s hand was on my arm. She pushed me toward the rowboats that hung off the side of the ship. “You want the manticore, you get to take her across the water.”
“You got rope?” I asked.
“What?” said Naji. “You’re going to send her out there… no. No, absolutely not. It’ll completely incapacitate me–”
“Then go with her!” Marjani shoved Naji at me. “I’ll take the Goldlife crewmen and swing across. You don’t have much time before they start firing. Go.”
For a second Naji and me stared at each other and I knew I couldn’t let him get to me, not now. An Empire man’ll die for his ship. I wasn’t gonna die for my broken heart.
“Come on!” I climbed into one of the boats, the manticore at my side. She trumpeted – not the way she had when we were racing across the beach. This sounded like a damn battle horn.
The Goldlife crew let out a cheer, all throaty with bloodlust.
And then the Empire fired its first volley of cannons.
Naji let out a shout and jumped into the boat beside me. Marjani swung her sword through the rope and we crashed into the water, the air thick with black smoke and the scent of cannon fire. The manticore wasn’t trumpeting no more, but flattened down in the center of the boat, one paw pressed over her head, whimpering. I grabbed hold of the oars and pushed off toward the Empire ship, trying to ignore the booms and thuds echoing overhead.
Naji flung himself on top of me, his weight pressing me into the manticore.
“What you doing?” I shouted. I could taste the gunpowder in the air.
“Protecting you,” Naji snarled. He was already covered in sweat; it must be hurting him, us being out on the water.
“Then help me row!”
He grabbed one of the oars and we pushed off together, the Empire ship looming tall in front of our little rowboat, sunlight making the water sparkle. Debris showered down on top of us, bits of wood and sail and metal and probably blood and bone, though I couldn’t think about that. Naji screamed, the muscles bunching up in his arms, and he kept shouting, “The shadow! The shadow!” and I didn’t know what the hell he meant at first, cause all I could think about was getting us out of the water. And then I realized the Empire ship was casting a long dark shadow across the sea, and once we got there he could slip us on board so we wouldn’t have to scamper up the side of the ship.
I rowed harder. Water splashed over the side of the boat, soaking me through. I could hear men screaming up on the ships, both of ’em, and pistols going off, and the cannons, booming and booming and booming like never-ending thunder.
And then we crossed the shadowline. Naji wrapped his arm around my shoulder and shoved his hand in the manticore’s fur, and all the noise fell away.
It was nice in the shadow, quiet and cool, with Naji’s body pressing up against me like maybe we were lovers after all. And I floated there in the darkness like I was underwater, and I didn’t want to come out, I didn’t–
We slammed onto the deck of the Empire ship.
The Goldlife hadn’t fired on her yet, of course, cause we were looking to take her, not steal from her, but those Empire soldiers were firing off their cannons quick as they could, and the deck was thick with the residue from the powder. Nobody noticed us at first, not in the fury of the battle, but then the manticore reared up on her hind legs and roared so loud the wood vibrated.
Everything stopped.
I pulled out my sword and pistol. Naji lifted his sword over his head.
All those Empire men turned from the stations and stared at us, a Confederation pirate and a Jadorr’a and a hungry manticore.
I’d never boarded a ship during a battle before. I’d always stayed with Papa’s boat and fought alongside Mama. But I heard the stories from the crewman who’d come back, bragging up their fighting, and all those Empire crewman were staring at me like they were expecting something.
“We’re here to take your ship,” I said, and I’m proud to say my voice didn’t waver none at all.
The manticore roared again, and then she lunged forward, knocking down this poor Empire soldier with her great sharp claws, burying her face in his belly. Blood splattered across the deck.
I looked away, my stomach clenching.
And then all those Empire men started screaming – I didn’t blame ’em one bit – and shooting at the manticore. She lifted her head out of her meal, blood smeared all over her face, teeth gleaming in the sun, and hissed.
Spines shot out of her tail, impaling soldiers in the heart, in the head, in the belly.
Naji yanked me down to the deck, slapping his hand over my head. “I think this is one battle where we’re not needed,” he said.
“They’re gonna kill her!” I squirmed away from him, lifted my head up enough to see a soldier running up to the manticore with his sword outstretched. I shot him.
“Ananna!” Naji hissed my name like he did when he was angry. I ignored him, just jumped to my feet and launched into a crush of soldiers, slicing at them with my sword to keep them off the manticore. Her spines whizzed past my head but none of them ever hit me.
And then Naji was fighting alongside me, his sword spinning out in a flashing silver circle. He moved like a shadow, darting between soldiers, keeping them off me as I kept them off the manticore.
Where the hell is Marjani? I kept thinking, cause I’d no idea how to take a ship. I knew in theory, but here in practice all I cared about was keeping me and Naji and the manticore alive. So I poured all my concentration into fighting, and I didn’t feel no pain or fear, just my heartbeat and my breath.
Dully, I was aware of the manticore taking down another soldier, his screams echoing out across the sea, the scatter of soldiers rippling backward across the deck as he fell.
I fought.
And then the fighting stopped.
I wanted to keep going, all that blood rushing through my veins, all that blood soaking into my skin, but Naji got me in a lock and pulled me still. The Empire peace horn was blowing, long and low. The Empire men had all thrown down their weapons.
Marjani was standing up at the helm, a knife pressing into the captain’s neck, two Goldlife crewmen at her side.
The manticore was eating.
“It’s over,” Naji told me, his mouth close to my ear. “We have the ship.”
I felt like I’d woken up from a fever dream, everything distorted and strange. The sunlight was too bright. The blood on the deck too red.
The peace horn died away.
Marjani dropped her knife from the captain’s throat, and Gorry and Ajim took him by the arms, dragged him away from the helm. Marjani leaned forward.
“This ship is under the control of the Pirate Captain Namir yi Nad
ir.” She jabbed her finger toward Naji, who tensed his arm. “Any man who wishes to join our crew may do so and no harm will come to him. Those of you who wish to die for the Empire…” She turned to the manticore, who was still hunched over the remains of the soldier. “You will have that chance as well.”
Goldlife pirates were streaming on board, but nobody moved to stop them. Tavin hoisted up the boat’s new colors, some flag Marjani had sewn before she picked us up at the Isles of the Sky: a black background and a dancing skeleton stitched in red silk. It snapped and fluttered in the sea wind and for a second the scent of blood and fear got wiped away, and the ship was almost silent.
Silent. Peaceful. And all I wanted to do was lie down and sleep.
I slept in the captain’s quarters that night, after stripping away my bloody clothes and swimming in the cold ocean to wash the blood from my skin. There was a real bed in there, big enough that two people could share. Naji let me and Marjani sleep in the bed while he hung a hammock from the comer and slept there. I fell asleep easy enough. I woke up in the middle of the night, the cabin dark and shadowy and unfamiliar.
I listened to Marjani and Naji breathe for a while, their breaths soft and out of synch, and when I realized I wasn’t gonna fall back asleep I rolled out of bed and pulled on one of the Empire captain’s gold cloaks and went up on deck.
Nearly all of the Empire men had chosen service over capture – Empire don’t train ’em as well as they think, I guess – but we were still headed for Bone Island, on account of Marjani not trusting a ship full of ex-soldiers. I didn’t blame her. We’d dump ’em there and let ’em find their own way back to their lives, then pick up a crew of our own.
But for now, we had ’em running the night shift, and they all shrunk away from me when I came up, turning back to their ropes and riggings. I ignored ’em, just walked up to the bow and leaned over the edge to feel the cool salt air on my face.
“Girl-human.”
I turned around. The manticore padded up to me, her face cleaned of blood, her mane brushed and shining – some poor Empire sap had been assigned to tend to her grooming needs.
“What are you doing up here?”