“I do not like the underneath,” she said. We hadn’t locked her up in the brig, but I’d asked her to stay down below in the hold on account of her presence making the men jumpy.
I didn’t say nothing and she added, “It stinks of human filth.”
“Hard to take a bath on a ship,” I told her.
“You’re surrounded by water!”
I didn’t have anything to say to that.
The manticore sat beside me, wings tucked into her sides, her tail curling up along her back. We didn’t speak for a long time.
“Thank you for allowing me to eat.” She sounded sincere, too, and kind of sad. “I had been very hungry before.”
“I know.” I stroked her mane and she nuzzled against my hand like a pet.
“I will not eat any men without your permission.”
It still creeped me out a little, that she ate humans, but part of me knew it was just the way things were, like me having to eat fish and sheep and goat. It wasn’t her fault that she ate people.
And I’d killed more men than she could eat that afternoon, all cause they were trying to kill her, but I tried to put it out of my mind the way Papa told me to, cause dwelling on it can turn you dark. But it was hard.
She gave me one of her sharp smiles and turned back to the sea. “It is strange, living with humans. But I am growing used to it.”
“I thought you lived with humans on the Island of the Sun.”
The manticore flicked her tail. “That’s different. They are our servants, girl-human, our slaves. Here, we are equals.” Another flick. “Or as equal as human and manticore can be.”
“Oh, is that so?” I leaned over the railing and looked down at the black ocean water skimming up along the side of the boat. “So tell me, how was it a human managed to kidnap you?”
The manticore let out one of her low, quiet hisses. “He was treacherous and dishonest. Not like you, or even the Jadorr’a.” She licked her lips and looked up at me. “You should not trust wizard-humans, as a rule.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“It was my parents’ fault,” she went on, like I hadn’t spoken. “His water-nest crashed onto our beach. We were going to eat him, of course, but he had magic, and my parents were willing to strike a deal.”
That caught my attention, since everybody’d been warning me about the dangers of striking a deal with a manticore. Looks like it got Eirnin killed.
“Did he double-cross them?” I asked. “Your parents?”
“Of course, he did, girl-human! We traded him his life for some of his spells and potions, but during the trade he cast a great smoke-cloud and paralyzed me. I do not know how he dragged me back to his water-nest, but I learned quickly that it hadn’t been broken at all. It had been a ruse, designed to ensnare me.”
“Why?” I said. “It’s not like he tried to sell you or anything–”
“Sell me! If only he had tried. No, he planned to cut me open and use my heart for some foul wizardry or other. Every morning for those three life cycles he taunted me with his knife. The morning that I escaped was the morning he was to kill me.”
I stared at her in the moonlit gloom. Her human-looking face was lovely in that silvery-white light, but she looked sad and lonely – or at least as sad and lonely as a manticore could. I draped my arm around her shoulder and leaned up against her mane, and she let out a little trill that sounded almost grateful.
“If I’d known you were there,” I said, “I’d have cut you loose myself.”
“I do not blame you for the not-knowing,” she said. “He hid me behind a veil of magic.”
“Well,” I said, pulling away from her. “You don’t have to worry about it anymore. We’ll get you home soon.”
“Yes,” the manticore said, and she let out a sweet ringing chiming call. “I know.”
The next morning, me and Naji and Marjani met up in the captain’s quarters to talk about what we were gonna do after we got our crew sorted.
“Drop off the manticore,” I said.
Marjani stood staring out the porthole, gazing, I suppose, at the sea. A beam of sunlight settled across the bridge of her nose. “I already told you, I’m not letting that manticore stay onboard my ship longer than I have to.” She turned to Naji. “What were the two remaining tasks? Finding a princess–” Her voice trailed off, and she had a strange, troubled expression.
“Starstones,” Naji said. “Find a princess’s starstones and hold them against my skin.”
Marjani stared at him. “Yes,” she said softly, “I remember now.”
“And the other was to create life out of an act of violence,” I said. “Whatever the hell that means.”
Marjani frowned. “Riddles.”
“Of course.” Naji said. “It’s a northern curse.”
“And what the hell’s a starstone anyway?” I asked.
“Magic,” Marjani said, and she turned back to the porthole, her face blank.
“They’re rare,” Naji said, although he sounded distracted and uncomfortable. “And honestly, I’m not too keen on chasing after them–”
“Why not?”
But Naji and Marjani both ignored me.
“Well?” I said, annoyed. “Why not?”
“It’s dangerous,” Naji said.
“Easy answer.”
“Perhaps we could go to one of the universities,” Marjani said. “The scholars might be able to help you.” She was still staring out the porthole. “The university in Arkuz is excellent…” But her voice wavered a little, and I could tell that whatever had sent her off to a life of piracy in the first place still lingered back in Jokja. I had a feeling it was more than complicated than what Chari, the old pirate I’d befriended back on the Ayel’s Revenge, had told me, about her not wanting to marry some nobleman – but I didn’t much want to pry, either.
“Lisirra would be better,” Naji said. “I have more ties there.”
Marjani looked at him. “I suppose that makes sense.” I could hear the relief in her voice.
“What do you think, Ananna?” Naji asked.
I glanced over at Marjani. She wasn’t staring out the window no more, just leaning up against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest. It was clear to me she didn’t want to go back to Jokja. I thought about Lisirra, the sunny streets and the water wells and the sweet-scented gardens. The exact opposite of the Isles of the Sky.
“Lisirra sounds good to me.”
And so it was decided. The pirate ship Nadir, formally a nameless Empire sloop, would load up a new crew, drop off a manticore, and sail to the universities of Lisirra.
It only took a day to sail into Bone Island, faster than should’ve been possible. We had favorable winds, and the ship was quicker than any sloop in the Confederation, though Marjani said the Jokja navy had built some rumored to sail even faster. She sneered at a knot of Empire sailors as she told me, like they’d stolen the ship plans from Jokja themselves.
But I suspected Naji might’ve had something to do with the speediness of our trip – he stayed in the captain’s quarters most of the time, the way Marjani told him to, and when I took him some food at Marjani’s request I saw spots of blood on the writing desk.
The day we pulled into port was bright and sunny and shot through with the first warmth I’d felt in months. As the crew prepared to make port, I marched into the captain’s quarters.
Naji was stretched out on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. He lifted his head when I came in. We’d hardly spoken since the battle.
“You look like an Empire commander,” he told me. I was still wearing that gold cloak and had taken to knotting my hair back in the Empire style, cause it did do a better job of keeping my hair out of the way.
“You look like a Port Iskassaya drunk.” I hadn’t meant to sass him, but I couldn’t help it, he was so bedraggled. “We’re gonna have to clean you up before we take you in to sign up a crew.”
“Marjani has already informed
me.”
We stood in silence for a minute longer. Then he lifted his head. “Did you need something, Ananna?”
I stared at him.
“Thank you for calling down the winds,” I finally said. “To get us here faster.”
His face was blank as always, but something glittered in his eyes, some flash of appreciation. I left the captain’s quarters before he could say anything more.
Bone Island had always been my favorite outlaw port of call when I was a kid, cause it’s big enough that it almost feels like a real city, and there are merchants selling clothes and silks and fancy Qilari desserts, instead of just whores and weapons, like at some of the other pirate islands. And it’s always mild there, never cold and never too hot, and the water in the beaches is pure bright blue, the same color as the sky. Even the rains are warm.
Marjani put me in charge of prettying up Naji and making him look like a captain. I didn’t want to do it – I wanted to stay on board the boat with the manticore. But when I said something about it Marjani didn’t even glance up from her maps and notes.
“The manticore,” she said, “will not get us a crew.”
I knew she was right and I knew she was my captain now, too, not in name but in action. I didn’t talk back.
Naji was waiting for me on the docks, his hair brushed out and combed over his scar – otherwise he was filthy. It almost hurt to look at him.
“I want a bath,” he said. “I don’t care if it won’t make me a believable captain. I want a bath.”
“Already planning on it.”
I took him to the Night Porch, a whorehouse down near the beach that was attached to the nicest bathhouse on the whole island. Led him round back so I wouldn’t have to see him staring at the whores all draped out in the main room in their silks and jewelry, all of ’em prettier than me.
The baths were nice as I remembered, clean and misty and smelling of aloe and basil. We stood in the entryway, steam curling up Naji’s hair, and he said in this voice like a sigh, “Civilization.”
“Not exactly,” I said. “But close enough.” I jutted my head toward the main room. Men’s laughter boomed out with the steam. “You can go in there.” I tried not to think about the women they kept on hand to slough men’s backs and wash their hair. “I’ll be in the secondary room there.”
Naji frowned. “They separate men and women? In a pleasure house?”
“No,” I said.
Naji opened his mouth, but I whirled away from before he asked me some question I didn’t want to answer. The thought of him seeing me naked next to all those perfect whores made my skin crawl.
“It’ll be difficult for me to relax if we aren’t in the same room,” Naji called out behind me. “The headaches–”
I stopped, one hand on the doorway. I could hear water splashing, the low hum of women’s voices, and I wondered why he was bothering to mention that to me. I knew about his damned headaches, and I also knew there wasn’t any danger here. Part of me wondered if maybe he just wanted my company – but no. I knew better.
“Too bad,” I said.
The secondary room is the one where the whores go when they ain’t working, and men don’t usually venture in cause there ain’t no one to wash ’em and flirt with ’em and make ’em feel wanted. I stripped over in the corner where no one would pay no attention to me, and then I slipped in the soft warm bathwater, bubbling up from some spring deep in the ground. It was my first proper bath in ages and I stayed in for longer than I normally did, dropping my head below the water and watching all the ladies’ legs kicking through the murk. Nobody said anything to me, which was exactly how I wanted it.
I met Naji in the garden after my bath. He came out with his hair wet and shining in the sun, his dirty clothes out of place against his gleaming skin. I was sitting underneath a jacaranda tree that kept dropping purple blossoms in my hair.
He sat beside me.
His presence still gave me a little thrill. We sat in silence for a moment, and I enjoyed it, his closeness and the warm sun and my clean skin. Felt nice.
“Do I look like a pirate captain now?” he asked.
“No.” I didn’t look at him. “You need new clothes.”
“Ah. Of course.”
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. I didn’t quite know how to go about doing this. It wouldn’t do to have word spread around about some man going shopping, then turning up in those same clothes at the Starshot drinkhouse as the Pirate Namir yi Nadir. Cutthroats are a gossipy bunch. Gotta be; it’s how you find out the best schemes and stratagems. Nobody wants to get caught unawares.
It was hard to think out there in the warm sun, all clean and bright, with Naji sitting beside me, but an idea came to me anyway, a big flash of an idea.
“I know what we can do,” I said, straightening up.
“Shopping?” Naji asked. “Or stealing?”
“Neither.” I stood up and led him out of the garden, away from the whorehouse and the fresh steam of the baths. Paid a carriage driver a couple pieces of pressed copper to take us out of town, down to the rows of little ramshackle shacks that sprouted up along the oceanline like barnacles. Naji didn’t say a word the whole time. I figured he wanted out of those rotted clothes more than he was letting on.
The house looked the way I remembered it, a little wooden shack with banana trees out front, the backyard sloping down to the ocean. I jumped out of the carriage. Naji stared at me.
“What are we doing?” he asked.
“Getting you some clothes. Come on.”
He stepped out of the carriage like I was setting him up for some kind of con. I stomped through the soft seagrass in front of the house and rapped my fist against the door.
“Where are we?” Naji asked.
“You got a headache?”
“No.”
“Then you know I ain’t in danger. Stop asking questions.”
He frowned and I thought his eyes looked kinda wounded, but he didn’t say nothing.
The door swung open, and Old Ceria, my old sea magic teacher, stuck her head out, squinting in the sunlight. She looked at me and then she looked at Naji.
“What happened to his face?” she asked. “Looks like what happens when you let Lady Starshine in charge of the roast at the dry season festival. Charred on the outside, bloody on the inside.”
Naji turned to stone, his eyes burning with anger. Before the kiss, I might’ve warned him.
“He got hurt a long time ago,” I said. “Ceria, we need to borrow some clothes, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“You mean take some clothes.” But she held the door wider and let me and Naji step inside. It was dark in there, with heavy curtains pulled over the windows. Dried-out seaweed hung from the rafters, and all manner of sea creatures lay out on the cabinet – or the shells of ’em did, anyway. The smell was the same, too, stale and salty.
Old Ceria was a seawitch, like Mama, and Mama would always bring me to see her when I was a little girl, to try and extract magic out of me. Ceria lived on Bone Island cause she couldn’t abide Empire rule, but she didn’t have no love for the Confederation neither – for pirates in general. She barely tolerated Mama, truth be told, but she was willing to put aside differences far as magic was concerned.
I hadn’t seen Ceria in years, but she looked the same as she did when I was younger, as dried out as her seaweed and her dead crabs.
“He the reason you ran off from the Hariri clan?” Ceria asked me, jutting her head toward Naji.
Shit. I didn’t think she would’ve heard.
She gave me a narrow, sharp-toothed smile.
I didn’t answer her, didn’t even move my head to shake it yes or no. I could feel Naji staring at me, staring at her.
“Oh, don’t worry,” she said, grinning wider. “You think I care about Confederation politics? Just asking cause it ain’t never wise to give your heart to a blood magician.”
I went hot at that.
Old Ceria chuckled and even though she was an old woman and I knew that meant she deserved my respect, I kinda wanted to hit her.
“You two wait here,” she said. “I take it you want the clothes for him? You’re looking awful dapper in that Empire cloak.” A little curl of her lip when she said Empire.
She disappeared into the back of the house. Naji and me stood in silence, and I listened to the waves rolling in to the beach behind us. Naji was still fuming over Ceria’s comment about his face – I could see it in the way he kept balling up the rotted fabric of his shirt in one hand.
I tried to work up the nerve to apologize to him.
Naji said, “Captain Namir yi Nadir will cover his face.”
“Marjani won’t like that.”
“Marjani can dress up as a man if she wants a captain so badly. I’m covering my face.”
Old Ceria came into the room, a tattered brocade coat tossed over one arm, some trousers and shirts tossed over another.
“I should be getting you a scarf, then,” she said.
Naji sneered at her and she threw the clothes at him.
“Ain’t scared of you, blood magician. Got nothing but seawater in these veins.” She nodded at me. “You best watch out, girl.”
“He won’t hurt me,” I said.
“Seems to me he already has.”
Naji stalked outside with his new captain’s clothes, but I stayed in the house for a minute or two longer, staring at her, thinking back to those horrible afternoons as a kid, digging up sand on the beach for her spells.
“How’d you know?” I asked.
“I’m a witch, darling,” she said. “I saw you coming two weeks back. I know his story too, the curse and all. The kiss.” She winked at me.
I scowled at her, then jumped up and pushed out of the house before I said something I’d regret. With a jolt, I wondered if she would tell the Hariris that she saw me, but then I remembered she’d always hated the Hariris more than other pirates. Maybe she’d just tell Mama.
Still, it was a reminder that I wasn’t in the north anymore – I was back in the parts of the world where the Hariri clan had plenty of eyes, and no doubt they’d still be looking for me, even if I’d mostly forgotten about them over the last few months, seeing as how I had bigger problems on my mind. I’d have to come up with some excuse for not dawdling in port. Threaten to feed some Empire man to the manticore. I felt sorry enough for her as it was, having to eat fish bones and sea birds again.