The Assassin's Curse

  At that moment, like she'd been standing inside listening to us, the door swung open. The woman who stepped out into the sunlight was beautiful. Curvy where she was supposed to be, with thick hair that curled down to her narrow waist. Big eyes and lashes long enough that she didn't need to wear no kohl to fake it. This perfect bow-shaped mouth. I knew immediately why Naji'd pitched such a fit about his desert mask.

  Course, I didn't trust her one bit.

  "Naji!" she cried, throwing up her hands. "My favorite disfigured assassin! What brings you all the way out here to my river?"

  "Don't do this, Leila. You know why I'm here." But he didn't say it like he was mad. In fact, he kept looking at her with this dopey expression I'd seen a thousand times before, on the faces of the crew whenever a pretty lady came aboard. Ain't nobody ever looked at me like that.

  Leila smiled and her whole face lit up like the river beneath sunlight. "Of course I do! One impossible curse, one round of spellshot to the heart. Which you seem to be mending up rather nicely on your own."

  Impossible curse? My blood started rushing in my ears. Mama had told me about impossible curses once, back when I was still trying to learn magic. They were a northern thing, cold and tricky like the ice. And impossible to cure, of course. Naji had dragged me across the desert for a cure that didn't exist.

  I was never going to get rid of him. And standing there by that dazzling river, I saw the life I'd imagined ever since I was a little girl sitting down in the cargo bay unfurl and then turn to dust. I'd killed a captain's son and now I had a lifetime bound to a damn blood magician.

  Curse the north and its crooked, barbaric magic.

  "The Order said you could help me," Naji said.

  Leila dipped one shoulder and fluttered her eyelashes. I wanted to hit her. I wanted to hit both of them. But then she tilted her head toward the mysterious darkness of her house. "Come in," she said. "Her, too. I don't imagine you'll want her to wait outside. Gives you quite the headache, doesn't it?"

  Well. I was starting to think she hadn't even seen me.

  "Come on," Naji said, wrenching himself away from the house's stone wall. Leila waited in the doorway, gazing kind of haughty-like at Naji. I didn't want to go in. Course, maybe she really could help us.

  I went in.

  The house was small and dark and cool. It smelled like the river. Naji sat down at the stone table in the center of the room, and Leila disappeared through the back, calling out as she went, "I've something for that fatigue, Naji dearest, if you just give me a second."

  I sat down beside him. Water dripped off my dress and pooled on the floor. I hoped she'd have to clean it up.

  Leila came back with a chipped tea saucer and a kettle. She poured hot water into the saucer, and grass-scented steam floated up into the air. I watched Naji drink, waiting for something bad to happen. But he just leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes and let out this long satisfied breath.

  "Spellshot's nothing to mess with," Leila said to me, like I'd have any idea what she was talking about.

  I glared at her.

  She laughed. "Naji, where'd you come up with her? She's so sullen."

  I clenched my hands into fists. Naji pushed himself up to sitting and leaned over the table and looked at Leila. "Thank you, I do feel much stronger."

  "I heard my river gave you a handout a few days ago." She smiled again, and the whole room seemed to fill with light. Kaol, it pissed me off.

  Naji's eyes flicked over to me a second. Back to Leila. "Can you help me or not?"

  "Well, it's called an impossible curse for a reason." She leaned against the wall. "But I'll see what I can do. Stand up so I can get a good look at you."

  For a few seconds Naji didn't move. Then he ducked his head a little and pushed away from the table. Leila sashayed up to him and walked around a few times as though she was sizing up a calf for slaughter. She moved like water, graceful and soft and lovely. Every part of me wanted to stick out my foot and trip her, just to see her stumble.

  "Well?" said Naji, who hadn't looked up once.

  Leila stopped. She was only a few inches from him, close enough he could have turned his head and kissed her if he wanted.

  She pressed two fingers underneath his chin and forced his head up. She stared at his face for a long time, and Naji didn't say anything, didn't move at all.

  "It's really a shame," she said. "You were such a beautiful man."

  Naji jerked away from her, slamming his hip into the edge of the table.

  "Leave him alone," I said, jumping to my feet, going for the knife that wasn't there no more. Wasn't enough that he had an impossible curse on him, she had to make fun of his face?

  Leila glanced over at me and laughed, which made me feel smaller than a fleck of dust. Naji had sunk into his chair, his head tilted down, his hair covering up his whole face.

  "Are you sure she's not the one cursed to protect you?" Leila slunk over to Naji and wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed her nose into the part of his hair. "Oh, don't be like that," she purred. "You know I was only joking."

  "No, you weren't," I said. I wanted that knife so bad. It weren't so much cause of Naji but cause I can't stand a bully, and that's all she was. A bully who got away with it cause she was so beautiful.

  "Ananna," Naji said. "Stop. She's going to help me."

  "If I can," Leila said, her arms still wrapped around Naji's shoulders, her mouth right on the verge of smiling.

  That was too much. I stalked out of the house, back out into the sunlight, all the way down the steps leading into the river. Naji's headache be damned. I sat down at the top step and stuck my feet in the water. Fish swam up to me and nibbled on my toes but nobody came out of the house. I didn't expect 'em to.

  I stayed out there for a while, until the sun set and my stomach grumbled. I thought about swimming over to the other side of the river and setting up camp. But by now it was too dark to see, and I doubted I'd be able to catch any fish to eat. The air had gotten cold again, and the river was cold, and I kept on shivering out there in my ragged, cut-up dress.

  My pride kept me from walking back in the house until it was late enough I figured both of 'em had fallen asleep. I crept back in slowly, pulling up on the door handle so the hinges wouldn't creak. The floors were stone, so my bare feet didn't make too much noise.

  "I'm glad to see you came back inside."

  I yelped.

  Naji was stretched out on a cot in the corner of the room. He pushed up on his arm when he saw me.

  "Where's Leila?"

  "Asleep, I imagine."

  I sat down on the floor beside the cot, drawing my feet up close against me.

  "I don't like her," I said, pitching my voice low.

  "I'd prefer not to talk about this." A rustle as he rolled over onto his back and pulled the thin woven blanket over his chest.

  "She's beautiful," I said.

  "I know."

  I wanted to slap him for that, but I didn't, cause I knew I didn't have no good reason. "It means she ain't trustworthy."

  "What? Because she's beautiful?"

  "Yeah. Beautiful people, things are too easy for 'em. They don't know how to survive in this world. Somebody's ugly, or even plain, normal-looking, that means they got to work twice as hard for things. For anything. Just to get people to listen to 'em, or take 'em serious. So yeah. I don't trust beautiful people."

  "I see." He dropped his head to the side. I didn't look at him, but down at the floor instead, at the fissures in the stones. "No wonder you were so quick to trust me."

  I heard the hard edge in his voice, the crack of bitterness. And so I lifted my head. He was staring up at the ceiling.

  "You ain't ugly," I said.

  He didn't answer, and I knew my opinion didn't matter none anyway.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Leila didn't do much to sway me over to trusting her those next few days, mostly cause she toyed with Naji, not giving him a straig
ht answer one way or another with regards to the curse.

  "He needs to rest," she told me that first afternoon. "Before I can examine him to see if I can help." She had come out to the river to gather up a jar of silt and a few handfuls of river nettle. I spent as little time inside the house as I could, and it surprised me that she said anything to me. I hadn't asked after him, although I'd been wondering.

  "He's a lot more injured than he lets on," she added, scooping the silt up with her hand. It streamed through her fingers and glittered in the sunlight. "I'm surprised he made it as far as he did."

  "I took care of him," I snapped, even though I was trying to hold my tongue.

  She looked up from the half-filled jar. "Of course you tried, sweetling," she said. "But you aren't used to that sort of magic." One of her vicious half-smiles. "Or any kind of magic at all."

  The water glided around my ankles, and I thought about that night the river spoke to me in her babbling soft language, that night she guided me into action.

  "By the way," Leila said. "I have some old clothes that might work for you. Men's clothes, of course. You're not going to fit into anything of mine, I'm afraid."

  I knew I really wasn't going to hold my tongue against that, so I slipped off the edge of the steps and into the river, the cold shocking the anger right out of me. I kept my eyes open, the way I always do underwater, so I could see the sunlight streaming down from the surface, lighting up the murkiness.

  Naji'd told me Leila was some kind of river witch, but the river didn't seem to play favorites, didn't seem to care about the differences between me and her. It wasn't like Naji. And so I stayed under long as I could, cause it was safe down there, everything blurred, the coldness turning me numb.

  Naji did seem to get better. I guess I'll give Leila that. He got the color back in his cheeks, and he didn't shake when he shuffled around the house. The wound was slow to heal, though, despite the river nettle Leila pressed against it every evening. Sometimes I watched them, studying the way her long delicate fingers lingered on his chest. When she sang, her voice twinkled like starlight, clear and bright and perfect. That was when I figured out that she and Naji had been lovers before he got the scar. Cause she touched him like she knew how, and he stared at her like all he thought about was her touch.

  It left me dizzy and kind of sick to my stomach. At least she never did say nothing about his face again. Not in front of me, anyway.

  We'd been there close to a week when Leila announced over dinner that she was ready to talk to Naji about the curse.

  "Finally," I said.

  Naji kicked me under the table.

  "You need to be there too," Leila said.

  "Be where?"

  "The garden, I imagine," Naji said. He poked at the fish on his plate. All we ate was fish and river reeds, steamed in the hearth in the main room.

  "There's a garden?"

  "Yes, out back," Leila said.

  That didn't make no sense. The house was built into the wall of the canyon, and even if she had stairs leading up to the surface, the surface wasn't nothing but desert.

  "Magic," Leila said, and tapped her chest. I scowled. She smiled at me like I'd said something stupid that she found amusing.

  I slumped down in my chair and pushed the fish around on my plate, my appetite gone. And I kept doing that till Naji and Leila decided they were finished up, at which point both of 'em filed out of the kitchen, toward the back of the house. I took my time, dawdling till Naji strode back into the main room. I was sure he was going to command me to follow, but instead he looked at me real close and said, "Please, Ananna."

  I shot him a mean look, and he watched me for a few minutes like he was trying to think of something to say. I can wait out a silence just fine, so I crossed my arms over my chest and stared right back.

  He said, "I went into Kajjil last night and spoke with the Order."

  "What does that have to do with anything?"

  "The Hariri clan hasn't hired another Jadorr'a. If you're worried that curing me will leave you vulnerable – if this is some pirate's scheme for protection–"

  "I told you," I snapped, "I can take care of myself."

  "Of course. I just thought that might be a reason for your reticence."

  "Well, that don't surprise me none. That you'd think that." I gave him my best glare. I didn't want to think about the Hariri clan. I didn't want to think about Tarrin. "I just don't understand what Leila needs me for."

  "She says that she needs your help."

  "What?"

  "You're part of the curse."

  "Yeah, an impossible one. I don't see how I'm gonna make much of a difference–"

  The expression on Naji's face stopped me dead. I'd never seen a man look so desperate. It made me aware of my own desperation, that ache that had settled in the bottom of my stomach after the battle in the desert.

  "I just don't see what good it can do," I muttered.

  "The least you can do is give me five minutes," Naji said.

  That was enough for me. I followed Naji to the back of the house, through the dark, dripping stone hallway, past rooms glowing with something too steady for candlelight. And then the hallway opened up, the way corridors do in caves, and there was the garden.

  So it was underground. There wasn't no sunlight in the room, though the ceiling had that same weird glow to it as the rooms in the house. And the plants weren't like any plants I'd ever seen: All of 'em were real pale, so pale you could almost see straight through 'em. They wriggled around whenever we walked past, as though they were turning to look at us.

  Leila sat in the center of the garden, on a stone bench in the middle of a circle carved into the wet rock of the cave. She had on this floaty white dress that made her look like one of the flowers, and when we walked up she patted the bench beside herself. I let Naji take it. She obviously meant for him to sit there anyway.

  "Everyone's gathered, I see." Like we were some big crowd, not three people who'd been living in the same house for a week. "Naji, I'll need you to look at me." That damn smile again. "I know it's hard for you–"

  I took a step toward her, my hands balled up tight into fists, and so help me, her voice kind of wavered, and for a minute she actually shut up. Then she cleared her throat and said, "Look at me, and don't move. It's important you don't move."

  Then she glanced over at me and said, "I need you over here too. Come along, yes, put your hand on Naji's hand there. No, palm down. Good."

  She pulled out a blue silk scarf and tied Naji's and my hand together.

  "Now," she said, looking up at me. "You need to stand there and not move your hand from his–"

  "I'm tied to him," I said.

  "And don't interrupt."

  Naji didn't look at either of us while she spoke. He just kept his head down, his hair pulled over his scar.

  "Don't give me a reason to interrupt," I said. "And I won't."

  That got a glare from her and nothing else. She turned her attention to Naji. Put her hands on his shoulders. Closed her eyes. Hummed. The flowers trembled and shook and danced. Naji kept his face blank, and I wondered what was going through his head. I wondered if he bought it.

  Cause I'd seen a lot of magic those last few weeks, and Leila's humming and swaying didn't fool me one bit. There was magic down here, for sure – have to be, with those creepy flowers – and Leila certainly could work a charm when she needed. But she didn't need to do anything right now. She was faking.

  She carried on like that just long enough to be annoying. I shifted my weight around and tapped my foot and looked at Naji's scar. My hand was starting to sweat from being tied up with his.

  And then she stopped. The cave seemed to let out a sigh.

  Naji stared at her, and his eyes were so hopeful it almost broke my heart.

  "Sorry dearest," she said. "There's nothing I can do."

  "What!" Naji jumped to his feet, his whole body springing tight like a coil. The scarf fluttered
to the ground.

  I felt like the earth had been pulled out from under me. Nothing she could do. I realized then that I'd been thinking she could help too. I hadn't even recognized the hope for what it was until it got dragged away from me and I felt its absence in my heart. I couldn't let go of that old vision of my future life and the thought of what it was going to be like now.

  "What do you mean? Nothing? Not even a charm against–"

  "It's an impossible curse," Leila said lightly. "What did you expect?"

  "But you said… And the Order…" Naji threw up his hands and stalked away from her. The flowers shrank away from him, curling up into themselves. "I can't believe this."