The Assassin's Curse

  Then one of the crewmen started talking about the Isles of the Sky. He leaned in close to the fire so that his face didn't look human no more, and he told a story about an old captain of his who'd had a friend who got blown off course and winded up in the Isles. That friend had sailed between the different islands, his crew growing gaunter and gaunter until they were nothing but moonlight and old bones. The friend escaped cause he made a deal with the Isles themselves, but after he came back to Anjare all his thoughts were wrapped up in the Isles, cause the spirits were far trickier than he was.

  Naji sat off in the sidelines all this time, shadows crowding dark around him. I got a couple of shots of rum in me after listening to that Isles story, to try and forget that was where we were headed to, and I slunk over to him and sat down. Everything was bright from the rum and the music, though Naji managed to swallow up some of the brightness just by sitting there. I thought of his pitch feather quill.

  "You know any stories?" I asked him.

  "No."

  "Really? None at all?" I wanted to press up against him the way Leila did, but not even rum gave me that much courage. "Don't they tell stories back at the Order?"

  Naji's hair blew across his forehead. "You aren't allowed to hear those stories." He pushed at his hair like it was some kind of spider crawling on him in his sleep.

  "Why not?"

  "Because they're sacred. Darkest night, do I really have to explain this to you?"

  That stung me, and I slid away from him, and drew my knees up under my chin. Somebody brought out this old falling-apart violin and took to playing one of the old sea-dances, the one that asks for good fortune on a voyage.

  We sat side by side for a few minutes while the crew spun out music and light in the center of the deck.

  "Ananna," Naji said. "I have actually done this sort of thing before. With alarming regularity, in fact."

  "I know." I said it real soft, and he leaned over to me like he cared what I was saying. "I just want to help you is all."

  His eyes got soft and bright. I wanted him to smile.

  "That's very kind," he said. "I don't have a lot of experience with kindness, but I… I do appreciate it."

  I blushed. "And I wish you wouldn't be so sore with me all the time."

  He blinked. The music vibrated around us, all shimmery and soft. Nobody was dancing.

  "I'm not sore with you," he said.

  I guess it shoulda made me feel better, but it didn't. The song ended and another started up. Another seadance, and still nobody was dancing. Maybe since they weren't part of the Confederation, they didn't know the steps. Or maybe they just didn't care. It took me a few seconds to recognize the melody without the dancing, and I realized it was the song asking for luck in love. On Papa's ship the crew had interpreted it as a prayer against brothel sickness.

  "This ain't right," I said. "Nobody dancing."

  Naji glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. His brow was furrowed up like he'd been thinking real hard about something, and I hoped it was me but knew it probably wasn't.

  I jumped up and bounded back into the light. It took me a few seconds to remember the steps: a lot of kicks and jumps and twirls, but once I got it down the crew started hooting and hollering and clapping out the rhythm. Then this big burly fellow got up and started following along, and damn if he wasn't lighter on his feet than me. And the next sea-dance started up, asking for victory in battle, and I was laughing and spinning and any darkness Naji might've slipped into me disappeared – at least for a time.

  Things fell into a routine quick enough; they always do, once you're out at sea and the novelty of departure wears off. I got all caught up in the routine, though, cause it'd been so long since I'd been on the open ocean – the movement of the boat beneath my feet, and the smell of rotted wood and old seawater and sweet rum. You don't realize how much you miss something till it comes back to you, and then you wonder how you went so long without it.

  I tried not to think on Naji's curse too much. Didn't want to remind myself of the overwhelming possibility that it really was just impossible and my time on the Revenge would be my last time on a ship at all.

  Captain put me on rigging duty cause I could scamper up the ropes easier than a lot of the men, even though by lady standards I ain't exactly small. By the end of the first week my palms had their calluses back, and I'd gotten to know some of the crew. I liked 'em well enough, even though they teased me and tried to embarrass me with crude stories and the like. Course, I had a few stories up my sleeve that made them blush.

  One afternoon, when we'd been out on the water for about a week and some days, a couple of the crew told me about Marjani.

  "Some big-shot noble's daughter down in Jokja," Chari said. He was old and weathered and knew the ropes. "Ran off when her father wanted her to marry some second-rate Qilari courtier. Went to university, too."

  It was noon and we were eating lunch up in the rigging, some hardboiled eggs and goat's milk cheese and honey bread, all the fresh stuff that only lasts a few weeks.

  "She don't like people to know," Chari went on. "Afraid they'll hold it against her, or somebody'll find out and send her back."

  I didn't say nothing, cause I figured it's none of my business what parts of their past people want to leave behind.

  "Nah, she just don't want people thinking she's a stuck-up bitch. Too bad it didn't work none," said Ataño, who wasn't much younger than me and always out to prove something. Chari threw a handful of crushed-up eggshells at him and told him to shut up. That set me to laughing, and Ataño gave me a look that might have melted glass had I not gotten used to Naji's constant scowling.

  "What about you, sweetheart?" Chari asked. "You got a story?"

  I knew he really wanted to hear Naji's story. I wasn't giving it to him, not the fake one and sure as hell not the real one.

  "Born under deck and grew up like you'd expect," I said. "Don't need a story to know that."

  Chari leaned back thoughtfully while Ataño glowered and picked eggshells out of his hair.

  "Ananna!"

  It was a woman's voice, and there was only one other woman on board that boat. Marjani.

  "What we get for talking about her," Chari muttered.

  I leaned over the rigging and waved, wondering what she wanted with me.

  "I need to speak with you!" she called out.

  Ataño made this kind of grunting noise under his breath. I ignored him and swung down, going through the possibilities in my head: Naji had screwed something up. Marjani was gonna blackmail us. The captain was gonna toss us in the open ocean.

  "You said you'd done some navigation before?" she asked soon as my feet landed on the deck.

  I stared at her. "A little." It was the truth: Mama'd showed me once or twice, but Papa liked to do most of the navigation himself. He kept saying he'd teach me once I was older, but then they tried to marry me off.

  "Good enough. Come on."

  I followed her down below, even though I still wondered why she needed my help.

  We passed some crewmen sitting around telling fortunes with the coffee dregs. Marjani kept her head up high, the way Mama used to, and nobody said nothing to her. She had that same don't-mess-with-me expression Mama used to take on, the one I practiced in the mirror when I was younger and sure I'd get a ship of my own someday.

  The captain's quarters on the Ayel's Revenge were nicer than what I was used to, brocades and silks hanging from the ceiling, with big glass windows that let in streams of sunlight. Flecks of dust drifted in the air, glinting gold. Marjani walked right through them.

  "I'm having some trouble with a rough patch on the map," she said, stopping in front of a table. The map showed the whole world, the ocean parts criss-crossed with lines and measurements. Marjani pointed to a little brooch pin stuck in a patch of ocean right where we needed to go. The jewels glittered in the sunlight.

  "Sirens," she said. "They move around, but I threw some divinations las
t night and it looks like they're staying put for the time being."

  She looked up at me expectantly.

  "Sirens?" I blinked. "You mean this really is just about the navigation?"

  She stared at me for a moment before collapsing into laughter. "What, did you think I was dragging you down here to chase rats?" She laughed again.

  "I thought you'd told on me and Naji."

  Her face turned serious. She shook her head. "I told you I wouldn't. No, I just…" She looked down at the map. "Nobody on this ship knows anything. Well, the captain does, but he spends all his time on deck swapping rum with the crew." She rubbed at her forehead. "I feel like a wife."

  "Well, I don't know much, just the bit Papa taught me…"

  She waved her hand. "I know. All I wanted was someone who'd understand when I tried to talk my way through it."

  "Oh." I frowned. "I guess I can do that." In truth I was excited, though I tried not to show her. Knowing navigation gets you one step closer to being a captain.

  She smiled at me, and I wondered how I ever thought she was gonna toss me and Naji overboard.

  "So," I said. "Sirens."

  "Have you ever dealt with them before?"

  I shook my head. "Papa would always make a wide berth."

  She gave me a weird look then, and I added, "Same with my last captain. Liable to lose your whole crew."

  "That's what I was afraid of. But over here's Confederation territory, the Uloi and the Tanisia," she tapped a spot on the map, "and they've both got a major beef with the captain. And this direction," another tap on the map, "will take us too far out of our way." She looked up at me. "Suggestions?"

  "I don't got any." I frowned at the map. "My last captain, he'd probably have gone through the Confederation territory." I didn't mention that's cause he was Confederation. "A risk of a fight versus the guarantee of delay or the sirens, you know? But he liked to fight, too."

  "Not sure about fighting," Marjani said. "We have too much–" She stopped and glanced at me real quick out of the corner of her eye, and I knew she was talking about the cargo.

  Marjani messed with the map some, tracing an arc around the sirens, up close to the northern lands. Something shivered through me – but I doubted Marjani was taking us anywhere close to the Isles of the Sky. She ain't stupid. And as much as I wanted Naji to cure his curse, I wasn't sure I was ready to face the Isles just yet.

  So I watched Marjani work, trying to memorize the movements, the way she used her whole arm as she worked, the little scribbles she took down in her logbook. Her handwriting was curved and soft and learned, and it reminded me of the calligraphy I saw in this book of spells Mama used to keep on her. Not plant-spells – something else. Alchemy. She never talked about it.

  "It's the only way," Marjani muttered. "Up north. Curses! Captain's not going to be pleased." She looked up at me. "It'll take us over two weeks off course. Nearly three."

  "We got the food for it?"

  "We can make do."

  I shrugged. "Well, if you don't wanna fight and you don't wanna lose half your crew to drowning, that's probably the only way." I shivered again, but Marjani didn't seem to notice.

  "I might be able to shave it down." She wrote some figures in her logbook, crossing them out, scrawling in new ones. When she turned her attention back to the map, I asked if I could take a look.

  "At my notes?"

  I felt myself go hot, but I got over my pride enough to nod. "I always wanted…" My voice kinda trailed off. Marjani handed the logbook over to me.

  "Wanted to learn navigation?"

  I nodded.

  "It's not terribly hard, once you know the mathematics behind it."

  "Most mathematics I ever learned was how to count coins." I wanted to ask her about university, but she was frowning down at the map again. I ran my fingers over the dried ink of the logbook, reading through her scratched-out notes, all those calculations of speed and direction and days lost.

  "I might have time to start teaching you," she said, interrupting our silence. Her divider scritch scritch scritched across the map. "Especially with this detour."

  I looked hard at the logbook.

  "I'd like that," I said. "I'd like that a whole lot."

  That night, Naji emerged from the crew's quarters and slunk up on deck. The wind was calm and favorable, pushing us north toward the ice-islands, out of the path of the sirens. The captain had issued the orders to change directions that afternoon, and the crew had scrambled to work without so much as a grunt of complaint. I wondered what would've happened if Marjani had issued the order. Or me.

  "Something's different," Naji said, sidling up beside me. I was standing next to the railing, looking out at the black ocean. "We aren't going in the same direction."

  "You can tell that?"

  "Yes." He frowned. "We were going east, now we're going north. Did you manage to convince them to take us–"

  I smacked him hard on the arm. "Are you crazy? Don't say that out loud!" Nobody was near us, though. The crew kept clear of Naji, though they sure saw fit to gossip about him whenever he was hidden away belowdeck.

  "And no," I said. "We're still headed for Port Idai. But we're having to detour on account of some sirens."

  "Sirens?" Naji stared out at the darkness. "I hate the ocean."

  That made me sad. Sure, sirens are a pain in the ass, but how could he not see all the beauty that was out there – the starlight leaving stains of brightness in the water, the salt-kissed wind? I wanted to find a way to share it with him, show him there was more in the world than blood and shadow. The ocean was a part of me – couldn't he see that?

  Of course he couldn't. He barely saw me half the time, plain and weatherworn and frizzy-haired.

  "How far north is the detour taking us?" he asked.

  I shrugged. "A couple weeks out of our way."

  "That's not what I asked."

  I looked over at him. His face was hard and expressionless. "I ain't sure," I said. "Not so far we have to worry about ice in the rigging."

  Naji frowned. "Are you wearing that charm I made you?"

  Course I was, though my wearing it didn't have nothing to do with protection. Still, I nodded.

  "Good," Naji said. "Don't take it off."

  I knew there was something he wasn't telling me, probably something about the Mists, and as much as Naji claimed to hate the ocean he sure seemed content to stare all gloomy at the waves.

  "It ain't so bad," I said.

  "What isn't?"

  "Being out here." I glanced at him. "I know something's got you spooked, but I'm safer here. Ain't been in danger once. So there ain't been no hurt for you."

  The wind pushed Naji's hair across his face, peeling it away from his scar.

  "You haven't been attacked, that's true." He sighed. "But you spend all day scampering among the ropes like a monkey."

  "That hurts?" I was almost offended. I've been messing about in ship's rigging since I was four years old. It's about as dangerous as walking.

  "Not really," Naji said. "I get a headache sometimes." He looked at me. "But you could fall."

  "In fair weather like this? Not a chance." I frowned.

  The water slapped against the side of the boat, misting sea spray across my face and shoulders. The ocean trying to join in on your conversation, Mama always told me. It's her way of giving advice.

  Naji let out a long sigh and wiped at his brow with his sleeve. "I'm going back to the crew's quarters."

  "Wait."

  He actually stopped.

  "Listen," I said. "First off, it ain't healthy for you to stay down below so much. You're gonna get the doldrums faster'n a bout of crabs in a whorehouse. Second…" I groped around for the words a bit. "Marjani's gonna teach me navigation, but I don't know none of the math."

  "Alright," he said. "What does that have to do with me?"

  The words hit me like one of Mama's open-hand slaps. "Because," I said, faltering. "You… you're
educated. I thought you could…"