The Assassin's Curse

  Things fell into a routine. I didn't get used to 'em, but they were at least a routine.

  Then one morning I woke up and Naji was gone. The familiar sick panic set in. I was on my feet immediately, tearing the tent apart, screaming Naji's name. A million possibilities raced through my head. Maybe he'd turned into moonlight after all, and I was next. Maybe he'd turned into a fern and I was ripping him into shreds in my fear.

  I dropped the fern and I stepped back, almost stepping into the fire. The beach was silent save for the wind and my racing, terrified heartbeat.

  "Naji?" I said one last time. All my hope was lost. That wasn't much of a surprise, though, cause I really didn't have much of it left.

  "Ananna? Are you alright?"

  Naji popped up in the shadow of a tree.

  "You!" I shouted. "What's wrong with you?"

  He blinked at me.

  "I thought you got turned into a fern."

  "Oh. Oh, Ananna, I'm sorry, I didn't think–"

  "You go on and on about how I can't be left alone and then you just leave me here?"

  Naji walked up to me. He moved with his old grace, slinking across the beach instead of shuffling. I'd hardly noticed that particular quality was coming back along with the magic.

  "I was restless," he said. "I'm sorry. You weren't in danger."

  I suppose that was something, but my heart was still beating too fast.

  "I have something to show you."

  "What could you possibly have to show me? Did your sword turn into a courtier's dress?" I narrowed my eyes at him. "Or did you find the wizard? Did you–"

  "No. I'm not that well yet. But I think you'll appreciate it nonetheless."

  He turned and headed off down the sand. I followed him because I didn't much want to be left alone again. After fifteen minutes we came across an old fallingapart little shack, set back into the woods, still within sight of the beach.

  I didn't trust it at all. "Does somebody live here?" Though I had to admit it looked long-abandoned, the stones in the walls cracked and warped, the thatched roof dotted with holes.

  "Look at it, Ananna. But the answer's no, no one lives here. I cast a history spell. A small one, but enough to tell."

  I stepped up to the shack's door and nudged it with my foot. Inside, the stone floor was coated with sand and old ashes and the thin, glassy sheen of sea salt. There was a tiny hearth in the back, where Naji had started a fire, and a pile of stone jars and a rotted bed in the corner.

  The warmth spread over me, welcoming as an embrace, but I just looked on it with suspicion

  "It's some island trick," I said, turning toward Naji. "It'll be like the lean-to. We'll go fetch water and come back to find it turned into a big pile of stones." I thought about the stones on the beach and shivered.

  "It's not. I cast a history spell, remember?" Naji leaned up against the doorway. "It's been here for almost seventy-five years. And the first spell cast on it was one of protection."

  "And it's still working?"

  "It was very strong magic. Very old magic."

  I glowered at him. He stepped inside and the fire flickered against his rotting clothes. "Would I do anything to put you in danger?"

  He'd done plenty to put me in danger. He'd dragged me across the desert in the white hot heat. He'd gotten me stranded on the Isles of the Sky. But I'd let him. I'd done it all cause I wanted to break the curse as much as he did.

  I shrugged and didn't look him in the eye.

  "You should sit by the fire. It's a work of magic in and of itself that you haven't gotten sick yet."

  "I'm fine."

  "Let's not risk it."

  I had to admit, the firelight looked awfully inviting.

  And Naji looked healthy, not in any pain at all. I took one step cautiously through the doorway, and then strode across the shack to the hearth. The heat soaked into my skin, and I sat down, drawing my knees up to my chin. Naji sat down beside me.

  "Why'd you do this?" I asked.

  "Do what?"

  "Find a shack."

  "Because we need it," he said. "I don't know how long it will be until I'm fully healed, and it isn't helping that we have to sleep out in the cold every night."

  I didn't say nothing, just leaned closer to the fire. Naji got up and paced around the room liked a caged jungle cat.

  "I hope the wizard can break your curse," I said, speaking into the fire.

  Naji stopped pacing. I looked over at him, and he stared back at me from across the room, the firelight flickering across his scars. But he didn't say a word, not about the curse, and not about anything else, neither.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The shack looked halfway destroyed, but I was grateful for it when a storm blew through later that week, cold driving rain and dark misting winds. There was a hole about the size of my fist up in the roof, and water sluiced across the far wall, opposite the hearth, but me and Naji huddled up next to the fire and stayed dry. Naji kept rubbing his head, though, and I think it might've had something to do with the whispering on the wind. This time I could make out what it was saying: a voice speaking a language I didn't understand.

  The next morning, the sun broke through the clouds, sending down pale beams of light that dotted across the beach. It was hard to imagine the storm from the night before and harder still to remember the voice, which seemed more like a dream as the day wore on. I thatched the roof with fern fronds and pine needles, and Naji swept out the inside with a broom I made for him from more pine needles. When we finished, we sat down to eat berries and some pale creamy tuber Naji dug out of the ground. Neither were very satisfying.

  "I might be able to catch some fish," Naji said after we'd finished. "I think that may be the reason I'm not healing as quickly as I expected. I don't have enough strength just eating berries."

  "We'll need a line. I guess I could make one out of that net Marjani gave us–"

  "That won't be necessary." He paused, and the wind blustered in off the beach and knocked the pine trees around. "The island casts enough of a shadow over the sea that I can move through the water that way. I've done it before, in the Qilari swamps."

  "How long you been well enough to do that?" I didn't have my usual strength, neither, although I'd thought it was cause of the island, or that I was spending energy on glowing.

  "A few days."

  "What! Then why haven't you done it already?"

  "I don't like leaving you alone."

  "You've done it before."

  He frowned out at the ocean line. "Things were different."

  I thought about the whispers on the wind.

  "I got my charm," I said.

  "I know you do."

  "If I don't get us some fish we'll probably both starve to death and then it won't matter if the Mists show up. That's what you're worried about, isn't it? The Mists?"

  He didn't answer.

  "Hell and sea salt! Naji, you promised me that you'd start telling me things."

  "I'm telling you now." He unfolded himself and the wind pushed his hair away from his face. It was cloudy and a bit of his glow peeked through his skin, his scar shining a pale soft white. "While I'm gone, you must promise to stay in the shack."

  "Fine. I just hope it won't turn into a tree."

  "It won't." Naji frowned, and then glanced over his shoulder at the woods. "Come."

  "Into the woods? Why?"

  "I need to gather up something." He plodded over to the treeline and then ran his fingers over the greenery spilling onto the sand. He plucked three narrow, shiny fern leaves, twisted them together, and muttered in his language. His glow dimmed for a few seconds, and then he handed me the bundle of ferns.

  "Hang this above the door," he said.

  I turned the ferns over and over in my hand. They were much heavier than three twisted-up leaves should be.

  "Go on," he said. "You have to do it."

  "What's this to protect me from?" I asked as we made our way back
over to the shack. "The Mists or the Isles?"

  "They're practically the same thing," he said.

  A chill went down my spine.

  I jammed the ferns into a crack above the door, and Naji slipped off his sword and scabbard and handed it to me.

  "Stay inside," he said.

  "Go," I said. "I'm starving."

  He nodded, stepped into the shack's shadow, and disappeared.

  He was gone for longer than I expected, not that I knew how long it took to sneak up on fish and catch 'em that way. I got bored and started tossing leaves that had fallen through the hole in the roof into the fire to watch 'em smolder and curl in on themselves. When I ran out of leaves, I stood in the doorway, Naji's sword and scabbard looped around my hips, and stared out at the shadowline along the trees. Nothing. I drummed my fingers against the doorway. Glanced up at the bundle of fern leaves. Thought about Naji telling me to stay put.

  Something flashed out of the corner of my eye.

  I had the sword out even though my brain was telling me it was only Naji. Except it wasn't Naji. It wasn't nobody at all, just a gray mist that was slinking out of the woods, shrouding my view of the forest, of the beach, of everything–

  "Darkest night! Get inside!"

  Naji looped his arm around my chest and pulled me backward into the shack. I cried out and dropped the sword in a clatter on the floor. The door to the shack slammed shut with a force that rattled the stones in the walls. I could hear Naji breathing in my ear. He smelled like the sea and like the cold nights of the ice-islands.

  "What the hell!" I shouted. "Where did you come from?"

  "The water." Naji let me go, and I whirled around to face him. He was as dry as when he left, but he had a big silver-striped fish in one hand, and he didn't look furious the way I expected him to, only tired. "I felt you about to do something stupid. I told you not to go outside."

  I slumped down on the floor, my heart pounding. "I was just bored," I muttered.

  "Fortunately, they didn't see you," he said, laying the fish out on a slab of stone that was next to the hearth. "They'll only get stronger, though. You need to be more careful." He leaned in close to me, and I stared up at him, dizzy with the rush of my fear, and with something else I couldn't identify. "Promise you won't go out alone."

  "You're the one that left me be–"

  "Promise."

  "I promise. Kaol. I'm sorry I stood in the damn door."

  He slid away from me and pulled out his knife. "Midnight's claws, I wish I could heal faster. If only I knew how long I had to keep them from you–"

  "Me! You're the one they're after."

  He slid the knife up under the fish's scales, his movements quick and assured. If I hadn't been annoyed with him, I might've been impressed. "I'm currently far more protected than you are," he said. "I have the strength of the Order behind me."

  I scowled. "Don't cut that fish too thin. It'll burn up in the fire."

  He stopped cutting and looked at me. "Would you rather do it?"

  "I can do it better than you can."

  He pulled out the knife and handed it over like it was a peace offering. Cleaning the fish calmed me down a little. It helped that Naji didn't nag me about the Mists no more, and by the time we had the fish cooking on the fire, I had forgotten about the mist curling through the woods outside the shack. I was inside, I was surrounded by warmth and the smells of real food, I was safe.

  The two of us finished off the entire fish. Its flesh was flaky and almost sweet-tasting, and it snapped clean and bright inside my mouth. The best meal I'd had in ages.

  When we finished eating, Naji pulled out his sword and started sharpening it against the side of a rock he had brought in from the beach with him. It didn't take him long; he was sure practiced at it.

  He held the sword up to the fire. It glittered, throwing off little dots of silvery light.

  "You had that sword long?" I asked him. Some people, soldiers especially, make a big deal about their swords, and you can get 'em to talk about the things forever. Never been one for that sort of thing myself. A weapon's a weapon.

  "I received it when I took my vows." Naji lay the sword over his knees.

  "What kinda vows?" Celibacy? I thought, though I didn't say it. Nobody keeps a celibacy vow anyway.

  Naji lifted his head. "I'm not supposed to discuss it with outsiders."

  "Oh, course not." I picked the sword up by the handle and swiped it through the air a few times. But without the threat of danger, it only reminded me of Tarrin of the Hariri and I dropped it on the floor. Naji gave me one of his looks and slipped it back into its scabbard.

  "Can I ask you a question?" I said.

  "I'm not divulging any secrets of the Order."

  "Not even one?"

  Naji narrowed his eyes, and I realized he'd probably been joking, in his way. I took a deep breath.

  "Why didn't you want to kill me?"

  Naji looked away, toward the fire-shadows flickering across the doorway.

  "Well?" I prompted. "Or is that a secret of the Order, too?"

  Naji sighed. He leaned back against the wall. He didn't look the least bit like an assassin, what with the firelight and his seaworn clothes. In truth, cause of the scar and his long hair, he looked like a pirate. Even the tattoos reminded me of ocean waves.

  "Do you know who the Jadorr'a are?" he asked.

  "Assassins."

  My answer made him look worn out.

  "No, do you know their involvement in the history of the Empire?"

  I shrugged. Not much use for knowing history on board a pirate ship.

  "They used to prevent wars," he said. "Before the Empire bound together the countries of the desertlands, they were a way to put a cease to the constant fighting between kings. Better to kill one man than allow soldiers to destroy the countryside, raping and burning their way across the desert."

  War between countries was something the Confederation didn't much get involved in beyond its own internal squabbling. Though there hadn't been war for a long time, not since I was a little girl, and that was over on Qilar anyway. The Empire had formed long before I was born.

  "I don't see what any of this has to do with me," I said.

  "It doesn't," Naji said. "That's my point. The Order was always paid for its services, but once the Empire formed, gold lust opened them up for use by any merchant with enough wealth to provide payment."

  "Like Captain Hariri?"

  "Like Captain Hariri." Naji shook his head. "I joined the Order after my strength manifested itself – after I learned my magic came from darkness and death, not the earth, the way it did for my mother, my brother–"

  "You have a brother?"

  Naji fixed me with a steely gaze. "My mother sent me away. She said I could harness my darkness into something good, that I could stop the Empire from destroying all the people living under its banners..." He laughed, a short, harsh bark. "I suppose I've done that. Once or twice. But mostly it's errand-running for rich men. I despise wealth."

  I didn't say nothing to that. Wealth is power, Papa always told me. Wealth is strength. But I could see where Naji was coming from, too.

  "So that's why you didn't want to kill me?" I finally said. "Cause you didn't think it was worth your time?"

  Naji looked up at me. "No," he said. "I didn't want to you kill you because I thought it was wrong."

  I dunno why, but my face flushed hot at that. Hotter than the fire.

  "I won't tell nobody," I said.

  "It doesn't matter. No one's going to believe you escaped an assassin."

  "A Jadorr'a," I said.

  He looked at me again, and I still couldn't read his face none. Not even his eyes.

  "Yes," he said. "A Jadorr'a."

  And his voice was soft as a kiss.

  I woke up to rainfall pattering across the roof. It was awful hard to tell the passing of days here, on account of the cloud cover and the way the sun didn't always rise and set in the
same place. The rainfall was constant, though. It was a shame you couldn't keep track of the days through the rain. All I knew was that I'd heard that soft rustle of rain more often than not.

  This morning something was different, though. The shack was lit not by the usual faint golden glow of our skin, but by bright blue light. Light the color of northern glaciers.