The Assassin's Curse

  Things stayed like that for a while. The singing and the uman flower and Naji's bright eyes. But despite all of it, I wasn't too fearful, even though I knew that made me a damn-right fool. I figured the charm was working, and that's where my complacency came from.

  I couldn't say how long Naji was away. It couldn't have been too long because I hardly moved one bit and neither of my legs cramped up. When Naji did come back, it happened all at once. The singing stopped and the uman flower stopped dancing and the light came back into the room. Naji slumped forward onto the floor, knocking the uman flower aside, out of the circle. It skittered up to me and I jumped away from it, not so much out of fear but revulsion. Naji still hadn't moved.

  I crawled over to him, stopping just outside the circle, and poked him in the shoulder. He groaned. I poked harder, and then I shook him. The part of my arm in the circle tingled. The smell of his magic was so overpowering, I could taste it in the back of my throat. But at least nothing in the room seemed to be shifting and changing from the magic-sickness.

  Naji jerked up, so fast it startled me. He blinked a few times. His eyes were dark again. When he spotted me crouching by the circle he rubbed his head and said, "Don't cross the line."

  "I know, I ain't an idiot." I frowned at him. "You alright?"

  He nodded, his head hanging low. I scooted across the floor and leaned against the bed. "What'd you find out?"

  "Find out?"

  "You said you had some questions that need answering."

  "Oh." His face darkened for a moment. "It seems we'll need to go across the desert." He stood up, using one hand to steady himself against the bed.

  "What! The desert?" I was hoping that he'd seen the Hariri clan wherever he went – not them exactly, but the shadows of them, the way fortune-tellers do. I was hoping that he'd tell me that other assassin wasn't coming after me no more. "I don't want to go to the desert."

  "You're in the desert now."

  I shook my head. "No, I'm in Lisirra, and it ain't the same thing." I crossed my arms and glared at him. "Why do we have to cross the desert?"

  "I need to see someone."

  "That's it?" I said. "That's all you're going to tell me?"

  Naji glared at me. He looked about a million years old.

  "Yes," he said. "It's all that concerns you."

  "Bullshit!" I stalked across the room, taking care to avoid the circle. I balled up my clothes and wrapped the scarves around them for a strap. I took the protection charm off and threw it on the bed.

  "What do you think you're doing?"

  "Leaving."

  "You can't leave."

  I went right up to him, close enough that I could smell the residue of his magic. "Sure can. I got money and my wits and there ain't nothing you can do to stop me."

  "There's plenty I can do and you know it."

  I didn't have an answer to that, so I stomped away from him, right out the door and into the hallway. I didn't think about what I was doing; it was a lot like when I left Tarrin, honestly. Get the hell out and come up with a plan later.

  Naji screamed.

  It stopped me dead in my tracks, cause it didn't sound like anger or magic, but like he was in pain, like someone had stuck him in the belly. The hallway was silent – nobody stuck his head out to see what was going on.

  Then there was a thump and the door banged open. Naji spilled out into the hallway. He cradled his head in one hand, and his skin was covered in sweat. His tattoos looked sickly and faded.

  "Ananna," he said, choking it out. "You can't–"

  "What the hell is wrong with you?" Part of me wanted to bolt and part of me wanted to get him a cold washrag and a cup of mint tea.

  He staggered forward, pressing his shoulder up against the wall. I kept expecting some angry sailor to come out and lay into us for interrupting his good time.

  "You can't…" Naji closed his eyes, pressed his head against the wall. He took a deep, shuddery breath. "You can't go out there alone, without protection. The Hariri clan–"

  "To hell with the Hariri clan. Let 'em send their worst."

  Naji looked like he wanted both to roll his eyes and puke. "That's the problem," he said. "They will."

  He pushed himself away from the wall and swayed in place. He didn't stop rubbing his head.

  "Please," he said. "Come back to the room. You can't leave. I have to protect you."

  That was when I figured it out. It sure took me long enough.

  "Are you cursed?" I asked.

  His expression got real dark. He jerked his head toward the doorway.

  "Are you?"

  "Get in the room."

  I did what he asked. I tossed my dresses on the floor and sat down on the bed. The color had come back to Naji's cheeks, and his eyes weren't glassy and blank no more. He locked the door behind us and started sweeping at the used-up magic circle with his foot.

  "Well?" I said. "You are, ain't you? That's why you have to protect me."

  He didn't say anything. The circle was gone, replaced with smears of powders and streaks of drying blood, but he kept kicking at it. The dust made me sneeze.

  Naji finally looked at me.

  "Yes," he said. Then he turned his attention back to the powders.

  I folded my hands in my lap all prim and proper like a lady. Naji wasn't protecting me cause of some stupid oath. He was protecting me cause it hurt him if he didn't.

  "When did it happen?" I asked. "During the fight, I'm assuming?" I thought back to that night in the desert, crawling through the sand, flinging my knife at his chest, killing the snake–

  "The snake," I said.

  Naji stared at me for a few moment. Then he nodded.

  "Was it a special snake?"

  Naji looked weary, but he shook his head, his hair falling across his eyes. "It was just an asp, in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I suppose it would have bit me had you not killed it."

  "Oh."

  He stopped kicking at the circle and leaned up against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. "You saved my life. Now I have to protect yours."

  "From the snake?"

  "Apparently."

  "So what you told me was true," I said. "About having to protect me and all? It just wasn't an oath." I frowned. "What happens if you don't protect me?"

  "I imagine I would die." Naji turned away from me and fussed with the robes he had lying across the table. "That's generally how these sorts of curses go."

  I didn't have nothing to say to that. I'd accidentally activated some curse when I killed that snake and now we were stuck with each other.

  This was why untouched folks hate magic.

  "So why are we crossing the desert? Is there a cure?"

  That darkness crossed his face again. "I said I don't want to talk about it."

  "What about the Hariris? You keen on killing me so bad you're gonna march through the desert just to get to do it? You're out of your mind if you think I'm going with you–"

  "I told you we are not discussing this matter further."

  There was an edge to his voice, anger and shame all mixed up the way they get sometimes, where you can't tell one from the other, and that shut me up at first. But the more I got to thinking about it, the angrier I became. This was worse than an oath, cause oaths can be broken. And I didn't want Naji's curse hanging over my head.

  "Well, I think we should discuss the matter further." I stood up. "This don't just affect you, you know. I had plans. And they didn't involve tiptoeing around so some assassin wouldn't get a headache."

  Naji glared at me. "There's nothing to discuss. If you try to stay behind with the other sea rats, I'll bind you to me."

  "No, you won't."

  He stepped up close to me, his scars glowing a little from the faint coating of magic in the room. "All I need is a drop of your blood. And I know I can fetch that easily enough."

  I lunged at him, but he'd already whirled away from me and all I did was slam up against the wall
for my trouble. He had pulled his pitch feather out and was scratching something across the top of his chest armor, trying his best, it felt like, to ignore me. I leaned up against the wall and watched him. I did still have the Hariri clan to worry about, and if I took sail with even a southern ship they'd probably catch up to me eventually.

  "I'll go," I said, as if he'd put the decision to me in the first place. "At least until you take care of the Hariris."

  Naji glanced at me. Then he tossed his quill aside, sat down on the floor next to the uman flower, picked it up, and started pulling off its petals in long, thin strips. We didn't say nothing, not either of us. The only sound in the room was a crackle as the petals came off the stem, one at a time, white as ghosts.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Two days later, we left for the desert. It was probably stupid of me, going to help cure a man who had been paid pressed gold to see me dead, but every time I thought about giving him the slip I heard that scream of his from when I tried to leave the inn and felt sick to my stomach. And so it seemed the matter was decided for me. Bloody magic. You'd think they could come up with a curse that didn't have to drag innocent bystanders into it.

  Naji got me to buy all the supplies. He gave me a list of a few powders from the night market, but the rest of it was run-of-the-mill stuff, and he wasn't too picky about it. Most of that I stole, creeping into a closeddown day market one night for the food, making off with a couple of water skeins and some desert-masks one crowded, distractible morning. I did pay for the water itself, though, down at the well. Felt wrong not to.

  With the leftover money I bought a camel. A real strong, fancy-looking one, with soft brown eyes and an elegant, spidery gait. I marched that camel up to the inn the morning we left. Naji was waiting for me in the shadows, his face covered like always. When he saw the camel he looked at it and then he looked at me and then he said, "You bought supplies, correct?"

  "I got supplies."

  His eyes crinkled up above his mask. I wondered if he was smiling.

  We took off, me and the camel marching through the streets like we were important, Naji creeping though the dark places like a ghoul in a story. He didn't materialize again until we got to the edge of the city and the sun was peeking up over the horizon, turning the light gray.

  "We need to head southeast," he said. "You know which way that is? I don't want you wandering off–"

  "Don't insult me."

  Naji looked at me.

  "I'm serious," I said. "It was the first thing I ever learned, how to tell north from south." That wasn't exactly true – I learned east from west first off cause it's obvious – but I wanted to get my point across. I jabbed my finger out at the horizon. "There. Southeast. You look at the shadows during the day and the stars at night, assuming you don't got no compass." Which we didn't.

  "Or you can cast a spell," said Naji. "That's what I did."

  "My way's better." I patted the camel's neck, and he huffed at me like he agreed. "Anybody can do it."

  Naji didn't answer. It wasn't too hot yet, but already I had the scarf on over my head to protect me from the sun, and Naji made me put on a desert-mask even though it itched my nose. Plus I'd stolen one of those light-as-air dresses before we left, the fabric soft and cool against my skin, almost like sea spray, and thin enough that my tattoo peeked through the fabric. I'd heard how bad it gets once you're away from the ocean. Some of the crew on Papa's boat had told stories.

  Still, all the stories in the world weren't enough to prepare me for that trip. The first few hours were alright, but the sun got higher and higher, arcing its way across the sky, and I kept wanting all that sand to turn into the ocean, blue-green and cold and frothed with white. Instead it stung my eyes. My skin poured sweat, and the fabric of my dress only stuck to me and didn't do nothing to cool me off. And my feet ached from walking alongside the camel – we'd saddled him up with our food and water, and Naji said we could take turns riding if we needed.

  "And why aren't we walking at night?" I asked him, tottering along in the sand.

  "It'll be too dark," Naji said. "I can't risk casting lanterns. Besides, we'll be fine. I usually travel during the day."

  "Cause you're magic. I ain't."

  Naji sighed. "You'll get used to the heat." And that apparently was enough to settle the matter.

  We stopped to eat and rest a little during the middle of the day. Naji pitched a tent real quick and neat and told me to sit in the shade, which I did without protesting. Then he brought some water – he rationed it out to me, said we had just enough for the trip – and a handful of dried figs. The sight of 'em made my stomach turn.

  "Don't drink too quickly," he said. He crawled into the tent beside me and tossed back one of the figs.

  I didn't listen to him with regards to the waterdrinking and immediately my stomach roiled around, and I moaned and slumped up against the fabric of the tent. Naji pulled me up straight. "You'll knock the whole thing over," he muttered.

  "I didn't know this kind of heat existed in the world."

  "Have a fig."

  I shook my head. Naji sighed. "There's energy in them," he said. "They'll help make the evening walk easier."

  "What! This ain't us stopping for the night?"

  "Does it look like night to you?"

  I didn't bother to respond. The tent's shadow seemed to be shrinking, burning up in the sun. Sand blew across my feet, stuck to my legs.

  When we set off again I did feel a bit better. I guess the air was cooler, but as the sun melted into the dunes, the heat still shimmered on the horizon like water, which set me to daydreaming about Papa's boat, first during calm weather and then during a typhoon, wind and rain splattering across the desk, drenching me to the bone. I would have given my sword hand to be stuck in a typhoon instead of creeping across the desert.

  Naji finally let us stop for the night after it got too dark to see. He set up the tent again, making it wide enough that we could both lie down. I stripped off my scarf and bunched it up like a pillow.

  Naji brought me some water.

  "Two weeks from now, we'll be at the canyon," he said.

  "Two weeks!" My mouth dropped open. "Two more weeks of almost dying?"

  "You didn't almost die." He looked at me. "And surely you've gone on longer journeys? I understand that Qilar alone is almost a month's trip–"

  "That's on a boat!" I wished I had something to throw at him. "You ain't walking the whole time and you got the shade from the masts and the spray from the sea – Kaol, have you ever even been at sea?"

  He didn't answer.

  "I can't believe this," I muttered, cradling the skein of water up close to my chest. "Two weeks in the desert all on account of some assassin who doesn't know how to look out for snakes."

  "If you hadn't killed that snake," Naji said calmly, "I would have killed you."

  "Oh, shut up." I took a long drink of water. "Are you going to tell me where we're going?"

  "I told you, to a canyon."

  "Anything else?"

  "No." He looked over at me. "Stay here."

  "I ain't moving. Gotta rest up for the next two damn weeks."

  He disappeared out of the opening of the tent. I drank the skein dry and set it aside and lay back and listened to the wind howling around me and to the camel snuffling just outside the tent. At first I was thinking about how awful the next few weeks were gonna be, and how I was probably gonna dry out like a skeleton in the sun. Then Naji came back from wherever he went, his footsteps crunching over the sand, and then I smelled smoke, and I got kind of drifty and floaty, like I was in the sea. Best part of my whole day.

  And then Naji was saying my name, over and over, and shaking me awake. It was completely dark save for a reddish-golden glow just outside the tent, and after a few bleary seconds I realized that Naji was sitting outside, tending to the fire and not touching me at all. My body was just shaking from the cold.

  I sat up and pulled my scarf around me, tryi
ng to get warm.

  "Ananna?" Naji stuck his head into the tent. "Oh good, you're awake. Come eat."

  "Why in hell's it so cold?"

  "It's night time," said Naji, like that answered it.

  Now, I knew it got cooler in the desert at night. Lisirra certainly does. But I felt like I'd spent the night on the ice-islands. So I scrambled out of the tent and pressed my hands out to the fire, keeping my scarf drawn tight around my shoulders. Naji handed me a tin filled with salted fish and spinach cooked down to a sludge. The minute I smelled it my stomach grumbled and I scooped it up with one hand, slurping it off my fingers.