Текст книги "The Pirate's Wish"

Автор книги: Cassandra Clarke

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

Naji scowled.

“This is the only way we’ll be able to complete the rest of the tasks,” Marjani said, and my face went hot, cause I knew then that he’d told her everything, about the curse’s cure and my kiss. “You’ll never be able to convince Chijal to do it, that’s for certain.”

And then she walked out of the brig before Naji had a chance to answer.

We sailed for four days and didn’t see another soul, just the gray expanse of sea and sky. It was colder on the boat than it had been on land, the wind sharp against the skin of my hands and face, like it could flay it from my bones. One of the crewmen, a boy from the ice-islands named Esjar who had white-yellow hair and looked about my age, gave me a pair of sheepskin gloves.

“For the lady,” he said, with this weird flourish I realized was meant to be an Empire bow.

I took the gloves and stared at them. Papa’d always told me to treat the ropes with my bare hands. Ship gets pissy otherwise, he said. Rope’ll slip clean away from you.

“They stop the cold.” Esjar spoke Empire, but he had the same hissing accent as Eirnin. “We ain’t in Empire seas anymore. Out here, you need them, same as you need that pretty red cloak.”

I glanced down. Marjani’d let me have her cloak once we came on board – she had another one, dark blue, that she said she liked better – and I had to admit it kept me warmer than any clothes I’d ever owned. So I slipped on the gloves.

They helped. Yeah, the ropes slipped out of my hands more often, but at least my fingers could move.

Esjar and I became friends after that, chatting sometimes as we were working the ropes. He’d actually heard of the Mists – most of the ice-islanders had, in fact, which surprised me, seeing as how they ain’t so well known in the south. Esjar explained to me that the boundaries between worlds are thinner up at the top of the world, and most ice-island children learn early on to look out for flat gray eyes and cold mist.

“Which is tricky,” he said, looping the ropes into a sheet knot. “Cause mist is all over the place in the north, and gray eyes ain’t too uncommon either. So you learn to pay attention to the differences.”

“The differences?”

“Yeah.” Esjar nodded, tugging the ropes tight. “Nothing from the Mists is human, and you can tell that, when they’re creeping around. Something’s off about them. Like they don’t got a soul.”

I nodded, remembering my encounters with Echo and the others back in Lisirra. “But you don’t really notice until it’s too late.”

“That’s the trouble with them.” Esjar started knotting the next two ropes together. “The whole thing with them is that they want to get to our world, cause our world’s more stable. Not so much magic.”

I laughed at that. “There’s magic all over the damn place.”

“Sure, but not like in the Mists! Those floating islands we just picked you up from – that’s what the Mists are like, only worse, much worse. They’re built out of magic, see? And a little bit seeps through to our world and the magicians can make it work. But in the Mists magic is everywhere. So they want to come here and take over cause it’s safer.”

I shivered. Esjar hunched over his work, face scrunched up in concentration. I remembered the story Naji had told me, about how he’d stopped a lord of the Mists from crossing over permanently. That was why they were after him now, and it’d never made much sense to me, how persistent they were. But the Isles of the Sky, especially before Naji worked his spells to keep us safe, had been awful – not just cause of the cold and the rain, but cause everything was so uncertain.

And living in a world like that, only worse? I’d be trying to cross over too.

“What else do you know about them?” I asked. Esjar tied off the last of his knots and looked at me.

“Not much,” he said. “Why you asking?”

“Just curious, is all.” I grinned as if that would prove it. “It’s creepy, you know, like the stories of the dead my old crew liked to tell.”

Esjar grinned back. “In the south you fear the dead. In the north we fear the Mists.” He squinted out at the horizon line. “Not much else to tell, truthfully. Their magic is dangerous, cause they’re so seeped in it. My papa told me a story once about a cousin who faced down a man of the Mists, and his skin turned to tree bark and he rotted into the soil before anyone could save him. Supposedly he was alive for the whole thing – people could hear him screaming and begging for mercy and whatnot.”

My whole body went cold.

Esjar looked at me and frowned. “But my papa was known for bullshitting,” he said quickly. “So it probably wasn’t that bad.”

The sails snapped around us, the wind cold and biting, and I forced myself to believe him.

One evening the crew all gathered up on deck for drinking and singing and storytelling. I went too even though it meant having to listen to stupid jokes all night – I noticed Marjani made herself scarce.

I hadn’t been out there an hour when Naji slunk up, sword hanging at his side, rubbing at his head like something must’ve kicked up his curse. Probably from some of the crew leering at me all night.

“I don’t need your help,” I hissed at him, dragging him over to the railing. The sea was a churn of black and stars.

“I’m not here for you,” he said. “Though you really should be more careful. Those men aren’t… they aren’t honorable.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him. “You think I’ve never been on a ship full of drunk pirates before?”

“They could still overpower you–”

“I thought you weren’t out here for me.”

He didn’t say nothing, just turned his face toward the sea. I stalked away from him. Fine. Let him slash at any asshole who tried to grab at me. Get us tossed into the ocean, he would.

I huddled up near the fire some crewman had got going for warmth. Esjar was sitting over by the fore mast, playing a tune on this beat-up old Qilari guitar. I glanced over my shoulder at Naji – he was watching me, one hand on his sword hilt. Conspicuous as hell. But at least he’d see what I was about to do.

I walked over to the mast. “Hey, ice boy,” I said.

He stopped playing and looked up at me. “Hey, sun girl.”

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. I ain’t never been any good at flirting, but Esjar looked at me with these heavy-lidded eyes and said, “See you’re still wearing my gloves.”

“Oh.” I held up my hand to show him, even though he’d obviously already noticed. “Yeah. You’re right, I needed ’em.”

He laughed and started plucking out a Confederation tune on his guitar. I didn’t say nothing – I wasn’t too keen on letting him know who I was, since the Hariri clan almost certainly still had a watch out for my head, despite all the time that had passed – but I did sit down beside him. His fingers moved deft and sure over the guitar strings.

Naji was still watching us.

I was sweating underneath my cloak and the cold sea air, nervous. Esjar finished up his song and set the guitar off to the side.

“So what’s your story?” he asked me. I was surprised; for all our conversations, we’d never really talked about ourselves before.

“Ain’t got one.”

Esjar kinda smiled at that, but he didn’t ask no more questions. We sat side by side for a few minutes, not talking. I scooted closer to him. He put his hand on my knee.

“I don’t got much of a story, either,” he said.

We sat in another few moments of awkward silence while I tried to figure out what my next move should be. I was aware of Naji standing at the railing, turned sideways to us, like he was watching us out of the corner of his eye. I was about to ask Esjar if he wanted to go down below, but then a couple of crewman struck up an old Empire song, bright and cheerful.

“Hey, sun girl, you know this one?” Esjar asked.

“Sure do. It’s got a dance that goes with it. I can show you if you want.” When Esjar nodded, I stood up and held out my hands. He laughed and grabbed both of them and I pulled him to his feet.

I looked over at Naji, trying to be casual about it. He was frowning at us.

Least your head ain’t hurting no more, I thought bitterly.

I led Esjar to the center of the deck and showed him the basic steps. In truth, I didn’t know the dance all that well – I’d watched people do it whenever I made port in Lisirra with Mama and Papa, and I’d followed along with the steps once or twice. But I knew enough to show Esjar: mirrored steps, back, right, forward, swinging your hips all the while. He took to it quickly enough, and we swung over the deck, laughing and whirling while the rest of the crew stomped out a beat.

When the song ended, the crew burst into applause, and Esjar pulled me into him and kissed me.

It surprised me, but I liked it, too, and I kissed back, tasting the sea salt on his lips. Part of me wanted to see how Naji was reacting, but part of me just wanted to kiss Esjar until the sun came up.

We pulled apart. I couldn’t help myself this time, and I glanced over at Naji, who was watching us with his face shrouded in shadows.

Then the crew started another Empire song, and Esjar whooped and pulled me into the dance again, and for the first time in months, it was almost like Naji didn’t exist.

The next morning, I got a couple of water rations from the galley and then headed down to the brig, where I found the manticore, curled up in the corner and mewling like a kitten.

“I brought you some water,” I said.

“I want meat, girl-human!”

“You’ll have meat tonight.” I picked the lock with my knife and let myself in, skirting around the neat pile of crushed pig bones. The crew kept some livestock on board, and they gave her the bits nobody wanted to eat, plus fish, which she apparently ate despite claiming it wasn’t food. “Once me and Marjani have our own boat I’ll make sure you get real food.”

“Manflesh?” Her head perked up. Her face was dirty, her mane matted even though I’d worked through the tangles a few days earlier. The sight of her twisted my stomach.

“I’ll see what I can do. Here.” I dumped the water in her bowl and she knelt down and lapped at it. I sat beside her, stroking her side, listening to the drip drip of seawater coming through the boards.

Footsteps on the stairs. I prayed to Kaol that it wasn’t Naji.

Marjani’s head appeared in the doorway. “Brought you something,” she said. “Oh, Ananna, you’re down here.”

“Where else would I be?”

She shrugged, then grinned at me. She had a burlap sack with her, the bottom stained red. The manticore lifted up her head and sniffed.

“Animal meat,” she grunted.

“Yeah, well, I keep hoping some of those barbarians’ll hack each other to bits, but they just… don’t.” Marjani pushed open the cell and dumped out the contents of the burlap sack: fish heads and a pair of shriveled up old pig’s feet, more than a little moldy.

“Best I could do,” Marjani said.

The manticore returned to her water.

Marjani gestured for me to get out of the cell. I sighed, patted the manticore’s shoulder, and stood up. I knew the manticore would eat the food Marjani brought her, but she’d only do it alone. Pride. And I couldn’t much blame her.

“Heard you had a good time last night,” Marjani said.

“Yeah? Who’d you hear that from?”

“Half the crew. And Naji,” she added, giving me this disapproving look I didn’t like one bit.

I wasn’t gonna ask her what he said. I wasn’t going to ask her if he seemed angry about it or annoyed or sad. Mostly cause if she told me he didn’t care, I was pretty sure I might die.

“We just danced,” I said.

Marjani laughed. “And kissed. A couple times.” She paused. “Do you know how to make the moon tonic? The cook should have all the ingredients.”

I blushed and nodded. Mama had shown me how to mix it up when I turned fifteen.

“I doubt he’ll know what you’re making,” she added gently. “The cook isn’t exactly well informed on the matters of women.”

“I told you, I don’t need it! We didn’t do anything!”

“For the future, then.” She smiled. “Anyway, that’s not actually what I need to talk to you about.” She peered out the brig doorway, and then turned back to me. “Those… people… who are after Naji. They’re here.”

My stomach turned to ice, but then I realized we were still sailing along, no magic erupting out behind us, no soldiers of the Mists crawling over the deck. But Marjani looked skittish, almost scared. I grabbed her by the hand and led her over to the bench built into the wall.

“What happened?” I said. “Tell me everything.”

She took a deep breath. “I was in the navigation room last night, checking our progress. Alone. And then all of sudden this woman was in there with me. I didn’t hear the door. She was just… there.” Marjani shivered.

“Echo,” I said.

“What?”

“That’s her name. She was kind of smoky, right? Like she’s not quite in this world?”

Marjani frowned. “Sort of. When I refused to take her Naji, she fought me.”

“What! You mean she could touch you?”

“Yeah. Can she not touch you?” Marjani tilted her head, studying me, like she was trying to work out all the pieces.

“No, she can’t–” And then I remembered the charm around my neck. “Oh,” I said. “You don’t have Naji’s protection.”

“Protection?”

I lifted my charm out from shirt collar and showed it to her. “I can’t take it off,” I said. “It’ll flare up Naji’s curse otherwise. But whenever I’m wearing it, she can’t touch me.” I slipped it back inside my shirt. “I’ll tell him to make you one, once we get to land. We probably don’t have the ingredients on the boat.”

“I’d like that.” Then Marjani gave me a quick, nervous smile. “Although I did beat her back easily enough last night. I don’t think she was expecting me to be carrying a loaded pistol.”

“You killed her?” I thought of the lone pistol shot I’d been given when the Ayel’s Revenge captain marooned me and Naji on the Isles of the Sky. I’d used it to start a fire that went out in the rain. If only I’d saved it–

“No, she billowed out like dust and disappeared.” Marjani sighed. “Why the hell are they coming after me? You’ve got the curse, so you’re at least… magically tied to him.” She looked at me closely then. “And maybe more than magically, right?”

I looked down at my lap. “That ain’t important. They’re after you because you know him. They can’t get to him, see, because he’s hidden himself with his magic–”

“So they go after the next best thing. I get it.” Marjani shook her head. “He just keeps bringing around trouble, doesn’t he? The magic onboard the Ayel’s Revenge, and now this.” She laughed.

I couldn’t disagree with her. “He’s nothing but trouble,” I said. “Although he was trying to save the ship, during that mess with the Ayel’s Revenge. He just did it in a… Naji way.”

Marjani laughed at that. But when her laughter faded she took on a serious, intense expression.

“How dangerous do you think she is?” she asked. “Without the protection charm.”

It was a reasonable question, and I wanted more than anything to give Marjani a reasonable answer. But I didn’t have one. I’d never fought Echo. She whispered pretty words in my head and I had to remind myself where my loyalties lay. Maybe they were misplaced, setting ’em with Naji.

“She’s dangerous when she talks,” I finally said. “Cause it ain’t death she’s dealing. If a pistol shot’ll send her away, that should be enough to keep you safe until landfall. But just – be careful if she tries to talk to you.”

Marjani looked at me for a long time. “I understand,” she said. Then: “I’ll let you know if I see her again.”

“Have you told Naji about this?”

Marjani shook her head. “I wanted to hear what you had to say about it. Naji’s a little…” She waved her hand through the air like she could catch the right word. “A little intense. He reminds me of the academics I met at university. So focused. You can see the bigger picture.”

I beamed at that.

“I should still mention it to him though, shouldn’t I?” Marjani ran her hands over her hair. “It’s got me spooked, I have to admit.”

“I’ll go with you,” I said, even though I didn’t particularly want to see him just yet. “We can ask him about the protection spell too.” I stood up and turned to wave goodbye to the manticore. She’d fallen asleep. “And if you want me to go to the navigation room with you, next time, I can do that too.”

“Thanks.” She grinned at me, although I could see a bit of nervousness in her eyes.

CHAPTER FIVE

I was up in the rigging a week later when the alarm went up. Somebody’d spotted a ship.

I immediately slid down a nearby rope and scurried down below to grab my sword out from the little corner where I’d stashed it. The quartermaster had given it to me when we first boarded, but I never liked carrying a sword around when I was working the ropes.

Marjani was up at the helm, talking to the first mate, her arms crossed over her chest, her expression serious. The ship was a flurry of men and their swords and pistols as the crew scrambled for their battle stations. Somebody was pounding on the drum, and cannons were wheeling across deck. The ship was a bright smear of red and gold on the horizon. The colors of the Empire.

Naji appeared beside me, and put his hand on my arm. I jumped and yanked it away.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Are we under attack?”

Marjani called us over to the helm, waving her arm wide. “It’s an Empire sloop,” she shouted over the din of battle preparations. “We’re gonna have to fight for her.”

Naji gave me a sideways glance and set his face in stone.

“I don’t need your protection,” I told him.

Naji frowned and didn’t say anything. Marjani jumped down from the stern deck and pulled out her own sword and her pistol and nodded at me. “Captain’s lending us Tavin, Ajim, and Gorry,” she said. “And his weapons. Otherwise, we got to take the ship ourselves.”

It’s best to take a ship without violence. You ride on board with your fiercest looking men, fire off a couple of shots, hold a knife to the captain’s throat. But you don’t kill nobody. Merchants’ ships are the easiest for that. The crew don’t value their cargo more than their lives.

But this wasn’t a merchant ship, it was Empire standard, and I could bet they were loading up their cannons and singing their battle songs as we waited. I bet they had their blood-drop battle flags raised and at the ready. Empire soldiers ain’t no merchants. They’ll die for their ship.

And then I had an idea.

“I’ll be back,” I told Marjani. “I ain’t running. Just… I’ll be back.”

“No!” she said. “They’ll be here–”

“Give me five minutes,” I said. “I’ll be back.”

And then I took off, scrambling down the ladder to get to the brig.

The manticore was pacing in her cell, tail curling and uncurling. She looked up at me when I came in, her face wan and pale.

“I got somebody you can eat,” I said.

Her lips sneered back. “Don’t lie to me, girl-human.”

“I ain’t lying,” I said. “I got lots of somebodies, in fact. We’re about to board an Empire sloop, to take her. There’ll be fighting, but–”

She ran her tongue over her lips, though I could tell from the darkness in her eyes she still didn’t believe me.

“I’m gonna let you out,” I said. “But you gotta swear – swear on our friendship, and I know we got one – that you’ll only go after a man in Empire uniform. You know what that looks like?”

She shook her head. Her teeth were like daggers.

“Red,” I said. “They wear red with a gold snake on the chest. Tie up their hair in red scarves. You got that? A man’s got on red and gold, you can eat him.”

“If you are lying to me,” she said. “I will fill you full of poison and drop you to the bottom of the sea.”

“Fair enough.” I yanked out my knife and picked the lock on her gate, swung it open. She bounded out, snarling and hissing, and then stopped right beside the doorway. She looked at me over her shoulder.

“Once I have eaten,” she said, “You may ride me. For your battle.”

“Fine.” I pushed her toward the doorway. I didn’t have the heart to tell her sea-battles don’t work that way.

We ran side by side through the lower decks, men screeching and drawing swords as we passed. “She ain’t gonna hurt you!” I shouted, waving my pistol around, afraid somebody was gonna shoot her before we got to battle. “She’s got a taste for Empire men!”

As many ice-islanders were in that crew, I figured they’d like the sound of that, and it didn’t take long before the crew was cheering us instead of shrinking from us, calling out they hoped she’d rip them Empire scummies to pieces and eat their intestines. I blamed the battle fever. Sends men into such a frothing rage they forget to be scared of a manticore.

Marjani glared at me when we got up on deck.

“I was really hoping that’s not what you were going to do,” she said.

“She’s starving,” I told her. “You expect me to keep her locked away while we’re piling up dead men out here?”

Marjani crossed her arms in front of her chest.

“It’s an Empire ship! They won’t come peaceful and you know it.”

She did know it. She nodded at me, and then turned to Naji, started telling him the protocol for boarding a ship. He stared at her, face blank.

I wondered if he was as scared as I was.

The manticore growled. “Where are the red-and-gold men?” she asked me, her breath hot against the side of my neck.

“There.” I pointed out to sea with my sword. The Empire ship was coming closer, her red bow veering in for us. Dots of light flashed on her deck. Empire swords.

“We’re gonna board her,” I added, cause I figured the manticore was wondering.

And then Marjani’s hand was on my arm. She pushed me toward the rowboats that hung off the side of the ship. “You want the manticore, you get to take her across the water.”

“You got rope?” I asked.

“What?” said Naji. “You’re going to send her out there… no. No, absolutely not. It’ll completely incapacitate me–”

“Then go with her!” Marjani shoved Naji at me. “I’ll take the Goldlife crewmen and swing across. You don’t have much time before they start firing. Go.”

For a second Naji and me stared at each other and I knew I couldn’t let him get to me, not now. An Empire man’ll die for his ship. I wasn’t gonna die for my broken heart.

“Come on!” I climbed into one of the boats, the manticore at my side. She trumpeted – not the way she had when we were racing across the beach. This sounded like a damn battle horn.

The Goldlife crew let out a cheer, all throaty with bloodlust.

And then the Empire fired its first volley of cannons.

Naji let out a shout and jumped into the boat beside me. Marjani swung her sword through the rope and we crashed into the water, the air thick with black smoke and the scent of cannon fire. The manticore wasn’t trumpeting no more, but flattened down in the center of the boat, one paw pressed over her head, whimpering. I grabbed hold of the oars and pushed off toward the Empire ship, trying to ignore the booms and thuds echoing overhead.

Naji flung himself on top of me, his weight pressing me into the manticore.

“What you doing?” I shouted. I could taste the gunpowder in the air.

“Protecting you,” Naji snarled. He was already covered in sweat; it must be hurting him, us being out on the water.

“Then help me row!”

He grabbed one of the oars and we pushed off together, the Empire ship looming tall in front of our little rowboat, sunlight making the water sparkle. Debris showered down on top of us, bits of wood and sail and metal and probably blood and bone, though I couldn’t think about that. Naji screamed, the muscles bunching up in his arms, and he kept shouting, “The shadow! The shadow!” and I didn’t know what the hell he meant at first, cause all I could think about was getting us out of the water. And then I realized the Empire ship was casting a long dark shadow across the sea, and once we got there he could slip us on board so we wouldn’t have to scamper up the side of the ship.

I rowed harder. Water splashed over the side of the boat, soaking me through. I could hear men screaming up on the ships, both of ’em, and pistols going off, and the cannons, booming and booming and booming like never-ending thunder.

And then we crossed the shadowline. Naji wrapped his arm around my shoulder and shoved his hand in the manticore’s fur, and all the noise fell away.

It was nice in the shadow, quiet and cool, with Naji’s body pressing up against me like maybe we were lovers after all. And I floated there in the darkness like I was underwater, and I didn’t want to come out, I didn’t–

We slammed onto the deck of the Empire ship.

The Goldlife hadn’t fired on her yet, of course, cause we were looking to take her, not steal from her, but those Empire soldiers were firing off their cannons quick as they could, and the deck was thick with the residue from the powder. Nobody noticed us at first, not in the fury of the battle, but then the manticore reared up on her hind legs and roared so loud the wood vibrated.

Everything stopped.

I pulled out my sword and pistol. Naji lifted his sword over his head.

All those Empire men turned from the stations and stared at us, a Confederation pirate and a Jadorr’a and a hungry manticore.

I’d never boarded a ship during a battle before. I’d always stayed with Papa’s boat and fought alongside Mama. But I heard the stories from the crewman who’d come back, bragging up their fighting, and all those Empire crewman were staring at me like they were expecting something.

“We’re here to take your ship,” I said, and I’m proud to say my voice didn’t waver none at all.

The manticore roared again, and then she lunged forward, knocking down this poor Empire soldier with her great sharp claws, burying her face in his belly. Blood splattered across the deck.

I looked away, my stomach clenching.

And then all those Empire men started screaming – I didn’t blame ’em one bit – and shooting at the manticore. She lifted her head out of her meal, blood smeared all over her face, teeth gleaming in the sun, and hissed.

Spines shot out of her tail, impaling soldiers in the heart, in the head, in the belly.

Naji yanked me down to the deck, slapping his hand over my head. “I think this is one battle where we’re not needed,” he said.

“They’re gonna kill her!” I squirmed away from him, lifted my head up enough to see a soldier running up to the manticore with his sword outstretched. I shot him.

“Ananna!” Naji hissed my name like he did when he was angry. I ignored him, just jumped to my feet and launched into a crush of soldiers, slicing at them with my sword to keep them off the manticore. Her spines whizzed past my head but none of them ever hit me.

And then Naji was fighting alongside me, his sword spinning out in a flashing silver circle. He moved like a shadow, darting between soldiers, keeping them off me as I kept them off the manticore.

Where the hell is Marjani? I kept thinking, cause I’d no idea how to take a ship. I knew in theory, but here in practice all I cared about was keeping me and Naji and the manticore alive. So I poured all my concentration into fighting, and I didn’t feel no pain or fear, just my heartbeat and my breath.

Dully, I was aware of the manticore taking down another soldier, his screams echoing out across the sea, the scatter of soldiers rippling backward across the deck as he fell.

I fought.

And then the fighting stopped.

I wanted to keep going, all that blood rushing through my veins, all that blood soaking into my skin, but Naji got me in a lock and pulled me still. The Empire peace horn was blowing, long and low. The Empire men had all thrown down their weapons.

Marjani was standing up at the helm, a knife pressing into the captain’s neck, two Goldlife crewmen at her side.

The manticore was eating.

“It’s over,” Naji told me, his mouth close to my ear. “We have the ship.”

I felt like I’d woken up from a fever dream, everything distorted and strange. The sunlight was too bright. The blood on the deck too red.

The peace horn died away.

Marjani dropped her knife from the captain’s throat, and Gorry and Ajim took him by the arms, dragged him away from the helm. Marjani leaned forward.

“This ship is under the control of the Pirate Captain Namir yi Nadir.” She jabbed her finger toward Naji, who tensed his arm. “Any man who wishes to join our crew may do so and no harm will come to him. Those of you who wish to die for the Empire…” She turned to the manticore, who was still hunched over the remains of the soldier. “You will have that chance as well.”

Goldlife pirates were streaming on board, but nobody moved to stop them. Tavin hoisted up the boat’s new colors, some flag Marjani had sewn before she picked us up at the Isles of the Sky: a black background and a dancing skeleton stitched in red silk. It snapped and fluttered in the sea wind and for a second the scent of blood and fear got wiped away, and the ship was almost silent.

Silent. Peaceful. And all I wanted to do was lie down and sleep.

I slept in the captain’s quarters that night, after stripping away my bloody clothes and swimming in the cold ocean to wash the blood from my skin. There was a real bed in there, big enough that two people could share. Naji let me and Marjani sleep in the bed while he hung a hammock from the comer and slept there. I fell asleep easy enough. I woke up in the middle of the night, the cabin dark and shadowy and unfamiliar.

I listened to Marjani and Naji breathe for a while, their breaths soft and out of synch, and when I realized I wasn’t gonna fall back asleep I rolled out of bed and pulled on one of the Empire captain’s gold cloaks and went up on deck.

Nearly all of the Empire men had chosen service over capture – Empire don’t train ’em as well as they think, I guess – but we were still headed for Bone Island, on account of Marjani not trusting a ship full of ex-soldiers. I didn’t blame her. We’d dump ’em there and let ’em find their own way back to their lives, then pick up a crew of our own.

But for now, we had ’em running the night shift, and they all shrunk away from me when I came up, turning back to their ropes and riggings. I ignored ’em, just walked up to the bow and leaned over the edge to feel the cool salt air on my face.

“Girl-human.”

I turned around. The manticore padded up to me, her face cleaned of blood, her mane brushed and shining – some poor Empire sap had been assigned to tend to her grooming needs.