Текст книги "The Pirate's Wish"

Автор книги: Cassandra Clarke

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“What are you doing up here?”

“I do not like the underneath,” she said. We hadn’t locked her up in the brig, but I’d asked her to stay down below in the hold on account of her presence making the men jumpy.

I didn’t say nothing and she added, “It stinks of human filth.”

“Hard to take a bath on a ship,” I told her.

“You’re surrounded by water!”

I didn’t have anything to say to that.

The manticore sat beside me, wings tucked into her sides, her tail curling up along her back. We didn’t speak for a long time.

“Thank you for allowing me to eat.” She sounded sincere, too, and kind of sad. “I had been very hungry before.”

“I know.” I stroked her mane and she nuzzled against my hand like a pet.

“I will not eat any men without your permission.”

It still creeped me out a little, that she ate humans, but part of me knew it was just the way things were, like me having to eat fish and sheep and goat. It wasn’t her fault that she ate people.

And I’d killed more men than she could eat that afternoon, all cause they were trying to kill her, but I tried to put it out of my mind the way Papa told me to, cause dwelling on it can turn you dark. But it was hard.

She gave me one of her sharp smiles and turned back to the sea. “It is strange, living with humans. But I am growing used to it.”

“I thought you lived with humans on the Island of the Sun.”

The manticore flicked her tail. “That’s different. They are our servants, girl-human, our slaves. Here, we are equals.” Another flick. “Or as equal as human and manticore can be.”

“Oh, is that so?” I leaned over the railing and looked down at the black ocean water skimming up along the side of the boat. “So tell me, how was it a human managed to kidnap you?”

The manticore let out one of her low, quiet hisses. “He was treacherous and dishonest. Not like you, or even the Jadorr’a.” She licked her lips and looked up at me. “You should not trust wizard-humans, as a rule.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“It was my parents’ fault,” she went on, like I hadn’t spoken. “His water-nest crashed onto our beach. We were going to eat him, of course, but he had magic, and my parents were willing to strike a deal.”

That caught my attention, since everybody’d been warning me about the dangers of striking a deal with a manticore. Looks like it got Eirnin killed.

“Did he double-cross them?” I asked. “Your parents?”

“Of course, he did, girl-human! We traded him his life for some of his spells and potions, but during the trade he cast a great smoke-cloud and paralyzed me. I do not know how he dragged me back to his water-nest, but I learned quickly that it hadn’t been broken at all. It had been a ruse, designed to ensnare me.”

“Why?” I said. “It’s not like he tried to sell you or anything–”

“Sell me! If only he had tried. No, he planned to cut me open and use my heart for some foul wizardry or other. Every morning for those three life cycles he taunted me with his knife. The morning that I escaped was the morning he was to kill me.”

I stared at her in the moonlit gloom. Her human-looking face was lovely in that silvery-white light, but she looked sad and lonely – or at least as sad and lonely as a manticore could. I draped my arm around her shoulder and leaned up against her mane, and she let out a little trill that sounded almost grateful.

“If I’d known you were there,” I said, “I’d have cut you loose myself.”

“I do not blame you for the not-knowing,” she said. “He hid me behind a veil of magic.”

“Well,” I said, pulling away from her. “You don’t have to worry about it anymore. We’ll get you home soon.”

“Yes,” the manticore said, and she let out a sweet ringing chiming call. “I know.”

The next morning, me and Naji and Marjani met up in the captain’s quarters to talk about what we were gonna do after we got our crew sorted.

“Drop off the manticore,” I said.

Marjani stood staring out the porthole, gazing, I suppose, at the sea. A beam of sunlight settled across the bridge of her nose. “I already told you, I’m not letting that manticore stay onboard my ship longer than I have to.” She turned to Naji. “What were the two remaining tasks? Finding a princess–” Her voice trailed off, and she had a strange, troubled expression.

“Starstones,” Naji said. “Find a princess’s starstones and hold them against my skin.”

Marjani stared at him. “Yes,” she said softly, “I remember now.”

“And the other was to create life out of an act of violence,” I said. “Whatever the hell that means.”

Marjani frowned. “Riddles.”

“Of course.” Naji said. “It’s a northern curse.”

“And what the hell’s a starstone anyway?” I asked.

“Magic,” Marjani said, and she turned back to the porthole, her face blank.

“They’re rare,” Naji said, although he sounded distracted and uncomfortable. “And honestly, I’m not too keen on chasing after them–”

“Why not?”

But Naji and Marjani both ignored me.

“Well?” I said, annoyed. “Why not?”

“It’s dangerous,” Naji said.

“Easy answer.”

“Perhaps we could go to one of the universities,” Marjani said. “The scholars might be able to help you.” She was still staring out the porthole. “The university in Arkuz is excellent…” But her voice wavered a little, and I could tell that whatever had sent her off to a life of piracy in the first place still lingered back in Jokja. I had a feeling it was more than complicated than what Chari, the old pirate I’d befriended back on the Ayel’s Revenge, had told me, about her not wanting to marry some nobleman – but I didn’t much want to pry, either.

“Lisirra would be better,” Naji said. “I have more ties there.”

Marjani looked at him. “I suppose that makes sense.” I could hear the relief in her voice.

“What do you think, Ananna?” Naji asked.

I glanced over at Marjani. She wasn’t staring out the window no more, just leaning up against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest. It was clear to me she didn’t want to go back to Jokja. I thought about Lisirra, the sunny streets and the water wells and the sweet-scented gardens. The exact opposite of the Isles of the Sky.

“Lisirra sounds good to me.”

And so it was decided. The pirate ship Nadir, formally a nameless Empire sloop, would load up a new crew, drop off a manticore, and sail to the universities of Lisirra.

It only took a day to sail into Bone Island, faster than should’ve been possible. We had favorable winds, and the ship was quicker than any sloop in the Confederation, though Marjani said the Jokja navy had built some rumored to sail even faster. She sneered at a knot of Empire sailors as she told me, like they’d stolen the ship plans from Jokja themselves.

But I suspected Naji might’ve had something to do with the speediness of our trip – he stayed in the captain’s quarters most of the time, the way Marjani told him to, and when I took him some food at Marjani’s request I saw spots of blood on the writing desk.

The day we pulled into port was bright and sunny and shot through with the first warmth I’d felt in months. As the crew prepared to make port, I marched into the captain’s quarters.

Naji was stretched out on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. He lifted his head when I came in. We’d hardly spoken since the battle.

“You look like an Empire commander,” he told me. I was still wearing that gold cloak and had taken to knotting my hair back in the Empire style, cause it did do a better job of keeping my hair out of the way.

“You look like a Port Iskassaya drunk.” I hadn’t meant to sass him, but I couldn’t help it, he was so bedraggled. “We’re gonna have to clean you up before we take you in to sign up a crew.”

“Marjani has already informed me.”

We stood in silence for a minute longer. Then he lifted his head. “Did you need something, Ananna?”

I stared at him.

“Thank you for calling down the winds,” I finally said. “To get us here faster.”

His face was blank as always, but something glittered in his eyes, some flash of appreciation. I left the captain’s quarters before he could say anything more.

Bone Island had always been my favorite outlaw port of call when I was a kid, cause it’s big enough that it almost feels like a real city, and there are merchants selling clothes and silks and fancy Qilari desserts, instead of just whores and weapons, like at some of the other pirate islands. And it’s always mild there, never cold and never too hot, and the water in the beaches is pure bright blue, the same color as the sky. Even the rains are warm.

Marjani put me in charge of prettying up Naji and making him look like a captain. I didn’t want to do it – I wanted to stay on board the boat with the manticore. But when I said something about it Marjani didn’t even glance up from her maps and notes.

“The manticore,” she said, “will not get us a crew.”

I knew she was right and I knew she was my captain now, too, not in name but in action. I didn’t talk back.

Naji was waiting for me on the docks, his hair brushed out and combed over his scar – otherwise he was filthy. It almost hurt to look at him.

“I want a bath,” he said. “I don’t care if it won’t make me a believable captain. I want a bath.”

“Already planning on it.”

I took him to the Night Porch, a whorehouse down near the beach that was attached to the nicest bathhouse on the whole island. Led him round back so I wouldn’t have to see him staring at the whores all draped out in the main room in their silks and jewelry, all of ’em prettier than me.

The baths were nice as I remembered, clean and misty and smelling of aloe and basil. We stood in the entryway, steam curling up Naji’s hair, and he said in this voice like a sigh, “Civilization.”

“Not exactly,” I said. “But close enough.” I jutted my head toward the main room. Men’s laughter boomed out with the steam. “You can go in there.” I tried not to think about the women they kept on hand to slough men’s backs and wash their hair. “I’ll be in the secondary room there.”

Naji frowned. “They separate men and women? In a pleasure house?”

“No,” I said.

Naji opened his mouth, but I whirled away from before he asked me some question I didn’t want to answer. The thought of him seeing me naked next to all those perfect whores made my skin crawl.

“It’ll be difficult for me to relax if we aren’t in the same room,” Naji called out behind me. “The headaches–”

I stopped, one hand on the doorway. I could hear water splashing, the low hum of women’s voices, and I wondered why he was bothering to mention that to me. I knew about his damned headaches, and I also knew there wasn’t any danger here. Part of me wondered if maybe he just wanted my company – but no. I knew better.

“Too bad,” I said.

The secondary room is the one where the whores go when they ain’t working, and men don’t usually venture in cause there ain’t no one to wash ’em and flirt with ’em and make ’em feel wanted. I stripped over in the corner where no one would pay no attention to me, and then I slipped in the soft warm bathwater, bubbling up from some spring deep in the ground. It was my first proper bath in ages and I stayed in for longer than I normally did, dropping my head below the water and watching all the ladies’ legs kicking through the murk. Nobody said anything to me, which was exactly how I wanted it.

I met Naji in the garden after my bath. He came out with his hair wet and shining in the sun, his dirty clothes out of place against his gleaming skin. I was sitting underneath a jacaranda tree that kept dropping purple blossoms in my hair.

He sat beside me.

His presence still gave me a little thrill. We sat in silence for a moment, and I enjoyed it, his closeness and the warm sun and my clean skin. Felt nice.

“Do I look like a pirate captain now?” he asked.

“No.” I didn’t look at him. “You need new clothes.”

“Ah. Of course.”

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. I didn’t quite know how to go about doing this. It wouldn’t do to have word spread around about some man going shopping, then turning up in those same clothes at the Starshot drinkhouse as the Pirate Namir yi Nadir. Cutthroats are a gossipy bunch. Gotta be; it’s how you find out the best schemes and stratagems. Nobody wants to get caught unawares.

It was hard to think out there in the warm sun, all clean and bright, with Naji sitting beside me, but an idea came to me anyway, a big flash of an idea.

“I know what we can do,” I said, straightening up.

“Shopping?” Naji asked. “Or stealing?”

“Neither.” I stood up and led him out of the garden, away from the whorehouse and the fresh steam of the baths. Paid a carriage driver a couple pieces of pressed copper to take us out of town, down to the rows of little ramshackle shacks that sprouted up along the oceanline like barnacles. Naji didn’t say a word the whole time. I figured he wanted out of those rotted clothes more than he was letting on.

The house looked the way I remembered it, a little wooden shack with banana trees out front, the backyard sloping down to the ocean. I jumped out of the carriage. Naji stared at me.

“What are we doing?” he asked.

“Getting you some clothes. Come on.”

He stepped out of the carriage like I was setting him up for some kind of con. I stomped through the soft seagrass in front of the house and rapped my fist against the door.

“Where are we?” Naji asked.

“You got a headache?”

“No.”

“Then you know I ain’t in danger. Stop asking questions.”

He frowned and I thought his eyes looked kinda wounded, but he didn’t say nothing.

The door swung open, and Old Ceria, my old sea magic teacher, stuck her head out, squinting in the sunlight. She looked at me and then she looked at Naji.

“What happened to his face?” she asked. “Looks like what happens when you let Lady Starshine in charge of the roast at the dry season festival. Charred on the outside, bloody on the inside.”

Naji turned to stone, his eyes burning with anger. Before the kiss, I might’ve warned him.

“He got hurt a long time ago,” I said. “Ceria, we need to borrow some clothes, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“You mean take some clothes.” But she held the door wider and let me and Naji step inside. It was dark in there, with heavy curtains pulled over the windows. Dried-out seaweed hung from the rafters, and all manner of sea creatures lay out on the cabinet – or the shells of ’em did, anyway. The smell was the same, too, stale and salty.

Old Ceria was a seawitch, like Mama, and Mama would always bring me to see her when I was a little girl, to try and extract magic out of me. Ceria lived on Bone Island cause she couldn’t abide Empire rule, but she didn’t have no love for the Confederation neither – for pirates in general. She barely tolerated Mama, truth be told, but she was willing to put aside differences far as magic was concerned.

I hadn’t seen Ceria in years, but she looked the same as she did when I was younger, as dried out as her seaweed and her dead crabs.

“He the reason you ran off from the Hariri clan?” Ceria asked me, jutting her head toward Naji.

Shit. I didn’t think she would’ve heard.

She gave me a narrow, sharp-toothed smile.

I didn’t answer her, didn’t even move my head to shake it yes or no. I could feel Naji staring at me, staring at her.

“Oh, don’t worry,” she said, grinning wider. “You think I care about Confederation politics? Just asking cause it ain’t never wise to give your heart to a blood magician.”

I went hot at that.

Old Ceria chuckled and even though she was an old woman and I knew that meant she deserved my respect, I kinda wanted to hit her.

“You two wait here,” she said. “I take it you want the clothes for him? You’re looking awful dapper in that Empire cloak.” A little curl of her lip when she said Empire.

She disappeared into the back of the house. Naji and me stood in silence, and I listened to the waves rolling in to the beach behind us. Naji was still fuming over Ceria’s comment about his face – I could see it in the way he kept balling up the rotted fabric of his shirt in one hand.

I tried to work up the nerve to apologize to him.

Naji said, “Captain Namir yi Nadir will cover his face.”

“Marjani won’t like that.”

“Marjani can dress up as a man if she wants a captain so badly. I’m covering my face.”

Old Ceria came into the room, a tattered brocade coat tossed over one arm, some trousers and shirts tossed over another.

“I should be getting you a scarf, then,” she said.

Naji sneered at her and she threw the clothes at him.

“Ain’t scared of you, blood magician. Got nothing but seawater in these veins.” She nodded at me. “You best watch out, girl.”

“He won’t hurt me,” I said.

“Seems to me he already has.”

Naji stalked outside with his new captain’s clothes, but I stayed in the house for a minute or two longer, staring at her, thinking back to those horrible afternoons as a kid, digging up sand on the beach for her spells.

“How’d you know?” I asked.

“I’m a witch, darling,” she said. “I saw you coming two weeks back. I know his story too, the curse and all. The kiss.” She winked at me.

I scowled at her, then jumped up and pushed out of the house before I said something I’d regret. With a jolt, I wondered if she would tell the Hariris that she saw me, but then I remembered she’d always hated the Hariris more than other pirates. Maybe she’d just tell Mama.

Still, it was a reminder that I wasn’t in the north anymore – I was back in the parts of the world where the Hariri clan had plenty of eyes, and no doubt they’d still be looking for me, even if I’d mostly forgotten about them over the last few months, seeing as how I had bigger problems on my mind. I’d have to come up with some excuse for not dawdling in port. Threaten to feed some Empire man to the manticore. I felt sorry enough for her as it was, having to eat fish bones and sea birds again.

Naji stood at the side of the road, pulling his hair over his scar, the clothes lying in a pile at his feet.

“You’re getting ’em all dusty!” I shouted.

“Who cares?” Naji asked. “They’re just going to rot once we make sail.”

I picked up the clothes and shoved them at him. He yanked them away from me, his hair hanging in curls across his face.

“Why did you bring me here?” he asked.

“To get you clothes.”

“You knew she would–” His face twisted up with anger. “You knew she would say something. You wanted her to.”

I looked away from him, cheeks burning.

“Why?” The question was sharp and painful a knife. It cut into me and I knew I deserved it. “Why did you do it?”

“You should change,” I muttered. “Before we go back into town.”

He glared at me.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think… I didn’t do it on purpose.” I still couldn’t look at him. “And your face doesn’t look like a half-roasted pig anyway.”

Silence. The wind blew in from the ocean, stirring up sand and dust.

“You have no idea what it’s like,” Naji said.

CHAPTER SIX

Marjani had already set up at the Starshot drinkhouse, claiming a table in the back, away from the singer warbling some old Confederation tunes. I threaded through the crowd, Naji behind me in his captain’s outfit. It suited him, I thought, especially the brocade coat. Before he’d covered up his face – with a scarf I nicked for him off one of the carts outside – he’d been so handsome my chest hurt to look at him.

When she saw us, Marjani folded her arms over her chest.

“Take it off,” she said.

“No,” I told her, before Naji could say anything.

She flicked her eyes over to me.

“It makes him look more formidable,” I said.

“I’m not leaving my face uncovered,” Naji said.

Marjani sighed. “No one’s going to say anything–”

“Yes,” Naji said. “They will.”

I stepped in between the two of them and said, “We should probably do this fast. Manticore’s gonna get hungry out on that boat. Don’t know how long she’ll be able to avoid temptation.”

Marjani sighed. “Yes, I’d thought of that myself. You stay here and get the drunks. I’ll go out in the street and look for the desperates.”

And then she was out the door.

It didn’t take long for word to circulate that the Pirate Namir yi Nadir was in port and that he was signing up men for his new crew. Probably helped that an Empire warship flying pirate colors was waiting out in the docks, but mostly it was the fact that pirates can’t keep their mouths shut for longer than five minutes. It occurred to me that leaving port early probably wasn’t gonna be good enough – I needed to keep my face covered, too, before some Hariri ally or wannabe-ally or plain ol’ asshole who wanted to kick up a fight spotted me and kidnapped me back to Lisirra.

All that time on the Isles of the Sky, with no company but Naji and the manticore, had left me soft. Not wary enough, like the Mist woman had said.

So I snuck out back and slipped down the street till I came to a shop selling scarves and jewelry. I bought a pair of scarves and covered my face the way Naji did and wrapped my hair up in the Empire style, though with a black scarf instead of a red one. The cloak hid my chest well enough. I figured I could pass for a man.

“And who the hell are you supposed to be?” Marjani asked when she came back in with some men she’d picked up off the streets.

“The rat who got Captain Namir yi Nadir the ship,” I said.

She frowned. I could tell she didn’t approve. Messed up his reputation, having a ship handed to him on account of subterfuge.

“A prisoner?” I said. “Who agreed to sail under his colors? And by allowing me my freedom we can see the extent of his mercy?”

“Better,” Marjani said. “And the mask?”

“A show of solidarity.”

She didn’t push that none, neither. I don’t know why I hadn’t yet told her about the Hariri clan. Felt bad about lying in the first place, I guess. And she’d had this all planned out – it was the reason me and Naji weren’t still stuck on that frozen floating slab of rock after all. I didn’t want to be the one to throw a kink in her plans.

I’d just keep my face covered, and we’d be fine.

It was mostly Marjani who did the recruiting anyway. She’d done it before, I could tell. Even now that she was back in the drinkhouse, she didn’t just sit down and wait for men to come to her – she wove through the place, Naji trailing behind her like a puppy, dodging whores and serving girls and the worthless outlaws who came out here not knowing one whit about sailing a ship. She had an eye for the ones that would know what they were doing, and she knew how to catch ’em at their drunkest, when they would slap an X on anything you stuck in front of ’em.

She left me in charge of the table, in case anyone came asking. I leaned back in my chair and sipped from my pint of beer and tried not to think about Naji.

“Excuse me? This where I sign up to sail with Captain Namir yi Nadir’s crew?”

The voice was speaking Empire all posh and educated, and when I dropped down in my chair and looked up I saw one of the soldiers we’d cut free when we made port.

“What you want to sail with us for?”

“Are you the manticore’s trainer?” The soldier reached over and plucked at the mask. I slapped his hand away.

“I ain’t her trainer. And we ain’t taking on mutineers.”

“I’m not a mutineer.” The soldier sat down at the table. “Where are you sailing?”

I crossed my arms over my chest.

“Well?”

Marjani had given me some story or another, but most of it had slipped out of my head due to drink. “Captain’s sailing after treasure.”

“All pirates sail after treasure,” the soldier said. “What in particular is he looking for?”

I fixed him my steeliest glare. “Gotta ask him yourself.”

The soldier looked me right in the eye. “I will. Once I’m onboard your ship. What about that manticore? She sailing with us, too?”

That, at least, I could answer. “At least as far as the Island of the Sun. She and I made a deal, and now I’m making good on it and taking her home.”

The soldier arched his eyebrow. “You made a deal with a manticore?”

I shrugged.

“Well,” he said. “That if nothing else has convinced me.” He grabbed the name sheet and the quill Marjani had left with me. I tried to snatch it away from him – no luck. “There isn’t an Empire general alive who could make a deal with a manticore and survive.” He scrawled his name across the sheet. Jeric yi Niru. The yi gave him away as nobility, I knew, and I knew too his nobility was real, since no Empire soldier would lie about his status the way a pirate would – the way, for example, Marjani had lied about the status of the pirate Namir yi Nadir. I scowled at the sheet.

“I’ll feed you to the manticore first sign of trouble,” I told him.

He gave me a smile. He was older, with streaks of gray in his hair, although his skin wasn’t as weatherworn as it would’ve been had he spent his whole life at sea.

“The Empire look suits you,” he said before turning away and heading off toward one of the serving maids. I don’t trust handsome people, and he wasn’t handsome in the slightest. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Snakeheart!”

He looked over at me. “I’m not an Empire soldier anymore. I’m afraid the epithet no longer fits.”

“We set sail at sunrise tomorrow. You’re not there, we’re leaving you.”

He gave me a nod.

“And I ain’t kidding about the manticore!”

He just laughed, which pissed me off. I wanted to shout something back to him, but he was talking to the serving girl again, leaning in close to her, and I figured he wasn’t gonna pay me no mind.

Marjani and Captain Namir yi Nadir came back about thirty minutes later. I hadn’t gotten anybody to sign up save for Jeric yi Niru, who seemed to have stashed himself in a corner with a pitcher of ale. Marjani handed me her logbook, folded open to the first page. There were names spelled out in her neat, tidy handwriting down one side, a row of mostly Xs cascading down the other, mixed in with the occasional signature.

She tucked my loose sheet of paper, with its one signature, back in the logbook. “Our crew, Captain.”

“Stop calling me that,” said Naji.

“Just getting you used to it,” she said.

Naji turned to me, his eyes big and dark over the edge of his mask. “Are you my decoy?” he asked.

“What?”

He ran his fingers across my scarf. I could feel his touch through the fabric, on my lips, and my whole body shivered.

“No.” I stood up, pulling myself away from him. “I need something to drink.”

He didn’t say nothing more, though Marjani watched us close, eyes flicking back and forth, until I turned and melted into the crowd.

The crew we signed up turned out decent. Not as good as Papa’s crew, but better than the Goldlife bunch. A handful of ’em were Confederation drifters, men who got the tattoo but don’t stick to one particular ship, but most were unaffiliated sailors from the Free Countries in the south. A crew like Papa’s, which is bound to one particular ship and captain, aren’t so keen to sail with outsiders. It’s an honor thing, though Mama used to tell me it was really just plain ol’ snobbery, the way Empire nobility looks down on the merchants. But the drifters aren’t so particular, probably cause they’re used to a crew like Papa’s looking down on ’em for jumping from boat to boat, and our crew blended together without much trouble.

I kept my face covered the first few days, but got sick of it soon enough, the cloth half-smothering me in the humid ocean air.

“Finally,” Marjani said. I’d taken my hair out of the Empire scarf, too. I was still wearing the cloak, though I kept it open at the neck on account of the heat. “I was starting to hear rumbling about how you and Captain Namir yi Nadir were the same man.”

“What? That don’t make no sense. They’ve seen us together before.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “They thought he could copy himself, be in two places at once.”

“They thought I was Naji? I don’t look nothing like him!”

“I told you,” Marjani said. “People will believe anything.”

In truth, I could see how the crew might’ve gotten that idea about Naji. He kept to his captain’s quarters most of the time and let Marjani do all the captaining. She got me to be her first mate – “Second mate,” she called it – and at first I wasn’t quite sure how to act. I’d seen Mama plenty, of course, so I tried to act like her. I kept my back straight and my head high and I carried a dagger and a pistol with me everywhere I went. Got real good at whipping out the dagger and holding it up to some back-talking crewman’s neck, too.

Besides which, I didn’t keep the manticore in the brig.

“They’re scared of you,” Marjani told me one morning, the sun warm and lemony, the wind pushing us toward the south, toward the Island of the Sun. We were up at the helm, the crew sitting in little clumps down on deck, not working so hard cause they didn’t have to. The manticore was sunning herself over at the stern, her tail thwapping against the deck as she slept.

“They are?”

“Sure. It’s a good thing, though.” She leaned against the ship’s wheel, squinted into the sun. “Because you’re a woman. If they’re scared of you, they’ll listen to you.”

“That’s how it works with men too.”

Marjani shook her head and laughed. “Not always. Men have the option of earning respect.”

The wind picked up, billowing out the sails. The boat picked up speed. One of the crewmen hollered up in the ropes. Probably Naji’s doing, that wind. There was something unnatural about it.

“I always wanted to captain a ship,” I said after a while. “When I was a little kid.” I didn’t mention that I’d still wanted it when I was seventeen years old and about to be married off to Tarrin of the Hariri. “Used to fancy I could dress up like a boy and everyone would listen to me. I never thought about getting some man to stand in as a proxy.”

Marjani squinted out at the horizon. “Dressing up as a man can get you in trouble.”

“What do you mean? Always figured it’d be nice. I could never pull it off proper, cause of my chest.”

Normally Marjani might’ve laughed at that, but today she just ran her hand over the wheel and said, “I used to dress as a man to visit someone I loved. It was a sort of game. I met her when my father sent me to university, since I split my time between my studies and court, like a half-proper lady.” Marjani laughed. “When she came of age she’d complain about suitors constantly – this one was too skinny, this one was too old, this one talked too much about politics.” Marjani kinda smiled, but mostly she just looked sad. “And so I decided to surprise her, and show up as a suitor.”