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The Pirate's Wish
  • Текст добавлен: 9 октября 2016, 05:27

Текст книги "The Pirate's Wish"


Автор книги: Cassandra Clarke



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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

CHAPTER EIGHT

I woke up in a room made of light.

I blinked and rubbed at my eyes and slowly things started moving into focus: a big open window lined with gauzy fluttering curtains, the kind you use to keep bugs out. A table with a water pitcher. A bed, which I was in.

Otherwise, the room was empty.

When I tried to sit up pain exploded through the lower part of my stomach, and I fell back, gasping. I put my hands on my stomach. I wasn’t wearing my Empire robe no more, but some kind of thin dress, and through the fabric I could feel the thick weight of a bandage.

I remembered the pop of Mistress Hariri’s pistol, the swell of pain. Had the Hariris captured me? No, they were dead. Lightning had cut them down… No, that wasn’t right, either–

“Hello?” I nudged myself up on one shoulder. That didn’t hurt too bad. “Anybody around?”

No answer but the wind rustling the curtains. It smelled of the desert.

I lay back down. Stared up at the ceiling. It looked kinda like the clay they used in Lisirran houses, only it was red-orange, like a sunset.

Footsteps bounced off the walls.

“Hello?” I tried to sit up again, grinding my teeth against the pain.

“Ananna? What are you…? No, lie back down.” Naji darted up next to the bed and pressed me gently against the soft downy pillows. “You shouldn’t move yet.”

He wasn’t covering his face, and in the room’s bright sunlight the twists of his scars made him look concerned.

“Where am I?”

“The Island of the Sun.” Naji straightened up and walked over to the table, covered with scraps of parchment with brownish-red writing and vials of dried plants. He set something on it – another vial. “You woke up earlier than I was expecting. That’s good.”

“Did I die?” I asked. I couldn’t remember nothing about what happened after the battle. How far had we been from the island when the Hariris struck? Not far: Jeric yi Niru had shot down seabirds…

“No.” Naji sprinkled some of the plants onto one of the scraps of parchment and folded it into a package, the ends tucked inside themselves. “You came close, very close, but… I pulled you back.”

He slipped the paper package underneath my pillows.

“With magic?” I hesitated. “Blood magic?”

“Yes.” He sat down on the bed beside me, leaned up against the wall. “Medicine wouldn’t have saved you.”

“Oh.” I paused. “Did it… did it hurt you bad? When I… when she shot me?”

Naji turned to me. “Yes,” he said, but his eyes were soft, like he hadn’t minded. “And I worked to save you, and that made the pain go away.”

“I’m sorry.”

He looked at me long and hard. “Don’t apologize.”

Then he brushed his hand over my forehead, pushing the hair out of my eyes. His touch startled me, the cool dry skin of his palm.

“Rest,” he said. “I’ll be back to check on you.”

“Wait,” I said. He stopped. “How long we been here?”

“We sailed in yesterday evening.” His face hardened. “It seems your manticore is the daughter of the island’s pride leader, so our plan for a quick getaway would be distressingly rude. They want to give us a feast when you’re better.”

My expression must have told him something, cause he said, “They swore they will not force us to engage in cannibalism. Still, most of the crew have opted to sleep on the boat.”

I kinda smiled at that. No wonder the manticore had been so demanding of me. Wasn’t a manticore thing, it was a royalty thing. Well.

“When you sleep,” Naji said, “the dreaming will help you heal faster.”

“Oh.” I frowned. “I didn’t think blood magic could save people–”

“Blood magic can do whatever I will it to do.”

I didn’t say anything to that, and Naji gave me a nod. I expected him to leave, but instead he walked over next to the window and pushed the curtains aside and looked out. I watched him for a little while, as the curtains fluttered around him like butterflies. The wind blowing in was hot and dry and smelled of clay. It made me sleepy. Or maybe it was the spells he cast, the little packet of dried herbs under my pillow.

It didn’t take long before my eyes refused to stay open, and I curled up on top of the blankets and the dreams came in like the wind.

They were dark and strange, those dreams, and I was back in that black-glass desert, only this time I wasn’t scared. Nobody was searching for me. I just wandered across the desert, the glass smooth and strangely cool beneath my bare feet. I wore that same dress I’d had on when Naji and me crossed the desert together after I saved him, on our way to the canyon that was supposed to hold a cure to his curse. Sometimes I thought I saw creatures made out of ink and shadow. I’d turn to look at ’em and they’d dart out of my line of sight, but they left dark streaky trails in their wake, and when I touched them my fingers came back sticky with blood.

When I woke up again it was dark outside and my stomach didn’t hurt no more. Torches flickered pale gold against the walls. Naji was gone.

This time I was able to sit up, but it exhausted me, and I leaned against the wall and took deep gulping breaths while my heart pounded against my chest. The bedside table was still littered with Naji’s parchments. I picked one up. It was in his language, and I didn’t recognize the alphabet, couldn’t match the letters to the sounds.

And yet I could hear his voice inside my head, gruff and throaty, chanting the song that had saved me. I couldn’t read the parchments, but I could understand it.

Weird.

“Ananna?”

It wasn’t him, it was Marjani. I dropped the scraps of parchment, and they fluttered across the top of my bed like flower petals.

“Naji said you had woken up–”

“Yeah.” I gathered up the parchment, my movements slow and heavy like I was underwater. “He told me there’s gonna be a feast.”

“Don’t remind me.” Marjani rolled her eyes. “They’ve already begun preparations. I’ve had to reassure them about fifty times that we don’t mind eating ‘servant food’.”

I grinned.

We sat in silence for a little while, the shadows sliding across the floor. I thought about the shadows in my dream, the shadows that had led me to the Hariris.

“How’s the boat?” I asked.

“Got us here.” Marjani sighed. “Still working on repairs, although it shouldn’t be much longer. A day or so.” She paused. “Jig’s up on Captain Namir yi Nadir, by the way. Crew figured it out during the battle. Good news is they don’t seem to mind.”

“So Jeric yi Niru doesn’t have nothing on us no more.”

“I suppose that’s true. He’s still an eavesdropper. Untrustworthy.” She sighed. “Only lost about ten men, all told. A few more were injured. I’m going to give them a higher cut for it. Next time we do some honest pirating, anyway.”

“So you’re the captain now?”

“That’s what they’ve been calling me.” She smiled at me, a real smile. “Naji makes them nervous now that they know about his magic, although I think they’ll tolerate him being onboard on account of him blasting those damned metal bugs out of the sky.”

She looked at me, then, and I knew she was looking for the story, about the Hariris and who I really was. Marjani knew subtlety. I’d warrant she’d won the crewmen over long before the battle – why else would they’ve listened to her when the Hariris attacked?

She’d won me over a long time ago, too.

So I finally told her everything. I told her about running away from Tarrin of the Hariri, and I told her how Naji was supposed to kill me, and that I saved his life and that in turn saved me – she already knew most of that already, just none of the details. And I told her about how I killed Tarrin in the desert.

And the whole time she kept her eyes on me, not moving or speaking, just watching me and listening.

When I finished, I expected her to do something, to yell at me for putting the Nadir in danger, or for not trusting her enough with the truth. But all she did was nod.

“I’m glad you told me.” She stood up. “You still want to be my first mate?”

“You ain’t pissed?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We all have secrets. Mine probably won’t attack us with a swarm of flying machines, but…” She shrugged. “It’s over now, right?”

“It’s over.” I pressed my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. “The Hariri clan’ll disband now. Anybody comes after us for the captain’s death, I got the right to go after him for revenge, or to send someone after him – doubt anyone’ll bother.”

Marjani looked amused. “I never understood the Confederation rules for revenge.”

“Trust me, ain’t no one in the Confederation understands ’em neither.”

She laughed. Folded her arms over her chest. “I should go. Naji said sleep would help you get better – so, please, sleep for as long as it takes. I don’t want to stay on this island much longer.”

“Sure thing.” I smiled. “Captain.”

The manticores scheduled the feast for two days after I got up and walked around the manticores’ palace garden. Naji took me down there, one hand pressed against my back as he led me out of the bare servants’ quarters and across the island’s dry red sands. As we walked, I kept thinking I heard him talking to me. But when I asked him what he wanted, he only shook his head and told me he hadn’t said nothing.

“You’re still in the process of recovering,” he said stiffly. “Things will clear up for you soon enough.”

As it turned out, the manticores’ palace wasn’t really a palace; it was big pile of red and yellow rocks surrounded on all sides by flowering vines and fruit trees and soft pale grasses. The human servants took care of the garden – I saw ’em working as I stumbled over the paths. My sunlit room was actually in the servants’ quarters, which were a series of little clay shacks lining the edge of the garden. The manticore had explained to her father that sleeping inside was a human preference, and then he explained to me that these shacks were the best they had. I didn’t mind. Better than sleeping in the grass.

Naji led me into the shade of a lemon tree and helped me sit down. The palace of rocks loomed up huge and tall against the cloudless blue sky.

“That ain’t a palace,” I said.

“Manticores don’t live inside.” Naji sat down beside me. “They think it’s barbaric.”

“How do you know that?”

“I found myself trapped in conversation with Ongraygeeomryn’s father after we landed.”

I looked out over the garden. The plants swayed in the hot desert wind. One of the servant girls walked alongside a row of ginger flowers, spilling water over each one from a bucket that came up almost to her knees.

I didn’t see any servant boys.

“Do they all want to eat you as badly as she does?”

“Oh yes.” He blinked. “For the first time, I find myself grateful for the curse.”

I didn’t know if it was alright to laugh, so I just kinda squinted at him and nodded. He had covered his face to walk me out to the gardens. I wanted to tell him he didn’t need to do that, that he was handsome even with the scars, that the scars made him more beautiful than any untrustworthy pretty boy lurking in some Empire palace.

I didn’t, though, cause I knew if I did he would leave. And he only saved my life cause of his curse, but out there in the garden, the scent of jasmine heavy on the air, it was easy to pretend otherwise.

For those two days before the feast, Naji wouldn’t let me go any farther than the gardens – he said I still wasn’t strong enough – and every day at sunrise and sunset he came into my room and slipped another packet of blood-spells and dried herbs underneath my pillow. Sometimes he sang this song in his dead-rose language and I’d fall asleep and dream of the black-glass desert and a dry wind full of starlight that would blow me across the landscape and cradle me gentle as a lover.

Sometimes, even when I was alone, I’d hear him singing. I’d hear him thinking. I figured it must be leftover from the magic.

The manticore came to visit me too. The first time she came trotting up to us while Naji led me through a maze of thorny red flowers in the garden.

“You lead her well, Jadorr’a,” she said. “You’ve only taken one wrong turn so far. You’ll arrive at the maze’s center soon.”

Naji gave her this annoyed stare, and I knew, suddenly and without explanation, that his magic showed him the way through the maze, and he hadn’t taken a wrong turn at all.

“Girl-human,” she said to me. “I am glad to see you have not died.”

“Yeah, me too.”

The manticore looked different now that she was home. Her mane shone like copper, and her coat was smooth and silky. Her eyes were ringed in red powder that made her look feral and haunted all at the same time.

“The servant-humans have promised you many delicious items for the feast,” she said. “Fruit and fish and honey.” She wrinkled her nose when she spoke.

“My father is most grateful that you have returned me,” she went on. “Even though you could not bring us the Jadorr’a uncursed–”

Naji sighed.

“Still, he would like to meet with you, to thank you personally, and to offer you a boon.”

“She isn’t well enough,” Naji said.

The manticore looked at me with concern. “But you are walking through our gardens!”

“A walk through the gardens isn’t quite the same thing as a meeting with the pride leader.” Naji stepped in front of me like he was protecting me, even though I wasn’t in danger from the manticore.

She didn’t seem to notice, though, just tossed back her mane and pawed at the ground. “At the feast, then. He is anxious to meet with you.”

“At the feast.” I nodded. “Looking forward to it.” I pushed Naji aside. He stayed close, though. He’d been staying close a lot lately. Closer even than when we’d been stranded on the Isles of the Sky and had to stay close cause we were the only two humans around other than Eirnin.

“The feast!” the manticore cried, chiming with delight.

The night of the feast, Marjani and Naji and me all walked from the servants’ quarters to the garden together, along with the braver crewmen – including Jeric yi Niru, who Marjani didn’t want leaving on the newly repaired boat alone. The manticores’ servants brought us clean clothes, soft cotton robes dyed the color of pomegranates and saffron, and they gave us steam-baths and lined our eyes with red powder, the way the manticores did.

Naji had his face wrapped up in a scarf.

I wondered if he really thought the manticores cared about his scars.

The feast was in the garden, with long low tables set up beneath the fruit trees. We sat down in the grass, lining up on one side of the table, and waited.

“The pride will join you soon,” said one of the servants, who tilted her head when she spoke and never looked any of us in the eye.

The sun was just starting to set, and the light in the garden was purple and gold and turned everything into shadow. A trio of servants began to strum harps and sing in a language I didn’t recognize, and soft pale magic-cast lanterns blinked on one by one up among the trees.

“Why’re they making us wait?” I asked Marjani.

Marjani shook her head. “I don’t trust manticores.”

“They won’t do anything,” Naji said. He leaned forward on the table, drumming his fingers against the wood. “As many deals as Ananna has made with Ongraygeeomryn, there’s no way they’d risk killing her now.”

“What? Why?”

“Their elaborate system of boons and favors.” Naji looked at me. “You’re lucky,” he said.

I knew he wanted to say more, but a loud, reverberating trumpet cut through the thick air.

All the servants scrambled to line up behind us.

The music twinkled on in the background.

The manticores marched into the garden.

It was the entire pride, I guess, cause there were about fifteen manticores in all. They walked one after another in a long procession. Ongraygeeomryn came in toward the end, flanked by an older lady-manticore and man-manticore. They sat at the center of the table, right across from me.

The man-manticore reared back his head and trumpeted, and this was the loudest trumpet I’d ever heard. It seemed to echo out for miles.

The music stopped playing.

“Girl-human,” he said, turning his golden eyes to me. “Do you have a name?”

The silence in the garden was so thick I thought I might choke on it. All the manticores stared at me expectantly.

“Yes,” I said. “Your Grace.”

“Don’t call me that. I am not a human king.” He leaned forward, sniffed the air. “What is your name?”

I glanced at Naji. Should you tell a manticore your name or not? He must’ve known what I was thinking, cause he kinda nodded at me like it was alright.

“Ananna of the Nadir.”

Ongraygeeomryn smiled at me.

“Ananna,” the manticore leader said. “I will gift you a boon in exchange for rescuing my daughter from the foul Wizard Eirnin.”

The other manticores trumpeted and flapped their wings and furled and unfurled their tails. I saw Marjani shrink down out of the corner of my eye, but nobody let loose any spines.

“You will receive the boon tonight, after the feast.” He nodded at me. “It is rude to divulge the nature of the boon in public, but Ongraygeeomryn told me what you would like most in the world, and I am confident in her judgment.”

That got my suspicions up a bit, cause much as I liked the manticore I wasn’t convinced she knew what I wanted most in the world. Mostly cause I didn’t know what I wanted most in the world. I used to think it was being a pirate captain, but I wasn’t so sure of that anymore.

Still, I knew better than to say something. When it comes to dealing with people who think of themselves as important, it’s usually best to keep your mouth shut.

“You will find the boon most satisfying,” she told me. “I am certain of it.”

I nodded and plastered on a smile that I hoped came across as polite.

“Servant-humans!” bellowed the manticore leader. “Bring us food!”

The servants disappeared into the gardens and then reappeared with heavy stone platters laden with fruits and little savory pies and bottles of Empire wine. They set them down first, and I could see all the manticores trying to act like it didn’t turn their stomachs.

Then the servants brought out more stone platters covered with slabs of raw meat, pink and glistening in the candlelight. I knew it wasn’t sheep.

“We thought this would be more comfortable for you,” Ongraygeeomryn said to me, nodding her head at the piles of meat.

“Yes,” said her father. “Normally we catch them alive.”

Marjani and I glanced at each other.

“We appreciate your thoughtfulness,” Marjani said, though her mouth twisted up when she spoke.

Naji didn’t say nothing, just slipped his mask into his lap and picked up a lemon-salt fish.

I’d never been to a proper feast before, just the big drunken parties that pirates call feasts. Nobody got up and danced on the table, or groped any of the servant girls – even the crewmen we had with us seemed too terrified to do anything but pick at their food. The music playing in the background was soft and fancy. The conversation was polite and didn’t say nothing of any substance. The only thing that made me realize I wasn’t up in the palace with the Emperor was the way the manticores ate: they leaned forward and tore chunks of meat off with their teeth, and red juices streamed down their faces and tangled up in the manes.

After dinner, the servants came around with cloths and wiped the manticores’ faces clean. One of ’em came at me with a cloth but I declined polite as I could. So did Marjani, though she sounded like a right proper lady – “I don’t require your services tonight, thank you.” The servant kind of smiled at her. Then she turned to Naji, his scars shadowed and deep in the dim light. He scowled at her until she shuffled away.

When all the platters of food had been cleared, all us human stared at the manticores like we expected something bad to happen. I didn’t think they were going to eat us or nothing, but I was still a little concerned about the boon.

“We would be most honored if you would share a dessert wine with us,” said the manticore leader. “Ahiial. It is a delicacy from the northern part of our island, and a very precious nectar indeed.”

“What’s it made of?” I asked. Somebody had to say it.

“It’s derived from the pollen of the ahiiala flower,” said Ongraygeeomryn. “The only plant we consume.”

“The stories say it has magical properties,” said a lady-manticore with pale white dappling on her coat.

Marjani and me both looked at Naji.

“It’s fine,” he said.

“Of course it’s fine!” boomed the manticore leader. “Servant-humans, bring us the wine!” He smiled, and he only showed the points of his teeth. “You will not be able to drink any of that human swill after tasting ahiial.”

Naji shrugged, and I got the sense that he’d had it before.

The servants trotted up to the table, half of ’em holding shallow porcelain bowls and the other half holding rough-hewn stone goblets. They lined ’em up on the table. Then another row of servants marched out, this time carting huge carved pitchers. They made their way around the table, slowly pouring a bit of ahiial for each guest.

The ahiial was pale gold, the color of morning sunlight and a manticore’s fur. It smelled sweet, like honey, like a man’s perfume.

We all waited till everybody’s cup or bowl had been filled. Then the manticore leader lifted one paw.

“To Ananna of the Nadir,” he said. “Who saved my eldest daughter, the heir to my pride. I am indebted to you.”

Naji squirmed beside me. I remembered what he’d said to me back on the Isles of the Sky – you made a deal with a manticore? And the way he said it, too, like I’d just confessed to killing my own mother. I could just about see him remembering it himself.

Well, too late now.

The manticore leader bowed his head and lapped at his wine. Even Marjani, who knew as well as I did how rude it was, hesitated.

But I also knew poison wasn’t how a manticore killed – not poison in a glass of wine. If they wanted us dead they would have shot us full of spines or launched across their table with their mouths wide open, showing us all three rows of teeth. So I picked up my glass and drank.

It was sweet, sweeter than honey, and the taste of it filled my mouth up with flowers.

When I didn’t keel over dead, or jump up, bewitched, and start clearing away the table like a servant, the rest of the crew followed suit. Jeric yi Niru knocked it back like a shot of rum. Marjani sipped it like a lady in a palace. Naji finished his off in a trio of gulps.

“What do you think?” the manticore leader asked me.

“Delicious,” I said. And stronger than a barrel of sailor’s rotgut. The whole garden was filled with light. All the flowers were glowing. Overhead, the stars left bright trails across the black sky. I laughed, suddenly full up with mirth, the way it happens when I get drunk under good circumstances, with a boat full of friends and the ocean stretching out empty and vast before us.

“Wonderful,” the manticore leader said. He nodded his head and the music struck up, some bawdy song I recognized from whenever Papa’s crew made port. “Servant-humans!” he called out. “Bring us more ahiial!”


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