Текст книги "The Pirate's Wish"

Автор книги: Cassandra Clarke

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CHAPTER NINE

I sprawled out on my bed, music still drifting in from the garden through my open window. The manticores had proceeded back into their palace of rocks, and the rest of the crew had come crawling off the boat to flirt with the servants and drink ahiial and rum, which was when I decided to slink back to my room. My injury left me too tired to deal with a true pirates’ feast.

Every now and then laughter exploded into the nighttime, drowning out the music. Men’s laughter, women’s laughter. The ahiial left me so happy I didn’t even feel left out.

Somebody knocked on my door.

“Who is it?” But I felt a wriggle in the back of my brain, and I knew–

“Naji.”

I sat up. “Ain’t locked or nothing.”

Naji pushed the door open. He had his mask on but his hair was all tousled from the wind. He hadn’t been dancing after the feast, I remembered. Just sat on the sides and watched.

“You need to change the… the spell that was making me better?”

He shook his head and stepped inside. Came up right close to me, close enough that I could smell him: honey and medicine. He kept his eyes on me.

It was weird, and it confused me, but my heart pounded loud and fast from the way he looked at me.

Like I was Leila. The river witch. His old lover.

“Can I ask you a question?” he said.

I was too nervous to speak. I shrugged.

He took off his mask, yanking it hard away from his face. He let it drop to the floor.

“Do you remember when you told me I wasn’t ugly?”

I stared at him. I couldn’t get past the light in his eyes.

“You don’t, do you?”

“Of course I do,” I said, and my voice came out real small.

“Did you mean it?”

“That I don’t think you’re ugly?”

He nodded.

I couldn’t think straight. All I knew was my heart slamming against my chest and his eyes drinking me up like ahiial. How many times had I thought about the answer to this question? How many nights had I spent trying to figure out the exact way to tell him what I thought of him, what I thought of his face and his hair and his body?

Too many to count.

“Of course,” I said, voice hardly a whisper again. I swallowed. “I think… I think you’re beautiful.”

His face didn’t move. “I thought you don’t trust beautiful people.”

“Not beautiful like that. I mean… I don’t ever want to stop looking at you.”

The funny thing is that I couldn’t actually look at his face while I said that cause I was so embarrassed, and so I looked at his throat instead, at the little triangle of skin poking up out of his shirt. He’d taken off the pirate coat.

For a minute I wondered why the hell he was asking me this anyway.

And then he was kissing me.

I ain’t kissed many boys before, but Naji knew what he was doing better than any of ’em. He put his hands on the side of my face and pressed himself close to me and the whole time it was like he and I were the only people in the world. My hands kept crawling over his chest and shoulders, trying to memorize the lines of his body, and I was dizzy, but in a good way, the way you get when you swing through the ropes on a clear sunny day. That was what kissing Naji was like: the best day at sea, warm sunlight and cool breeze. Happiness.

Kissing Naji was happiness.

When he pulled away from me he smoothed my hair off of my forehead. I was too stunned to do anything but stare at him.

“Is this alright?” he asked.

“Uh. Yeah.” I frowned. He kissed me again, and I worked up the nerve to press my hands against his hips. He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me close, and the smell of him was everywhere, and I swear I could feel his blood pulsing through his veins. The closeness of his body was so distracting, so wonderful, that I forgot to be nervous.

He lay me down on the bed, still kissing me, and my thoughts were a jumble of confusion and excitement and desire – his desire and my desire both, like two pieces of silk braiding together. I couldn’t believe this was happening, couldn’t believe he was gazing at me like he wanted me.

“Why are you doing this?” It came out wrong, kinda accusatory. He stopped.

“You said it was alright,” he said.

Oh, now you’ve gone and messed everything up, I thought.

“It is.” I reached out, tentative, and cupped the scarred side of his face in my hand. He jerked at my touch, but didn’t pull away, and for a moment he looked as vulnerable as I felt. “I mean, I just don’t understand… why now…”

He traced the line of my profile, one finger running over my forehead and my nose and finally my lips.

“I should have done it sooner,” he said. “I should have done it on the Isles of the Sky.” And he kissed me before I could say anything more. I got lost in it, the kissing. It went on for a long time. My lips thrummed, and my body was hot and distracted.

After a while, he pulled away, just a little, and we lay in silence, looking at each other.

I touched his scar, the skin rough and slick at the same time. He flinched away. I dropped my hand.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“No,” he said. “No, I just… no one’s ever… before.”

“Oh.”

Another long silence, and then I lifted my hand and touched him again. This time he only blinked.

“I like it,” I said.

He didn’t answer. His face was so serious, like always. Except for his eyes, which were gentle right now. Almost kind.

“Why don’t you ever smile?”

“What?”

I traced a line from the unscarred skin of his brow down across the folds in his flesh to his chin. “I’ve never seen you smile.”

“You don’t want to.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

He pushed away from me. A coldness settled over me: he was going to leave.

“Wait,” I said. “I’m sorry. I just… Ain’t you happy right now?”

“You don’t want to see me smile.”

“But I do. Ever since…” There was no point. His eyes had gone cold and stony again. I’d ruined everything.

And then something dislodged itself in my brain.

I thought about him showing up at my room for no reason.

I thought about the kissing.

And a realization lit up bright and blazing as the sun.

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, Kaol. You ain’t happy at all.”

He looked at me, pained, like he wanted to protest. But he didn’t.

“This isn’t you,” I said, and the words turned to panic in my throat. “This isn’t… you wouldn’t on your… the boon.”

Naji looked stricken. Confused. He didn’t deny anything.

I felt like I was spitting out poison. I shoved myself off the bed. Heat rose up hot and angry in my chest. “It’s the boon!” I shouted. “From the manticores!”

Kaol, why hadn’t I stopped him when he first came in? Why hadn’t I known?

“Ananna, no, you don’t understand.” His words shook. “The magic, it’s–”

“Shut up!” I drew my robe tight over my body – it had slipped off my shoulders before. “I can’t believe… I’m so sorry… I actually thought you wanted me–”

“I do.” Naji rubbed his head. He still looked confused. “I do want you–”

“Get out!” Part of me didn’t mean it. Part of me looked at Naji and thought about how he’d cared for me after I was shot, how he walked me around the gardens and stayed close to me even though I wasn’t in any danger. But I couldn’t run the risk of letting him hurt me. Not again.

“Get out of my room!” I shouted.

Naji stumbled out of the bed. He seemed drunk. The ahiial, I thought. They stuck something in his wine.

What you want most in the world. The manticore must’ve thought it was Naji.

“This isn’t how I wanted things to happen,” Naji said, still watching me with that pained, befuddled expression.

“It ain’t how I wanted ’em to happen neither!” I yanked my sword out from its hiding place under the bed and brandished it at him. I couldn’t decide if I was angry at him or at the manticores or at myself. “So get out now.”

He stared at the sword and looked sad. “I do want you,” he said.

Blood rushed in my ears. I remembered us standing in the sunlight of the garden, his hand on my arm, the scent of flowers heavy on the wind. I remember him looking at me, flush with happiness.

Naji turned and walked out the door.

I couldn’t sleep. The bed smelled like Naji.

I left my room and followed the hallway through the servants’ quarters, one hand trailing along the powdery walls, dust kicking up behind my feet. The quarters were silent and still, but the air was stuffy out in the hallways. No windows. So I went outside and sat down underneath a palm tree, leaning up against the trunk.

The desert swirled around me, cold and sad with the night-time.

I wasn’t going to cry, and I wasn’t going to remember.

“What are you doing awake?”

It was Marjani. She came walking from the direction of the desert, her robes stained with dirt at the hem.

“Where the hell were you?”

“Thinking.” She folded her arms in front of her chest. “You look like you had too much ahiial.”

“I left when you did,” I muttered.

“I know.” She sat down beside me. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

She folded her legs up against her chest and tucked her chin on her knees. “You got that boon yet?”

Kaol, she had to ask that, didn’t she? I spat in the dirt.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“Take it as a yes.” I glared off into the darkness. “And I don’t want to talk about it so don’t ask.”

Marjani blinked at me and then lay her cheek against the top of her knees. We sat in the dusty quiet until I couldn’t stand the sound of silence no more.

“When we leaving?” I asked.

Marjani lifted her head. “Tomorrow, I imagine. Later, though. After the crew’ve all slept off their hangovers.”

“We got a course laid out yet?”

Marjani hesitated. I peered at her, wondering what she was keeping from me. The mystery kept my mind off other things.

“We aren’t going to Lisirra,” she finally said.

“What? Why?” I dropped my head against the palm tree. “Another damn delay? Marjani, you’ve no idea how much I want to get rid of Naj… of the curse.”

Marjani gave me a weird look, but all she said was, “We’re going to Jokja. I know of starstones there.”

“You didn’t think that might’ve been important to mention before?” But then I remembered seeing that brooch stuck in the map at Arkuz. It hadn’t registered at the time, but– “Kaol, how long have you been planning this?”

“Since Bone Island.” Marjani’s expression didn’t change. “I shouldn’t have kept it from you, but – I had my reasons.”

I glared at her.

“I wasn’t sure I wanted to… go back.”

Something about her voice softened me. “Is it dangerous for you?”

“Probably not,” she said softly. “The king died three weeks ago. I received word when we were on Bone Island.”

“The king? You got banished on orders of the king?”

“The king had a… personal connection to the affair.”

It took me a few minutes to realize what she was saying.

“You tried to court the Jokja princess?”

Marjani blinked at me a few times, eyelashes fluttering against her cheek. Then she laughed. “I never thought about it that way before.”

“But it’s what you did! Merciful sea, Marjani, that’s a hell of–” I stopped. “Wait, so she’s the queen now? Your, ah, your friend? That’s how it works in Jokja, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“She ever pick a suitor?”

Marjani shook her head.

“That’s the real reason you want to go back, ain’t it?”

Marjani looked away, out toward the desert. “Saida’s family has owned a pair of starstones for several generations. I remember hearing about them from the court storyteller. And the condition of the curse required a princess, if you recall…” She laughed, shook her head. “It’s really quite perfect.”

Almost as perfect as me falling in love with him cause of helping him find his cure.

I was back in that bedroom, Naji kissing me and touching me and looking at me all cause of some manticore sorcery–

“Ananna? Are you sure you’re alright?”

I scowled.

Marjani tilted her head in a way that reminded me of Mama, bending over to lay cool rags on my forehead whenever I had a fever. “It’s about the boon, isn’t it?”

“I told you I don’t want to talk about it!”

“It might help you, though.” Marjani eyes were wide and clear. “It helped me. Talking.”

I stared at her and didn’t say nothing.

“What did they give you, Ananna?” And her voice was soft like she was speaking to a child.

I hesitated.

“Ananna–”

“Naji!” I shouted. “They gave me Naji.”

That was met with silence, like I figured it would. Then Marjani said, “Not as a meal, I hope–”

“No.” The palm tree was leaking sap, sticky and cool against the skin of my back.

“Then wha… Oh.”

I didn’t say nothing.

“How’d they–”

“I don’t know!” I slammed my fist into the ground. “Poisoned him or something. Magic. I don’t know.”

“Manticores with love spells,” Marjani said. “Well, that’s awfully terrifying.”

“It ain’t funny.”

“No,” she said. “It’s not.” She leaned forward, put one hand on my knee. “Sweetness, how do you know it was the boon?”

“Because there ain’t no way he could want me on his own!”

Marjani frowned.

“And I asked him to smile and he wouldn’t do it, and then he acted all confused, like he was coming out of a fever. Plus I can just tell, after spending every damn day with him.”

“It might’ve been the boon,” Marjani said. “But that sort of magic always builds upon latent desires–”

“Don’t try to make me feel better!”

“I’m not.” Her hand dropped off my knee. I thought about the way he held me close as he kissed me. All that manticore trickery. “I knew someone back in Jokja who studied magic. She explained how those kind of spells work, and she said you can’t make anything happen if it’s not there to start with it.”

I’d heard that too, but this was manticore magic, and it was probably different.

Marjani and I sat in silence for a few moments longer, and then she said, “Was he at least any good?”

I looked up at her. Then I burst into laughter, relieved that she was here, that I could talk to her about this.

“Why would you ask me that?” I asked, still laughing.

“I’m just curious.” She grinned. “A Jadorr’a… I always thought they sublimated their desires. You know. Abstinence so that their magic can work. Closeness to death and all that.”

“He had desires,” I said carefully. “And his magic still works.”

She laughed, her voice breaking against the wind.

“And we didn’t… didn’t do everything,” I finally said. “I figured out what happened before… before we could…”

At that, Marjani stopped laughing. She made this sympathetic clucking sound and stuck her arm around my shoulder, pulled me in close for a hug.

“I mean I’ve done it before. But it was never a big deal. It was always just… weird. And with Naji I thought… thought it might be special.”

“Oh, sweetness.”

“The others were just… boys I met. You know. And I was kind of hoping that I’d get to see what the big deal was.”

“The big deal?”

“You know.” I didn’t know how to put it into words. “How it’s supposed to feel really good, and you just… fall away…”

“Oh, that.” Marjani laughed again. “You know you don’t need Naji for that. Or anyone.”

I frowned.

“Did you really never… Alright, listen.” And then she leaned close to me and told me about my body, stuff nobody’d never told me before, like I was supposed to just know. I felt like some stupid little kid, listening to her, my eyes getting big and wide, but she didn’t sound like she thought any less of me for not knowing.

“That’s what I mean,” she said when she had finished. “I know you think you’re in love with him–”

“I don’t just think!” I said. “The curse–”

“Oh, never mind the curse. You can’t let that dictate your life.” She paused. “You don’t need Naji to give you pleasure, and you don’t need Naji to make you happy.”

Right now, it didn’t feel like that, but I knew better than to say something to her.

“You killed the son of Captain Hariri,” Marjani said, “one of the richest pirates in the Confederation, before he could kill you. You helped win a sea battle against the Hariri clan. You struck a deal with a manticore and lived. Why do you care what Naji thinks of you?”

I didn’t have an answer to that.

She stood up and dusted the sand off her robes. “When we set sail for Jokja tomorrow, I don’t want to see a single misty-eyed glance his way, do you understand? You have a ship to navigate and a crew to help command, and I have neither the patience nor the inclination to put up with a heartsick child.”

“I ain’t a child.”

“Then act like it.” She held out one hand and I took it and she pulled me to my feet. “Do you want me to command it? Cause I will, if that’ll get you to stop mooning over him.”

That got a grin out of me. “No, Captain.”

“Captain.” She laughed. “We’ll see how long they call me that.” She put her hand on my back. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll walk you inside.”

I let her. And for a minute, forgetting Naji didn’t seem totally impossible no more.

CHAPTER TEN

The manticore came to see me before we set sail the next day. I was up on the boat, screwing around with the rigging cause half the crew was too hungover to be of much use. One of the manticore’s servants crept across the deck, and I damn near tossed a pile of ropes on her.

“Mistress,” she whispered, keeping her eyes downcast. “Ongraygeeomryn would like to speak with you.”

I’d kinda been hoping I wouldn’t have to see the manticore before we left, cause I was still sore on account of what happened with Naji, even though I was trying real hard not to moon over him.

But I figured this was my chance to prove that I was strong and that I didn’t need him, the way I’d proved it last night, underneath the thin rough blankets of my bed.

“Tell her she can come talk to me when she’s ready,” I said.

The servant trembled. “Mistress,” she said. “The manticore doesn’t wish to come aboard…”

“Oh, hell.” Figures. “She on the beach, at least?”

“Yes, mistress.” The servant pointed a trembling finger off to the side. “My rowboat is in the water. She doesn’t wish to be kept waiting–”

“Of course she doesn’t.”

I rowed me and the servant back in to the beach, and sure enough, the manticore was stretched out on a quilted silk blanket on the sand, another servant standing beside her with a palm leaf.

“Girl-human!” she cried. “Did you enjoy your boon last night?”

“You mean Naji?”

“Of course! Such an easy one to enchant. Almost no convincing necessary at all.” She looked closer at me. “You did want him still, yes? He is your true love.”

Never mind the curse, I thought. But I didn’t say nothing. The manticore looked so damned pleased with herself.

“He was very…” I glanced off in the direction of the palace, hoping he wouldn’t show up while I was talking. “Skillful.”

The manticore looked puzzled for a moment. “Is that a good thing?”

“Uh, yeah.”

She beamed at me. “That is excellent news! We do not describe our matings as skillful; I shall remember that.”

Part of me wanted to ask her how she did it, if it really had been the ahiial, or some other manticore spell, maybe drawn out of the red desert sand. The sandcharmers in Lisirra could do that; I remembered from my trips to the night market. But what would be the point? It had happened, and not cause he wanted it.

Something else was bothering me, though.

“So he isn’t… he isn’t gonna keep bugging me after this?” I asked. “I’ve heard about love spells, and they always… persist, if you know what I mean.”

“Persist?” The manticore frowned. “No, girl-human. Love does not persist! It is allotted to us once a life-cycle.”

Oh. Like cats.

“The boon was only for one love-period,” the manticore said. Her eyes dimmed. “I could ask my father to recast it in perpetuity–”

“No!” I held out my hands. “No, it’s fine. Once was… once was enough.”

“Spoken like a manticore!” She smiled big and bright at me. “I knew you were of a superior mind to the servants.”

“I’m gonna miss you, Ongraygeeomryn,” I said, stumbling over the last syllable.

And even with the boon, I still meant it.

“When the Jadorr’a is free of his curse, you are always welcome to return him to us. Remember, it would do him a great honor.”

I just looked at her, although I thought about how easy it would be to cart him back here.

Easy, but not fair and wrong to boot. Dishonorable. Even if he had soul-hurt me a million and one ways.

No. I promised Marjani I wasn’t gonna moon over him.

So I threw my arms around the manticore’s neck and gave her a big hug. She nuzzled me back, her mane tickling my nose.

“You are always welcome on the Island of the Sun as a guest,” she said. Her tongue swiped across my cheek and left my skin stinging. “With or without the Jadorr’a. You are always a friend.”

Jokja was two weeks’ sail from the Island of the Sun, through water bright and green as glass. It was an easy voyage. Once Naji found out where we were headed and why, he called down favorable winds every morning, and we had plenty of food. The best bit of all was that the crew listened to Marjani and called her captain. They didn’t even grumble about chasing after starstones, since our chase was taking us into Jokja. Plenty of treasure there if you know where to look.

Some afternoons I’d sit up in the riggings, whenever there wasn’t nothing else to do, and remember how I used to dream about captaining my own ship, knowing all along it was as impossible a dream as marrying into the Emperor’s family or becoming as powerful a witch as Mama. But Marjani had managed it easy enough. Maybe I could too.

The only trouble with the voyage was Naji. I did my best to avoid him after what happened. He and Marjani slept in the captain’s quarters, same as before, but I couldn’t stand the thought of sharing the cabin with him. So I dragged a hammock down to the crew’s quarters and cleared out a spot of my own in the corner. It was as awful as you’d expect, but better than having to spend my nights so close to Naji. Sometimes when I was close to him I felt like his thoughts were trying to crowd into mine. I hated it.

Daytime, it was easier to avoid him. He rarely came out on deck, despite everyone knowing he wasn’t really Captain Nadir, and so I just made sure not to go to the captain’s quarters. Marjani didn’t like it, but she put up with it, sending word through one of the crew to come meet her at the helm whenever she needed me.

One afternoon I was sitting up in the rigging, watching the waves break up against the side of the boat. Wasn’t much work to be done that day; the breeze was just enough to glide us along. The ropes cradled me as I leaned back and blinked up at the bright blue sky.

Everything was beautiful enough for me to forget my troubles.

And then I felt a tension in the ropes. A tug.

“Who is it?” I called out. My shift wasn’t over till sunset, but it could’ve been one of Marjani’s messengers. The ropes tugged again, and then I knew who it was. I couldn’t say how. I just knew.

Naji climbed up onto the yard, his dark hair appearing first, and then his mask, and then his dark clothes. My heart started pounding, but I didn’t say anything, just watched him climb. When he finished, he tottered back and forth, one hand clinging to the mast, watching me.

We sat in silence for a long time, the wind whistling around us.

I could hardly stand it. Everything up here in the rigging was bright – the white sails, the sunlight. And then Naji had to show up, a dark imperfection.

“You sure you should be out of your cabin?” I asked, hoping if I said something he’d go away. “Not really Captain Nadir’s style, you know.”

Naji shifted his weight, looking uneasy. “I’m not Captain Nadir.” He took a deep breath. “Ananna, I’d like to speak with you.”

I shrugged.

“About–” He edged forward on the mast, moving closer to me. I pulled myself in like I could disappear.

He stopped.

“We still have two more tasks to complete,” he said. “And you clearly can’t stand the thought of my company.”

I looked away from him, out to sea.

“If this is what you want,” he said, “to sleep down below, and to spend your days in the rigging – then it’s fine, for our time on the ship.” His voice wobbled when he said fine, like he didn’t mean it. I looked at him, not sure what I expected to see. What I found was an intensity in his expression. A hopelessness, maybe.

Love spells build on existing desires.

“But when the time comes for us to disembark, we’re going to have to be in close proximity again. You know I can’t leave you alone in the city, especially not with the Mists still a factor.” He leaned up against the mast and looked exhausted. “You’re going to have to speak to me eventually. I’m sorry… sorry about what happened, and I want you to know that it isn’t how it seemed–”

“Yeah,” I snapped. “That was the whole problem.”

“That isn’t what I meant.” Naji scowled. “If you don’t want to make amends, fine. But I need to know you aren’t going to run off the moment we make port. That will kill me. Do you understand? It will kill me.”

My skin felt hot. Of course I knew it would kill him. That was the whole reason I’d agreed to help him in the first place, that night in Lisirra.

“I ain’t gonna run off,” I said. “And if you need me to travel with you, then I guess I’ll have to do it. But we’re on the boat right now, so it ain’t much of a problem, is it?”

He stared at me with that same intensity as before, and I could feel him burning through me. I shook my head. “Is that all you want?”

He didn’t move. The wind blew his hair across his forehead and dislodged his mask enough that a bit of scar peeked through, brownish-red in the sunlight.

“Well?” I asked.

“Yes.” He turned away from me. “Yes, that’s all I wanted.”

The day we arrived in Arkuz was hot and bright, the sun an unblinking eye overhead. The docks were busy and close to full, but Marjani sweet-talked our way into a slot near the marketplace. I’d been to Jokja before, but always on Papa’s boat, and we always sailed along the coasts to plunder, cause Jokja’s got a lot of wealth, like all the Free Countries do. They have access to the mines in the jungle, which everyone from outside the Free Countries is afraid to travel through cause of all the magic there, plus some of the fastest and best-equipped ships on the seas. Jokja’s navy is the one navy a pirate, Confederate or otherwise, doesn’t want to cross. The Empire navy might be bigger, but Jokja’s got technology on their side. Fast ships and quick cannons. Papa was brave to sack the Jokja coast, all things considered.

Anyway, I’d never much had a chance to just wander around Arkuz the way I did in Lisirra, and I was looking forward to it, to seeing the acacia trees and tasting the chili-spiced fruit Marjani was always going on about.

After we’d docked, Marjani ordered the crew to take shifts watching the ship. As she was sorting ’em out, Jeric yi Niru slipped out from down below and grabbed me by the wrist. I had my knife out before he could say anything. Naji wasn’t nowhere to be seen. I wondered if it hurt him and he was just respecting my wishes not to see him, or if Jeric yi Niru had no intention of harming me.

“Still chasing after fool’s treasure?” he whispered.

“Let go.” I wrenched my arm free of his grip, though I kept my knife leveled at his throat. “What do you want?”

“You really think you’ll find the starstones here? Jokja’s a land of science, not magic.”

“Magic’s everywhere, snakeheart. And what do you care anyway? You’ll still get paid.”

“With what? Starstones?” He laughed again. “Do you even know what they are, first mate?” He leered at me and I pressed the knife up against his skin, not enough to hurt him but enough to draw blood. He didn’t even move. “Have you ever seen a starstone before?”

I didn’t answer. Off in the distance, I could hear Marjani shouting at the crew, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off Jeric yi Niru’s face.

“I’ll take that as a no.” He laughed. “I have. They’re awfully pretty. Like the stars fell from the sky. That’s where the name comes from, did you know that? There’s a story, an old Empire story. The nobles like to tell it. A man was pursuing a woman, the most beautiful woman in the Empire. She told him she would marry him, but only if he fit a starstone into a ring for her to wear. He spent years seeking one out, and when he finally found it, do you know what happened?”

I pressed my lips tight together and kept my knife at his throat and didn’t say a word.

“He scooped it up in his bare hand and all the life fell out of him. The starstone sucked it right up.”

“He died?” I hadn’t meant to act like I cared, but it came out anyway.

“Yes, first mate. He died. His life flowed into the stone. That’s what makes them so beautiful, you know. All that human life trapped in such a small space.”

Find the princess’s starstones, the Wizard Eirnin had said, and hold them, skin against stone.

Skin against stone.

I scowled, though I eased up on my knife a bit. I’d be damned if I let Jeric yi Niru know what I was thinking. “Sounds like Empire trash to me. Let me guess: the woman in the story was above his station and the man had to be punished for chasing after her? Half the Empire stories I’ve heard end like that.”

“No,” Jeric yi Niru said, “that isn’t it at all.”

“Jeric!” Marjani’s voice cut across the ship. “Ananna! What the hell are you two doing?”

“We were talking, Captain,” Jeric yi Niru said.

Marjani gave him the iciest glare I’d ever seen her take on. “Nothing’s ever just talking with you, Jeric. If I hear one word of trouble from you, you can stay behind in Arkuz in your Empire robes when we make sail.”

That shut him up. The people of the Free Countries don’t take too kindly to Empire soldiers milling around their cities, even a turncoat like Jeric.

Once the boat was secure enough for Marjani’s liking, she led me and Naji off the docks and through the hot bright streets of Arkuz. I kept a big space between me and Naji cause it seemed easier that way, but the whole time I was thinking about that stupid story Jeric yi Niru had told me. The task was impossible not because starstones are rare, but because touching ’em killed you.

I glanced at Naji out of the corner of my eye, but he stared straight ahead, his face covered with a desert-mask that drew more looks from the Jokjana than his scar would’ve. It marked him as Empire, since there are no deserts in the Jokja. I wondered if he’d ever heard that story. Probably. He’d been pretty quiet on the subject of the starstones. It was mostly Marjani plotting everything out, bringing us here to Jokja. And I knew that didn’t have nothing to do with Naji’s curse or rocks that can destroy you at the touch.