“Seems plenty fair to me,” I called out, managing to choke back the quiver in my words. Echo laughed. The trees rustled a response. I beat my hands up against the manticore’s side, but she didn’t move.
“I’m afraid that won’t work, Ananna. We hold sway over the beasts of your world.”
“The manticore ain’t no beast.”
More laughter. I shoved up against the manticore and kicked at her haunches. But she just slept on.
“This is growing tiresome,” Echo said.
“I know,” I told her. “Suggests you ought to just move on, don’t it?”
Something flashed behind my eyes, and next thing I knew I was standing on the beach, in the cold open wind, next to the bonfire.
This was the closest I’d been to it since the day Naji set it to burning. It was bigger now, the figures writhing in its flames more defined. I could make out the features of their faces. Those faces weren’t something I wanted to see.
“This is much better, don’t you think?” Echo stepped into the hazy golden light. It shone straight through her so she glowed like a magic-cast lantern. “Easier to see each other.”
I kept my eyes on her, even though the fire flickering off to the side made me want to turn my head. Both times we’d gotten rid of her involved hitting her unawares: Naji with his sword, me with my fist. So I did the first thing that came to my head. I lunged at her.
She glided out of the way, and I landed face-first in the sand behind her. I didn’t waste no time feeling sorry for myself – a sucker punch don’t work more than once that often – and twisted around so I could see her again. She floated there beside the fire, her arms crossed over her chest.
“What do you want?” I said. “You know I ain’t gonna hand over Naji.”
She sighed. “I really wish you would stop saying that.”
She kept on sizing me up, and I knew there wasn’t nothing she could do or else she would’ve done it already.
“We just gonna stand here till the sun comes up?” I asked. “You wanna place bets on what side of the island it’ll be? I bet it’s over that way.” I tilted my head off to the left. “Ain’t seen it rise over that half of the island in a while. Figure we’re due.”
“That wasn’t my intention, no,” Echo said. And she gave me this hard cruel smile that I didn’t like one bit and gestured at the fire. “This is lovely. The assassin’s handiwork, yes? I’ve seen this sort of magic before. It’s rather unstable.”
She glanced over at the fire. “You don’t spend much time here, I’ve noticed, watching the flames. They’re quite remarkable. I’m sure my lord could teach you to do this sort of thing, if you were so inclined. Our world is the world of magic, did you know? It’s the place all your magic is born.”
“I already know one way to build fires,” I said. “I don’t need another.”
“This isn’t a fire,” she said. “It’s far more dangerous.”
That was when I looked. I tore my eyes away from her and looked at the fire. It’d been tickling there at the edges of my sight all that time, like an itch I wanted to scratch, and I finally turned my head and looked.
It swallowed me whole, all that golden light. Sparks and a warmth like the bright sun at home. The pale northern sun didn’t even compare. And here: Naji’d brought a piece of that familiar sun here, he’d set it to burning on the sand.
The bodies in the flames swirled and danced and called me over.
Echo was up close to me, whispering in my ear, and the fire burned away the coldness of her breath. “You can create that yourself. He’ll never teach you. But we can. I can. You can carry that light with you everywhere you go.”
I stared at the fire, my hands tingling. I tried to tell her I couldn’t do magic. But maybe I could, if I was part of the Mists.
“Who wants to be a pirate when you can be a witch? The most powerful witch the world has ever known. You won’t just control the seas, you’ll control the pulse of life. That pulse is what makes these flames burn. It is what gives power to that silly trinket around your neck-”
That brought me out of myself. She wasn’t offering power, she wasn’t even offering magic. She was after Naji. Always had been.
And the fire, for all its beauty, for all its magic, was still fire. It would only burn me if I got too close. Just as it had done Naji.
I dipped forward and yanked a stick out from under the fire. It was hot, but I didn’t drop it; no, I spun around and flung the stick and the lick of flame at Echo, and her eyes went wide with surprise and then with anger, and then the stick sliced straight through her and she turned to mist and disappeared.
I collapsed on the sand. My hand stung. In the golden light I saw the place where the stick had touched my skin, saw the red line it left there.
The beach stayed empty. The wind howled and the waves crashed down below. I forced myself to stand up, legs wobbling, and began to pick my way across the beach. I didn’t realize I was heading for the cave till I got there and found myself swaying outside its entrance, the dim, flickering light from the campfire casting long uneven shadows.
Inside the cave, Naji groaned.
“Naji?” I stepped in, leaning up against the damp stones for support. Naji was curled up in front of the fire, his hands pressing up against his forehead. He stirred when I said his name.
I shuffled forward and knelt beside him. Prodded him in the shoulder. He lifted his head.
“What did they do to you?” he rasped.
“Nothing.” I leaned back, didn’t look at him. I was too tired to be embarrassed. “Tried to get me to hand you over. I didn’t, course, even though–” I decided not to finish that thought.
Naji stared at me. “What?” He pushed himself up. He was pale and ashen, his scars dark against his skin. His hair hung in sweaty clumps into his eyes. “Wait, you mean the Otherworld…” He collapsed back down on his back, looking up at the ceiling.
“Of course I mean the Otherworld. Who else would be chasing after me?”
“The flames,” he said. “I felt them. The heat…”
I kept real quiet. My hand started stinging again, and I had to look at it. A thick red line cutting diagonal across my palm.
“We were by the fire,” I said. “Echo took me there.”
“Echo?” Naji sat up again. He didn’t look so pale no more. “You know her name?”
“It ain’t her name. It’s what she told me to call her.”
“Oh, of course.” Naji closed his eyes. “She can’t hurt you, you know.”
“I know. The charm.”
Naji looked at me, looked at the charm resting against my chest.
“So why in all the darkest of nights did you touch the flames?”
“What?” I slipped my hand behind my back. “The hell are you talking about?”
“The flames, Ananna. The fire. I know you touched it. It struck me down so hard I couldn’t even come save you.”
“I don’t need you to save me.” I stood up. “And it’s not like you want to save me anyway.” Naji didn’t move, his eyes following me across the cave as I scooped up the cooking pot we’d filched out of the Wizard Eirnin’s house. I set water to boiling on the fire.
“You still touched the flames.”
“Do I look like I touched any flames?”
Naji got real quiet, and his eyes darkened, and he tilted his head so his hair fell over his scar. I felt suddenly sheepish.
“I didn’t touch no flames,” I said. “But I yanked out one of the sticks to send Echo back to the Mists.”
Naji glared at me.
“Had to use something,” I said. “Didn’t have your sword.” The water was boiling. I poured it into one of Eirnin’s tin cups and dropped in the flat green leaves Naji used to make tea. Some herb that only grew in the north. I didn’t know its name.
“That was very stupid,” he said.
“It was just a stick!”
“It burned you.”
He said
this more gently than I expected, but I still shoved the tea at him, sloshing a little across his chest. He glanced down at it like he’d never seen a cup of tea before, but after a few seconds he wrapped his hand around the cup and drank.
“Not bad,” I said.
“What?”
“It didn’t burn me bad.” And I showed him my hand.
“Would a stick pulled from any other fire have burned you at all?” he asked.
I scowled at him. “You only care cause the burn hurt you. But it ain’t hurting no more, right? So could we just drop it?”
“It’s not about the burn hurting me–”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Ananna–”
“Shut up!” I was regretting coming back to the cave now. I should have just trudged back to the manticore. The damn beast probably slept through the whole thing, but at least she wouldn’t nag me about getting burned by magical fires or look at me like I was this big disappointment cause I was the one in love with him and not some pretty little river witch.
CHAPTER FOUR
I woke up the next morning to the manticore licking my face.
“Stop it!” I shouted, rolling away from her. “Feels like you’re skinning me alive.”
“Girl-human,” she said. “The Jadorr’a asked me to fetch you.”
“Again?” I twisted my head around and squinted up at her. Sunlight shone around her big glossy mane. “I ain’t in no danger.”
“He said it was urgent. I told him I wouldn’t do it, that I am not his personal servant, but…” Her tail curled up into a tight little coil at the base of her spine.
“Urgent?” I asked. “Is it the Mists?”
“Oh, no. He said it wasn’t a matter of danger.”
“Then what is it a matter of?”
She blinked her big golden eyes at me. “I don’t know.”
Figures. Still, I roused myself up, taking my time cause it was the worst thing I could do to Naji, making him wait. Me and the manticore strode side by side down to the beach, where the smoke from the bonfire bloomed up against the sky, dark gray on light gray.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Where the hell is he?”
“He said he would meet you here.”
I sighed and scanned over the horizon. Nothing but emptiness. Except–
There were two people standing beside the fire.
I’d gotten so accustomed to the aloneness of the island that the sight of two human figures at once startled me. One of ’em was definitely Naji, cause he stood farther back from the flames, wearing some dark cloak I didn’t recognize, one that wasn’t tattered beyond repair. And the other–
I leaned forward, squinted.
“Marjani!” I shrieked
“What is that?” asked the manticore.
“Remember how I said a friend was coming to pick us up from the island? Well, she’s here!”
“We can leave?”
“I hope so.”
The manticore reared up on her hind legs and let out a string of trumpets and then raced toward the fire before I could stop her. I pounded along in the sun, the wind cold and biting, my breath coming out in puffs. Marjani stared at us. She was wearing a bright red fur-lined cloak that I gotta admit I wanted. It looked warmer than anything I’d nicked from the Wizard Eirnin’s house.
“What the hell?” she said.
The manticore skittered to a stop a few feet away from her. I snuck a look at Naji – he had his arms crossed over his chest, his face dark with intensity. “Don’t get too close to the flames,” he said.
“I won’t,” I said. The sight of him twisted my stomach up into knots for a few seconds before I shoved it all away.
Marjani’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Is that a–”
“Oh! This is the manticore,” I said, like I was making introductions.
The manticore lowered her head, all deferential and polite like she was meeting a lady. She must’ve wanted off the island more than I realized.
“My name is Ongraygeeomryn, and I am most grateful for your assistance.”
“You never talked that nice to me,” I said.
“You never had a water-nest.”
Marjani stayed calm, although the longer she looked at the manticore the deeper her frown became. I ran up to her and threw my arms around her shoulders and she laughed and hugged me back.
“I am so glad to see you right now,” I said. Now that I was across the beach I could just make out some big white sails way off in the distance. It was a bigger ship than the Ayel’s Revenge, probably a warship, though I couldn’t tell from that far off.
“They wouldn’t come any closer,” Marjani said.
“How’d you get on land?”
“I climbed.” She jerked her head over to the place where the beach dropped off, and there was a hook wedged into the sand.
“That held?” I said.
“Barely.” She smiled.
“You came back,” I said, cause part of me still thought it was hard to believe. I knew it wasn’t the easy thing to do. Hell, probably wasn’t even the most honorable, what with Naji being a murderer and a mutineer and all. At least she didn’t know about what I’d done to Tarrin of the Hariri, about how I’d had to kill him in self-defense. I didn’t like thinking about it.
“Of course I did,” she said. “I promised. Besides, I need your help. His too.”
Naji glanced at her, his eyes all suspicious. “Help with what?”
“I’ll explain once we’re on the ship. I don’t imagine the crew’s gonna be too happy about sitting out this close to the Isles of the Sky for much longer.” She turned to the manticore. “Naji told me about the, ah, arrangement you made with Ananna. I’ll allow it, but you should know I’m not taking you aboard if you intend on eating any of the men on that ship.”
“What?” The manticore bared her teeth and hissed.
“Sorry.” And Marjani pulled out a pistol and pointed it at the manticore’s heart. The manticore drew back, not quite into a cower. She kept her teeth out, though. “You’ll stay in the brig for the entire trip. I’d muzzle you if I could.”
“But you’ll let her onboard?” I asked.
Marjani sighed. “I’m not about to double-cross a deal you made with a manticore.”
I wondered if Naji’d told her about the three impossible tasks as well. Probably. But I doubted he’d tell her about the kiss. Hoped he wouldn’t.
“Get your things,” she said. She threw me a second pistol and a pouch of powder and shot. “And keep that damn manticore in line.”
The manticore hissed, crouching low to the ground.
It didn’t take long for me and Naji to gather up our clothes and Naji’s weapons. I didn’t talk to him, didn’t even look at him, but as I walked out of the cave he put his hand on my arm and said, “We should take the caribou.”
“Don’t touch me.”
Naji didn’t say nothing for a few moments. Then: “It hasn’t quite finished drying out yet, but perhaps we can find a place on the ship. Payment for bringing a manticore on board.”
He was right and I knew it, even though the thought of spending another minute alone with him, remembering everything about what happened the last few nights, the good parts and the horrible parts both, made me want to throw up.
“Fine,” I said, dumping my clothes on the ground.
We wrapped the meat in his old assassin’s robe. There was so much we only took half the strips, leaving the other half there to rot or feed the noisy creatures of the island.
I hated every minute of it. I kept waiting for him to say something about the fire or even about the kiss, but he never did.
Marjani was waiting for us by the fire once we finished, sitting on a piece of driftwood with her pistol pointed at the manticore. The manticore was curled up on the sand, eyes full of hate.
“I didn’t look at it once,” Marjani said as Naji and me walked up. “But you’re insane if you think I’m going to forsake
a fire in all this coldness.”
Naji scowled and didn’t say nothing.
“I do not like this friend-girl-human,” the manticore said.
“Well, she’s the one with the boat.” I stopped in front of Marjani. “We got dried caribou to give to the crew.”
“They’ll like that. Half of them are from the ice-islands.”
I carried my stuff up to the beach’s edge, next to the place where Marjani had thrown her rope. Something about the edge of the island made me dizzy, like it was the place where the world cut off.
I peered down. A rowboat bobbed in the water. I tied me and Naji’s clothes up together and tossed them down, then tossed down the caribou meat too. Both landed right in the middle of the boat. A useful trick, Papa’d told me when he taught me. Never know when you’ll need to toss something.
“Are we gonna climb down?” I asked.
“I can’t climb,” the manticore said.
“I’ll take you.” Naji cut across the beach. “All of you,” he added, when the manticore opened her mouth.
I remembered the day we arrived on the island, how close he pressed me into his chest. And it was weird, cause the last thing I wanted in the world was for him to hold me – but at the same time, it was the only thing.
Instead, he asked me if my hand hurt.
“What?”
“Your hand. That you burnt last night.”
Thinking about it made my skin tingle, but it didn’t hurt none at all. “No, it doesn’t. Told you it was fine.”
Naji gave me a hard look. I stared back long as I could.
“I’ll bring the manticore and Marjani down to the boat one at a time,” he said. “Don’t start rowing out to the ship yet.”
“I know that.”
Another dark look and then:
“Don’t leave me on the island, either. You know what would happen if I stepped out of the shadows on that ship. The crew won’t trust that sort of magic. I’d be tossed overboard.”
“I ain’t gonna leave you!” It took every ounce of willpower not to smack him hard across the face. “I ain’t cruel, Naji. I ain’t you.”
He glowered at me. I glowered right back.
The Pirate's Wish Page 5
