And then Jeric yi Niru stepped out from the knot of crewman. “Annoying though she is,” he said, “I couldn’t imagine a finer captain.”
I glared at him.
Still, his words broke some spell, and the crew started cheering the way they had when Marjani said we were setting sail for Lisirra. I didn’t quite believe it at first, that they were cheering – well, not for me really, but for the idea of me as their captain.
“So are we setting sail tonight, Captain First Mate?” Jeric asked me.
“Don’t call me that.” I stepped forward and looked out over the crew, all of them staring back at me, waiting to give an order. And I knew I could order them to take me anywhere but Lisirra, all the way to the underside of the world if I wanted, and Naji couldn’t do a thing about it.
Except he could. Even if he didn’t blow the ship off course he could slip into the shadows or go through the trance-place and I’d never see him again.
“We’ll set sail tonight,” I said. I could feel Naji staring at me, but I didn’t say nothing. “We’ll set sail tonight, and we’ll set sail to Lisirra.”
Lisirra was as hot as I remembered, that dry baking heat that soaked into my skin and made me feel like I was home. Naji and me walked side by side through the streets of the pleasure district. It was the middle of the day, and everyone was tucked away in the shadowy coolness of the buildings, the way the Nadir was tucked into the Lisirran dock under a fake name and the promise of a few sheets of pressed silver.
Every now and then Naji’s hand touched mine. Every time it did my body shivered with happiness.
Naji took me to an inn. The Snake Shade Inn. The one we’d stayed at after I’d started up his curse. This time, though, the innkeep didn’t recognize him for what he was. When he handed us the key to our room, he looked at us like we were nothing but a pair of pirates.
Upstairs in the room, Naji undressed me slow and soft, starting with my boots and jacket and then undoing my dress with all the precision of a clockmaker. He stood behind me as he pulled my underclothes off me, and then he pulled my naked body close to him and kissed my neck and whispered in my ear, “I’m not leaving you.”
I twisted around to glare at him. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
He gazed at me for a few seconds. Then he tapped his finger against his temple, tapped it against mine.
“That ain’t the same!”
“I know,” he said softly, “but it’s there.”
He set me down on the bed and stood in front of me as he peeled off his own clothes. His tattoos gleamed in the light streaming through the windows. The scar on his chest looked a million years old. The scar on his face from the Mists lord’s knife did not.
He crawled on top of me and kissed my mouth and neck and my stomach. He kissed every part of me. Every time he kissed me he told me that he loved me, and after a while I knew I had to believe him.
We stayed in the inn room for a long time. The sun dropped in the sky. The light in the windows turned golden and rich and syrupy. I laid my head against Naji’s chest and listened to his heart beating.
“I’m not leaving you,” he said again.
“Don’t.” I was gonna start crying. I could feel the weight of it, lurking there right behind my eyes.
Naji rolled over so we were facing each other. Ran his fingers over my lips. “I’m not even talking about reading your thoughts,” he said. “Even if we couldn’t do that, I still wouldn’t be leaving you.”
I scowled up at the ceiling.
“Would you want to stay in one place?” he asked.
“What?”
“Say I bought you a house in Lisirra,” he said. “The garden district, maybe. And you lived there. And I could travel through the shadows to come see you–”
“Like the Hariris?” I frowned.
“You wouldn’t like that?”
“I like being on a boat.”
Naji brushed my hair away from my forehead. “I know,” he said. “It’s part of you. The ocean. The water. You can’t stay in one place. Even if you wanted to.”
I thought about those first few days after I ran away, how badly I wanted to be back out on the sea.
“I ain’t a sea witch,” I said.
He laughed hard enough that the bed shook. “Don’t you dare try to tell me you still believe that.”
I scowled. “It was just cause of your blood-bond.”
“It was not and you know it.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “If ever there was someone who was a part of the ocean, it was you.”
I didn’t say nothing.
“You have to follow the currents all over the world. It’s who you are.” He kissed my forehead, my cheeks, my throat. “And I have to follow death all over the world at the Order’s command. It’s who I am.”
I frowned.
He rolled me onto my back and sat up and traced two paths over my belly with both hands. “Here I am,” he said. “And here’s you.”
The two paths crossed each other.
“I can make that happen,” he said. “I can make that happen anytime you need me.”
For a long time I didn’t answer. I just stared at him, at his beautiful face and his beautiful scars.
“I need you all the time,” I said.
“You do now.” He kissed my forehead. “And so do I. But after a while we won’t. And you’ll be glad to be rid of me.”
“I won’t stop loving you!”
“Did I say that?” His face darkened. “I said you’ll be glad to be on your own. And you will.”
I couldn’t imagine it at first, but then I thought about it and I could. I wasn’t like Marjani, who could give up a life on the sea in exchange for a life with her love. Because Naji was right: Marjani wasn’t a part of the ocean. I was.
And now I had a boat of my own, and a crew of my own. And we’d sailed to Lisirra with no trouble. They listened to me like I was Papa, like I was important. And when you got down to it that whole trip Naji’d just been a distraction, really. Keeping my mind away from the boat.
I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him deep and sure.
“Do you really want to see me smile?” he whispered into my neck. “I know the Otherworld lord tried…” His voice trailed off.
I hesitated. “I know how you look when you’re happy.”
“It’s not the same as a smile. I know that.” His fingers ran over the bridge of my nose. “After it happened,” he said, “after the blood-fire burned me, I would spend hours in front of a mirror Leila had given me, trying to find my face.” He dropped his head to the side and didn’t look at me as he spoke. “And one day I was going through my expressions, trying to find myself again.”
He paused, ran his hand over the tattoo on my belly.
“And I smiled. People used to like my smile. Women, you know.” He sighed. “And I’d never seen anything so monstrous.”
“You’re not a monster,” I said.
He looked at me.
“I know that now.”
I smiled.
And then he did too.
It didn’t look like a smile at first. It looked like a snarl. One part of his face twisted up and the other twisted down. His teeth gleamed.
But I looked at his eyes, where the brightness was. And everything changed.
For the first time, I understood the difference between leaving and not staying. It was the difference between a snarl and a smile.
“Thank you,” I whispered, and I kissed his scars, those ridges and lines that twisted his face up into something beautiful. I kissed the place where the man from the Mists had cut him. I kissed over the smooth skin of his neck, the soft tangle of his hair, his lips.
When I pulled away, the smile disappeared from everywhere but his eyes.
“We’ll see each other soon,” he said.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to kick off the wave of thanks with my editor, Amanda Rutter, who first suggested that we split the
megabook that was the first draft of The Assassin’s Curse into a duology. For this reason I was able to preserve the original story and didn’t have to edit away any of my favorite characters. Amanda also deserves thanks for all her tireless support for both books in the series.
As always, I want to thank my parents and Ross Andrews, for all their love and support. Thanks to Amanda Cole and Bobby Mathews, my friends and beta readers and general writing support system. Indeed, special thanks goes to Amanda for reading the first draft of this book and helping me see its strengths and weaknesses.
Thanks to my agent Stacia Decker as well, for her help with early revisions of the book, as well as all her ceaseless hard work in general. The rest of the Angry Robot crew – Mike Underwood, Lee Harris, Darren Turpin, and Marc Gascoigne – deserve special mention too. The Assassin’s Curse. You all helped make the experience of releasing my first novel a overwhelmingly wonderful one, and I sincerely hope that you enjoy The Pirate’s Wish.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cassandra Clarke is a speculative fiction writer and occasional teacher living amongst the beige stucco of Houston, Texas. She graduated in 2006 from the University of St Thomas with a bachelor’s degree in English, and in 2008 she completed her master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Texas at Austin. Both of these degrees have served her surprisingly well.
During the summer of 2010, she attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle, where she enjoyed sixty-degree summer days. Having been born and raised in Texas, this was something of a big deal. She was also a recipient of the 2010 Susan C Petrey Clarion Scholarship Fund.
Unlike many authors, Cassandra does not have a resume of peculiar careers. She worked at a Barnes and Noble once – that’s about as exciting as it gets. In her spare time she enjoys drawing, painting, crocheting, cooking, and quilting, because she is secretly an old lady. She will see literally any movie as long as it’s in a theatre. She watches television. She doesn’t play many video games though.
cassandraroseclarke.com
twitter.com/mitochondrial
STRANGE CHEMISTRY
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Strange Chemistry #11
A Strange Chemistry paperback original 2013
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Copyright © Cassandra Rose Clarke 2013
Cassandra Rose Clarke asserts the moral right to be
identified as the author of this work.
Cover art by Sarah J Coleman
All rights reserved.
Angry Robot is a registered trademark and the Angry Robot icon a
trademark of Angry Robot Ltd.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the
products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.
Sales of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is
coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed”
and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
Ebook ISBN 978 1 90884 429 3
Contents
The Pirate's Wish
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Imprint
The Pirate's Wish Page 25
