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"Who was she?" I asked.
"Stand up," said Naji. "We shouldn't stay here. It's not safe."
"You didn't answer my question." But I got back up to my feet, shaking as I did. The woman's light was still on my clothes and skin and knife, although the glow was begi
"Well?" I said.
"She's from the Otherworld," said Naji. "She's been chasing after me for some time."
I stared at him. "Another world?" I asked. "What, like the ice-islands?"
Naji's head turned in the darkness. He still had on his mask.
"No," he said. "Not like the ice-islands."
I waited for an explanation.
He sighed. "It's a world layered on top of our world. Some call it the Mists."
"Oh, well that clears everything up." But I remembered the woman refusing to tell me where the green-light portal would send Naji. Elsewhere.
"I'll explain it to you later. We need to get out of the desert before the fallout takes effect."
I took fallout to mean the magic-sickness, since even I could feel that prickle in the air that always comes when you use too much magic at once. Mama'd told me stories about how it changes you, since that's all magic is anyway, pure change – she said she knew a dirt-witch who got turned into a pomegranate tree after trying to resurrect her dead husband. And I'd seen clams and ripples of sea-bone sprout out of the side of the Tanarau after Mama used magic in battle.
Naji turned, cloak swirling around him, and walked in the direction of the city. And cause the air was choking with magic, the sand twisting into figures in the darkness, my own skin crawling over my bones, I followed him.
CHAPTER FOUR
We walked for a long time, the city growing brighter and more distinct on the horizon. Naji didn't talk. I kept trying to think of things to say, and I kept coming up short. Fortunately all that walking warmed me up against the chill of the dusty night wind.
Naji stopped right outside the desert wall, his cloak rippling and casting slinky shadows across the sand. He pulled his mask away and then turned toward me. He looked like he had been in a fight: blood on his face, ragged cuts on his clothing, scratches in his armor. I realized I probably didn't look much better.
"Did you have any belongings in your room at the i
"What?"
"The Desert Light I
"How did you… Oh." I frowned, wondering if he had ever watched me through the open window without me knowing. "Some spare clothes." I knew better than to tell him about the money. "Why?"
His face got all intense and he said, "I have to protect you. But I'm afraid you shouldn't stay at that i
I saw where he was going with this. We could rent a room in the pleasure district and the i
Assuming my parents were still in the city at all.
That thought made me sad. I turned away from Naji so he couldn't see that sadness washing across my face.
"Collect your things," he said. "I'll wait for you in the alley outside the i
"What do you want?" I snapped.
"A word of warning. Don't think you can slip out the back of the i
"What! I wasn't go
"I can track you," he said. "And I can bind you to me if necessary."
"Oh yeah?" I was a little pissed, cause I ain't done nothing to make him think I had any intention of sneaking off. Not while the Hariris were still after me, at any rate. "Why didn't you just do that straightaway? Bind me to you?"
"Because it's cruel," he said.
That stu
My room was just how I left it, my spare dresses draped over the back of the divan, my money still shoved beneath the loose floorboard under the bed. It was like I'd only been out at the night market, not battling some creature from the Mists and picking up an assassin-protector for my trouble.
Naji was waiting for me in the alley like he said, not as a shadow but as a man, although he'd covered his face again. He looked sinister. At least his eyes weren't glowing.
"You're too conspicuous," I told him. I handed him one of my dresses, folded up to look like a package. "Here, take this."
He didn't. "I've been doing this much longer than you have–"
"I doubt it. Besides, I bet you always worked alone, didn't you? You could slink around in the shadows, no problem. But now that you got me you have to act like a normal person." I pressed the package against his stomach, and this time he touched his hands gingerly against its sides.
"What are you giving me?"
"It's one of my dresses. I don't want to carry it all the way to the pleasure district. Now take off your mask and act like you have a right to be here."
He stared at me. The glow from the street illuminated the little burst of scarring that peeked up from the top of his mask. Then he handed the dress back and turned into shadow.