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"What the hell's wrong with you?"
He reached into his robe and pulled out the charm from the battle and tossed it at me. The minute it was in my hands he straightened up.
"I hope that'll stave it off," he muttered, more to the air in the room than to me.
"What are you talking about?"
"Wear that charm." He pointed at my chest. "Keep it on you at all times."
"Why?"
"It's for protection."
"I know what it's for. I'm more curious what it's protection against."
He glowered. "Probably nothing. But I… I don't like sending you out alone."
"You sent me downstairs."
"That was different. You were still in the building."
"So? You can look through walls or something? What if someone snatched me when the i
"No one was going to snatch you."
"But someone's go
"Probably not."
"But you still need to give me protection?"
"Stop asking questions!" he roared. "I thought you were hungry!"
"I am hungry! I just want to know I ain't walking into a trap is all."
Naji rubbed at his forehead, his eyes closed. "You aren't walking into a trap. As long as you swear to me that you won't take off the charm, you'll be safe."
I stared at him.
He opened his eyes. "I need you to swear it."
"I don't swear," I finally said. "But I'll promise." I looped the charm around my neck. That feeling of safety drizzled over me. I thought the whole thing was off, like I'd just been handed a key to something I shoulda understood, but I was so hungry I didn't much care. I was out the door and into the kitchen before Naji could say another word.
The night market in the pleasure district was a lot bigger than the one where Naji had almost killed me. It stretched from the row of brothels all the way down to the docks, and I could make out the outline of ship sails in the distance, blocking out the sky's bright stars. Vendors crowded onto the street like weeds, shouting at me to come buy their charms and enchantments as I walked past. Mostly love potions and the like. I ignored them.
It took me less time than I expected to gather up all the things on Naji's list. Those plants I recognized – the powdered Echinacea, the rose petals, the hyacinth root – I picked up first, going from vendor to vendor so none of them would ask after what spells I pla
That left the weird stuff. Like an uman flower. Never heard of that before, and as it turned out, it was extremely rare and extremely expensive, and only grew in a particular swamp in the southern part of Qilar. I had to ask five separate vendors after it, and I eventually got sent to an old man tucked away behind a stand selling vials of snake blood. He was all shriveled up like a walnut, and he peered up at me through the folds of wrinkled-up skin around his eyes. "What you needing a weed like this for?" he asked.
"Magic."
"Don't sass me, girl." But he rummaged underneath his table for a few seconds and produced a plant that reminded me of a body wrapped in burial shrouds. It wasn't like any flower I ever saw, what with its twisted wooden stem, all deformed and grotesque, and its long, fluttering white petals.
"Be careful with her," the old man said. "You can call down the spirits, if you don't know what you're doing."
I thanked him, so as to seem polite, and then tucked the uman flower away in my bag so I wouldn't have to look at it again.
There was one rarity on the list that I did recognize: le'ki, which Mama had used sometimes in the tracking spells that helped us sift out the best merchant ships. I figured I could find that at the stands set up on the docks, and I was right. At the first one I went to, the vendor had a half-inch left, dried out and powdered like Naji had requested. Naji only wanted a quarterinch, but I bought all the vendor had, cause it reminded me of home, that briny sea scent and opalescent pink sheen, like the inside of a shell.
I'd been half-avoiding coming down to the docks, but once I was there, I didn't want to leave. I had everything on the list but the swamp yirrus, and it wasn't even midnight yet. So I followed a dock away from the lights of the city, all the way out to its edge. Boats thumped against the water, that hollow wooden sound I always found so reassuring. Nobody was out but a single dock-guard, and he didn't pay me no mind. Not like one person can steal a boat anyway.
I sat down on the pier, the bag filled with Naji's supplies in my lap, my feet dangling out over the ocean. Mama used to tell me the sea had an intelligence all her own, though I'd never been able to feel it like Mama could. I loved the ocean, don't get me wrong, but for me and Papa it was just water, huge and beautiful and strong and bigger than everything in the whole world, sure – but never something I could sit down and chat over my problems with.
When I was younger I'd get up early sometimes and climb to the top of the rigging so I could watch Mama work her magic with the sea. Sometimes she stripped naked and swam in it, and the waves would buoy her around like a jellyfish. Other times she sang and threw offerings from our merchant runs – small things, like a few coins of pressed metal, or a necklace, or a bangled scarf. And the offerings wouldn't float away like jetsam, neither. The sea sucked them down to the depths, leaving a wisp of foam in their wake. Once Mama lowered a jar into the water and scooped that foam up and then drank it down. Three days later, we defeated the Lae clan in a battle everyone, even Papa, thought we'd lose.
Thinking back to my childhood, and to Mama and her magic, and even that horrible battle, I started getting real sad. And I didn't want to be on the docks no more, sea spray kicking up along the hem of my dress. So I gathered up my bag and made my way back to the twinkling lights of the night market. My melancholy left me feeling distracted and confused, and I didn't know I'd taken a wrong turn until I realized I was back in the city proper – not the night market.
I cursed and turned around, intending to follow my steps back to the docks. But the buildings all looked the same in the dim light of the magic-lanterns, and when I started going one direction I was sure it was the wrong way, so I turned and went another – and after doing that a couple times I realized it was hopeless. I was lost, and in a city, unlike the open ocean, it's best to just ask somebody for directions.