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I heard the hard edge in his voice, the crack of bitterness. And so I lifted my head. He was staring up at the ceiling.
"You ain't ugly," I said.
He didn't answer, and I knew my opinion didn't matter none anyway.
CHAPTER TEN
Leila didn't do much to sway me over to trusting her those next few days, mostly cause she toyed with Naji, not giving him a straight answer one way or another with regards to the curse.
"He needs to rest," she told me that first afternoon. "Before I can examine him to see if I can help." She had come out to the river to gather up a jar of silt and a few handfuls of river nettle. I spent as little time inside the house as I could, and it surprised me that she said anything to me. I hadn't asked after him, although I'd been wondering.
"He's a lot more injured than he lets on," she added, scooping the silt up with her hand. It streamed through her fingers and glittered in the sunlight. "I'm surprised he made it as far as he did."
"I took care of him," I snapped, even though I was trying to hold my tongue.
She looked up from the half-filled jar. "Of course you tried, sweetling," she said. "But you aren't used to that sort of magic." One of her vicious half-smiles. "Or any kind of magic at all."
The water glided around my ankles, and I thought about that night the river spoke to me in her babbling soft language, that night she guided me into action.
"By the way," Leila said. "I have some old clothes that might work for you. Men's clothes, of course. You're not going to fit into anything of mine, I'm afraid."
I knew I really wasn't going to hold my tongue against that, so I slipped off the edge of the steps and into the river, the cold shocking the anger right out of me. I kept my eyes open, the way I always do underwater, so I could see the sunlight streaming down from the surface, lighting up the murkiness.
Naji'd told me Leila was some kind of river witch, but the river didn't seem to play favorites, didn't seem to care about the differences between me and her. It wasn't like Naji. And so I stayed under long as I could, cause it was safe down there, everything blurred, the coldness turning me numb.
Naji did seem to get better. I guess I'll give Leila that. He got the color back in his cheeks, and he didn't shake when he shuffled around the house. The wound was slow to heal, though, despite the river nettle Leila pressed against it every evening. Sometimes I watched them, studying the way her long delicate fingers lingered on his chest. When she sang, her voice twinkled like starlight, clear and bright and perfect. That was when I figured out that she and Naji had been lovers before he got the scar. Cause she touched him like she knew how, and he stared at her like all he thought about was her touch.
It left me dizzy and kind of sick to my stomach. At least she never did say nothing about his face again. Not in front of me, anyway.
We'd been there close to a week when Leila a
"Finally," I said.
Naji kicked me under the table.
"You need to be there too," Leila said.
"Be where?"
"The garden, I imagine," Naji said. He poked at the fish on his plate. All we ate was fish and river reeds, steamed in the hearth in the main room.
"There's a garden?"
"Yes, out back," Leila said.
That didn't make no sense. The house was built into the wall of the canyon, and even if she had stairs leading up to the surface, the surface wasn't nothing but desert.
"Magic," Leila said, and tapped her chest. I scowled. She smiled at me like I'd said something stupid that she found amusing.
I slumped down in my chair and pushed the fish around on my plate, my appetite gone. And I kept doing that till Naji and Leila decided they were finished up, at which point both of 'em filed out of the kitchen, toward the back of the house. I took my time, dawdling till Naji strode back into the main room. I was sure he was going to command me to follow, but instead he looked at me real close and said, "Please, Ana
I shot him a mean look, and he watched me for a few minutes like he was trying to think of something to say. I can wait out a silence just fine, so I crossed my arms over my chest and stared right back.
He said, "I went into Kajjil last night and spoke with the Order."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"The Hariri clan hasn't hired another Jadorr'a. If you're worried that curing me will leave you vulnerable – if this is some pirate's scheme for protection–"
"I told you," I snapped, "I can take care of myself."
"Of course. I just thought that might be a reason for your reticence."
"Well, that don't surprise me none. That you'd think that." I gave him my best glare. I didn't want to think about the Hariri clan. I didn't want to think about Tarrin. "I just don't understand what Leila needs me for."
"She says that she needs your help."
"What?"
"You're part of the curse."
"Yeah, an impossible one. I don't see how I'm go
The expression on Naji's face stopped me dead. I'd never seen a man look so desperate. It made me aware of my own desperation, that ache that had settled in the bottom of my stomach after the battle in the desert.
"I just don't see what good it can do," I muttered.
"The least you can do is give me five minutes," Naji said.
That was enough for me. I followed Naji to the back of the house, through the dark, dripping stone hallway, past rooms glowing with something too steady for candlelight. And then the hallway opened up, the way corridors do in caves, and there was the garden.
So it was underground. There wasn't no sunlight in the room, though the ceiling had that same weird glow to it as the rooms in the house. And the plants weren't like any plants I'd ever seen: All of 'em were real pale, so pale you could almost see straight through 'em. They wriggled around whenever we walked past, as though they were turning to look at us.