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"Because," he said. "I didn't want to kill you."
I stared at him. My heart was pounding all fast and fu
"Ana
Marjani. I jerked up in surprise, banging my head against the back wall. Naji glanced at me but didn't ask me if I was alright or nothing. His voice kept echoing around in my head: I didn't want to kill you. I'd no idea what to make of that.
Marjani pushed the cell door open and stood there expectantly. She didn't say nothing about Naji's mask. I handed him back his knife, and once I'd stepped out she slammed the bars shut. The clang of metal against metal rang in my ears.
"Crew's saying you move like a ghost," she told him, leaning up against the bars.
Naji didn't reply.
"Fortunately, the captain doesn't believe in ghosts."
"He ought to," Naji said.
"Is he go
"The captain?" Marjani looked at me. "No."
Over in the corner, Naji didn't even stir.
"Ataño's a worthless little shit," Marjani said. "But it seems he's done more work in the past three hours than he's done in the past three days, so – the quartermaster's happy." She smiled. "Captain's letting you out tomorrow morning."
"Wonderful," Naji said, though he didn't sound like he meant it. "Curses and darkness, I want off this ship."
"Well, it's four weeks till Qilar. You've got awhile. Whispers are go
Naji lifted his head a little. "No, I'm lucky he has a navigator clever enough to dispel any residual belief in ghosts and ghouls."
Marjani didn't say nothing, but I could tell from the way she tightened her mouth that he was right.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Whatever magic Marjani worked on the captain held fast; he released Naji at sunup the next day. I filched a knife off the cook when he wasn't looking and made sure I was down in the brig when it happened, tucked away out of notice in a back corner. Ataño wasn't nowhere to be seen.
The captain had a couple of crewmen standing by with a pair of pistols each, all four barrels pointed at Naji's forehead.
"I see any hint of magic," the captain said as he unlocked the cell. "Any hint of weirdness, I'm tossing you out to sea."
He didn't say nothing about tossing me off the boat along with Naji, but then, I can't kill a man in less than a second.
"I understand," Naji said. He'd kept his mask on but his words came out clear and even.
The captain nodded like this was good enough and pulled the cell door open wider. The crewmen kept their pistols trained on Naji as he strolled up to the ladder. Naji glanced at me when he walked past but didn't say nothing. The captain stopped, though.
"What're you doing down here?" he asked.
"Checking up on my friend."
The captain chuckled. "Ain't go
"He won't." I shifted my weight from foot to foot. "Sides, and with all due respect, sir, I was more worried about Ataño striking out revenge."
The captain roared at that. Even his ca
"Ataño ain't go
Things got back to normal after that. I kept on working for Marjani, taking down measurements and tracking our course toward Qilar. Naji went back to spending all his time in the crew's quarters, scribbling over the sail scraps left over from my mathematics lessons. I went down there once or twice to keep him company, but he didn't much talk to me, just muttered over his work.
"What're you writing?" I frowned. "It ain't magic, is it?"
"Don't be ridiculous. When I said I wanted off this ship I didn't mean I wanted to be thrown into the open sea." Naji handed me one of the sail scraps. It was a story – an old desertlands story about a little boy who gets lost in the desert and has to strike a deal with the scorpions to make it back home.
"Why're you writing this?"
"I need something to do." Naji leaned back in his hammock.
"Nobody writes down stories."
"They do when they're trapped at sea and bored senseless." Naji hunched over his sail scrap and wrote a little swirl of something. "I hear from Marjani you're plotting part of our course each day."
"Getting us to Port Idai as fast as possible." Not that I liked the idea of leaving the Revenge. Any boat crazy enough to take us to the Isles wasn't one I'd want to work on.
Naji stopped writing and looked up at me, all dark hair and dark mask and the little golden strip between them. "I appreciate that." He looked down at his sail scrap. "Although I can't say I'm much looking forward to our second journey north."
"Me, neither."
Naji picked up his quill and began writing again.
"You think it'll work?" I asked him.
"Will what work?"
"Do you think we'll find a cure?"
Naji's hand twitched, but he kept writing, and he didn't look at me. "I don't know."
That was not the answer I wanted to hear. I left him to his stories and stomped back up to deck, where Marjani was waiting for me with the logbook and a quill, and things fell back into their routine, ocean and wind and salt and sails.
It felt like the begi
A week later, the weather turned.