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Instead, I turned away from her and hobbled over to the ladder that'd take me down below.
"Ana
"Stay there," I said, cause what else could I do? She didn't listen, of course, and came chasing after me, grabbing hold of my arm. Pain shot up through my elbow.
"Let me go! I need to…" Do what? I didn't want to put it into words.
"Need to what?"
"Naji." It was all I could bring myself to choke out. I jerked away from her and half-slid, half-climbed down the ladder. Down below the floor was covered in a half-foot of dirty water, rum bottles floating by like they might hold some kind of message for me, and scraps of clothing and pieces of dried fish. I splashed through the water, the chill setting my whole body to shaking. Marjani had stopped at the ladder.
"Ana
I didn't have the faintest idea what that was, and I didn't care, neither. I pushed my way into the crew's quarters.
The first thing that hit me was that horrible medicine smell, stronger than anything that ever soaked its way into the air of the crew's quarters before. My eyes watered and my throat burned and my skin prickled from all the leftover magic. The ship walls down here were all blood-red, transformed by magic.
And there was Naji, slumped across a hammock, blood trailing down his arms, his skin white as death. Bits of sail floated in the water around him like flower petals, leaving streaks of red in their wake.
He lifted his head when I came in, just enough that I knew he wasn't dead.
I splashed forward and picked up one of the scraps of cloth. His writing was all over it, the ink a brownish-red color, not black like Marjani's ink. It wasn't a story. I stared at it for a long time, not making any sense of those symbols, knowing full well it was a spell. I balled the cloth up in my fist and dropped it at my side. Naji moaned, dropped his head back. My anger swelled up inside me like a wave.
"You son of a whore," I said. "You filthy, mutinous, lying sack of shit–"
Naji tried to say something, but his words came out all slurred, and for a second I wondered how bad it had hurt him when I fell out of the rigging, if his body shattered like it was made out of glass. I hoped so. And then my anger was this flash of white light, hot and searing, and I waded up to him, pulled my arm back, and punched him square in the face.
"Ana
Marjani crashed into the room. I hit Naji again, open-handed this time, and he tried to squirm away from me, shoving his hands between us to block me. I grabbed his wrist, dried blood flaking off on my fingers, and yanked him up off the hammock and punched him again. He slammed up against the wall.
And then Marjani had her arms around my waist.
"Stop it," she said. "Stop." She pulled me away from him, dragging me through the water. I strained against her, arms flailing, but it wasn't no use.
"Calm down," she said, over and over. "Ana
She froze in place, staring at the walls, and I wriggled out of her arms and turned to look at her. Over on his hammock, Naji moaned my name.
"Shut up," I told him. My heart pounded up against my ribs and it didn't have nothing to do with the fight.
"The air," Marjani said. "It's all wrong…" Then she picked up one of the sail scraps and stared at it good and hard. I stood there with my chest heaving, waiting for her to get angry, as angry as I was. But she only seemed sad.
She looked up at Naji. "You shouldn't have done this."
"You don't understand," Naji said. "The curse–"
"Shut up!" I screamed at him. "You're going to get us killed." I turned to Marjani. "We were always headed for Port Idai, like I said. I never thought he'd do something like this."
"Neither did I," Marjani said. She splashed over to me. "I know about the curse," she said, her voice soft. "He told me."
"What?" I said.
"I tried…" Naji gasped. "Tried to save–"
"Get him," she said, jerking her head at Naji. "And come up on deck. And for Aje's sake, play along."
"You knew?" I said. "How long?"
She didn't answer, just made her way out of the crew's quarters, the water splashing up around her knees. I turned to Naji. He'd sat up some, and there was a bruise forming around his eye from where I hit him.
"You heard the lady," I said.
"We are… The islands? We're… here?"
"Shut up."
I grabbed him by his arm and jerked him up to standing. He slouched against me. Fine. I threw his arm around my shoulder, and together we waded through the ship's belly. I wasn't screwing around with this. We'd been caught, flat-out. Having Marjani on our side helped, but it wasn't just Marjani who'd caught us, it was everyone. The crew. The captain. If we were lucky we'd be thrown in the brig for the rest of the trip. I didn't think we'd be lucky.
It took us a while to get up on deck, cause I pretty much had to push Naji up the ladder. He pulled himself up through the hatchway, Kaol knows how, and then he slumped against the deck, wheezing and grasping for breath. The captain and Marjani were waiting for us, standing side by side with the rest of the crew fa
"This true, Ana
Naji coughed and pushed himself up on his hands. His hair pressed in thick clumps against his face.
"I did it," he said. "Don't blame her."
The captain looked like he wanted to whip out his sword and take care of the problem the old-fashioned way, but instead he just spat at Naji and turned to me.
"Wasn't asking him," he said.
I closed my eyes. All I could feel was my heartbeat, the blood rushing through my body.
"Well?" he said.