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"What's this to protect me from?" I asked as we made our way back over to the shack. "The Mists or the Isles?"
"They're practically the same thing," he said.
A chill went down my spine.
I jammed the ferns into a crack above the door, and Naji slipped off his sword and scabbard and handed it to me.
"Stay inside," he said.
"Go," I said. "I'm starving."
He nodded, stepped into the shack's shadow, and disappeared.
He was gone for longer than I expected, not that I knew how long it took to sneak up on fish and catch 'em that way. I got bored and started tossing leaves that had fallen through the hole in the roof into the fire to watch 'em smolder and curl in on themselves. When I ran out of leaves, I stood in the doorway, Naji's sword and scabbard looped around my hips, and stared out at the shadowline along the trees. Nothing. I drummed my fingers against the doorway. Glanced up at the bundle of fern leaves. Thought about Naji telling me to stay put.
Something flashed out of the corner of my eye.
I had the sword out even though my brain was telling me it was only Naji. Except it wasn't Naji. It wasn't nobody at all, just a gray mist that was slinking out of the woods, shrouding my view of the forest, of the beach, of everything–
"Darkest night! Get inside!"
Naji looped his arm around my chest and pulled me backward into the shack. I cried out and dropped the sword in a clatter on the floor. The door to the shack slammed shut with a force that rattled the stones in the walls. I could hear Naji breathing in my ear. He smelled like the sea and like the cold nights of the ice-islands.
"What the hell!" I shouted. "Where did you come from?"
"The water." Naji let me go, and I whirled around to face him. He was as dry as when he left, but he had a big silver-striped fish in one hand, and he didn't look furious the way I expected him to, only tired. "I felt you about to do something stupid. I told you not to go outside."
I slumped down on the floor, my heart pounding. "I was just bored," I muttered.
"Fortunately, they didn't see you," he said, laying the fish out on a slab of stone that was next to the hearth. "They'll only get stronger, though. You need to be more careful." He leaned in close to me, and I stared up at him, dizzy with the rush of my fear, and with something else I couldn't identify. "Promise you won't go out alone."
"You're the one that left me be–"
"Promise."
"I promise. Kaol. I'm sorry I stood in the damn door."
He slid away from me and pulled out his knife. "Midnight's claws, I wish I could heal faster. If only I knew how long I had to keep them from you–"
"Me! You're the one they're after."
He slid the knife up under the fish's scales, his movements quick and assured. If I hadn't been a
I scowled. "Don't cut that fish too thin. It'll burn up in the fire."
He stopped cutting and looked at me. "Would you rather do it?"
"I can do it better than you can."
He pulled out the knife and handed it over like it was a peace offering. Cleaning the fish calmed me down a little. It helped that Naji didn't nag me about the Mists no more, and by the time we had the fish cooking on the fire, I had forgotten about the mist curling through the woods outside the shack. I was inside, I was surrounded by warmth and the smells of real food, I was safe.
The two of us finished off the entire fish. Its flesh was flaky and almost sweet-tasting, and it snapped clean and bright inside my mouth. The best meal I'd had in ages.
When we finished eating, Naji pulled out his sword and started sharpening it against the side of a rock he had brought in from the beach with him. It didn't take him long; he was sure practiced at it.
He held the sword up to the fire. It glittered, throwing off little dots of silvery light.
"You had that sword long?" I asked him. Some people, soldiers especially, make a big deal about their swords, and you can get 'em to talk about the things forever. Never been one for that sort of thing myself. A weapon's a weapon.
"I received it when I took my vows." Naji lay the sword over his knees.
"What kinda vows?" Celibacy? I thought, though I didn't say it. Nobody keeps a celibacy vow anyway.
Naji lifted his head. "I'm not supposed to discuss it with outsiders."
"Oh, course not." I picked the sword up by the handle and swiped it through the air a few times. But without the threat of danger, it only reminded me of Tarrin of the Hariri and I dropped it on the floor. Naji gave me one of his looks and slipped it back into its scabbard.
"Can I ask you a question?" I said.
"I'm not divulging any secrets of the Order."
"Not even one?"
Naji narrowed his eyes, and I realized he'd probably been joking, in his way. I took a deep breath.
"Why didn't you want to kill me?"
Naji looked away, toward the fire-shadows flickering across the doorway.
"Well?" I prompted. "Or is that a secret of the Order, too?"
Naji sighed. He leaned back against the wall. He didn't look the least bit like an assassin, what with the firelight and his seaworn clothes. In truth, cause of the scar and his long hair, he looked like a pirate. Even the tattoos reminded me of ocean waves.
"Do you know who the Jadorr'a are?" he asked.
"Assassins."
My answer made him look worn out.
"No, do you know their involvement in the history of the Empire?"
I shrugged. Not much use for knowing history on board a pirate ship.
"They used to prevent wars," he said. "Before the Empire bound together the countries of the desertlands, they were a way to put a cease to the constant fighting between kings. Better to kill one man than allow soldiers to destroy the countryside, raping and burning their way across the desert."