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War between countries was something the Confederation didn't much get involved in beyond its own internal squabbling. Though there hadn't been war for a long time, not since I was a little girl, and that was over on Qilar anyway. The Empire had formed long before I was born.
"I don't see what any of this has to do with me," I said.
"It doesn't," Naji said. "That's my point. The Order was always paid for its services, but once the Empire formed, gold lust opened them up for use by any merchant with enough wealth to provide payment."
"Like Captain Hariri?"
"Like Captain Hariri." Naji shook his head. "I joined the Order after my strength manifested itself – after I learned my magic came from darkness and death, not the earth, the way it did for my mother, my brother–"
"You have a brother?"
Naji fixed me with a steely gaze. "My mother sent me away. She said I could harness my darkness into something good, that I could stop the Empire from destroying all the people living under its ba
I didn't say nothing to that. Wealth is power, Papa always told me. Wealth is strength. But I could see where Naji was coming from, too.
"So that's why you didn't want to kill me?" I finally said. "Cause you didn't think it was worth your time?"
Naji looked up at me. "No," he said. "I didn't want to you kill you because I thought it was wrong."
I du
"I won't tell nobody," I said.
"It doesn't matter. No one's going to believe you escaped an assassin."
"A Jadorr'a," I said.
He looked at me again, and I still couldn't read his face none. Not even his eyes.
"Yes," he said. "A Jadorr'a."
And his voice was soft as a kiss.
I woke up to rainfall pattering across the roof. It was awful hard to tell the passing of days here, on account of the cloud cover and the way the sun didn't always rise and set in the same place. The rainfall was constant, though. It was a shame you couldn't keep track of the days through the rain. All I knew was that I'd heard that soft rustle of rain more often than not.
This morning something was different, though. The shack was lit not by the usual faint golden glow of our skin, but by bright blue light. Light the color of northern glaciers.
I sat up, mussing the pile of pine needles and leaves I used for bedding. Naji sat in the corner next to the fire, his eyes and tattoos glowing. My heart pounded. Was he tracking the wizard? Or maybe he was talking to the Order. Maybe they'd have a way to bring us home.
For the first time since we landed on the island, I felt a dizzying twist in my brain that I half-recognized as joy.
A pile of berries was lying next to the hearth, and I ate 'em and checked the water jar. It was empty. I cursed and sat back down on my pile of leaves. Figured he'd think to pick some berries but not go fetch some water. And I was thirsty from sleep.
I watched him in his trance for a while, my head leaned up against the stone walls. He didn't move. Not even his chest rose and fell with his breath. It was eerie, truth be told. I'd never watched him this closely during a trance before. I'd always had better things to do with my time.
"Naji!" I said, waving my hands in front of his face. "I'm thirsty."
Naji didn't move, and the light in the shack didn't change.
"If you don't come out of that trance I'm go
Nothing.
I sighed. His sword was lying across the bed. It wouldn't take long to walk down to the spring, I knew the different paths so well now, and I was in such good spirits I felt invincible. I hadn't even seen any mist in the last week. Hadn't heard no voices, neither.
And I was wearing my charm. It'd protected me from the Mists man in the night market in Lisirra. It'd made him look right through me. Maybe it could do the same with the island.
And Kaol only knew how long Naji would be under.
I scooped the sword off the bed and grabbed the water pot. Naji was wearing the scabbard, so I just carried the sword with me out into the rain. The drops were cold and stinging, the way the rain always was here. Made me miss the warm soft rains that fell across the pirates' islands. But once I got into the thick part of the forest the leaves caught most of the drops, and I trudged over pine needles and crushed ferns, shivering and miserable. My brain started churning up like the sea, thinking on the curse and getting kicked off the Revenge and fighting the Hariri clan. I thought about Tarrin, who I'd managed to shove down deep inside me when we left Port Iskassaya. The memory was back now: his breath tickling my ear, how easy the sword had slid into his belly, the heat of his blood spilling over my hands. And it was this sword that had done it, this sword that I'd used to kill Tarrin.
I suddenly couldn't stand the thought of the sword touching me no more, and I tossed it off into the greenery, my chest heaving, my heart racing. I watched it disappear in a spray of ferns, and for a split second I wondered what I'd done. But then my thoughts went elsewhere.
The woods had gone silent.
There's always noise in the world.
But not now.
I stopped and that's when I heard it, that emptiness of sound, like the forest was holding her breath. I got this creeping chill up my spine, and my palms turned cold and clammy, and here I was alone and with no ma
A shimmer appeared up ahead, a curl of mist, pale silver and hazy. I took a step backward, trying to figure out the best way to run. I was in the chiming forest, all those ski
"Ana
A woman stepped out of the mist, her body long and thin, her eyes that same eerie silver as the woman in the dress shop. But this was a different woman. The woman in the dress shop had been human enough to fool me; this one had a narrow feral face, her chin too pointed and her cheekbones too sharp. And the silver in her eyes blocked out all the white.