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“Manflesh?” Her head perked up. Her face was dirty, her mane matted even though I’d worked through the tangles a few days earlier. The sight of her twisted my stomach.
“I’ll see what I can do. Here.” I dumped the water in her bowl and she knelt down and lapped at it. I sat beside her, stroking her side, listening to the drip drip of seawater coming through the boards.
Footsteps on the stairs. I prayed to Kaol that it wasn’t Naji.
Marjani’s head appeared in the doorway. “Brought you something,” she said. “Oh, Ana
“Where else would I be?”
She shrugged, then gri
“Animal meat,” she grunted.
“Yeah, well, I keep hoping some of those barbarians’ll hack each other to bits, but they just… don’t.” Marjani pushed open the cell and dumped out the contents of the burlap sack: fish heads and a pair of shriveled up old pig’s feet, more than a little moldy.
“Best I could do,” Marjani said.
The manticore returned to her water.
Marjani gestured for me to get out of the cell. I sighed, patted the manticore’s shoulder, and stood up. I knew the manticore would eat the food Marjani brought her, but she’d only do it alone. Pride. And I couldn’t much blame her.
“Heard you had a good time last night,” Marjani said.
“Yeah? Who’d you hear that from?”
“Half the crew. And Naji,” she added, giving me this disapproving look I didn’t like one bit.
I wasn’t go
“We just danced,” I said.
Marjani laughed. “And kissed. A couple times.” She paused. “Do you know how to make the moon tonic? The cook should have all the ingredients.”
I blushed and nodded. Mama had shown me how to mix it up when I turned fifteen.
“I doubt he’ll know what you’re making,” she added gently. “The cook isn’t exactly well informed on the matters of women.”
“I told you, I don’t need it! We didn’t do anything!”
“For the future, then.” She smiled. “Anyway, that’s not actually what I need to talk to you about.” She peered out the brig doorway, and then turned back to me. “Those… people… who are after Naji. They’re here.”
My stomach turned to ice, but then I realized we were still sailing along, no magic erupting out behind us, no soldiers of the Mists crawling over the deck. But Marjani looked skittish, almost scared. I grabbed her by the hand and led her over to the bench built into the wall.
“What happened?” I said. “Tell me everything.”
She took a deep breath. “I was in the navigation room last night, checking our progress. Alone. And then all of sudden this woman was in there with me. I didn’t hear the door. She was just… there.” Marjani shivered.
“Echo,” I said.
“What?”
“That’s her name. She was kind of smoky, right? Like she’s not quite in this world?”
Marjani frowned. “Sort of. When I refused to take her Naji, she fought me.”
“What! You mean she could touch you?”
“Yeah. Can she not touch you?” Marjani tilted her head, studying me, like she was trying to work out all the pieces.
“No, she can’t–” And then I remembered the charm around my neck. “Oh,” I said. “You don’t have Naji’s protection.”
“Protection?”
I lifted my charm out from shirt collar and showed it to her. “I can’t take it off,” I said. “It’ll flare up Naji’s curse otherwise. But whenever I’m wearing it, she can’t touch me.” I slipped it back inside my shirt. “I’ll tell him to make you one, once we get to land. We probably don’t have the ingredients on the boat.”
“I’d like that.” Then Marjani gave me a quick, nervous smile. “Although I did beat her back easily enough last night. I don’t think she was expecting me to be carrying a loaded pistol.”
“You killed her?” I thought of the lone pistol shot I’d been given when the Ayel’s Revenge captain marooned me and Naji on the Isles of the Sky. I’d used it to start a fire that went out in the rain. If only I’d saved it–
“No, she billowed out like dust and disappeared.” Marjani sighed. “Why the hell are they coming after me? You’ve got the curse, so you’re at least… magically tied to him.” She looked at me closely then. “And maybe more than magically, right?”
I looked down at my lap. “That ain’t important. They’re after you because you know him. They can’t get to him, see, because he’s hidden himself with his magic–”
“So they go after the next best thing. I get it.” Marjani shook her head. “He just keeps bringing around trouble, doesn’t he? The magic onboard the Ayel’s Revenge, and now this.” She laughed.
I couldn’t disagree with her. “He’s nothing but trouble,” I said. “Although he was trying to save the ship, during that mess with the Ayel’s Revenge. He just did it in a… Naji way.”
Marjani laughed at that. But when her laughter faded she took on a serious, intense expression.
“How dangerous do you think she is?” she asked. “Without the protection charm.”
It was a reasonable question, and I wanted more than anything to give Marjani a reasonable answer. But I didn’t have one. I’d never fought Echo. She whispered pretty words in my head and I had to remind myself where my loyalties lay. Maybe they were misplaced, setting ’em with Naji.
“She’s dangerous when she talks,” I finally said. “Cause it ain’t death she’s dealing. If a pistol shot’ll send her away, that should be enough to keep you safe until landfall. But just – be careful if she tries to talk to you.”
Marjani looked at me for a long time. “I understand,” she said. Then: “I’ll let you know if I see her again.”
“Have you told Naji about this?”
Marjani shook her head. “I wanted to hear what you had to say about it. Naji’s a little…” She waved her hand through the air like she could catch the right word. “A little intense. He reminds me of the academics I met at university. So focused. You can see the bigger picture.”
I beamed at that.
“I should still mention it to him though, shouldn’t I?” Marjani ran her hands over her hair. “It’s got me spooked, I have to admit.”
“I’ll go with you,” I said, even though I didn’t particularly want to see him just yet. “We can ask him about the protection spell too.” I stood up and turned to wave goodbye to the manticore. She’d fallen asleep. “And if you want me to go to the navigation room with you, next time, I can do that too.”
“Thanks.” She gri
CHAPTER FIVE
I was up in the rigging a week later when the alarm went up. Somebody’d spotted a ship.
I immediately slid down a nearby rope and scurried down below to grab my sword out from the little corner where I’d stashed it. The quartermaster had given it to me when we first boarded, but I never liked carrying a sword around when I was working the ropes.
Marjani was up at the helm, talking to the first mate, her arms crossed over her chest, her expression serious. The ship was a flurry of men and their swords and pistols as the crew scrambled for their battle stations. Somebody was pounding on the drum, and ca
Naji appeared beside me, and put his hand on my arm. I jumped and yanked it away.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Are we under attack?”
Marjani called us over to the helm, waving her arm wide. “It’s an Empire sloop,” she shouted over the din of battle preparations. “We’re go
Naji gave me a sideways glance and set his face in stone.
“I don’t need your protection,” I told him.