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“We’re here to take your ship,” I said, and I’m proud to say my voice didn’t waver none at all.
The manticore roared again, and then she lunged forward, knocking down this poor Empire soldier with her great sharp claws, burying her face in his belly. Blood splattered across the deck.
I looked away, my stomach clenching.
And then all those Empire men started screaming – I didn’t blame ’em one bit – and shooting at the manticore. She lifted her head out of her meal, blood smeared all over her face, teeth gleaming in the sun, and hissed.
Spines shot out of her tail, impaling soldiers in the heart, in the head, in the belly.
Naji yanked me down to the deck, slapping his hand over my head. “I think this is one battle where we’re not needed,” he said.
“They’re go
“Ana
And then Naji was fighting alongside me, his sword spi
Where the hell is Marjani? I kept thinking, cause I’d no idea how to take a ship. I knew in theory, but here in practice all I cared about was keeping me and Naji and the manticore alive. So I poured all my concentration into fighting, and I didn’t feel no pain or fear, just my heartbeat and my breath.
Dully, I was aware of the manticore taking down another soldier, his screams echoing out across the sea, the scatter of soldiers rippling backward across the deck as he fell.
I fought.
And then the fighting stopped.
I wanted to keep going, all that blood rushing through my veins, all that blood soaking into my skin, but Naji got me in a lock and pulled me still. The Empire peace horn was blowing, long and low. The Empire men had all thrown down their weapons.
Marjani was standing up at the helm, a knife pressing into the captain’s neck, two Goldlife crewmen at her side.
The manticore was eating.
“It’s over,” Naji told me, his mouth close to my ear. “We have the ship.”
I felt like I’d woken up from a fever dream, everything distorted and strange. The sunlight was too bright. The blood on the deck too red.
The peace horn died away.
Marjani dropped her knife from the captain’s throat, and Gorry and Ajim took him by the arms, dragged him away from the helm. Marjani leaned forward.
“This ship is under the control of the Pirate Captain Namir yi Nadir.” She jabbed her finger toward Naji, who tensed his arm. “Any man who wishes to join our crew may do so and no harm will come to him. Those of you who wish to die for the Empire…” She turned to the manticore, who was still hunched over the remains of the soldier. “You will have that chance as well.”
Goldlife pirates were streaming on board, but nobody moved to stop them. Tavin hoisted up the boat’s new colors, some flag Marjani had sewn before she picked us up at the Isles of the Sky: a black background and a dancing skeleton stitched in red silk. It snapped and fluttered in the sea wind and for a second the scent of blood and fear got wiped away, and the ship was almost silent.
Silent. Peaceful. And all I wanted to do was lie down and sleep.
I slept in the captain’s quarters that night, after stripping away my bloody clothes and swimming in the cold ocean to wash the blood from my skin. There was a real bed in there, big enough that two people could share. Naji let me and Marjani sleep in the bed while he hung a hammock from the comer and slept there. I fell asleep easy enough. I woke up in the middle of the night, the cabin dark and shadowy and unfamiliar.
I listened to Marjani and Naji breathe for a while, their breaths soft and out of synch, and when I realized I wasn’t go
Nearly all of the Empire men had chosen service over capture – Empire don’t train ’em as well as they think, I guess – but we were still headed for Bone Island, on account of Marjani not trusting a ship full of ex-soldiers. I didn’t blame her. We’d dump ’em there and let ’em find their own way back to their lives, then pick up a crew of our own.
But for now, we had ’em ru
“Girl-human.”
I turned around. The manticore padded up to me, her face cleaned of blood, her mane brushed and shining – some poor Empire sap had been assigned to tend to her grooming needs.
“What are you doing up here?”
“I do not like the underneath,” she said. We hadn’t locked her up in the brig, but I’d asked her to stay down below in the hold on account of her presence making the men jumpy.
I didn’t say nothing and she added, “It stinks of human filth.”
“Hard to take a bath on a ship,” I told her.
“You’re surrounded by water!”
I didn’t have anything to say to that.
The manticore sat beside me, wings tucked into her sides, her tail curling up along her back. We didn’t speak for a long time.
“Thank you for allowing me to eat.” She sounded sincere, too, and kind of sad. “I had been very hungry before.”
“I know.” I stroked her mane and she nuzzled against my hand like a pet.
“I will not eat any men without your permission.”
It still creeped me out a little, that she ate humans, but part of me knew it was just the way things were, like me having to eat fish and sheep and goat. It wasn’t her fault that she ate people.
And I’d killed more men than she could eat that afternoon, all cause they were trying to kill her, but I tried to put it out of my mind the way Papa told me to, cause dwelling on it can turn you dark. But it was hard.
She gave me one of her sharp smiles and turned back to the sea. “It is strange, living with humans. But I am growing used to it.”
“I thought you lived with humans on the Island of the Sun.”
The manticore flicked her tail. “That’s different. They are our servants, girl-human, our slaves. Here, we are equals.” Another flick. “Or as equal as human and manticore can be.”
“Oh, is that so?” I leaned over the railing and looked down at the black ocean water skimming up along the side of the boat. “So tell me, how was it a human managed to kidnap you?”
The manticore let out one of her low, quiet hisses. “He was treacherous and dishonest. Not like you, or even the Jadorr’a.” She licked her lips and looked up at me. “You should not trust wizard-humans, as a rule.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“It was my parents’ fault,” she went on, like I hadn’t spoken. “His water-nest crashed onto our beach. We were going to eat him, of course, but he had magic, and my parents were willing to strike a deal.”
That caught my attention, since everybody’d been warning me about the dangers of striking a deal with a manticore. Looks like it got Eirnin killed.
“Did he double-cross them?” I asked. “Your parents?”
“Of course, he did, girl-human! We traded him his life for some of his spells and potions, but during the trade he cast a great smoke-cloud and paralyzed me. I do not know how he dragged me back to his water-nest, but I learned quickly that it hadn’t been broken at all. It had been a ruse, designed to ensnare me.”
“Why?” I said. “It’s not like he tried to sell you or anything–”