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“What?”
He ran his fingers across my scarf. I could feel his touch through the fabric, on my lips, and my whole body shivered.
“No.” I stood up, pulling myself away from him. “I need something to drink.”
He didn’t say nothing more, though Marjani watched us close, eyes flicking back and forth, until I turned and melted into the crowd.
The crew we signed up turned out decent. Not as good as Papa’s crew, but better than the Goldlife bunch. A handful of ’em were Confederation drifters, men who got the tattoo but don’t stick to one particular ship, but most were unaffiliated sailors from the Free Countries in the south. A crew like Papa’s, which is bound to one particular ship and captain, aren’t so keen to sail with outsiders. It’s an honor thing, though Mama used to tell me it was really just plain ol’ snobbery, the way Empire nobility looks down on the merchants. But the drifters aren’t so particular, probably cause they’re used to a crew like Papa’s looking down on ’em for jumping from boat to boat, and our crew blended together without much trouble.
I kept my face covered the first few days, but got sick of it soon enough, the cloth half-smothering me in the humid ocean air.
“Finally,” Marjani said. I’d taken my hair out of the Empire scarf, too. I was still wearing the cloak, though I kept it open at the neck on account of the heat. “I was starting to hear rumbling about how you and Captain Namir yi Nadir were the same man.”
“What? That don’t make no sense. They’ve seen us together before.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “They thought he could copy himself, be in two places at once.”
“They thought I was Naji? I don’t look nothing like him!”
“I told you,” Marjani said. “People will believe anything.”
In truth, I could see how the crew might’ve gotten that idea about Naji. He kept to his captain’s quarters most of the time and let Marjani do all the captaining. She got me to be her first mate – “Second mate,” she called it – and at first I wasn’t quite sure how to act. I’d seen Mama plenty, of course, so I tried to act like her. I kept my back straight and my head high and I carried a dagger and a pistol with me everywhere I went. Got real good at whipping out the dagger and holding it up to some back-talking crewman’s neck, too.
Besides which, I didn’t keep the manticore in the brig.
“They’re scared of you,” Marjani told me one morning, the sun warm and lemony, the wind pushing us toward the south, toward the Island of the Sun. We were up at the helm, the crew sitting in little clumps down on deck, not working so hard cause they didn’t have to. The manticore was su
“They are?”
“Sure. It’s a good thing, though.” She leaned against the ship’s wheel, squinted into the sun. “Because you’re a woman. If they’re scared of you, they’ll listen to you.”
“That’s how it works with men too.”
Marjani shook her head and laughed. “Not always. Men have the option of earning respect.”
The wind picked up, billowing out the sails. The boat picked up speed. One of the crewmen hollered up in the ropes. Probably Naji’s doing, that wind. There was something u
“I always wanted to captain a ship,” I said after a while. “When I was a little kid.” I didn’t mention that I’d still wanted it when I was seventeen years old and about to be married off to Tarrin of the Hariri. “Used to fancy I could dress up like a boy and everyone would listen to me. I never thought about getting some man to stand in as a proxy.”
Marjani squinted out at the horizon. “Dressing up as a man can get you in trouble.”
“What do you mean? Always figured it’d be nice. I could never pull it off proper, cause of my chest.”
Normally Marjani might’ve laughed at that, but today she just ran her hand over the wheel and said, “I used to dress as a man to visit someone I loved. It was a sort of game. I met her when my father sent me to university, since I split my time between my studies and court, like a half-proper lady.” Marjani laughed. “When she came of age she’d complain about suitors constantly – this one was too ski
“Did it work?”
“For a little while. I didn’t fool her, of course, and she loved it, but I fooled her parents. One of the noblewomen figured it out, though, and I spent some time in prison for lying about my identity.”
“Is that why you left Jokja?” I asked. “Why you took to piracy?”
All the emotion left Marjani’s face. “Yes.”
We stood in silence, the u
I tried to tell her. I did. I started forming the words in my head. But then one of the crew called up to her about trouble in the galley over some sugar-wine rations, and she leapt over the railing to deal with it, and the moment was lost.
A few days passed, and we got closer and closer to the Island of the Sun. One afternoon I went down to the galley to get some food for myself and some scraps of meat for the manticore. There wasn’t a whole lot there, though. Fish parts and some dried sheep meat. I kept the sheep meat for myself, started dropping the fish into a rucksack.
“Still wearing my captain’s old uniform, I see.”
At the sound of Jeric yi Niru’s voice I almost dropped the sack of fish. I whirled around. He lounged against the doorway, a trio of seabirds hanging on a rope from his belt.
“What do you want?” I narrowed my eyes at the seabirds. “And where the hell did you get those?”
“Shot ’em down.” He slung the birds over the table. “I trained in archery before I was a sailor. We must be nearing land. The manticore’s island, I hope?”
“You hope?” I shoved another fish head in the sack. “What do you care? She ain’t bothering nobody on this boat.”
“She’s hungry.”
I scowled. “You don’t think I haven’t noticed?”
“I appreciate you not feeding any of us to her.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Here.” He slid one of the birds off the rope and handed it to me. I stared at it, at the black empty beads of its eyes, the orange triangle of its beak. “For the manticore,” he said.
I lifted my head enough to meet his eye. He gave me another one of his easy smiles.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Always willing to help the first mate.”
I froze. “You mean navigator.”
He winked at me. “No,” he said. “I don’t.”
I yanked out my knife and lunged toward him, but he was faster, and he grabbed my arm and twisted me around so he had my back up against his chest. I struggled against him but couldn’t break free, and my heart started pounding and I was scared, but I knew I couldn’t let him know.
“I wouldn’t do that,” he whispered into my ear. He plucked the knife out of my hand. “You’re going to need me.”
“Need you?” He dropped my arm and I stumbled away from him. When I turned around, he was examining my knife. Hell and sea salt.
“Yes,” he said. “To find the starstones. That is what we’re looking for, isn’t it? After we leave the Island of the Sun?”
My whole body went cold. I didn’t even bother to lie. “How do you know that?”
Jeric tapped his ear. “I pay attention. Even when I’m held prisoner aboard a pirate ship, I pay attention. You do realize starstones aren’t the sort of treasure the crew is expecting, don’t you? Even the more educated among them has never heard of a starstone – they’ll think you’re chasing after magician’s treasure.” A slow grin. “Fool’s treasure, is how you pirates would put it, yes?”
I did my best Mama impression. I kept my face blank and my eyes mean. It didn’t seem to work.