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“Manticore, this way!”
She lifted her head and hissed. Nobody was coming anywhere close to us, which probably made Naji happy – if it weren’t for the occasional bullet whizzing past my head, anyway. But I needed to get to Captain Hariri. It was the only way to end this.
“Come on!” I shouted. “Time to eat later!”
She leapt to her feet and then galloped across the deck. I swung my sword out against a Hariri crewman and tried to find Captain Hariri in all the confusion.
“The machines!” I shouted, pointing with my sword. The manticore hissed again, but she slunk up to them, her ears pressed flat against her head. I felt like I was in the chiming forest again, all that sunlight bouncing off the spindly metal legs.
We crept slowly, cautiously.
A shot fired off and zipped past my head. I crouched down and buried my face in the manticore’s mane while she reared around and sent a pair of spines zinging through the air. I heard a man scream.
The manticore skulked forward, the muscles in her back and shoulders tensed and hard. She sniffed at the ground.
For a moment, the smoke cleared, and there was Captain Hariri, reloading his pistol.
I yanked out my second pistol, took aim–
A blast of Naji’s magic echoed across the boat, bright blue and smelling of spider mint. Everything tilted. My head spun. The manticore snarled and leapt out of the way of the falling machines; Captain Hariri disappeared, knocked out by the force of Naji’s blow.
Magic showered over the side of the boat, staining the water that icy Naji-blue. The Hariri smoked and glowed – she had moved closer to us, her ca
Another blast of magic.
This one knocked me off the manticore, and I slid across the deck, my body smearing with salt water and blood. All over the ship, men were fighting best they could in the daze of magic, swords swinging sloppy and wide. I caught sight of Jeric yi Niru drawing his blade across the stomach of a Hariri crewman. When the crewman fell, Jeric dragged me to my feet.
“First mate,” he said. “Your captain is dying.”
“What?” I took him to mean Marjani, but when I turned to the stern deck she was still spi
“No,” he said. “The fake captain.”
“Naji!” I pulled away from him and raced across the deck. I could hear the manticore behind me, the soft snapping squelch of her jaws on some crewman’s neck. Men’s screams. I didn’t look back.
Naji was sprawled out on the bow, his arms soaked with blood, his face drawn, his skin almost blue. I knelt beside him, and he turned toward me. Pressed one hand against my face. His blood was hot and sticky against my skin.
“I can’t do it anymore,” he said, his voice like broken glass. “I’m sorry.”
“Did someone hurt you?” I felt around for a wound. “Where are you hurt? I can fix it–”
“Ana
The magic. Nobody had cut him or shot him, it was the magic.
“Mine,” I said. “You can have mine.”
He shook his head, but I didn’t listen to him earlier and I wasn’t listening to him now. I drew the tip of my sword down my arm. The sting of it took my breath away.
“Here,” I said, and there were tears in my eyes and I hoped he’d think it was from the ca
“No…” He closed his eyes. “I don’t want… Not from you… It’ll co
“What are you talking about? We’re co
He didn’t answer.
“Can you track ’em? Naji! You have to pull ’em out! I’ll kill ’em, alright? But it’s the only way they’ll stop.”
The boat lurched. Marjani screamed orders from the helm, but my head was spi
He took hold of my bleeding arm. I braced myself against the deck as the boat tilted farther. Men were scrambling up in the riggings, trying to get her righted.
“Hurry!”
He ran his hand up my arm, blood oozing between his fingers. I ground my teeth together so I wouldn’t scream at the pain of it. He began to chant, and his words rolled over me and then I didn’t feel the pain no more.
His voice strengthened. He gripped tight on my wrist. My blood rolled in rivers down the length of my arm. He sat up. The shadows underneath the machines started to wriggle and squirm, and men were screaming and moaning.
He leaned close to me, and put his mouth on my ear. “I won’t make you kill them,” he whispered. “I know it hurts you.”
It stu
The fact that he knew it hurt me, when I hurt people.
“Thank you,” I murmured.
He stood up. The glow in his eyes brightened, and for a second I felt this weird tingle in the arm I’d cut for him, this hum of magic rippling across my skin. And then the tingle was everywhere, sparking up the air, the way it gets before a lightning storm in the desert. Naji was close to me, his body and his mind both, and I felt a surge of warmth from him. A feeling of things being right. And then I got the sense of all these hearts beating, every heart on that boat, the blood and the life of every crewman who hadn’t gotten tossed down to the deep.
I wondered if this was how Naji felt all the time.
He spoke. His voice echoed inside my head, that secret rose-petal language, like I was hearing his thoughts and his words both. A co
The shadows billowed up like smoke, thick enough to rip the Hariri machines into shreds, into long glinting metal ribbons. Men flung themselves against the side of the boat. The Hariri fired off another volley of ca
And then in all that confusion, all those glints of metal, all that smoke, all that splintered wood, I knew where Captain and Mistress Hariri were.
I didn’t see them.
I just knew.
They were on the bow of the ship, cutting their way through Nadir crewman.
I jumped to my feet. Naji grabbed my arm, turned his glowing eyes toward me.
“I know where they are,” I said.
“I know.” He blinked and I felt a surge of worry. “Ana
“You don’t have to protect me!” And I wrenched my arm free, despite the strength of his magic – the strength my blood had given him. I leapt off the helm and followed the trail of the shadows, listening to the beating of those two hearts that wanted me dead.
“Girl-human!” The manticore galloped up behind me. I glanced at her over my shoulder. Her entire face was covered in blood. Her teeth shone like knives.
“You smell like Jadorr’a,” she said. “But I will not eat you.” She dipped her shoulder down. With Naji’s magic inside me, I swung myself onto her back.
“To the bow!” I wound my fingers in her mane and pressed myself low against her back. We pressed on together, the shadows sliding over us like water.
I still couldn’t see the Hariris, but they were there, I knew it, I could feel the proximity–
Off in the distance, a pop.
Warmth spread across my belly. Pain. Warmth and pain. I looked down.
Blood.
The smell of smoke and metal.
Someone was laughing. A woman. Shrill and mean. I recognized it–
“Girl-human! You are body-hurt!”
“She shot me,” I said, cause I couldn’t believe it.
“Yes, Ana
Lightning arced across the boat.
The Hariris both crumpled like rag dolls.
I blinked.
“Lightning doesn’t move sideways,” I said. The world was spi