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And the whole time she kept her eyes on me, not moving or speaking, just watching me and listening.
When I finished, I expected her to do something, to yell at me for putting the Nadir in danger, or for not trusting her enough with the truth. But all she did was nod.
“I’m glad you told me.” She stood up. “You still want to be my first mate?”
“You ain’t pissed?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We all have secrets. Mine probably won’t attack us with a swarm of flying machines, but…” She shrugged. “It’s over now, right?”
“It’s over.” I pressed my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. “The Hariri clan’ll disband now. Anybody comes after us for the captain’s death, I got the right to go after him for revenge, or to send someone after him – doubt anyone’ll bother.”
Marjani looked amused. “I never understood the Confederation rules for revenge.”
“Trust me, ain’t no one in the Confederation understands ’em neither.”
She laughed. Folded her arms over her chest. “I should go. Naji said sleep would help you get better – so, please, sleep for as long as it takes. I don’t want to stay on this island much longer.”
“Sure thing.” I smiled. “Captain.”
The manticores scheduled the feast for two days after I got up and walked around the manticores’ palace garden. Naji took me down there, one hand pressed against my back as he led me out of the bare servants’ quarters and across the island’s dry red sands. As we walked, I kept thinking I heard him talking to me. But when I asked him what he wanted, he only shook his head and told me he hadn’t said nothing.
“You’re still in the process of recovering,” he said stiffly. “Things will clear up for you soon enough.”
As it turned out, the manticores’ palace wasn’t really a palace; it was big pile of red and yellow rocks surrounded on all sides by flowering vines and fruit trees and soft pale grasses. The human servants took care of the garden – I saw ’em working as I stumbled over the paths. My sunlit room was actually in the servants’ quarters, which were a series of little clay shacks lining the edge of the garden. The manticore had explained to her father that sleeping inside was a human preference, and then he explained to me that these shacks were the best they had. I didn’t mind. Better than sleeping in the grass.
Naji led me into the shade of a lemon tree and helped me sit down. The palace of rocks loomed up huge and tall against the cloudless blue sky.
“That ain’t a palace,” I said.
“Manticores don’t live inside.” Naji sat down beside me. “They think it’s barbaric.”
“How do you know that?”
“I found myself trapped in conversation with Ongraygeeomryn’s father after we landed.”
I looked out over the garden. The plants swayed in the hot desert wind. One of the servant girls walked alongside a row of ginger flowers, spilling water over each one from a bucket that came up almost to her knees.
I didn’t see any servant boys.
“Do they all want to eat you as badly as she does?”
“Oh yes.” He blinked. “For the first time, I find myself grateful for the curse.”
I didn’t know if it was alright to laugh, so I just kinda squinted at him and nodded. He had covered his face to walk me out to the gardens. I wanted to tell him he didn’t need to do that, that he was handsome even with the scars, that the scars made him more beautiful than any untrustworthy pretty boy lurking in some Empire palace.
I didn’t, though, cause I knew if I did he would leave. And he only saved my life cause of his curse, but out there in the garden, the scent of jasmine heavy on the air, it was easy to pretend otherwise.
For those two days before the feast, Naji wouldn’t let me go any farther than the gardens – he said I still wasn’t strong enough – and every day at sunrise and sunset he came into my room and slipped another packet of blood-spells and dried herbs underneath my pillow. Sometimes he sang this song in his dead-rose language and I’d fall asleep and dream of the black-glass desert and a dry wind full of starlight that would blow me across the landscape and cradle me gentle as a lover.
Sometimes, even when I was alone, I’d hear him singing. I’d hear him thinking. I figured it must be leftover from the magic.
The manticore came to visit me too. The first time she came trotting up to us while Naji led me through a maze of thorny red flowers in the garden.
“You lead her well, Jadorr’a,” she said. “You’ve only taken one wrong turn so far. You’ll arrive at the maze’s center soon.”
Naji gave her this a
“Girl-human,” she said to me. “I am glad to see you have not died.”
“Yeah, me too.”
The manticore looked different now that she was home. Her mane shone like copper, and her coat was smooth and silky. Her eyes were ringed in red powder that made her look feral and haunted all at the same time.
“The servant-humans have promised you many delicious items for the feast,” she said. “Fruit and fish and honey.” She wrinkled her nose when she spoke.
“My father is most grateful that you have returned me,” she went on. “Even though you could not bring us the Jadorr’a uncursed–”
Naji sighed.
“Still, he would like to meet with you, to thank you personally, and to offer you a boon.”
“She isn’t well enough,” Naji said.
The manticore looked at me with concern. “But you are walking through our gardens!”
“A walk through the gardens isn’t quite the same thing as a meeting with the pride leader.” Naji stepped in front of me like he was protecting me, even though I wasn’t in danger from the manticore.
She didn’t seem to notice, though, just tossed back her mane and pawed at the ground. “At the feast, then. He is anxious to meet with you.”
“At the feast.” I nodded. “Looking forward to it.” I pushed Naji aside. He stayed close, though. He’d been staying close a lot lately. Closer even than when we’d been stranded on the Isles of the Sky and had to stay close cause we were the only two humans around other than Eirnin.
“The feast!” the manticore cried, chiming with delight.
The night of the feast, Marjani and Naji and me all walked from the servants’ quarters to the garden together, along with the braver crewmen – including Jeric yi Niru, who Marjani didn’t want leaving on the newly repaired boat alone. The manticores’ servants brought us clean clothes, soft cotton robes dyed the color of pomegranates and saffron, and they gave us steam-baths and lined our eyes with red powder, the way the manticores did.
Naji had his face wrapped up in a scarf.
I wondered if he really thought the manticores cared about his scars.
The feast was in the garden, with long low tables set up beneath the fruit trees. We sat down in the grass, lining up on one side of the table, and waited.
“The pride will join you soon,” said one of the servants, who tilted her head when she spoke and never looked any of us in the eye.
The sun was just starting to set, and the light in the garden was purple and gold and turned everything into shadow. A trio of servants began to strum harps and sing in a language I didn’t recognize, and soft pale magic-cast lanterns blinked on one by one up among the trees.
“Why’re they making us wait?” I asked Marjani.
Marjani shook her head. “I don’t trust manticores.”
“They won’t do anything,” Naji said. He leaned forward on the table, drumming his fingers against the wood. “As many deals as Ana
“What? Why?”
“Their elaborate system of boons and favors.” Naji looked at me. “You’re lucky,” he said.
I knew he wanted to say more, but a loud, reverberating trumpet cut through the thick air.