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Love spells build on existing desires.
“But when the time comes for us to disembark, we’re going to have to be in close proximity again. You know I can’t leave you alone in the city, especially not with the Mists still a factor.” He leaned up against the mast and looked exhausted. “You’re going to have to speak to me eventually. I’m sorry… sorry about what happened, and I want you to know that it isn’t how it seemed–”
“Yeah,” I snapped. “That was the whole problem.”
“That isn’t what I meant.” Naji scowled. “If you don’t want to make amends, fine. But I need to know you aren’t going to run off the moment we make port. That will kill me. Do you understand? It will kill me.”
My skin felt hot. Of course I knew it would kill him. That was the whole reason I’d agreed to help him in the first place, that night in Lisirra.
“I ain’t go
He stared at me with that same intensity as before, and I could feel him burning through me. I shook my head. “Is that all you want?”
He didn’t move. The wind blew his hair across his forehead and dislodged his mask enough that a bit of scar peeked through, brownish-red in the sunlight.
“Well?” I asked.
“Yes.” He turned away from me. “Yes, that’s all I wanted.”
The day we arrived in Arkuz was hot and bright, the sun an unblinking eye overhead. The docks were busy and close to full, but Marjani sweet-talked our way into a slot near the marketplace. I’d been to Jokja before, but always on Papa’s boat, and we always sailed along the coasts to plunder, cause Jokja’s got a lot of wealth, like all the Free Countries do. They have access to the mines in the jungle, which everyone from outside the Free Countries is afraid to travel through cause of all the magic there, plus some of the fastest and best-equipped ships on the seas. Jokja’s navy is the one navy a pirate, Confederate or otherwise, doesn’t want to cross. The Empire navy might be bigger, but Jokja’s got technology on their side. Fast ships and quick ca
Anyway, I’d never much had a chance to just wander around Arkuz the way I did in Lisirra, and I was looking forward to it, to seeing the acacia trees and tasting the chili-spiced fruit Marjani was always going on about.
After we’d docked, Marjani ordered the crew to take shifts watching the ship. As she was sorting ’em out, Jeric yi Niru slipped out from down below and grabbed me by the wrist. I had my knife out before he could say anything. Naji wasn’t nowhere to be seen. I wondered if it hurt him and he was just respecting my wishes not to see him, or if Jeric yi Niru had no intention of harming me.
“Still chasing after fool’s treasure?” he whispered.
“Let go.” I wrenched my arm free of his grip, though I kept my knife leveled at his throat. “What do you want?”
“You really think you’ll find the starstones here? Jokja’s a land of science, not magic.”
“Magic’s everywhere, snakeheart. And what do you care anyway? You’ll still get paid.”
“With what? Starstones?” He laughed again. “Do you even know what they are, first mate?” He leered at me and I pressed the knife up against his skin, not enough to hurt him but enough to draw blood. He didn’t even move. “Have you ever seen a starstone before?”
I didn’t answer. Off in the distance, I could hear Marjani shouting at the crew, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off Jeric yi Niru’s face.
“I’ll take that as a no.” He laughed. “I have. They’re awfully pretty. Like the stars fell from the sky. That’s where the name comes from, did you know that? There’s a story, an old Empire story. The nobles like to tell it. A man was pursuing a woman, the most beautiful woman in the Empire. She told him she would marry him, but only if he fit a starstone into a ring for her to wear. He spent years seeking one out, and when he finally found it, do you know what happened?”
I pressed my lips tight together and kept my knife at his throat and didn’t say a word.
“He scooped it up in his bare hand and all the life fell out of him. The starstone sucked it right up.”
“He died?” I hadn’t meant to act like I cared, but it came out anyway.
“Yes, first mate. He died. His life flowed into the stone. That’s what makes them so beautiful, you know. All that human life trapped in such a small space.”
Find the princess’s starstones, the Wizard Eirnin had said, and hold them, skin against stone.
Skin against stone.
I scowled, though I eased up on my knife a bit. I’d be damned if I let Jeric yi Niru know what I was thinking. “Sounds like Empire trash to me. Let me guess: the woman in the story was above his station and the man had to be punished for chasing after her? Half the Empire stories I’ve heard end like that.”
“No,” Jeric yi Niru said, “that isn’t it at all.”
“Jeric!” Marjani’s voice cut across the ship. “Ana
“We were talking, Captain,” Jeric yi Niru said.
Marjani gave him the iciest glare I’d ever seen her take on. “Nothing’s ever just talking with you, Jeric. If I hear one word of trouble from you, you can stay behind in Arkuz in your Empire robes when we make sail.”
That shut him up. The people of the Free Countries don’t take too kindly to Empire soldiers milling around their cities, even a turncoat like Jeric.
Once the boat was secure enough for Marjani’s liking, she led me and Naji off the docks and through the hot bright streets of Arkuz. I kept a big space between me and Naji cause it seemed easier that way, but the whole time I was thinking about that stupid story Jeric yi Niru had told me. The task was impossible not because starstones are rare, but because touching ’em killed you.
I glanced at Naji out of the corner of my eye, but he stared straight ahead, his face covered with a desert-mask that drew more looks from the Jokjana than his scar would’ve. It marked him as Empire, since there are no deserts in the Jokja. I wondered if he’d ever heard that story. Probably. He’d been pretty quiet on the subject of the starstones. It was mostly Marjani plotting everything out, bringing us here to Jokja. And I knew that didn’t have nothing to do with Naji’s curse or rocks that can destroy you at the touch.
My thoughts churned around inside me like a sickness.
We walked on and on, far enough that I lost the scent of the ocean and caught instead the rainy damp scent of the jungle. Arkuz reminded me of Lisirra, cause it was big and sprawling and crowded with street vendors selling spiced fruit and charred meat wrapped up in banana leaves, and shops full of spices and jewels and fabric dyes and precious metals. And everybody looked like nobility, the women in these long fluttering dresses, their shoulders bare and their wrists heavy with bangles, and the men in tailored slim-cut cotton shirts.
I speak a bit of Jokjani, enough to understand the vendors trying to entice me to come buy something from them, but not enough to have any idea what Marjani said to the guard at the entrance to Azende Palace once we finally arrived. He used a different dialect than I was used to, and Marjani matched it. For a while it didn’t look like he was go
Marjani was getting more and more a