The Pirate's Wish

The men cheered. Marjani didn’t; she just set her jaw straight and hard. “We haven’t won yet.”

I jumped down to the deck, figuring they’d need as much help in the reloading as possible. I ignored Naji following me as I worked on one of the ca

The Confederation ship fired on us. I skittered backward, limbs flailing. Naji caught me even though I knew I’d slid past him in the explosion – his lightning-quick assassin dance again. He looked relieved.

I pushed up to my feet.

A wind blew in from the open sea, sweet and clean, and for a few quick seconds it cleared away the smoke.

I saw the other ship’s colors.

A blue field. A gray skeleton, dancing the dance of the dead.

The Tanarau.

Mama. Papa.

“Stop!” I screamed. “Stop firing!” I was half-talking to the crew and half-talking to the Tanarau, even though I knew it was madness to think they could hear me across the water. “Stop! It’s me! It’s me!”

“What in the darkest of nights are you doing?” Naji grabbed at me but I wrenched free. I raced up to the flagpole and yanked on the rope. Our colors dropped.

“What in the holy hell!” Marjani leapt over the helm. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“We have to surrender!” I shouted.

“What?”

I didn’t answer, just pulled hard on the rope and caught the colors in my arms. One of the crewmen was on me with his sword, and I swung around and caught him, blade to blade, before he could cut me.

“I know that ship!” I shouted, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to fight. The sound of our swords rang out across the deck. I tossed the colors aside, lunged at him. More ca

Then Jeric yi Niru stepped in, nimble as a dancer, wedging himself between me and the crewman so that the crewman hit his sword instead of mine.

“Go on, first mate,” he called out over his shoulder. “Hoist up the surrender flag.”

Where the hell is Naji? I thought, and then I saw – Marjani’d gotten a couple of the bigger fellows to hold him down. And she was coming after me herself.

“It’s my parents!” I screamed.

She froze in place. “Are you sure?”

“Course I’m sure. I sailed under those colors for close to two decades.” I fumbled around on the deck for a scrap of sail. Yellow-white, but it would do. “Once we get them to stop firing I can go over and have them let us be.”

“And how do you know that will work?” Her voice was quiet and cold, but she’d dropped her sword to her side.

“How’d you know it’d be safe for you to come back to Jokja?”

Her jaw moved up and down like she was trying out responses. Nothing came out. She gave me a curt nod, and I tied the scrap of sail to the flag rope and hoisted it up. Jeric yi Niru had knocked the crewman out and nobody else tried to stop me. The Tanarau stopped firing on us once the sail was halfway up, the way I figured she would. Papa always heeds calls to surrender.

Naji shrugged away from his captors.

“Let me do the parley,” I said to Marjani.

“You bet your ass I will.”

“No,” said Naji. “If they harbor ill will because of the Hariri affair–”

“They won’t.” I was already readying the rowboat. I had my sword and my pistol and my heart was beating faster than it did before any battle. I called over Jeric yi Niru.

“Drop me down,” I told him. I know it’s crazy, but I trusted him more in that moment than I did anyone else, on account of him helping me call surrender.

“Aye aye,” he said, eyes glinting like he was making fun of me.

“Wait!” Naji flashed across the deck and reappeared beside me in the boat. I didn’t have time to protest before Jeric yi Niru cut the line and we crashed into the water.

I rowed us over to the Tanarau. The closer we got the slower I rowed. What if Naji was right? What if they were still sore about me ru

“You’re right to worry,” Naji said, staring straight ahead, looking grim.

“Shut up!” I said. “It’s my family. They ain’t go

“You don’t know that,” Naji said, and he tapped his finger to my forehead. “Can you see what I’m thinking right now?”

“I don’t got to. I know you think this is a bad idea.” We were almost to the Tanarau. I pulled the oars in and let the waves knock us up against her side. A few seconds later, the ropes dropped down.

Two Tanarau men hauled us up. One of ’em I didn’t recognize, but the other was Big Fawzi, and when he saw me he squinted and then widened his eyes.

“Hey,” I said.

“Ana

“Not yet.”

And then I heard Mama’s voice, sweet as a song, asking the men what the hell was going on. I jumped out of the rowboat, the feel of the Tanarau firm and familiar beneath my feet. The sails flapped and snapped in the wind, and the sound was different from the sails on the Nadir and the Ayel’s Revenge and the Goldlife. The rigging hung different. It was like I never left.

“Ana

“Mama!” I raced forward. She caught me up in her embrace. The pirate in me thought back to Tarrin of the Hariri, reaching for his knife as he lay dying. But the daughter in me just wanted to be hugged.

“I never thought I’d see you again.” She pulled away and I saw the smudges in her kohl where she’d started crying. Mama never lets you see her cry; she can stop a tear before it falls down her face. But if you know how to look for the signs, you can still spot it. “I’d heard the Hariris sent an assassin after you.”

“They did.”

Mama frowned, and before she could say anything, Papa’s voice boomed across the ship.

“And what the hell kinda parley is thi–”

He stopped when he saw me. For a moment nobody moved. We all just stood there in the smoke and the sea breeze.

“Nana,” he said. He threw off his sword belt and his pistols and then rushed toward me, scooping me up like I was a kid again. “You were dead,” he said to me, leaning close. “You were dead. The assassin–”

“He’s here,” I said without thinking.

Everybody on the damn boat pulled out a weapon. Swords and pistols and daggers all threw off glints of light in the sun.

Naji slumped against the railing and sighed.

“No!” I said. “You don’t understand. He didn’t… he can’t kill me, alright?”

“That him?” Papa jerked his chin toward Naji.

Naji looked back at him warily. “I won’t allow any harm to come to your daughter.”

“That right?” Papa stared at him for a long time. Naji hadn’t pulled his sword, and his tattoos were all covered up, and he was still dressed like a pirate. Nothing about him, except maybe the scar, suggested that he was an assassin.

“I’ve protected her this long,” Naji said.

Another long pause, and then Papa roared with laughter. He turned to me. “You’ve turned into a right princess, you need some shield-for-hire following you around. Like those foppy Empire nobles.” He laughed again.

“I didn’t hire him!”

Mama scooped her arm around me and pulled me close. “Throw up the peace flag!” she shouted. “And make sail for the open sea before the Jokja authorities show up.”

That set the crew to scrambling. The queen’s boat wasn’t attacking no more, but it wouldn’t be long before the queen’s navy arrived. And I doubted Queen Saida would give amnesty to anybody who’d just burned half the Aja Shore, even if they were my parents.