The Pirate's Wish

“Write your damn note,” I told him.

“Ana

“Naji,” I said.

“I want to visit this…” he glanced down at the note. “This King of Foam and Salt. Things don’t appear in the liminal space unless they’re important.”

I sighed. “You want me to sail you to… to wherever. The middle of nowhere. The place where Mistress Hariri shot me.”

He touched my cheek with the back of his hand. “This has nothing to do with the Hariris.”

“Fine,” I said. “But I don’t know if I can convince Marjani to come with.” I gave him a sly smile. “Maybe you can be Captain Namir yi Nadir again.”

“I doubt it.” He stared at me, his eyes all dark and intense. He was go

The way he almost did picking up the starstones.

But that was different. That was the curse. This was just some nonsense he saw while he hovered between worlds.

I listened to the scritch scritch scritch of his pen against the back of the seabird’s note. When he finished he slid the parchment back into the tube and then slid the tube back onto the seabird’s leg. He kept the map, at least.

Then the seabird spread out its wings and dipped its head down low, almost like it was bowing, before taking off into the gray-blue sky.

I knocked on the door to Marjani’s bedroom. A guard stood nearby, gazing at the wall in front of him in such a bored way that I knew really he was keeping tabs on me. Don’t know why: Queen Saida was off in some diplomatic meeting, according to the whispers around the palace, and it’s not like I was up to any mischief.

The door swung open. Marjani blinked when she saw me.

“I need to talk to you,” I said.

She pushed the door open wider so I could come in. Her room was bigger than mine, with lots of open windows and expensive-looking furniture and a bed that looked like it had never been slept in.

“Is the ship alright?” she asked, soon as the door was shut. “The crew?”

“What? Oh, yeah, they’re both fine. Crew all came back from the Aja Shore and picked up their work shifts right where we left off.”

Marjani smiled. “I’m glad to hear that.”

“Actually, I kinda wanted to talk about the ship.”

“You want to leave.”

That gave me pause, the way she knew right away, and for a moment I just stared at her. She didn’t look like Marjani much anymore, with her pretty dresses and the makeup around her eyes, but I realized it was just that she didn’t look like the Marjani I knew, and that she had been this Marjani long before she met me. I wondered if she thought the same thing about me. I hadn’t been in men’s clothes much since we came to Jokja, either.

“Yeah,” I said, “I want to leave.”

She gave me a quick smile.

“Do you?”

The smile disappeared, and there was this long pause as she looked out the windows. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I miss it, you know, but when I was sailing I missed all this.”

I knew she really meant that she had missed Queen Saida, but I didn’t say nothing.

“Where do you want to go?” she asked.

I took a deep breath. “We got coordinates to someplace out in the ocean. Naji – he’s got some feeling about them, though–”

“You don’t agree,” Marjani said. “You don’t want to go.”

“Yeah, but… the thing is, I looked at the coordinates and they’re… well, they’re about the same place where we had that battle with the Hariris.”

She stared at me. “Violence,” she said. “It’s a cure for his curse.”

“It’s the middle of the ocean!” I said. “More likely it’s some Hariri trick.”

Marjani tilted her head at me. “Do you want me to go so you can stay here?”

“No! I ain’t no coward. I just… it’s your ship, you’re the captain–”

Marjani’s face changed. Just for a second, when I called her captain. I got the feeling she missed it all more than she let on.

“Besides,” I said, “if we do gotta fight the Hariris, I need to have you around. Don’t think I could lead the ship into battle the way you could.”

She laughed. I could tell it was cause she was flattered. “Well,” she said, “how can I say no to that? Not that I think you’re going to have to fight the Hariris.”

“We won’t be out long,” I said.

“You say that.” She shook her head. “I’ll go. I do miss it terribly. Saida may not be too pleased to hear it, but…” Her voice trailed off and she toyed with the end of one of her locks.

“Tell the queen I’ll bring you back safe,” I said. “Pirate’s honor.”

Marjani looked at me and laughed, but I knew I had my captain back.

We made sail three days later.

Queen Saida’d had her navy repair the boat after our trip to the Aja Shore, but Naji was still too weak to do magic, so we had to sail the old-fashioned way, with no guarantee of favorable winds. In truth it was nice, cause it gave the crew something to do besides sitting around on deck drinking sugar-wine and playing dice. And I didn’t have to deal with Jeric begging for more information about the starstones – Marjani kept him busy down in the armory, tending to the pistols and ammunitions and making sure everything stayed dry.

A storm blew through a week in, threatening to knock us off course. I crawled up in the rigging myself, to help keep the sails straight. Ain’t nothing like it, swinging from rope to rope while the water soaks you to the bone. It ain’t pleasant, but it was something I’d missed.

The whole time Naji was up near the helm, a rope knotted round his arm so he wouldn’t get tossed overboard, and whenever I glanced at him he’d be staring straight at me, his eyes flickering in and out, his face twisted up in pain. I’d locked him out of my head for the time being, but seeing that expression hurt me in a way that had nothing to do with my body.

That storm was the only one we faced, though, and for the rest of the trip the seas were smooth as glass, the winds brisk and warm. Two weeks passed. I checked the navigation every day and compared it to the map the seabird had left us. But it was hard as hell, cause the map just led us straight to the middle of the open ocean.

“You sure this is correct?” Marjani asked me one afternoon when she was up at the helm. I had the maps spread out on the deck beside her, pi

“Sure as anything,” I said.

Marjani frowned. She’d been in good spirits when we started out, but now that we were out on the open sea she was constantly gazing off to the east. Off to Jokja.

“Does Naji know anything?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“Go ask him.”

“He probably ain’t well–”

“Go ask him.” She gripped the wheel a little more tightly. “I trust him more than I trust that map of yours.”

I couldn’t much blame her for that, seeing as how the map had been given to us by a bird. I left her to her steering and made my way down to the captain’s quarters, where Naji was laid up recovering from my swinging around the rigging. I knocked but didn’t bother to wait for an answer, and when I walked in he was stretched on the bed, his hands folded over his chest.

“Marjani wants to know if we’re going the right way,” I said.

He turned his head to look at me, his hair falling across his face.

“Are you navigating?”

“Course I am.”

“Then of course we’re going the right direction.”

I scowled at him, though inside my whole heart lit up like a bonfire. “Yeah, but we ain’t sailing to land. Some tiny spot in the middle of the ocean… that ain’t easy to get to. You know she’s talking about using magic.”

“I know what she’s talking about.” Naji sat up and patted the bed beside him. I stared at him for a few seconds.