The Pirate's Wish (18 page)

Marjani hesitated. I peered at her, wondering what she was keeping from me. The mystery kept my mind off other things.

“We aren’t going to Lisirra,” she finally said.

“What? Why?” I dropped my head against the palm tree. “Another damn delay? Marjani, you’ve no idea how much I want to get rid of Naj… of the curse.”

Marjani gave me a weird look, but all she said was, “We’re going to Jokja. I know of starstones there.”

“You didn’t think that might’ve been important to mention
before
?” But then I remembered seeing that brooch stuck in the map at Arkuz. It hadn’t registered at the time, but– “Kaol, how long have you been planning this?”

“Since Bone Island.” Marjani’s expression didn’t change. “I shouldn’t have kept it from you, but – I had my reasons.”

I glared at her.

“I wasn’t sure I wanted to… go back.”

Something about her voice softened me. “Is it dangerous for you?”

“Probably not,” she said softly. “The king died three weeks ago. I received word when we were on Bone Island.”

“The king? You got banished on orders of the
king
?”

“The king had a… personal connection to the affair.”

It took me a few minutes to realize what she was saying.

“You tried to court the Jokja
princess
?”

Marjani blinked at me a few times, eyelashes fluttering against her cheek. Then she laughed. “I never thought about it that way before.”

“But it’s what you did! Merciful sea, Marjani, that’s a hell of–” I stopped. “Wait, so she’s the queen now? Your, ah, your friend? That’s how it works in Jokja, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“She ever pick a suitor?”

Marjani shook her head.

“That’s the real reason you want to go back, ain’t it?”

Marjani looked away, out toward the desert. “Saida’s family has owned a pair of starstones for several generations. I remember hearing about them from the court storyteller. And the condition of the curse required a princess, if you recall…” She laughed, shook her head. “It’s really quite perfect.”

Almost as perfect as me falling in love with him cause of helping him find his cure
.
 

I was back in that bedroom, Naji kissing me and touching me and
looking
at me all cause of some manticore sorcery–

“Ananna? Are you sure you’re alright?”

I scowled.

Marjani tilted her head in a way that reminded me of Mama, bending over to lay cool rags on my forehead whenever I had a fever. “It’s about the boon, isn’t it?”

“I told you I don’t want to talk about it!”

“It might help you, though.” Marjani eyes were wide and clear. “It helped me. Talking.”

I stared at her and didn’t say nothing.

“What did they give you, Ananna?” And her voice was soft like she was speaking to a child.

I hesitated.

“Ananna–”

“Naji!” I shouted. “They gave me Naji.”

That was met with silence, like I figured it would. Then Marjani said, “Not as a meal, I hope–”

“No.” The palm tree was leaking sap, sticky and cool against the skin of my back.

“Then wha… Oh.”

I didn’t say nothing.

“How’d they–”

“I don’t know!” I slammed my fist into the ground. “Poisoned him or something. Magic. I don’t know.”

“Manticores with love spells,” Marjani said. “Well, that’s awfully terrifying.”

“It ain’t funny.”

“No,” she said. “It’s not.” She leaned forward, put one hand on my knee. “Sweetness, how do you
know
it was the boon?”

“Because there ain’t no way he could want me on his own!”

Marjani frowned.

“And I asked him to smile and he wouldn’t do it, and then he acted all confused, like he was coming out of a fever. Plus I can just
tell
, after spending every damn day with him.”

“It might’ve been the boon,” Marjani said. “But that sort of magic always builds upon latent desires–”

“Don’t try to make me feel better!”

“I’m not.” Her hand dropped off my knee. I thought about the way he held me close as he kissed me. All that manticore trickery. “I knew someone back in Jokja who studied magic. She explained how those kind of spells work, and she said you can’t make anything happen if it’s not there to start with it.”

I’d heard that too, but this was manticore magic, and it was probably different.

Marjani and I sat in silence for a few moments longer, and then she said, “Was he at least any good?”

I looked up at her. Then I burst into laughter, relieved that she was here, that I could talk to her about this.

“Why would you ask me that?” I asked, still laughing.

“I’m just curious.” She grinned. “A Jadorr’a… I always thought they sublimated their desires. You know. Abstinence so that their magic can work. Closeness to death and all that.”

“He had desires,” I said carefully. “And his magic still works.”

She laughed, her voice breaking against the wind.

“And we didn’t… didn’t do everything,” I finally said. “I figured out what happened before… before we could…”

At that, Marjani stopped laughing. She made this sympathetic clucking sound and stuck her arm around my shoulder, pulled me in close for a hug.

“I mean I’ve done it before. But it was never a big deal. It was always just…
weird
. And with Naji I thought… thought it might be special.”

“Oh, sweetness.”

“The others were just… boys I met. You know. And I was kind of hoping that I’d get to see what the big deal was.”

“The big deal?”

“You know.” I didn’t know how to put it into words. “How it’s supposed to feel really good, and you just… fall away…”

“Oh, that.” Marjani laughed again. “You know you don’t need Naji for that. Or anyone.”

I frowned.

“Did you really never… Alright, listen.” And then she leaned close to me and told me about my body, stuff nobody’d never told me before, like I was supposed to just
know
. I felt like some stupid little kid, listening to her, my eyes getting big and wide, but she didn’t sound like she thought any less of me for not knowing.

“That’s what I mean,” she said when she had finished. “I know you think you’re in love with him–”

“I don’t just think!” I said. “The curse–”

“Oh, never mind the curse. You can’t let that dictate your life.” She paused. “You don’t need Naji to give you pleasure, and you don’t need Naji to make you happy.”

Right now, it didn’t feel like that, but I knew better than to say something to her.

“You killed the son of Captain Hariri,” Marjani said, “one of the richest pirates in the Confederation, before he could kill you. You helped win a
sea battle
against the Hariri clan. You struck a deal with a manticore and lived. Why do you care what Naji thinks of you?”

I didn’t have an answer to that.

She stood up and dusted the sand off her robes. “When we set sail for Jokja tomorrow, I don’t want to see a single misty-eyed glance his way, do you understand? You have a ship to navigate and a crew to help command, and I have neither the patience nor the inclination to put up with a heartsick child.”

“I ain’t a child.”

“Then act like it.” She held out one hand and I took it and she pulled me to my feet. “Do you want me to command it? Cause I will, if that’ll get you to stop mooning over him.”

That got a grin out of me. “No, Captain.”

“Captain.” She laughed. “We’ll see how long they call me that.” She put her hand on my back. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll walk you inside.”

I let her. And for a minute, forgetting Naji didn’t seem totally impossible no more.

CHAPTER TEN

The manticore came to see me before we set sail the next day. I was up on the boat, screwing around with the rigging cause half the crew was too hungover to be of much use. One of the manticore’s servants crept across the deck, and I damn near tossed a pile of ropes on her.

“Mistress,” she whispered, keeping her eyes downcast. “Ongraygeeomryn would like to speak with you.”

I’d kinda been hoping I wouldn’t have to see the manticore before we left, cause I was still sore on account of what happened with Naji, even though I was trying real hard not to moon over him.

But I figured this was my chance to prove that I was strong and that I didn’t need him, the way I’d proved it last night, underneath the thin rough blankets of my bed.

“Tell her she can come talk to me when she’s ready,” I said.

The servant trembled. “Mistress,” she said. “The manticore doesn’t wish to come aboard…”

“Oh, hell.” Figures. “She on the beach, at least?”

“Yes, mistress.” The servant pointed a trembling finger off to the side. “My rowboat is in the water. She doesn’t wish to be kept waiting–”

“Of course she doesn’t.”

I rowed me and the servant back in to the beach, and sure enough, the manticore was stretched out on a quilted silk blanket on the sand, another servant standing beside her with a palm leaf.

“Girl-human!” she cried. “Did you enjoy your boon last night?”

“You mean Naji?”

“Of course! Such an easy one to enchant. Almost no convincing necessary at all.” She looked closer at me. “You did want him still, yes? He is your true love.”

Never mind the curse, I thought. But I didn’t say nothing. The manticore looked so damned pleased with herself.

“He was very…” I glanced off in the direction of the palace, hoping he wouldn’t show up while I was talking. “Skillful.”

The manticore looked puzzled for a moment. “Is that a good thing?”

“Uh, yeah.”

She beamed at me. “That is excellent news! We do not describe our matings as skillful; I shall remember that.”

Part of me wanted to ask her how she did it, if it really had been the ahiial, or some other manticore spell, maybe drawn out of the red desert sand. The sandcharmers in Lisirra could do that; I remembered from my trips to the night market. But what would be the point? It had happened, and not cause he wanted it.

Something else was bothering me, though.

“So he isn’t… he isn’t gonna keep bugging me after this?” I asked. “I’ve heard about love spells, and they always… persist, if you know what I mean.”

“Persist?” The manticore frowned. “No, girl-human. Love does not persist! It is allotted to us once a life-cycle.”

Oh. Like cats.

“The boon was only for one love-period,” the manticore said. Her eyes dimmed. “I could ask my father to recast it in perpetuity–”

“No!” I held out my hands. “No, it’s fine. Once was… once was enough.”

“Spoken like a manticore!” She smiled big and bright at me. “I knew you were of a superior mind to the servants.”

“I’m gonna miss you, Ongraygeeomryn,” I said, stumbling over the last syllable.

And even with the boon, I still meant it.

“When the Jadorr’a is free of his curse, you are always welcome to return him to us. Remember, it would do him a great honor.”

I just looked at her, although I thought about how easy it would be to cart him back here.

Easy, but not
fair
and wrong to boot. Dishonorable. Even if he had soul-hurt me a million and one ways.

No. I promised Marjani I wasn’t gonna moon over him.

So I threw my arms around the manticore’s neck and gave her a big hug. She nuzzled me back, her mane tickling my nose.

“You are always welcome on the Island of the Sun as a guest,” she said. Her tongue swiped across my cheek and left my skin stinging. “With or without the Jadorr’a. You are always a friend.”

Jokja was two weeks’ sail from the Island of the Sun, through water bright and green as glass. It was an easy voyage. Once Naji found out where we were headed and why, he called down favorable winds every morning, and we had plenty of food. The best bit of all was that the crew listened to Marjani and called her captain. They didn’t even grumble about chasing after starstones, since our chase was taking us into Jokja. Plenty of treasure there if you know where to look.

Some afternoons I’d sit up in the riggings, whenever there wasn’t nothing else to do, and remember how I used to dream about captaining my own ship, knowing all along it was as impossible a dream as marrying into the Emperor’s family or becoming as powerful a witch as Mama. But Marjani had managed it easy enough. Maybe I could too.

The only trouble with the voyage was Naji. I did my best to avoid him after what happened. He and Marjani slept in the captain’s quarters, same as before, but I couldn’t stand the thought of sharing the cabin with him. So I dragged a hammock down to the crew’s quarters and cleared out a spot of my own in the corner. It was as awful as you’d expect, but better than having to spend my nights so close to Naji. Sometimes when I was close to him I felt like his thoughts were trying to crowd into mine. I hated it.