The servants brought clothes, too, a thin cotton dress and a narrow gold belt that I cinched around my waist. I combed my hair out and sat on the window ledge and looked down at the wash of green roiling up against the city’s walls. Papa’d told me once that he knew a man who had crossed the Jokja jungle and came out the most powerful sorcerer either the Empire or the Free Countries had ever seen. I’d never decided if I believed him or not.
For a minute, I wondered what Papa was doing. Had the Hariris gone after him first, back when I was crossing the desert with Naji? That wasn’t usually the way of things, but you never knew with a clan so enamored of the land. Or had Papa and Mama even heard about what I did, to Tarrin, to his parents? Mama hadn’t used her magic to track me, at least not that I could tell, although I might have been too far away from them for it work. Or maybe they just didn’t care.
The wind blowing in through the windows changed. I noticed it as a prickle on my skin. The hairs raised up on my arms. A chill crept into the room.
I fumbled around on the bed, trying to find the knife I’d tossed there while I was taking my bath. The wind blew harder, and then a mist crept in – a northern mist, nothing I should have seen in Jokja.
I touched the charm around my neck.
“Ananna,” Echo said.
I whirled around, knife out, heart racing. She stood beside the window, and she was dressed like a Jokja lady. But she had the same mean starry eyes and the same cold voice and the same swirl of mist where her feet should have been.
“Get out of here,” I said.
“Still protecting him?” Echo drifted forward, bringing the cold damp in with her. “You’ve come up in the world since last we spoke.”
I readied my knife.
She floated over to my bed and sank into it.
“But your affection for the assassin appears to be waning.”
I glared at her, tensed my fingers against my knife.
She smiled hard and cold at me. “The offer still stands,” she said. “Take us to him, and we’ll grant you a thousand boons.”
“Why?” I said. “Why do you want him so bad? Just cause he bested your lord?”
She looked at me, calm and implacable. “That’s exactly why. My lord was humiliated by that particular defeat. We don’t like being defeated, particularly by humans.” She narrowed her eyes and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “And we don’t like being humiliated either.”
“Yeah? So you’re just gonna let Naji keep defeating you every time you show up?” I jabbed my hand at the door. I didn’t think this was about defeat at all. It was about wanting a place in our world, like Esjar had told me. “You just floated in here like there wasn’t a door or walls. Go find him yourself. Or make me do it, you want him that bad.”
“But I can’t touch you,” she said. “Because of that thing around your neck.” She tilted her head. “Even after all the hurt he’s caused you, you still wear it?”
“Apparently.”
“So coy.” She smiled again. “And as point of fact, the assassin has not defeated me. He’s merely hidden himself with some silly human charm. It took three years by your reckoning to find him before – without anyone having to betray him, even. So don’t think your refusal will actually save him. It only delays the inevitable.” She laughed. “And rest assured that when I find him without your help – and I will – you will not be granted a thousand boons. And not even his pathetic human magic will protect you.”
I waited for her to laugh again, or give me that infuriating mocking smile of hers, but she didn’t. She just stared at me with a calm, placid expression and I thought about how he’d refused to smile for me like kissing me was the worst thing that could happen. I thought about how I didn’t let myself think his wanting me was the result of a spell, how it didn’t even cross my mind when it should’ve.
I thought about how he made me stupid.
“You’re considering it,” she said. “I can see it in your eyes.”
“I ain’t considering nothing.” No, I’d been thinking about the manticore, and how dangerous everyone said that was, making a deal with her, and yet I’d managed to get away with my life intact.
I didn’t want to hand the world over to the Mists, but maybe I could still hand over Naji, and save the world myself.
The door to my room slammed open, and there stood Naji with his sword and pirate’s coat. He gave me a look so full of dismay it was like he could read my mind.
I jumped to my feet, heat rushing to my face.
Echo stiffened. She sniffed at the air, jerked her head around the room.
“I can smell him,” she hissed. She didn’t sound like nothing human. “He’s here.”
“No, he ain’t,” I said.
“Don’t lie to me!” She slid forward, growling and spitting. “I told you, Ananna, I’ve found him before and I’ll find him again.”
Naji streaked forward and sliced her clean in half with the sword. She dispersed into mist. The room was so cold my teeth chattered.
Naji sat on the edge of my bed, his eyes staring at the space where she had been. I wrapped my arms around my chest. Slowly, the cold leaked out, the warmth came back in.
“You were going to betray me,” Naji said.
“What!” My face got hot. “No, I wasn’t.” But the lie turned to ash in my mouth and I didn’t try to deny it again.
Naji looked up at me. I expected anger but his expression was flat and empty. “Yes, you were. I could… tell.”
“You could tell? How the hell could you tell?” I shook all over, staring at him. And then his voice was in my head.
Because we’re connected.
I shrieked and jumped back, slamming my hands over my ears. Naji’s mouth hadn’t moved. He hadn’t spoken. But I heard him.
I’d been hearing him, on and off, speaking when he wasn’t speaking. I’d caught glimpses of his feelings. Not all the time. Just little enough that I thought it was my imagination, that I thought I was feeling my own emotions.
“Do you understand what happened during the sea battle?” Naji asked.
“I got shot through the belly.” My voice trembled.
“Before that.”
I closed my eyes. My arms tingled where I’d sliced open my skin.
“Yes,” Naji said. “You gave me your blood. I tried to tell you…” His voice dropped, and I remembered. He was dying on the deck, choking out that my giving him blood would connect us. And I hadn’t understood, because we were already connected, because of the curse, because I loved him.
“When you gave me your blood,” he said. “That magic… it drew us together. It’s ack’mora, not northern magic like the curse.” He took a deep breath. “You wanting to betray me is like me wanting to betray myself. I had to fight… to fight from–”
“Stop,” I said, because I could hear the rest of that sentence echoing in my head. Fight from handing myself over to the Mists.
Naji leaned up against the bedpost like he was trying to catch his breath. He peered up at me through the tangle of his hair. I could hardly breathe: I kept thinking about the moments I felt warmth from him when he was with me. Happiness. Comfort.
“When you shared your blood, it created intimacy,” he said. “And the magic joined us together. It was like sex–”
His voice trailed off.
I glared at him, humiliated. “Wouldn’t know,” I snapped. “I figured the boon out before we let it get that far, remember?”
He stared at me, his mouth open like he wanted to say something. I could feel his thoughts, his emotions, crowding at the gates of my mind, but now that I knew what they were I shoved them away. I didn’t need him inside my head.
“That wasn’t my fault,” Naji said.
I turned away from him, still flush with embarrassment. He was right, of course, but I wasn’t gonna let him know that.
“Maybe you should leave.” I glanced at him over my shoulder. “I’m not sure I want to talk to you right now
.”
“The boon wasn’t my fault,” Naji said. “But you were going to turn me over to the Otherworld. That was your choice.” He looked sad, even though his words slashed at me like they were full of rage. I wasn’t going to let him know I felt guilty about that, either.
“I was only thinking about it,” I said. “She raises some good points.”
His mouth hardened.
“I asked you to leave and you’re still here.”
He stood up. Grabbed his sword. But he didn’t leave. He came and stood real close to me. The exact opposite of leaving.
“They lie,” he said. “When they try to strike deals. You’ll be in thrall to them, if you help them, if you–”
“I ain’t gonna help ’em!” I shoved him away. “Get out of my room. And stay out of my head!”
“I’m not in your head,” he said. “You’ve blocked me.”
“Seems fair, given how I can’t get in your head.”
Naji gave me a long look. “Yes, you can,” he said. I knew he was right. “You’ve been doing it all this time. You just don’t seem to want to control it.”
Anger flashed white-hot behind my eyes. “Don’t tell me what I don’t want to do!” I swung my fist at him, sloppy with rage. He caught my arm, and at his touch I saw a flash of that night after the manticore’s feast, only it wasn’t me looking up Naji, it was Naji looking down at me, his thoughts flushed with desire and… and affection.
I yanked away from him.
“There,” he said. “You went inside my head.”
I turned away from him, sucking in deep breaths. That desire, that affection – that wasn’t from the boon. I felt it. It was from him.
“I know about the starstones,” Naji said. “I know about your conversation with Jeric yi Niru.” A pause. “I know you… worried.”
“Oh, shut up!” I jerked away from him. “I did not.”
Naji watched me.
“I have to try,” he went on. “With the starstones. I’ve been communicating with the Order. I have to try–”
“Of course you have to try,” I said. “It’s the only way I’m going to get rid of you.”
He recoiled, and something flashed across his face that I couldn’t identify. I didn’t bother peeking to see what it was; it might have been hurt. But then his eyes narrowed and he said, “You’re never going to get rid of me. Not as long as your blood flows through my veins.”
I scowled. “Get out of my room.”
“I’m only warning you.”
“Get out!”
“If you try to call down the Otherworld,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “I’ll know. Don’t ever forget that.”
“For Kaol’s sake, Naji, I ain’t gonna call down the Otherworld. I just want you to leave me alone!” I whipped my knife at him without thinking. He slid away in a blink. The knife thrummed into the wall.
“That was unnecessary,” he said.
“Get out.”
He gave me one last hard cold look before melting into the shadows. I leaned up against the wall and dug the heels of my hand into my eyes, trying to stop the tears from flowing over my cheeks, and failing. I concentrated, trying to see if I could feel him hiding in the room, if I could slip into his thoughts the way I did earlier. But there was only emptiness, a blank space where he’d been.
I let out a deep breath, and I realized I was shaking.
The sun room was filled with the orange and pink light of the sunset by the time I dragged myself up there for dinner. The windows were all open-air and gauzed with fine white netting. Flowering vines traced along the walls, growing out of carved stone pots. There was a table in the center of the room stacked high with food: charred meats and fresh fruits and crusty fried breads, along with more bottles of that sweet sugar wine.
Marjani and Naji were waiting for me when we walked in, but there was no Queen Saida yet. Naji sat up straight in his chair and didn’t look at me. Marjani seemed distracted.
I sat down at the table and poured a glass of wine.
“You shouldn’t start yet,” Naji said. I glared at him.
“This isn’t a formal feast,” Marjani said. “It’s dinner. She can have a glass of wine if she wants.”
Naji gave her one of his looks, but she didn’t notice, just kept staring at the door. I drank my wine down, poured another glass.
We hadn’t been waiting long when a pair of guards marched into the room, and then another pair, and then Queen Saida, fluttering behind them like a flower. Her attendants weren’t anywhere to be seen, but I guess she couldn’t ditch her guards that easily. She smiled at each of us in turn and then sat down at the head of the table and plucked a mango slice off a nearby platter.
“Eat,” she said cheerfully. “The cooks have been slaving away since this morning, I’m sure. I’d hate to tell them their efforts were wasted.”
Didn’t have to tell me twice. I scooped up a big pile of carrot salad and a lamb chop and took to eating. It wasn’t quite like carrot salad in the Empire – they used some different sort of spice I didn’t recognize – but it was still delicious.
For the first part of dinner, Queen Saida asked me and Naji a bunch of polite questions about our “journey”, like we’d been onboard some passenger liner and not a pirate ship. She asked about the manticores like they were Empire nobility. When I told her about the Isle of the Sky, she sat there with her pretty head leaning to the side, her eyes on me the whole time I was speaking. I was halfway through talking about drying out the caribou meat when I realized I’d just spilled half my life story to this beautiful woman.
I took a big bite of lamb to shut myself up.
“And you, Naji of the Jadorr’a,” said Queen Saida. “How did you come to know so much about… what was it called, caribou? Caribou preservation?”
Naji took a drink of wine. “I had a different life before I joined the Order.”
“Of course.” Another polite smile. I frowned. She was just so easy to trust.
I snuck a glance at Marjani. She’d stuck a lamb chop on her plate and pulled some of the meat away from the bone, but I could tell she hadn’t eaten hardly any of it. She kept her eyes on Queen Saida the whole time, following the movement of the queen’s graceful hand as she lifted spoonfuls of cream pudding to her mouth.
I wondered if Marjani was ever gonna ask about the starstones. Probably not. Probably Queen Saida didn’t even have them, Marjani just wanted to come see her now that she had a ship and a crew that’d listen to her–
Queen Saida set her spoon down beside her plate.
“Alright,” she said. “What is it?”
“What is what?” asked Marjani, though she flinched.
Queen Saida smiled. “You’ve been coy all day, dearest. You want to ask me something.”
Naji took a long drink of wine. His face had turned stony.
“I don’t know how you do that,” Marjani said. Her expression was serious and concerned, but her eyes lit up like she thought it was funny.
“Intuition. Now spill it.”
Marjani sighed. She tugged on the end of her locks.
“We need to borrow your starstones,” I blurted out. “Naji has to touch them.”
Naji let out a long sigh.
“My starstones?” Queen Saida laughed. “Is that why you sailed halfway across the world to see me?” She rested her chin in her hand and gazed at Marjani, who looked down at her lap like she was embarrassed.
“Don’t be absurd,” she said.
“It’s for Naji,” I said. “He has a curse.”
“Are starstones a cure for curses?” Queen Saida turned to Naji. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about magic.”
“They are for this one,” Naji said.
“I thought starstones were dangerous, though? The court wizard never let me near them.”
“Your court wizard was correct.” Naji glowered, his scar turning him menacing.
“Oh.” Queen Saida frowned, and Kaol help me
if it didn’t make her look even lovelier than when she smiled. “Well, I would be glad to help you, but I’m afraid I don’t have them anymore.”
The room got so quiet and so still I swore I could hear everybody’s hearts beating.
“You don’t have them?” Marjani said. “But they’re priceless–”
“They were stolen!” Queen Saida threw up her hands. “By members of your lot, in fact. Pirates.”
“They are not my lot–”
“Oh, I was teasing, dearest.” She looked back at Naji. “I’m truly sorry. Father kept them in the armory and during the last sacking… Well, that’s always the first place pirates go.”
“How could they take them?” Naji’s voice had gone quiet and angry. “What pirate would possibly possess the knowledge–”
“Why were they in the armory?” I asked, cause I didn’t feel like listening to Naji rant about the idiocy and unworldliness of pirates.
“Because Father thought of them as weapons.” Queen Saida looked at me and I felt myself blushing under her gaze. “Not that he or anyone else could ever figure out how to use them as such. Not even the wizards would touch them without special gloves.”
“Oh yes,” said Marjani. “The gloves. I remember now… What was that lord’s name, the one who always paraded around with them…?”
Queen Saida laughed. “The Lord of Juma. That was his title, anyway. I don’t remember his proper name. But he was always showing off.” She laughed again, and Marjani glowed. If the two of them were gonna be like that the whole time, we’d never get anything done.
“What pirates stole ’em?” I asked. “Were they Confederation?”
“Confederation?” Queen Saida furrowed her brow. “I’m not certain. They were pirates.”
I frowned. “You didn’t see their colors?”
“She means the flag,” said Marjani.
Queen Saida shrugged. “I didn’t see them. I get whisked away at the slightest hint of danger – you can ask the captain of the guard.” She smiled at me. “Are you going to track them down, like in a story? I’ve heard some of the Empire stories about the starstones. You ought to be careful.”
“Naji needs those stones,” I said.
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