Abruptly, Naji reached up and yanked his mask over his face. He didn't falter or stop walking, but the suddenness of his movement set me on guard.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. "We're almost there."
"That don't answer my question."
"You're not in danger."
"Why'd you put your mask on?"
His eyes darkened and he turned away from me and started walking more quickly, his strides long and brisk. I sighed with irritation and then lagged a little behind him, ambling along, taking my time. He glared at me over his shoulder.
"What?" I asked. "You said I wasn't in any danger."
A peal of laughter broke out from the shadows of one of those narrow Lisirran alleys that run like glasscracks between the buildings. A man spilled out of the alley, an old Empire sailor from the looks of the rags he wore. He leaned up against the building and guffawed and then said, "Now this is something I never thought I'd see. A little girl hassling an assassin." He laughed again, snorting like a camel, and then took a long drink from a rum bottle.
"I ain't a little girl," I said. Naji just glanced at him and kept walking, although I noticed he stuck his hand on the hilt of his sword. I followed after Naji, though I wasn't too worried – it was just some drunk. What else do you expect down here?
"Why you wearing the mask?" The man tottered forward. "You know you ain't in the desert."
Naji didn't answer, just stared straight ahead. I found myself hanging back a little, watching the whole thing with interest. You live your whole life with pirates, you start smelling when a fight's brewing.
"You don't got an answer for me?" the man called out, stumbling after Naji. "Or are them stories true, that they cut out your tongues?" And then the man grabbed Naji by the upper arm. In one clean movement, Naji had the man laid out on the ground, his foot on the man's chest, the point of his sword at the man's throat. I was pretty impressed in spite of myself.
"No," Naji said, "They don't."
By this point a crowd had gathered, drunks and sailors and sleepy-looking whores. A few of 'em tittered nervously at that, and Naji looked up at 'em, his dark eyes glittering. They looked away.
Then the drunk rolled out from under Naji's foot, grabbed him by the ankle, and yanked hard. Naji stumbled a little but managed to catch himself at the last moment. Even though it was a good sight more elegant than most men could do, I was still surprised by that reminder that he really was just a man.
And then I felt something cold against the side of my neck.
"Oh, hell," I said, dropping my dresses to the ground.
"I'll cut your little friend's throat," the man said.
"How do you like that?" His hands were shaking and his breath stank, and I stood extremely still, my heart pounding. The giddiness of watching a fight got washed out by the fear of actually being in one. I wasn't aware of the gathered crowd no more – the only things I knew were Naji glowering at me and the coldness of the knife and the drunk pressing his body up against me
Naji took a step forward. The knife dug deeper into my skin.
"Don't move!" I shrieked. "Please, you'll get me killed!" I tried to make my voice sound as hysterical as I could so the drunk wouldn't notice my hand slipping into the sash of my dress.
"Aw, you ain't gonna help her?" the man said. "Hoping to find someone prettier?"
I jabbed my knife into his side. The man howled and fell away from me and I raced over to Naji.
"Told you I don't need your help."
Naji glared at me. Then he stalked over to the drunk, who was curled up on the street, one hand pressed against his stomach, redness seeping through his fingers. The crowd was whispering again. Naji reached down and dipped his fingers in the man's blood. The man let out a low, frightened moan.
Naji started chanting.
The crowd lurched away, their whispers turning into a terrified babble. Naji's eyes gleamed blue. The man gasped and keened and then his head dropped back and the entire street was full of silence.
Naji gathered up my dresses and my knife and handed them to me. "Come," he said, yanking on my shoulder, pulling me away from the scene.
The crowd let us go.
"What did you do to that man?" I asked. I tried to pull away from his grip but he wouldn't let go. "Did you suck the soul of his body? Why didn't you just kill him normal?"
"I didn't kill him at all," Naji snapped. "He'll wake up in an hour."
We walked the rest of the way in silence. My neck was still bleeding a little from where the knife had pricked it, and I kept wiping at it and looking up at Naji and thinking about the drunk's blood staining his fingers.
When we arrived at the inn, its main room was mostly empty save for a couple of bedraggled-looking whores and a man I pegged as another pirate by the way he was dressed up in aristocrat's clothes. When Naji walked in, all three of them got to their feet and filed out without saying a word. And the innkeeper got the shakes when Naji told him he wanted a room. He kept glancing over at me, eyes all wide with fear. I wondered if it was cause he'd heard about the fight or cause the innkeep was just terrified of assassins generally.
"And… and the lady?" he said, stammering. "Will she have her own room?" I wanted to laugh, him calling me a lady when I had blood on my arms and my dress.
"No," Naji said. "She'll stay with me."
The innkeeper went pale, like Naji had just produced the ghost of his dead mother or something. He tried to hand over the key to the room and dropped it on the counter instead. I didn't want to laugh anymore. It occurred to me that if this was how people were gonna act every time me and Naji came into a place – well, I could see that getting to be a problem. Maybe Tarrin would meet some pretty Saelini girl and the Hariris would just forget the whole thing and I could slip off when Naji was in one of his trances. Not that I thought any of that would happen.
Naji finished the transaction and glided over to the stairs. I went up to the counter, leaned over it, and said to the innkeep, "Don't worry, you'll see me again."