The new innkeep gave me the paper and the ink without too much fuss, though he said he'd charge me if I didn't bring the ink down after I finished with it. I waved him off and then bounded back upstairs. The smell of food rolling in from the kitchen, spicy and warm and rich, made my mouth water. That didn't incline me toward screwing around with Naji just cause it would annoy him. The sooner he got me his list, the sooner I got to eat.
Unfortunately, he took his time writing it out. He had this special quill that he produced from out of his robes, long and thin and the kind of black that sucks the color out of everything. I sat down on the bed while he puzzled over his list, scratching things out, shaking his head, muttering to himself.
"I'm hungry," I said.
"So am I," he said. "But this is far more important than either of our appetites at the moment." He held the list at arm's length, squinting a little in the lamplight. Then he pressed it up against the wall and wrote one more thing.
"There," he said. "That should be it."
I jumped off the bed and snatched it out of his hand and scanned over his sharp, spiny handwriting. It was all in Empire, and most of the items were plants. Rose petals, rue, dried wisteria vines. Soil-magic stuff.
"Midnight's claws," he said. "You can read."
"Of course I can read." I folded the paper down as small as it would go and slipped it into my pocket. "And why would you give me a list if you thought I couldn't read?"
"I assumed you'd hand it over to the vendors."
"Oh, that's wise," I said. "Let them give me some fountain grass when I paid for swamp yirrus. Whatever that is." I shook my head. "How'd you get your supplies before you met me, anyway?"
"Not from a night market."
I let him have the last word, cause I was so hungry I could hardly think straight. I stuck my hand on the doorknob and was halfway to turning it when he roared, "Stop!" like a troop of Empire navymen were about to come bursting through the door. I froze, all my aching muscles preparing for yet another knife fight. But Naji just slouched toward me, the heel of his hand pressed against his forehead. "Curses and darkness," he said.
"What the hell's wrong with you?"
He reached into his robe and pulled out the charm from the battle and tossed it at me. The minute it was in my hands he straightened up.
"I hope that'll stave it off," he muttered, more to the air in the room than to me.
"What are you talking about?"
"Wear that charm." He pointed at my chest. "Keep it on you at all times."
"Why?"
"It's for protection."
"I know what it's for. I'm more curious what it's protection against."
He glowered. "Probably nothing. But I… I don't like sending you out alone."
"You sent me downstairs."
"That was different. You were still in the building."
"So? You can look through walls or something? What if someone snatched me when the innkeep wasn't looking?"
"No one was going to snatch you."
"But someone's gonna snatch me at the night market?"
"Probably not."
"But you still need to give me protection?"
"Stop asking questions!" he roared. "I thought you were hungry!"
"I am hungry! I just want to know I ain't walking into a trap is all."
Naji rubbed at his forehead, his eyes closed. "You aren't walking into a trap. As long as you swear to me that you won't take off the charm, you'll be safe."
I stared at him.
He opened his eyes. "I need you to swear it."
"I don't swear," I finally said. "But I'll promise." I looped the charm around my neck. That feeling of safety drizzled over me. I thought the whole thing was off, like I'd just been handed a key to something I shoulda understood, but I was so hungry I didn't much care. I was out the door and into the kitchen before Naji could say another word.
The night market in the pleasure district was a lot bigger than the one where Naji had almost killed me. It stretched from the row of brothels all the way down to the docks, and I could make out the outline of ship sails in the distance, blocking out the sky's bright stars. Vendors crowded onto the street like weeds, shouting at me to come buy their charms and enchantments as I walked past. Mostly love potions and the like. I ignored them.
It took me less time than I expected to gather up all the things on Naji's list. Those plants I recognized – the powdered Echinacea, the rose petals, the hyacinth root – I picked up first, going from vendor to vendor so none of them would ask after what spells I planned on casting.
That left the weird stuff. Like an uman flower. Never heard of that before, and as it turned out, it was extremely rare and extremely expensive, and only grew in a particular swamp in the southern part of Qilar. I had to ask five separate vendors after it, and I eventually got sent to an old man tucked away behind a stand selling vials of snake blood. He was all shriveled up like a walnut, and he peered up at me through the folds of wrinkled-up skin around his eyes. "What you needing a weed like this for?" he asked.
"Magic."
"Don't sass me, girl." But he rummaged underneath his table for a few seconds and produced a plant that reminded me of a body wrapped in burial shrouds. It wasn't like any flower I ever saw, what with its twisted wooden stem, all deformed and grotesque, and its long, fluttering white petals.
"Be careful with her," the old man said. "You can call down the spirits, if you don't know what you're doing."
I thanked him, so as to seem polite, and then tucked the uman flower away in my bag so I wouldn't have to look at it again.
There was one rarity on the list that I did recognize: le'ki, which Mama had used sometimes in the tracking spells that helped us sift out the best merchant ships. I figured I could find that at the stands set up on the docks, and I was right. At the first one I went to, the vendor had a half-inch left, dried out and powdered like Naji had requested. Naji only wanted a quarterinch, but I bought all the vendor had, cause it reminded me of home, that briny sea scent and opalescent pink sheen, like the inside of a shell.