"Doing something for Marjani," I said real quick, which was what she'd told me to say if any of the other officers caught me practicing. The quartermaster wrinkled up his brow, but he nodded and sauntered off.
"You shouldn't have said that to Ataño," I told Naji. "You made yourself an enemy just now. You see his eyes?"
"I'm not afraid of children."
I frowned and started working real hard on the next equation so Naji wouldn't see my face. The ink blotted across the sail.
"You're pressing too hard," Naji said.
"I ain't a child," I muttered.
"What?"
"Ataño's the same age as me." I didn't mean to tell him but it came out anyway. "And I ain't a child."
Naji stared at me. I stared back as long as I could but Naji was always gonna win a staring contest. I dropped my gaze back down to the equations. They looked like scribbles, like nonsense.
"You're the same age as him?" he asked.
"Uh, yeah. Seventeen."
This long heavy pause.
"Hmm," Naji said. "I put him at thirteen."
"Oh, shut up. You did not."
"Well, I'd put him at thirteen by his actions. Thirteen or seventeen, it doesn't matter. He can't hurt me." He hesitated. "I won't let him hurt you–"
"Oh please." I tossed the quill and sail scrap down to the deck. "You think I'm scared of Ataño? You really think–"
Then I saw that sparkle in Naji's eye and knew he was laughing at me.
"See?" he said. "Now you know how it feels."
I glared at him for a few seconds. He looked so pleased with himself, but he also looked kind of happy, and that was enough for me to turn my attention back to my equations. I was happy, too, about finally learning navigation, and the possibility that I could become an officer on a ship, which was the first step to having my own boat. And there hadn't been any whispers about the Hariri clan, either. I was starting to see my future again.
As long as I didn't think about the Isles of the Sky. As long as I didn't think on how Naji's curse was an impossible one. Cause I knew that just cause I could see my future again, that didn't mean it was going to happen.
After a while, Naji started coming with me to my lessons with Marjani. He didn't ask – of course he didn't ask – but he did show up at the captain's quarters one evening after dinner looking sheepish. Marjani had me perched over the maps with a divider, tracking a course from Lisirra to Arkuz, the capital city of Jokja, where she told me she had been born. She'd asked me my birthplace but I just said Lisirra, cause the stormy black-sand island where I'd been born wasn't even on the map. And then Naji was banging on the door, asking to come in.
"I hope you don't mind if I join you," he said. "But I find the crew…" He hesitated. Marjani looked like she wanted to laugh.
"A pain in the ass?" I offered.
"Tiresome," Naji said. He tugged at his hair, kind of pulling it over his scar, and I frowned, wondering what the crew had said to him.
"I have to go with Ananna on this one," Marjani said. "But you can sit in here if you want."
Naji settled down in this gilded chair in the corner and watched me and Marjani work without saying nothing. It took me awhile to chart the course from Lisirra to Arkuz – I was using some calculations Marjani had given me, from an old logbook. I felt like I'd taken way too long to get it done, but when I finished Marjani looked sorta impressed.
"Nice work," she said. "You're a quick learner." She smiled. "You would've done well at university."
That made me real happy, cause nobody had ever said nothing like that to me before.
"Yes," Naji said. "She would have."
Marjani glanced at him. "Where did you attend?"
"In Lisirra. The Temple School."
"Oh." She flipped through the logbook and handed it back to me. "Lisirra to Qilar," she told me. "Go."
I sighed like I was annoyed but really I thought the drills were fun. Marjani turned to Naji. "The Lisirra Temple School," she said. "That's a school of sorcery, isn't it?"
Naji nodded and said, "I didn't study ack'mora there, if that's what you're asking."
"I'll admit I was curious." Marjani smiled. "I've no ability for sorcery, myself. I studied mathematics and history. At the university in Arkuz."
"I've been there. It's lovely."
"The city or the university?"
"Both."
It was like they were speaking a whole other language. Universities and history and sorcery. I wondered what I would've studied if I'd got to go to university. Piracy's probably not an option.
"I've been to Arkuz," I said. "We sailed up the river into the jungle to trade with some folks there."
"Really?" said Marjani. "I always hated the jungle. You never know when it's going to rain." She leaned over the map. "Oh, good work," she said.
"I've got it?" I'd been so wrapped in listening in on Marjani and Naji's conversation that my hands must've kept on working while my brain lagged behind.
"You've got it," Marjani said.
After that, Naji came to my lessons about every day, I guess cause he and Marjani had bonded over both going to university. He didn't have a lot to offer in the way of navigation, but he and Marjani would tell me about other stuff they'd learned, like all these weird stories about the different emperors over the years, or how to calculate the volume of an empty container without having to fill it with water first. It was fun.
Then Marjani got me to start helping her with the true navigation, the navigation that was taking us around the sirens and three weeks out of our way and, as far as me and Naji were concerned, delaying the trip to the Isles of the Sky. One morning she called me down from the rigging and handed me her logbook and a quill and the sextant.
"I need measurements," she said. "You know how it works. Get going."
The crew stared at me while I stood there fiddling with the sextant. Marjani trotted off to speak with the captain up at the helm, and I felt real conspicuous with everybody's eyes on me. But then I lifted up the sextant and peered through it up at the sky and the whole boat fell away.