I stopped doing as much work in the rigging after that, since Marjani had me taking measurements for her every day. Seems that charting a new course on the water's a bit risky, as you're creating a new path in addition to the usual work of checking where you are in the water. But we stayed on course, still moving up toward the north and to the east, and Marjani said it was partially cause I helped her. I didn't necessarily believe that, mind, though I suppose I had no reason not to.
One afternoon I crawled up on deck to make the usual round of measurements and noticed immediately that something was off. There were a lot of voices shouting and yelling, but it wasn't about rigging or wind or none of the usual complaints. At first I thought we must be under attack, that some tracker from the Mists – or worse, the Hariris – had followed me and Naji all the way to sea. Immediately my heart started pounding and I went for the knife at my hip. Which I still hadn't replaced. Stupid. I needed to ask Naji for his knife or nick it off him while he slept.
But then I realized I didn't hear the clank of sword against sword, or the pop of a pistol. And nobody'd sent out the call to arms, neither. It was just yelling. And jeering.
And my heart started pounding all over again.
I raced across the deck to where Ataño and a couple of his cronies were crowded around the railing. Naji was there, too, staring at them stone-faced. Ataño said something I couldn't make out, on account of the wind blowing in off the waves and beating through the sails, but he pushed up the skin of the left side of his face until it snarled the way Naji's face did sometimes and his cronies laughed like it was the funniest thing they'd seen in a year.
Me, I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach.
"Fuck off!" I screamed. All three of 'em turned toward me and I took off running. Half the crew was up in the rigging or clustered over on the other side of the ship, not participating but not doing nothing to stop it neither.
And then Ataño was flat on his back, Naji crouched on his chest with his sword at Ataño's throat.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
Naji made this hissing sound through his teeth and pressed his sword up under Ataño's chin. A trickle of blood dripped onto the deck, glistening in the sunlight. Ataño whimpered, his eyes clenched shut.
"Look at me," Naji said in a voice like an ice storm.
Ataño opened his eyes.
"This is the last time you will ever look at my face. If you see me coming, look the other way. Because if you look at me again, or speak to me again, I'll make sure your face comes out worse than mine."
Nobody on deck was moving. Even the wind had stopped. In the silence, all you could hear was Ataño's pitiful little moans.
"Do you understand?"
"Y… Yes," Ataño said.
Naji pulled his sword away. Ataño scrambled backward, his head twisted over to the side, looking everywhere but at Naji. His cronies stumbled after him.
Naji wiped the blade of his sword on his robe.
And like that, the spell broke. A couple of the bigger crewman bounded across the deck and grabbed Naji by the arms, pulling him into a lock, though I could see that Naji didn't have no intention of fighting back.
I could see that if Naji had wanted to fight back, both of those crewman would've been dead.
And anybody else he wanted, too.
When he'd attacked Ataño, he'd covered close to five feet so fast I hadn't seen him move. He hadn't even moved that fast during the fight in the Lisirran pleasure district – this time, I hadn't seen him go for his sword, or even noticed the twitch in the arm that meant he was thinking about it. One second he'd been standing there like a victim, the next he could've slit Ataño's throat before anybody knew what was happening.
The two crewmen dragged Naji down to the brig, and all I could think about was that night in the desert, and how he hadn't done what he just did to Ataño – to me.
The brig smelled like rotten fish and piss and the air was thick with mold. Saltwater dripped off the ceiling and down my back as I made my way over the dank floor. I had Naji's desert-mask tucked into the pocket of my coat.
He was curled up in the corner of his cell, sitting with his chin on his knees. His eyes flicked over to me when I came in but he didn't say nothing.
I stared at him for a minute, his hair all tangled up from the sea wind, the lanterns illuminating the lines of his scar. Looking at it I got this phantom pain in the left side of my face.
"They take your knife off you?" I asked him.
He shook his head.
"Can I see it? I'll give it back."
Naji stared at me.
"C'mon, I ain't gonna do nothing bad."
He reached into his cloak and then there was a thwap and the knife wedged into the wood of the ship a few inches from my head. I was real proud of myself cause I didn't even blink, though I did see him go for it this time – something told me it was cause he wanted it that way. I yanked the knife out of the wall and walked up to the lock on the bars. Shoved the knife into the keyhole and wiggled it around like Papa'd taught me. When the lock clicked I snapped it open and stepped into the cell with Naji.
"I brought your desert mask," I said, pulling it out of my pocket and dangling it in front of me. Naji didn't move. I started thinking this might've been a bad idea.
But then he took the mask away from me and straightened it out on his knees.
"You sure it won't look suspicious?" he asked, his voice full up with sarcasm, and I looked down at my feet, shamed.
"I'm sorry." My voice kinda cracked. "I didn't think – on Papa's ship they would never–"
"Forget it." Naji pulled the mask across his face, hiding his scar. "Of course you're correct, the young men on your father's ship never once jeered at a disfigurement. Upstanding citizens the whole of them, I'm sure."
I didn't know what to say. My face got real hot, and Naji kept glaring at me.