“You’ll eat what’s inside of ’em,” I said.
The largest of the machines groaned and split open. Captain and Mistress Hariri sat beneath the shield, both of them dressed for battle and armed with a trio of pistols each.
“We’re here for Ananna of the Tanarau,” said Mistress Hariri, her voice like death. “She murdered our son. By the rules of the Confederation, you must hand her over.”
The men lined up along the edge of the boat, pistols pointed at the Hariris. Half of them were Confederation, and they knew better than to fire.
“We aren’t flying Confederation colors,” Marjani said. “We don’t have to adhere to Confederation rules.”
“Where’s the captain?” asked Captain Hariri. “Captain Namir yi Nadir? Where is he?”
Marjani didn’t answer. She just pulled out her pistol and cocked it back.
“Here.” Naji stepped forward.
Captain Hariri looked at him for a long time.
“You’re not a pirate,” he said. “You’re a–”
Then Naji spoke in his language, and light erupted out from the lines of his tattoos and the splatters of his blood on the ship’s wood, and it arced across the ship and slammed into Captain Hariri’s machine. The machine shot across the deck.
Both of the Hariris jumped out of the way, nimble as cats, and everything started again.
The rest of the machines roared open. Hariri crewmen poured out. That knocked our own crew out of their stun, and they launched forward in melee, pistols blasting and swords ringing.
“Ongraygeeomryn!” I shouted, pulling out my sword. “Now!”
“Ananna, no!”
But I wasn’t listening to Naji. We flew off the stern deck, the manticore trumpeting loud and perfect. She landed square on the chest of some poor Hariri clansman and his blood spilled across the deck. I caught sight of Captain Hariri in the blur of pistol-smoke and fighting and got off one shot and missed. He disappeared behind one of the machines.
“Manticore, this way!”
She lifted her head and hissed. Nobody was coming anywhere close to us, which probably made Naji happy – if it weren’t for the occasional bullet whizzing past my head, anyway. But I needed to get to Captain Hariri. It was the only way to end this.
“Come on!” I shouted. “Time to eat later!”
She leapt to her feet and then galloped across the deck. I swung my sword out against a Hariri crewman and tried to find Captain Hariri in all the confusion.
“The machines!” I shouted, pointing with my sword. The manticore hissed again, but she slunk up to them, her ears pressed flat against her head. I felt like I was in the chiming forest again, all that sunlight bouncing off the spindly metal legs.
We crept slowly, cautiously.
A shot fired off and zipped past my head. I crouched down and buried my face in the manticore’s mane while she reared around and sent a pair of spines zinging through the air. I heard a man scream.
The manticore skulked forward, the muscles in her back and shoulders tensed and hard. She sniffed at the ground.
For a moment, the smoke cleared, and there was Captain Hariri, reloading his pistol.
I yanked out my second pistol, took aim–
A blast of Naji’s magic echoed across the boat, bright blue and smelling of spider mint. Everything tilted. My head spun. The manticore snarled and leapt out of the way of the falling machines; Captain Hariri disappeared, knocked out by the force of Naji’s blow.
Magic showered over the side of the boat, staining the water that icy Naji-blue. The Hariri smoked and glowed – she had moved closer to us, her cannons firing.
Another blast of magic.
This one knocked me off the manticore, and I slid across the deck, my body smearing with salt water and blood. All over the ship, men were fighting best they could in the daze of magic, swords swinging sloppy and wide. I caught sight of Jeric yi Niru drawing his blade across the stomach of a Hariri crewman. When the crewman fell, Jeric dragged me to my feet.
“First mate,” he said. “Your captain is dying.”
“What?” I took him to mean Marjani, but when I turned to the stern deck she was still spinning the wheel one-handed, her pistol cocked and ready in the other. Not dying at all.
“No,” he said. “The fake captain.”
“Naji!” I pulled away from him and raced across the deck. I could hear the manticore behind me, the soft snapping squelch of her jaws on some crewman’s neck. Men’s screams. I didn’t look back.
Naji was sprawled out on the bow, his arms soaked with blood, his face drawn, his skin almost blue. I knelt beside him, and he turned toward me. Pressed one hand against my face. His blood was hot and sticky against my skin.
“I can’t do it anymore,” he said, his voice like broken glass. “I’m sorry.”
“Did someone hurt you?” I felt around for a wound. “Where are you hurt? I can fix it–”
“Ananna, you don’t understand… I need blood…”
The magic. Nobody had cut him or shot him, it was the magic.
“Mine,” I said. “You can have mine.”
He shook his head, but I didn’t listen to him earlier and I wasn’t listening to him now. I drew the tip of my sword down my arm. The sting of it took my breath away.
“Here,” I said, and there were tears in my eyes and I hoped he’d think it was from the cannon smoke. “What should I do with it?”
“No…” He closed his eyes. “I don’t want… Not from you… It’ll connect us… It’s invasive…”
“What are you talking about? We’re connected already! We need to kill Captain Hariri. His wife too. I can’t find ’em in all this! Can you do it?”
He didn’t answer.
“Can you track ’em? Naji! You have to pull ’em out! I’ll kill ’em, alright? But it’s the only way they’ll stop.”
The boat lurched. Marjani screamed orders from the helm, but my head was spinning from the blood seeping out of my arm. “Naji!” I said.
He took hold of my bleeding arm. I braced myself against the deck as the boat tilted farther. Men were scrambling up in the riggings, trying to get her righted.
“Hurry!”
He ran his hand up my arm, blood oozing between his fingers. I ground my teeth together so I wouldn’t scream at the pain of it. He began to chant, and his words rolled over me and then I didn’t feel the pain no more.
His voice strengthened. He gripped tight on my wrist. My blood rolled in rivers down the length of my arm. He sat up. The shadows underneath the machines started to wriggle and squirm, and men were screaming and moaning.
He leaned close to me, and put his mouth on my ear. “I won’t make you kill them,” he whispered. “I know it hurts you.”
It stunned me, that sudden burst of kindness, that suggestion that he might care for me, might care for my well-being.
The fact that he knew it hurt me, when I hurt people.
“Thank you,” I murmured.
He stood up. The glow in his eyes brightened, and for a second I felt this weird tingle in the arm I’d cut for him, this hum of magic rippling across my skin. And then the tingle was everywhere, sparking up the air, the way it gets before a lightning storm in the desert. Naji was close to me, his body and his mind both, and I felt a surge of warmth from him. A feeling of things being right. And then I got the sense of all these hearts beating, every heart on that boat, the blood and the life of every crewman who hadn’t gotten tossed down to the deep.
I wondered if this was how Naji felt all the time.
He spoke. His voice echoed inside my head, that secret rose-petal language, like I was hearing his thoughts and his words both. A connection.
The shadows billowed up like smoke, thick enough to rip the Hariri machines into shreds, into long glinting metal ribbons. Men flung themselves against the side of the boat. The Hariri fired off another volley of cannons.