And then in all that confusion, all those glints of metal, all that smoke, all that splintered wood, I knew where Captain and Mistress Hariri were.
I didn’t see them.
I just knew.
They were on the bow of the ship, cutting their way through Nadir crewman.
I jumped to my feet. Naji grabbed my arm, turned his glowing eyes toward me.
“I know where they are,” I said.
“I know.” He blinked and I felt a surge of worry. “Ananna, I can protect you.”
“You don’t have to protect me!” And I wrenched my arm free, despite the strength of his magic – the strength my blood had given him. I leapt off the helm and followed the trail of the shadows, listening to the beating of those two hearts that wanted me dead.
“Girl-human!” The manticore galloped up behind me. I glanced at her over my shoulder. Her entire face was covered in blood. Her teeth shone like knives.
“You smell like Jadorr’a,” she said. “But I will not eat you.” She dipped her shoulder down. With Naji’s magic inside me, I swung myself onto her back.
“To the bow!” I wound my fingers in her mane and pressed myself low against her back. We pressed on together, the shadows sliding over us like water.
I still couldn’t see the Hariris, but they were there, I knew it, I could feel the proximity–
Off in the distance, a pop.
Warmth spread across my belly. Pain. Warmth and pain. I looked down.
Blood.
The smell of smoke and metal.
Someone was laughing. A woman. Shrill and mean. I recognized it–
“Girl-human! You are body-hurt!”
“She shot me,” I said, cause I couldn’t believe it.
“Yes, Ananna of the Tanarau,” said Captain Hariri. He lifted up his pistol, pointed it at me. The barrel loomed huge and dark. “She shot you.”
Lightning arced across the boat.
The Hariris both crumpled like rag dolls.
I blinked.
“Lightning doesn’t move sideways,” I said. The world was spinning round and round. The pain in my stomach was dazzling.
I wasn’t gonna scream. I wasn’t gonna cry.
And then I heard a voice like roses and darkness, and I smelled mint and medicine, and strong sure hands wrapped round my chest, and I was tumbling, tumbling, tumbling into the warm soft sea, but I was safe. That I knew.
I was safe. I was protected.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I woke up in a room made of light.
I blinked and rubbed at my eyes and slowly things started moving into focus: a big open window lined with gauzy fluttering curtains, the kind you use to keep bugs out. A table with a water pitcher. A bed, which I was in.
Otherwise, the room was empty.
When I tried to sit up pain exploded through the lower part of my stomach, and I fell back, gasping. I put my hands on my stomach. I wasn’t wearing my Empire robe no more, but some kind of thin dress, and through the fabric I could feel the thick weight of a bandage.
I remembered the pop of Mistress Hariri’s pistol, the swell of pain. Had the Hariris captured me? No, they were dead. Lightning had cut them down… No, that wasn’t right, either–
“Hello?” I nudged myself up on one shoulder. That didn’t hurt too bad. “Anybody around?”
No answer but the wind rustling the curtains. It smelled of the desert.
I lay back down. Stared up at the ceiling. It looked kinda like the clay they used in Lisirran houses, only it was red-orange, like a sunset.
Footsteps bounced off the walls.
“Hello?” I tried to sit up again, grinding my teeth against the pain.
“Ananna? What are you…? No, lie back down.” Naji darted up next to the bed and pressed me gently against the soft downy pillows. “You shouldn’t move yet.”
He wasn’t covering his face, and in the room’s bright sunlight the twists of his scars made him look concerned.
“Where am I?”
“The Island of the Sun.” Naji straightened up and walked over to the table, covered with scraps of parchment with brownish-red writing and vials of dried plants. He set something on it – another vial. “You woke up earlier than I was expecting. That’s good.”
“Did I die?” I asked. I couldn’t remember nothing about what happened after the battle. How far had we been from the island when the Hariris struck? Not far: Jeric yi Niru had shot down seabirds…
“No.” Naji sprinkled some of the plants onto one of the scraps of parchment and folded it into a package, the ends tucked inside themselves. “You came close, very close, but… I pulled you back.”
He slipped the paper package underneath my pillows.
“With magic?” I hesitated. “Blood magic?”
“Yes.” He sat down on the bed beside me, leaned up against the wall. “Medicine wouldn’t have saved you.”
“Oh.” I paused. “Did it… did it hurt you bad? When I… when she shot me?”
Naji turned to me. “Yes,” he said, but his eyes were soft, like he hadn’t minded. “And I worked to save you, and that made the pain go away.”
“I’m sorry.”
He looked at me long and hard. “Don’t apologize.”
Then he brushed his hand over my forehead, pushing the hair out of my eyes. His touch startled me, the cool dry skin of his palm.
“Rest,” he said. “I’ll be back to check on you.”
“Wait,” I said. He stopped. “How long we been here?”
“We sailed in yesterday evening.” His face hardened. “It seems your manticore is the daughter of the island’s pride leader, so our plan for a quick getaway would be distressingly rude. They want to give us a feast when you’re better.”
My expression must have told him something, cause he said, “They swore they will not force us to engage in cannibalism. Still, most of the crew have opted to sleep on the boat.”
I kinda smiled at that. No wonder the manticore had been so demanding of me. Wasn’t a manticore thing, it was a royalty thing. Well.
“When you sleep,” Naji said, “the dreaming will help you heal faster.”
“Oh.” I frowned. “I didn’t think blood magic could save people–”
“Blood magic can do whatever I will it to do.”
I didn’t say anything to that, and Naji gave me a nod. I expected him to leave, but instead he walked over next to the window and pushed the curtains aside and looked out. I watched him for a little while, as the curtains fluttered around him like butterflies. The wind blowing in was hot and dry and smelled of clay. It made me sleepy. Or maybe it was the spells he cast, the little packet of dried herbs under my pillow.
It didn’t take long before my eyes refused to stay open, and I curled up on top of the blankets and the dreams came in like the wind.
They were dark and strange, those dreams, and I was back in that black-glass desert, only this time I wasn’t scared. Nobody was searching for me. I just wandered across the desert, the glass smooth and strangely cool beneath my bare feet. I wore that same dress I’d had on when Naji and me crossed the desert together after I saved him, on our way to the canyon that was supposed to hold a cure to his curse. Sometimes I thought I saw creatures made out of ink and shadow. I’d turn to look at ’em and they’d dart out of my line of sight, but they left dark streaky trails in their wake, and when I touched them my fingers came back sticky with blood.
When I woke up again it was dark outside and my stomach didn’t hurt no more. Torches flickered pale gold against the walls. Naji was gone.
This time I was able to sit up, but it exhausted me, and I leaned against the wall and took deep gulping breaths while my heart pounded against my chest. The bedside table was still littered with Naji’s parchments. I picked one up. It was in his language, and I didn’t recognize the alphabet, couldn’t match the letters to the sounds.
And yet I could hear his voice inside my head, gruff and throaty, chanting the song that had saved me. I couldn’t read the parchments, but I could understand it.