We all waited till everybody’s cup or bowl had been filled. Then the manticore leader lifted one paw.
“To Ananna of the Nadir,” he said. “Who saved my eldest daughter, the heir to my pride. I am indebted to you.”
Naji squirmed beside me. I remembered what he’d said to me back on the Isles of the Sky – you made a deal with a manticore? And the way he said it, too, like I’d just confessed to killing my own mother. I could just about see him remembering it himself.
Well, too late now.
The manticore leader bowed his head and lapped at his wine. Even Marjani, who knew as well as I did how rude it was, hesitated.
But I also knew poison wasn’t how a manticore killed – not poison in a glass of wine. If they wanted us dead they would have shot us full of spines or launched across their table with their mouths wide open, showing us all three rows of teeth. So I picked up my glass and drank.
It was sweet, sweeter than honey, and the taste of it filled my mouth up with flowers.
When I didn’t keel over dead, or jump up, bewitched, and start clearing away the table like a servant, the rest of the crew followed suit. Jeric yi Niru knocked it back like a shot of rum. Marjani sipped it like a lady in a palace. Naji finished his off in a trio of gulps.
“What do you think?” the manticore leader asked me.
“Delicious,” I said. And stronger than a barrel of sailor’s rotgut. The whole garden was filled with light. All the flowers were glowing. Overhead, the stars left bright trails across the black sky. I laughed, suddenly full up with mirth, the way it happens when I get drunk under good circumstances, with a boat full of friends and the ocean stretching out empty and vast before us.
“Wonderful,” the manticore leader said. He nodded his head and the music struck up, some bawdy song I recognized from whenever Papa’s crew made port. “Servant-humans!” he called out. “Bring us more ahiial!”
CHAPTER NINE
I sprawled out on my bed, music still drifting in from the garden through my open window. The manticores had proceeded back into their palace of rocks, and the rest of the crew had come crawling off the boat to flirt with the servants and drink ahiial and rum, which was when I decided to slink back to my room. My injury left me too tired to deal with a true pirates’ feast.
Every now and then laughter exploded into the nighttime, drowning out the music. Men’s laughter, women’s laughter. The ahiial left me so happy I didn’t even feel left out.
Somebody knocked on my door.
“Who is it?” But I felt a wriggle in the back of my brain, and I knew–
“Naji.”
I sat up. “Ain’t locked or nothing.”
Naji pushed the door open. He had his mask on but his hair was all tousled from the wind. He hadn’t been dancing after the feast, I remembered. Just sat on the sides and watched.
“You need to change the… the spell that was making me better?”
He shook his head and stepped inside. Came up right close to me, close enough that I could smell him: honey and medicine. He kept his eyes on me.
It was weird, and it confused me, but my heart pounded loud and fast from the way he looked at me.
Like I was Leila. The river witch. His old lover.
“Can I ask you a question?” he said.
I was too nervous to speak. I shrugged.
He took off his mask, yanking it hard away from his face. He let it drop to the floor.
“Do you remember when you told me I wasn’t ugly?”
I stared at him. I couldn’t get past the light in his eyes.
“You don’t, do you?”
“Of course I do,” I said, and my voice came out real small.
“Did you mean it?”
“That I don’t think you’re ugly?”
He nodded.
I couldn’t think straight. All I knew was my heart slamming against my chest and his eyes drinking me up like ahiial. How many times had I thought about the answer to this question? How many nights had I spent trying to figure out the exact way to tell him what I thought of him, what I thought of his face and his hair and his body?
Too many to count.
“Of course,” I said, voice hardly a whisper again. I swallowed. “I think… I think you’re beautiful.”
His face didn’t move. “I thought you don’t trust beautiful people.”
“Not beautiful like that. I mean… I don’t ever want to stop looking at you.”
The funny thing is that I couldn’t actually look at his face while I said that cause I was so embarrassed, and so I looked at his throat instead, at the little triangle of skin poking up out of his shirt. He’d taken off the pirate coat.
For a minute I wondered why the hell he was asking me this anyway.
And then he was kissing me.
I ain’t kissed many boys before, but Naji knew what he was doing better than any of ’em. He put his hands on the side of my face and pressed himself close to me and the whole time it was like he and I were the only people in the world. My hands kept crawling over his chest and shoulders, trying to memorize the lines of his body, and I was dizzy, but in a good way, the way you get when you swing through the ropes on a clear sunny day. That was what kissing Naji was like: the best day at sea, warm sunlight and cool breeze. Happiness.
Kissing Naji was happiness.
When he pulled away from me he smoothed my hair off of my forehead. I was too stunned to do anything but stare at him.
“Is this alright?” he asked.
“Uh. Yeah.” I frowned. He kissed me again, and I worked up the nerve to press my hands against his hips. He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me close, and the smell of him was everywhere, and I swear I could feel his blood pulsing through his veins. The closeness of his body was so distracting, so wonderful, that I forgot to be nervous.
He lay me down on the bed, still kissing me, and my thoughts were a jumble of confusion and excitement and desire – his desire and my desire both, like two pieces of silk braiding together. I couldn’t believe this was happening, couldn’t believe he was gazing at me like he wanted me.
“Why are you doing this?” It came out wrong, kinda accusatory. He stopped.
“You said it was alright,” he said.
Oh, now you’ve gone and messed everything up, I thought.
“It is.” I reached out, tentative, and cupped the scarred side of his face in my hand. He jerked at my touch, but didn’t pull away, and for a moment he looked as vulnerable as I felt. “I mean, I just don’t understand… why now…”
He traced the line of my profile, one finger running over my forehead and my nose and finally my lips.
“I should have done it sooner,” he said. “I should have done it on the Isles of the Sky.” And he kissed me before I could say anything more. I got lost in it, the kissing. It went on for a long time. My lips thrummed, and my body was hot and distracted.
After a while, he pulled away, just a little, and we lay in silence, looking at each other.
I touched his scar, the skin rough and slick at the same time. He flinched away. I dropped my hand.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“No,” he said. “No, I just… no one’s ever… before.”
“Oh.”
Another long silence, and then I lifted my hand and touched him again. This time he only blinked.
“I like it,” I said.
He didn’t answer. His face was so serious, like always. Except for his eyes, which were gentle right now. Almost kind.
“Why don’t you ever smile?”
“What?”
I traced a line from the unscarred skin of his brow down across the folds in his flesh to his chin. “I’ve never seen you smile.”
“You don’t want to.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
He pushed away from me. A coldness settled over me: he was going to leave.
“Wait,” I said. “I’m sorry. I just… Ain’t you happy right now?”