I stalked out of the garden and into the palace and right up to his room and pounded on his door until he answered.
“Ananna,” he said. “Always nice to see you in person.”
“Stay out of my head!” I shouted. I launched myself at him, aiming both of my hands for his chest, figuring I could at least topple him over. He grabbed me by the waist and swung me off to the side.
“You’re such an ass,” I told him.
He laughed. “Why? Because you couldn’t knock me down?”
“Cause you tossed me around like a rag doll. Good thing I didn’t have my pistol on me.”
“Yes,” he said. “Good for us all.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“I did want to tell you,” he said, his voice serious and eyes bright, which made me want to punch him, “that I do appreciate your concern for me–”
“What concern?” Even though I knew he knew.
“Thinking you could set sail on your own and find the starstones for me – I’m sure there’d be a great sea battle involved, lots of cannon fire and swords and whatnot.”
“Isn’t that what you want?”
“Don’t be absurd. You couldn’t even imagine the headache it would give me–” He stopped. “Actually maybe you could now. You haven’t been in sufficient danger for us to find out.”
“That ain’t what I meant. You want the starstones. So you can touch ’em and kill yourself and not have to deal with me no more.”
Naji blinked at me. “No,” he said. “That isn’t what I want at all.”
I could tell he meant it, his sincerity hanging over me like a storm cloud, but whatever it was he did want I couldn’t see.
Off in the corner of the room, I heard this soft thumping noise, like a rug being beaten. And when I tore my gaze away from Naji I actually screamed, Kaol help me, cause standing next to the open window was the biggest damn bird I’d ever seen.
It let out a big screeching caw.
“The hell is it?” I shouted, going for my knife. Naji didn’t move.
“An albatross.”
“A what?” But I knew it was a seabird, one of the big white ones Qilari sailors think signal luck – good or bad, I can never remember.
“There’s something tied to its foot.” Naji leaned forward and snatched something from the side of the bird’s leg. It was a little mother-of-pearl tube with a glass stopper. Naji pulled out the stopper and then drew out a second tube, this one made of paper. The bird cawed again and flapped its wings, stirring up the hot humid air.
“You think it’s for the queen?” I asked.
“The Jokja don’t communicate via albatross,” Naji said.
The bird cawed again. Then it pecked at Naji’s hand, the one holding the paper. Naji frowned.
Another caw.
“It wants you to read it,” I said.
The bird lifted up its wings and hopped on the bed.
“See!”
Naji gave me a dark look, but he unrolled the paper, smoothing it out along his thigh. The writing on it was curved and ornamental, decorated with drawings of seashells and ocean waves. I leaned over his shoulder to read.
We hope this message reaches you with ease, Naji of the Jadorr’a. I am the Scrivener of the Court of the Waves and am writing to you at the behest of the King of Salt and Foam. The King would like to speak to you personally as soon as possible. He extends an invitation for you to visit the Court of the Waves. Regards, Jolin I.
“What?” I said. “The Court of the Waves? The hell is that?”
“I don’t know.” Naji slid the map out of the mother-of-pearl tube and unfurled it. The bird cawed – the sound of it made me jump – and then flapped its wings and lifted up into the air and out the window. I watched the bird fly away for a moment before turning back to the map. It showed the western stretch of the Green Glass Sea between the Island of the Sun, where the manticores live, and the Empire continent. There was a place marked in the middle of the water.
The mark was labeled: “We shall post sentries to help you find your way.”
“This is very strange,” Naji said.
“I don’t trust it.”
Naji frowned. “I don’t either. I shall ask the Order about it. Perhaps that will give us some insight.”
I didn’t think the Order had much of value to say on anything, given its track record, but I knew Naji was gonna do it regardless. Still, I studied the map, tracing my finger across its width. I thought about staring at the maps onboard the Nadir, navigating our path to the Island of the Sun–
“This mark is where we fought the Hariri clan.” A coldness gripped my blood, and the scar on my stomach ached.
“How can you possibly tell?”
“Cause I’m the damned navigator. And I know–”
“Ananna,” Naji said gently. “The Hariris are dead. I killed them.”
I pushed the map away. My hands were shaking. “We shoulda checked that bird,” I said. “I bet it was metal, like those machines they’ve got…” And the more I thought about it the more convinced I was that the feathers had glittered in the sun, and it had left a streak of smoke as it flew off into the air.
Naji set the map and note on the bed and pressed his hand against my shoulder. I barely felt it. “You know I’m not going to put you in danger,” he whispered.
But this wasn’t danger; it was fear. It was the memory of a bullet tearing into my gut. It was Mistress Hariri laughing in the moments before I almost died – before I would’ve died, if Naji hadn’t been around. If he hadn’t decided I was worth saving.
When we finally made sail, a week later, it wasn’t to chase after starstones or to return to the place where I’d nearly died. It was to visit the Aja Shore, down on the southern tip of Jokja. Queen Saida’s idea.
She and Marjani sailed out on this lovely schooner, the wood painted orange and marigold and pink, the sails dyed the color of grass. It looked like a floating garden. Queen Saida, always gracious, offered me and Naji a spot on board, but I wasn’t skipping town without the Nadir.
“Good,” Marjani said when I told her, though she seemed distracted. We were ambling around the perimeter of the palace, next to the fence that kept the jungle from pushing in on the royal lands. “I really didn’t want to leave her here.” She crossed her arms over her chest, and all the bangles on her wrists tinkled like bits of glass. “You can captain her, if you’d like.”
“What?” I stopped. “She’s your boat!”
“We captured her with your manticore,” Marjani said. “She’s as much yours as she is mine.”
“I can’t captain a boat.”
Marjani glanced at me over the top of one bare shoulder. “Of course you can,” she said. “If I can do it, you can do it.”
“You’re smarter than me.”
“Smarter doesn’t necessarily make a good captain.” She shrugged. “Clever does. And you’re plenty clever.”
I didn’t know what to say. All my life I’d wanted to captain a ship, but lately it hadn’t seemed that important to me anymore. I was distracted by that bird and its map and its weird note, afraid the Hariris weren’t really dead. And I was afraid Naji would be, if we ever found the starstones.
“Besides,” said Marjani. “It’s just along the coast. A day and a half’s journey. Think of it as practice.”
Practice. Ha! Well, maybe I’d take off with her boat and her crew, see how she liked it then. Not that I knew where I’d go.
I ain’t no mutineer. But I toyed with the thought for a few seconds anyway, the way I toyed with handing Naji over to the Mists. And I felt just as guilty about it afterward.
“We’re leaving at dawn tomorrow morning,” she said. “Saida really does want you to come. Naji too. She likes talking to him.”
Naji and Saida had swapped magic stories at dinner, spells gone wrong and so on – she said she didn’t know much about magic if you asked, though that was a right lie from hearing the way she talked. Naji stuck to discussing earth-magic. I wondered what Queen Saida would think if he told her about me spilling my blood on the deck of the Nadir so we could win the fight against the Hariri clan. Probably wrinkle her nose and reach for a piece of flatbread.