“This isn’t for you,” the first assassin said.
He picked up Naji’s hand and cut a line down his arm. A thin trace of blood appeared on Naji’s pale skin. I got another rush of thoughts that didn’t belong to me – black-glass deserts and cold cold winds. The assassin glanced at me.
“Don’t worry, little girl. This wound will heal.” Another smile. He dipped his finger in Naji’s blood and then licked the blood away, neat like a cat. He closed his eyes.
“Oh,” he said. “He failed to mention that.”
The Qilari assassins stirred. “Mention what?” one of them asked.
“He blood-bonded.” The first assassin looked over at me, still cowering against the wall like a little ship-rat. “With this one, it seems.”
The Qilari assassins exchanged glances.
“Ah,” one of ’em said. “That explains her unnatural devotion.”
“My devotion ain’t unnatural!” I shouted, in spite of myself. “And besides, I’d be helping him even if we hadn’t shared bl–”
The desertland assassin held up one hand and my voice left my throat and I was filled up with silence. “There’s no need to explain yourself. I know about the curse and the foolishness with your kiss.”
Something heavy landed in my chest. I didn’t say nothing.
“And I know this foolishness was one of the tasks.” The assassin sighed. “He certainly dawdled long enough.”
“What?” I stepped forward, whole body tensed. “What do you mean, dawdled?”
The assassin looked at me. “Ah, the joys of dealing with the uneducated–”
“I know what the fuck the word means. I don’t understand why you–”
“I commanded him to break the curse,” the assassin said. “I thought he did well, managing the first task so easily.” He sneered at me. I sneered back. “Unfortunately, the cause of the first task resulted in him taking too long with the others.”
The sneer disappeared from my face, and the assassin laughed. The cause of the first task? My kiss? I understood what the assassin was implying, but I didn’t believe him. Naji didn’t love me back. This assassin was making fun of me. I was certain of it.
I lifted up my knife and lunged at him.
A blur of shadows and the two Qilaris had me pinned to the floor and the desertland assassin had my own knife at my throat.
“You knew that wouldn’t work,” he said.
“Get off me!”
He lifted the knife up off my skin by a fraction. “You need to step outside now,” he said. “My associates and I have work to do.”
“Are you gonna kill him?” I asked.
“A true Jadorr’a welcomes death.”
“I ain’t a Jadorr’a.”
“Yes, but Naji is.” He pressed the flat side of the knife against the left side of my face – the same as Naji’s scar. The metal was cold, colder than ice. “Although I’m not going to kill him. He still has work to do.” He dropped his knife. “Now leave.”
The assassin grabbed my arm and yanked me back, hard enough that my feet lifted off the ground. He put his mouth against my ear. “You shouldn’t care for him so.”
“Let me go, you Empire ass.”
The other two drew their daggers. I stopped struggling.
“Love is a wound,” the assassin said. “Neither life nor death.”
I wanted to tell him to shut up, but I figured I better hold my tongue. He smiled at me, showing all his teeth.
“Whatever you’re thinking, girl,” he said. “Speak. I won’t hold it against you.”
“Love is a wound?” I said. “Sounds like something a killer would say.”
“So you must understand my metaphor well.”
His words slammed into me, and for a moment I faltered, thinking about Tarrin bleeding in the desert. Then I kicked him, hard, in the shin. He laughed and dropped my arm, and the two Qilaris lifted me off my feet and dragged me, kicking and struggling, out of the garden house. I slammed my feet into one of them, right in the hip, before the door swung shut and I landed face-first in the soft grass.
“Are you alright?” The voice was speaking Jokjani. I spit out dirt and looked up. One of the palace soldiers, his eyes wide with fear. “They wouldn’t let me go inside. I tried–”
“Ain’t your fault.”
The soldier pulled me to my feet. I smelled mint.
A few moments passed, and the smell grew stronger, drowning out the rainy scent of the garden. Bright blue light seeped out of the house’s windows. The soldier positioned himself between me and the house, gripping his dagger tight, and I wanted to tell him he didn’t have to do that for me, but I was too tired to try and get the words right. Plus it reminded me of Naji, and I was afraid if I spoke then I would cry.
A chill crept into the air.
I stepped away from the garden house and sat down beneath a banana tree. I kept seeing Naji stretched out on the bed, unmoving. I kept hearing his faint, slow heartbeat. And then the scent of mint flooded through the garden. It plunged me backward in time, till I was facing down Naji that first night, when he could’ve killed me easier than a bug, but he didn’t.
Don’t cry, I told myself. You’re a pirate. Don’t cry.
But I did anyway. The palace guard came and patted me on the shoulder like I was noblewoman crying over a suitor. I snarled at him until he went away.
The assassins stayed in the garden house for a long time, long enough that the afternoon rains came and went, that the sun sank into the horizon and turned the sky orange, that the soldiers changed places, the first one scuttling off into the palace and leaving another man, older, more grizzled-looking, in his place.
I didn’t move from my spot beneath the banana tree.
The assassins came out of the garden house one at a time, their robes swirling around their feet, the armor gleaming in the thick orange light. They ignored the soldier and walked up to me.
“We need your help,” the desertlands assassin said.
I glared at him. “Need my help how?”
“You don’t seem to understand much of anything, do you?” he asked. “Perhaps if I inserted more profanity–”
“Just answer my damn question! What do you need my help for?” My heart was pounding. “Is Naji dead?”
“Your blood-bond.” The assassin looked like he’d just swallowed a scorpion. “It seems we have use of it.”
“What?”
He grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me up close. “It’s not a difficult concept to grasp. We were unable to pull Naji out. We may be able to do so with your blood. It seems your bond was helping keep him alive.”
I stared at him.
“I’m not explaining all this to you, girl. I saw he had enough of you in his blood when I cut him – I was testing for the curse but got that nasty little surprise.”
“Not so nasty,” I snapped, “if it means you’ll get to save him.”
The assassin scowled at me and dragged me back into the garden house. I let him. I didn’t think it would work, but I let him.
“Stand here,” he said, lining me up at the foot of Naji’s bed. The floor was covered in rust-colored markings, and the air smelled like blood. One of the Qilari assassins bolted the door shut and they both stood behind me. I could feel their eyes on the back of my neck.
The desertlands assassin pulled out his red-stained knife. “Hold out your arm,” he said.
I was shaking. I didn’t want to let him cut me, but I didn’t want Naji to die, neither.
“I know you want him to wake up,” the assassin said, sneering a little. “I saw it when I cut him.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
“Would you let yourself die to save him?”
“Ain’t nobody wants to die,” I said, and I knew it wasn’t a proper answer.
The assassin moved up close to me in a blink. Another blink and he’d stretched my arm out over the bed. I thought maybe I should struggle.
Another blink and he cut me.
The cut was long and deep and this time Naji’s thoughts flooded over mine so deeply I stopped being in the garden house and started being in the black-glass desert. It was empty except for the wind. I shivered in my thin Jokja dress and called out Naji’s name. My voice echoed out across the emptiness. I took a hesitant step forward, and my knee slammed into something invisible, and invisible hands grabbed my arms and pulled me back.