That gave me pause, the way she knew right away, and for a moment I just stared at her. She didn’t look like Marjani much anymore, with her pretty dresses and the makeup around her eyes, but I realized it was just that she didn’t look like the Marjani I knew, and that she had been this Marjani long before she met me. I wondered if she thought the same thing about me. I hadn’t been in men’s clothes much since we came to Jokja, either.
“Yeah,” I said, “I want to leave.”
She gave me a quick smile.
“Do you?”
The smile disappeared, and there was this long pause as she looked out the windows. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I miss it, you know, but when I was sailing I missed all this.”
I knew she really meant that she had missed Queen Saida, but I didn’t say nothing.
“Where do you want to go?” she asked.
I took a deep breath. “We got coordinates to someplace out in the ocean. Naji – he’s got some feeling about them, though–”
“You don’t agree,” Marjani said. “You don’t want to go.”
“Yeah, but… the thing is, I looked at the coordinates and they’re… well, they’re about the same place where we had that battle with the Hariris.”
She stared at me. “Violence,” she said. “It’s a cure for his curse.”
“It’s the middle of the ocean!” I said. “More likely it’s some Hariri trick.”
Marjani tilted her head at me. “Do you want me to go so you can stay here?”
“No! I ain’t no coward. I just… it’s your ship, you’re the captain–”
Marjani’s face changed. Just for a second, when I called her captain. I got the feeling she missed it all more than she let on.
“Besides,” I said, “if we do gotta fight the Hariris, I need to have you around. Don’t think I could lead the ship into battle the way you could.”
She laughed. I could tell it was cause she was flattered. “Well,” she said, “how can I say no to that? Not that I think you’re going to have to fight the Hariris.”
“We won’t be out long,” I said.
“You say that.” She shook her head. “I’ll go. I do miss it terribly. Saida may not be too pleased to hear it, but…” Her voice trailed off and she toyed with the end of one of her locks.
“Tell the queen I’ll bring you back safe,” I said. “Pirate’s honor.”
Marjani looked at me and laughed, but I knew I had my captain back.
We made sail three days later.
Queen Saida’d had her navy repair the boat after our trip to the Aja Shore, but Naji was still too weak to do magic, so we had to sail the old-fashioned way, with no guarantee of favorable winds. In truth it was nice, cause it gave the crew something to do besides sitting around on deck drinking sugar-wine and playing dice. And I didn’t have to deal with Jeric begging for more information about the starstones – Marjani kept him busy down in the armory, tending to the pistols and ammunitions and making sure everything stayed dry.
A storm blew through a week in, threatening to knock us off course. I crawled up in the rigging myself, to help keep the sails straight. Ain’t nothing like it, swinging from rope to rope while the water soaks you to the bone. It ain’t pleasant, but it was something I’d missed.
The whole time Naji was up near the helm, a rope knotted round his arm so he wouldn’t get tossed overboard, and whenever I glanced at him he’d be staring straight at me, his eyes flickering in and out, his face twisted up in pain. I’d locked him out of my head for the time being, but seeing that expression hurt me in a way that had nothing to do with my body.
That storm was the only one we faced, though, and for the rest of the trip the seas were smooth as glass, the winds brisk and warm. Two weeks passed. I checked the navigation every day and compared it to the map the seabird had left us. But it was hard as hell, cause the map just led us straight to the middle of the open ocean.
“You sure this is correct?” Marjani asked me one afternoon when she was up at the helm. I had the maps spread out on the deck beside her, pinned down with rum bottles and sea rocks.
“Sure as anything,” I said.
Marjani frowned. She’d been in good spirits when we started out, but now that we were out on the open sea she was constantly gazing off to the east. Off to Jokja.
“Does Naji know anything?” she asked.
I shrugged.
“Go ask him.”
“He probably ain’t well–”
“Go ask him.” She gripped the wheel a little more tightly. “I trust him more than I trust that map of yours.”
I couldn’t much blame her for that, seeing as how the map had been given to us by a bird. I left her to her steering and made my way down to the captain’s quarters, where Naji was laid up recovering from my swinging around the rigging. I knocked but didn’t bother to wait for an answer, and when I walked in he was stretched on the bed, his hands folded over his chest.
“Marjani wants to know if we’re going the right way,” I said.
He turned his head to look at me, his hair falling across his face.
“Are you navigating?”
“Course I am.”
“Then of course we’re going the right direction.”
I scowled at him, though inside my whole heart lit up like a bonfire. “Yeah, but we ain’t sailing to land. Some tiny spot in the middle of the ocean… that ain’t easy to get to. You know she’s talking about using magic.”
“I know what she’s talking about.” Naji sat up and patted the bed beside him. I stared at him for a few seconds.
“I want you to sit beside me,” he said.
“What for?”
He laughed, one of those short sharp Naji laughs. “We aren’t lost,” he said. “I’ve gone to Kajjil, to follow our path on the underside of the world. We’re quite fine.”
I blinked at him, confused.
“My trances,” he said.
“Oh.”
“It’s how we learn things in the Order. Come, sit.”
I sighed and sank down on the mattress beside him. He put his hand on my knee. I glanced at him and he flicked his head away real fast. The air crackled with something like magic.
He kissed me. I was starting to get used to his kisses, but this one went on longer than usual, and his hands trailed down over my shoulders, and tugged on my shirt, tugging it up over my shoulders.
“Oh,” I said, pulling away from him, flustered and embarrassed, sure he would take one look at me and call the whole thing off.
“Are you on shift?” he asked. “You said you had taken the mornings–”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “I was helping Marjani out some, but it wasn’t my official time–”
He kissed me again.
We sank down to the bed. I wrapped my arms over my stomach, afraid now would be the moment that he left. But he didn’t leave. He slipped out of his own clothes, and his tattoos were flat and dark against his skin, tracing all over his chest and down to the tops of his thighs. The scar from the spell fallout was red and new-looking, not like the scar on his face.
He climbed into the bed with me. I couldn’t believe it was going to happen, but when I let myself peek at his thoughts I felt only this hot red flush, and I knew he wanted me.
He kissed me all over, on my neck and my jawline and my shoulders. He touched me in that certain way and I felt him everywhere, the movement of his body and the warmth of his breath. It hadn’t felt like this the other times I’d been with someone. I hardly felt anything before; now, all I had was feeling.
Naji buried his head in my shoulder, his breath hot on my skin, and dug his fingers into the blankets. Afterwards, he kissed me long and deep and rolled over onto his back.
My chest filled with this warm honeyed feeling. And I knew it wasn’t gonna go away. I could feel his thoughts bumping up against mine, telling me it was for real, it had always been for real.
I kissed along his chest and asked him what we were looking for. I figured he’d know from his trances.
“Sentries,” he said.