The Pirate's Wish (14 page)

“With a crown?” I could hardly breathe. “A skull wearing a crown?”

“Looks like it, yeah.”

“The Hariris,” I said.

Naji pulled me close to him. My heart jolted in my chest like lightning was running through my body. “Go down below,” he said. “And stay there. Take the manticore with you.”

“What?” Marjani looked from him back to me. “Why? They’ll see us flying pirate colors and let us–”

“They’re after me.”

Marjani’s face went dark.

“I’m sorry, I shoulda told you–”

“Why in hell is the Hariri clan after you?”

“Ananna,” Naji said. “Please. Go.”

“No,” Marjani said. “Don’t you dare move from that spot. What do the Hariris want with you?”

My voice shook when I spoke. “I was supposed to marry Tarrin – Captain Hariri’s son – and I didn’t want to… and then I killed him…”

This time, Marjani’s face turned ashen.

“You killed a captain’s son?”

I nodded.

“For Kaol’s sake, Ananna, why?”

“He was gonna kill me–”

She shook her head. “No. Explain this to me later.” She clanged the attack bells, deep and ominous and so loud they hurt my ears.

“Arm the cannons!” Marjani shouted. “Prepare for battle!”

“Please, Ananna,” said Naji. “Please hide.”

“No!” I jerked around to face him. “This is my fault. I ain’t gonna go cower in the brig while you and Marjani and everybody fights for me.”

Naji’s eyes looked sad, and for a half-second I thought maybe he was worried about
me
and not about the pain of the curse.

I pulled away from him and raced across the deck toward the manticore, who had stood up, her tail curling and uncurling.

“This noise, girl-human,” she said. “Are we close to land?”

“Fraid not.” I stood face to face with her. “You see that speck of light out there…” I pointed to the horizon. “It’s a ship full of men you can eat.”

Her eyes lit up.

“In exchange for a meal,” I said, “may I ride you? Into battle?”

“With the other ship?”

I nodded. “They’re after me, and I bet they try to board.” I took a deep breath. “I need you to protect me.”

She scowled. “Do I look like the Jadorr’a?”

“Please, Ongraygeeomryn.” I know I mangled her name cause it came out sounding like a blood-cough and not like bells at all, but she still smiled without showing her teeth. “It would do me great honor to ride you into battle.”

She dipped her shoulder, and I climbed on. Her wings rose up around me like a shield.

“Where should I go?” she asked.

“The helm, the helm!” I pointed with my sword. Men were stopping their work to stare at us, but I ignored them as the manticore bounded across the deck, leaping up beside Marjani.

Naji didn’t say nothing at all.

“Bring the ship around starboard!” Marjani shouted. The men scrambled up in the rigging, moving the sails. She grabbed the wheel and yanked it hand over hand. The manticore trumpeted and dug her claws into the wood as the ship tilted and turned.

Naji’s eyes began to glow.

“I wouldn’t–” Marjani said.

“You are not me.” Naji crouched beside the manticore, his eyes fixed on the
Hariri
as she loomed larger and larger.

“Do they have another assas… another Jadorr’a on board?” I asked him.

“No.” He pushed his coat sleeves up to his elbow and drew the knife over the swirl of one of his tattoos. Blood welled up in thick shining drops. He dropped it over the deck, and when it struck the wood it began to glow pale, pale blue.

The manticore licked her lips. I yanked on her mane. “You’ll be eating soon enough.”

Naji ignored both of us.

At the helm, Marjani screamed, “Keep working! Get those cannons lined up! Ral, I don’t want to see you looking over here. The
Hariri
’s your concern now! Move! Go!”

My heart pounded up near my throat. Naji knelt down at the splatter of his blood and began to chant.

The
Hariri
got closer and closer.

I threaded my fingers through the manticore’s fur.

The wind was warm and the air was clean and Naji’s voice hummed with my heartbeat.

And then the
Hariri
fired her cannons.

The
Nadir
jolted, sending me and the manticore skittering backward. Naji slammed forward on the deck but didn’t stop chanting. Marjani brought the ship around, side by side with the
Hariri
.

“Fire!” she screamed.

A chunk of the
Hariri
’s side blew out across the water. Smoke curled up in the air.

And then I saw it.

The machines the Hariris had out in the desert, the ones that glinted metal and glass: they had them on the boat, too. That glint of light flashing off the surface of the sea – it’d been their machines.

“What in hell?” asked Marjani.

“Oh no,” I said, my body shaking.

Naji glanced up, his eyes bright and empty-looking.

One of the machines unfolded itself from the deck of the
Hariri
, looking like some golden insect. With a long, whining shriek, it leapt up into the air, metal wings beating into a blur, heading straight for the deck of the
Nadir
. The men screamed and scattered.

Naji said something in his language.

The machine froze in mid-flight, its wings stilled. For a second, it hung there, shining like a piece of jewelry.

Then it crashed down into the sea, water sloshing in a great wave over the side of the boat.

Silence and smoke.

“Keep firing!” Marjani shouted.

The men listened to her. Cannon fire erupted across the side of the
Hariri
.

More machines lifted up off her deck. They were like wasps, like spiders, like stinging scorpions. Only all of them could fly, and all of them were big enough to hold a pair of grown men.

“What are those things?” Marjani yelled.

“Metallurgy.” Naji’s voice shook.

The machines buzzed through the air. Ten of them. Fifteen.

“We can’t turn the cannons up,” I said.

“Fire!” Marjani shouted out to the crew. “Use your pistols!”

Shot blasts erupted all over the deck. The machines moved forward.

Naji chanted. One of the machines sputtered and crashed into the water. Another. Another. But his voice was fading, turning scratchy and old-sounding. They were closer, closer – one of them began to spiral out, and it spun and spun and then slammed into the side of the
Nadir
. The whole boat tilted.

Naji collapsed across the deck.

I leapt off the manticore and knelt beside him. His breath came out raspy and weak. I yanked the mask away from his face and he sucked in air. His skin was pale, his brow lined with sweat. But he sat up.

“I couldn’t breathe,” he said softly.

“Don’t wear your mask.” And I flung it aside, just as the machines landed across our deck.

“Get on the manticore.” He shoved me away and stood up, his movements shaking but strong. I clambered onto the manticore’s back.

“I can’t eat these creatures,” she said to me, and for a minute I thought she sounded scared.

“You’ll eat what’s inside of ’em,” I said.

The largest of the machines groaned and split open. Captain and Mistress Hariri sat beneath the shield, both of them dressed for battle and armed with a trio of pistols each.

“We’re here for Ananna of the
Tanarau
,” said Mistress Hariri, her voice like death. “She murdered our son. By the rules of the Confederation, you must hand her over.”

The men lined up along the edge of the boat, pistols pointed at the Hariris. Half of them were Confederation, and they knew better than to fire.

“We aren’t flying Confederation colors,” Marjani said. “We don’t have to adhere to Confederation rules.”

“Where’s the captain?” asked Captain Hariri. “Captain Namir yi Nadir? Where is he?”

Marjani didn’t answer. She just pulled out her pistol and cocked it back.

“Here.” Naji stepped forward.

Captain Hariri looked at him for a long time.

“You’re not a pirate,” he said. “You’re a–”

Then Naji spoke in his language, and light erupted out from the lines of his tattoos and the splatters of his blood on the ship’s wood, and it arced across the ship and slammed into Captain Hariri’s machine. The machine shot across the deck.

Both of the Hariris jumped out of the way, nimble as cats, and everything started again.

The rest of the machines roared open.
Hariri
crewmen poured out. That knocked our own crew out of their stun, and they launched forward in melee, pistols blasting and swords ringing.

“Ongraygeeomryn!” I shouted, pulling out my sword. “Now!”

“Ananna, no!”

But I wasn’t listening to Naji. We flew off the stern deck, the manticore trumpeting loud and perfect. She landed square on the chest of some poor Hariri clansman and his blood spilled across the deck. I caught sight of Captain Hariri in the blur of pistol-smoke and fighting and got off one shot and missed. He disappeared behind one of the machines.

“Manticore, this way!”

She lifted her head and hissed. Nobody was coming anywhere close to us, which probably made Naji happy – if it weren’t for the occasional bullet whizzing past my head, anyway. But I needed to get to Captain Hariri. It was the only way to end this.

“Come on!” I shouted. “Time to eat later!”

She leapt to her feet and then galloped across the deck. I swung my sword out against a
Hariri
crewman and tried to find Captain Hariri in all the confusion.

“The machines!” I shouted, pointing with my sword. The manticore hissed again, but she slunk up to them, her ears pressed flat against her head. I felt like I was in the chiming forest again, all that sunlight bouncing off the spindly metal legs.

We crept slowly, cautiously.

A shot fired off and zipped past my head. I crouched down and buried my face in the manticore’s mane while she reared around and sent a pair of spines zinging through the air. I heard a man scream.

The manticore skulked forward, the muscles in her back and shoulders tensed and hard. She sniffed at the ground.

For a moment, the smoke cleared, and there was Captain Hariri, reloading his pistol.

I yanked out my second pistol, took aim–

A blast of Naji’s magic echoed across the boat, bright blue and smelling of spider mint. Everything tilted. My head spun. The manticore snarled and leapt out of the way of the falling machines; Captain Hariri disappeared, knocked out by the force of Naji’s blow.

Magic showered over the side of the boat, staining the water that icy Naji-blue. The
Hariri
smoked and glowed – she had moved closer to us, her cannons firing.

Another blast of magic.

This one knocked me off the manticore, and I slid across the deck, my body smearing with salt water and blood. All over the ship, men were fighting best they could in the daze of magic, swords swinging sloppy and wide. I caught sight of Jeric yi Niru drawing his blade across the stomach of a
Hariri
crewman. When the crewman fell, Jeric dragged me to my feet.

“First mate,” he said. “Your captain is dying.”

“What?” I took him to mean Marjani, but when I turned to the stern deck she was still spinning the wheel one-handed, her pistol cocked and ready in the other. Not dying at all.

“No,” he said. “The fake captain.”

“Naji!” I pulled away from him and raced across the deck. I could hear the manticore behind me, the soft snapping squelch of her jaws on some crewman’s neck. Men’s screams. I didn’t look back.

Naji was sprawled out on the bow, his arms soaked with blood, his face drawn, his skin almost blue. I knelt beside him, and he turned toward me. Pressed one hand against my face. His blood was hot and sticky against my skin.

“I can’t do it anymore,” he said, his voice like broken glass. “I’m sorry.”

“Did someone hurt you?” I felt around for a wound. “Where are you hurt? I can fix it–”

“Ananna, you don’t understand… I need blood…”

The magic. Nobody had cut him or shot him, it was the magic.

“Mine,” I said. “You can have mine.”

He shook his head, but I didn’t listen to him earlier and I wasn’t listening to him now. I drew the tip of my sword down my arm. The sting of it took my breath away.