The Pirate's Wish (24 page)

“Ananna!”

It was Naji. He stepped out of the shadow of the mast, clutching a sword and a knife, his eyes glowing.

“I have to protect you,” he said.

I didn’t say anything.

Marjani glanced at him. “Oh, good, you’re here. We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

Naji frowned at her, and then put his hand on my arm. His skin was warm through the fabric of my shirt. “Please,” he said to me. “It’s not your fight.”

“It’s my boat!” I said. “Marjani said so. The
Nadir
’s as much mine as she is hers. I ain’t gonna let some Confederation scummies steal off with her.”

The skin crinkled around Naji’s eyes. He pulled out his sword.

“Hold steady!” Marjani shouted, leaning against the helm. We were close to the Confederation ship, close enough that they had to have spotted us–

They had. Their cannons were rotating.

“Fire!” Marjani screamed, and the whole boat rocked backward as the cannons fired, adding more smoke to the thick air. I braced myself against Naji. The Confederation ship shuddered, but we’d managed to knock half their cannons off the line of sight.

The men cheered. Marjani didn’t; she just set her jaw straight and hard. “We haven’t won yet.”

I jumped down to the deck, figuring they’d need as much help in the reloading as possible. I ignored Naji following me as I worked on one of the cannons, the gunpowder making my eyes water.

The Confederation ship fired on us. I skittered backward, limbs flailing. Naji caught me even though I knew I’d slid past him in the explosion – his lightning-quick assassin dance again. He looked relieved.

I pushed up to my feet.

A wind blew in from the open sea, sweet and clean, and for a few quick seconds it cleared away the smoke.

I saw the other ship’s colors.

A blue field. A gray skeleton, dancing the dance of the dead.

The
Tanarau
.

Mama. Papa.

“Stop!” I screamed. “Stop firing!” I was half-talking to the crew and half-talking to the
Tanarau
, even though I knew it was madness to think they could hear me across the water. “Stop! It’s me! It’s
me
!”

“What in the darkest of nights are you doing?” Naji grabbed at me but I wrenched free. I raced up to the flagpole and yanked on the rope. Our colors dropped.

“What in the holy hell!” Marjani leapt over the helm. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“We have to surrender!” I shouted.

“What?”

I didn’t answer, just pulled hard on the rope and caught the colors in my arms. One of the crewmen was on me with his sword, and I swung around and caught him, blade to blade, before he could cut me.

“I know that ship!” I shouted, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to fight. The sound of our swords rang out across the deck. I tossed the colors aside, lunged at him. More cannon fire from the
Tanarau
, and the boat lifted up and slammed back down. I managed to stay on my feet.

Then Jeric yi Niru stepped in, nimble as a dancer, wedging himself between me and the crewman so that the crewman hit his sword instead of mine.

“Go on, first mate,” he called out over his shoulder. “Hoist up the surrender flag.”

Where the hell is Naji? I thought, and then I saw – Marjani’d gotten a couple of the bigger fellows to hold him down. And she was coming after me herself.

“It’s my parents!” I screamed.

She froze in place. “Are you sure?”

“Course I’m sure. I sailed under those colors for close to two decades.” I fumbled around on the deck for a scrap of sail. Yellow-white, but it would do. “Once we get them to stop firing I can go over and have them let us be.”

“And how do you know that will work?” Her voice was quiet and cold, but she’d dropped her sword to her side.

“How’d you know it’d be safe for you to come back to Jokja?”

Her jaw moved up and down like she was trying out responses. Nothing came out. She gave me a curt nod, and I tied the scrap of sail to the flag rope and hoisted it up. Jeric yi Niru had knocked the crewman out and nobody else tried to stop me. The
Tanarau
stopped firing on us once the sail was halfway up, the way I figured she would. Papa always heeds calls to surrender.

Naji shrugged away from his captors.

“Let me do the parley,” I said to Marjani.

“You bet your ass I will.”

“No,” said Naji. “If they harbor ill will because of the Hariri affair–”

“They won’t.” I was already readying the rowboat. I had my sword and my pistol and my heart was beating faster than it did before any battle. I called over Jeric yi Niru.

“Drop me down,” I told him. I know it’s crazy, but I trusted him more in that moment than I did anyone else, on account of him helping me call surrender.

“Aye aye,” he said, eyes glinting like he was making fun of me.

“Wait!” Naji flashed across the deck and reappeared beside me in the boat. I didn’t have time to protest before Jeric yi Niru cut the line and we crashed into the water.

I rowed us over to the
Tanarau
. The closer we got the slower I rowed. What if Naji was right? What if they were still sore about me running off on my wedding day? What if they pledged some sort of allegiance to the Hariris, and this was all a Hariri trap after all?

“You’re right to worry,” Naji said, staring straight ahead, looking grim.

“Shut up!” I said. “It’s my family. They ain’t gonna hurt me.”

“You don’t know that,” Naji said, and he tapped his finger to my forehead. “Can you see what I’m thinking right now?”

“I don’t got to. I know you think this is a bad idea.” We were almost to the
Tanarau
. I pulled the oars in and let the waves knock us up against her side. A few seconds later, the ropes dropped down.

Two
Tanarau
men hauled us up. One of ’em I didn’t recognize, but the other was Big Fawzi, and when he saw me he squinted and then widened his eyes.

“Hey,” I said.

“Ananna? What the hell? We thought you were dead.”

“Not yet.”

And then I heard Mama’s voice, sweet as a song, asking the men what the hell was going on. I jumped out of the rowboat, the feel of the
Tanarau
firm and familiar beneath my feet. The sails flapped and snapped in the wind, and the sound was different from the sails on the
Nadir
and the
Ayel’s Revenge
and the
Goldlife
. The rigging hung different. It was like I never left.

“Ananna!” Mama pushed through the crew. She was decked out for battle in men’s clothes, her belt lined with pistols, but when I saw her all I could think about was the way she’d looked when she wore her worn silk robe as she rocked me to sleep back when I was a little kid.

“Mama!” I raced forward. She caught me up in her embrace. The pirate in me thought back to Tarrin of the
Hariri
, reaching for his knife as he lay dying. But the daughter in me just wanted to be hugged.

“I never thought I’d see you again.” She pulled away and I saw the smudges in her kohl where she’d started crying. Mama never lets you see her cry; she can stop a tear before it falls down her face. But if you know how to look for the signs, you can still spot it. “I’d heard the Hariris sent an assassin after you.”

“They did.”

Mama frowned, and before she could say anything, Papa’s voice boomed across the ship.

“And what the hell kinda parley is thi–”

He stopped when he saw me. For a moment nobody moved. We all just stood there in the smoke and the sea breeze.

“Nana,” he said. He threw off his sword belt and his pistols and then rushed toward me, scooping me up like I was a kid again. “You were dead,” he said to me, leaning close. “You were dead. The assassin–”

“He’s here,” I said without thinking.

Everybody on the damn boat pulled out a weapon. Swords and pistols and daggers all threw off glints of light in the sun.

Naji slumped against the railing and sighed.

“No!” I said. “You don’t understand. He didn’t… he can’t kill me, alright?”

“That him?” Papa jerked his chin toward Naji.

Naji looked back at him warily. “I won’t allow any harm to come to your daughter.”

“That right?” Papa stared at him for a long time. Naji hadn’t pulled his sword, and his tattoos were all covered up, and he was still dressed like a pirate. Nothing about him, except maybe the scar, suggested that he was an assassin.

“I’ve protected her this long,” Naji said.

Another long pause, and then Papa roared with laughter. He turned to me. “You’ve turned into a right princess, you need some shield-for-hire following you around. Like those foppy Empire nobles.” He laughed again.

“I didn’t hire him!”

Mama scooped her arm around me and pulled me close. “Throw up the peace flag!” she shouted. “And make sail for the open sea before the Jokja authorities show up.”

That set the crew to scrambling. The queen’s boat wasn’t attacking no more, but it wouldn’t be long before the queen’s navy arrived. And I doubted Queen Saida would give amnesty to anybody who’d just burned half the Aja Shore, even if they were my parents.

When the
Tanarau
took to the water, the
Nadir
was right behind her. But not the queen’s ship. Mama must’ve had somebody send word to Marjani. I wondered if she still thought we were in parley.

A pirate ship is outfitted to go faster than even the Empire’s little sloops, but Papa had us sail out past sunset, to be sure. They stuck me and Naji up in the captain’s quarters, like I was still five years old and liable to get underfoot. Though in truth I was grateful for it, cause I was tired, even though it hadn’t been much of a battle.

Naji and me sat side by side on the little trundle bed. We didn’t say much. I didn’t even feel him inside my head. I think it was more under his control than he’d let me believe. Or maybe he’d just put it under his control.

Once we seemed clear of an attack, Mama and Papa came back into the cabin.

“I think you got a story to tell us, girl,” Papa said. He pulled a jar of sugar-wine out of his cabinet and slid down in his big brass chair. Mama leaned against the wall. Both of them looked worn out.

The boat tipped back and forth from the winds and the speed on the water.

“I guess I do,” I said.

Papa drank the sugar-wine straight from the bottle and slammed it down on the navigation table.

“Why’d you run off?” Mama asked.

“I didn’t want to get married.”

She frowned at me, but I could see Papa get a hint of a smile.

“Heard you killed the Hariri boy,” he said.

“He was gonna kill me.” But that wasn’t the part of the story I wanted to tell, and I wrapped my arms around my stomach and took a deep breath. Naji glanced at me and frowned.

“She was saving her own life and mine,” he told Papa. “They attacked us with… machines… out in the desert–”

“Sandships,” Papa said. “Heard about ’em. Never seen ’em.” He took another swig of wine and handed the bottle to Naji, who shook his head. I grabbed it instead, which made Papa laugh.

“So why didn’t you kill her?” Mama asked Naji. She pulled her pipe out of her jacket pocket and a pouch of grayweed and took to packing it in tight.

Naji blinked.

“You’re an assassin, yeah? That’s what she said up on deck.” She snapped her fingers and flames danced on top of her fingertips, and she lit her pipe. Another snap and they were gone. The sort of thing she used to call “courtier’s tricks” back when I was trying to learn magic.

The scent of her smoke made me dizzy with homesickness, even though I was home.

“I am a member of the Jadorr’a,” Naji said. “And yes, Captain Hariri hired me to…” His voice trailed off, and I almost took his hand in mine. Stopped myself just as my fingers grazed across his knuckles.

Mama must’ve seen cause she arched an eyebrow and said, “Didn’t think you had it in you, Nana.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, scowling. And then before she could answer I blurted out the whole story about the snake and the curse and the Wizard Eirnin and the Isles of the Sky and the
Nadir
and the starstones. The whole time Mama and Papa listened, and the only time either of them moved was when Mama puffed on her pipe.

“Starstones,” Mama said when I’d finished.

“Yeah,” I said. “We gotta go find the sons of whores who stole ’em, but Marjani doesn’t want to leave Jokja.”

Papa squinted. “Well. That is a conundrum.”