The Pirate's Wish (31 page)

“Are you Naji of the Jadorr’a?” the King asked, his voice booming through the water like the blast from a cannon.

“I am.”

“And who is your companion?”

“I’m Ananna of the
Nadir
.” Water flooded into my mouth when I talked, only to pour back out through the gills in my neck.

“And how do you know Naji of the Jadorr’a?”

I didn’t want to talk again, cause of the way the water rushing through my head made me dizzy. But everybody was staring at me, especially the King with his flat black shark eyes.

“I saved his life,” I said

The King smiled, showing rows of teeth. Exactly like the manticore.

“Well, I am grateful for that, Ananna of the
Nadir
.” He swam toward us, his tail flicking back and forth in the water. “I suppose you’d like to know why you are here.”

“Yes,” said Naji. “Your Grace.”

The King of Salt and Foam stopped a foot away from us. I kept picturing his teeth sinking into my arm, into my belly – but no. He was like the manticore, right? He wouldn’t hurt us. His shark-sentries hadn’t hurt us–

“You created this,” the King said to Naji. His manta-ray fins swooped in and out, like they were trying to gather the city up in his arms. “All of this.”

Naji stared at him.

“It was your magic, the soothsayer told me.” The King nodded. “You cast wave after wave of magic into the sea, and from that magic we were born.”

“That’s impossible,” Naji whispered.

“But it isn’t,” the King said. “Look at all this. Our city, our people. We can feast you in our hall, we can entertain you in our gardens…”

I wondered how an underwater city could have gardens.

“All of this came about because of you,” the King said. “The soothsayer saw it.”

Over in the corner, Armand bowed.

Naji shook his head. “No, no… My magic… it doesn’t create, it destroys…” His voice trailed off. He was shaking, I realized, the water bubbling around him. And his skin had gone pale and sickly-looking, even in the soft glow of the algae. I pushed over toward him, wound my arm around his, touched his scars.

“You told me blood-magic can do whatever you will it to do,” I whispered, cause he was wrong, his magic had saved me from a gunshot wound.

Naji shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, I never willed–” He stopped and looked at me. His eyes widened. “Your blood,” he said.

“What?” Water swooshed through my head. I did my best to ignore it. “What about–”

“Your blood mixed with my blood…” His hands were on my face, his touch muted by the water. “We did this. Together. And I think…”

Lightness passed over his face like sunlight. He drifted away from me and floated up toward the ceiling, his mouth hanging open in something like surprise. Tiny white bubbles spun around him.

“Naji of the Jadorr’a?” The king flicked his fins at the courtiers and the school of fish flashed forward and swarmed around Naji, brought him back down to the floor. “Is he hurt?” the King asked me. “I don’t understand what he’s saying.”

I looked at Naji out of the corner of my eye, caught up in all those flashes of light and silver. “I helped him,” I finally said. “Whatever he did to make all you…”

And then I understood too. The battle with the Hariris. The magic we created. That
violence
, it all spilled into the ocean. This was all the magic-sickness. This was clams growing out of the side of the
Tanarau
, this was blood staining the walls of the
Ayel’s Revenge,
this was Queen Saida’s garden house collapsing into jungle plants in the middle of her garden. All that left over magic sank to the floor and brought forth this city, this whole civilization, with a king and a court, with soldiers and soothsayers. Life.

The third piece of the puzzle.

Once I understood what had happened, I felt the curse dissolve away. There was a sharp and sudden crack, like what I felt when I kissed Naji back on the Isles of the Sky, and then there was only a lightness, an absence of weight. This was northern magic, after all, unknowable and strange – we might have created life during the battle, but the curse had stayed in place until this moment, when Naji learned, when we
both
learned, that the third task wasn’t impossible. Completing the task wasn’t what broke the curse, it was learning that the impossible wasn’t really impossible at all.

Naji burst out of the school of fish, his clothes and hair fluttering around him. “Thank you,” he said to the King. “Your hospitality is most kind.” He seemed back to himself. My head was reeling from what I’d just figured out. It’s gone, his curse is gone
.
 

The King looked confused. “No,” he said. “I am thanking
you
.”

He lowered himself to the ocean floor, and then so did all the rest of the courtiers, until everyone, every fish and clam and eel in the Court of the Waves, was bowing to me and Naji.

Naji’s face was full of light. He wasn’t smiling, but he was happy, and his eyes were gleaming, and his hand looped in mine and squeezed tight as we kicked our feet there in the water. I pressed against him and held his hand as tight as I could. Music was pouring through the hall – not like the music up on land, but this soft creeping echo, like the reedy melody of a flute.

“Is it true?” I murmured to him, wanting to feel his body close to mine, wanting to hear him say it even though I already knew for certain, even though I could feel that the weight of the curse had drained away from him. “Is it broken?”

“It’s broken.” His hand squeezed mine. The King rose back up, solemn-faced and grateful, and the rest of the courtiers followed. The water churned from their movement.

“You’re free,” I said.

“Yes,” Naji said. His hand gripped mine so tightly my fingers ached. “Free of the curse.”

The King was smiling at us. Water rushed into my head and out through the gills in my neck.

“We broke it,” Naji said. “I didn’t know until I understood, but we broke it.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The King of Salt and Foam gave us gifts: sacks of pearls, vials of Armand’s potion that granted breath underwater, hard pink shells lashed together into strange clattering sculptures. They were brought in by a school of fish, all those tiny silvery bodies buoying up the gifts as they swam beside the King.

“The art of our society,” the King told us. We were in his garden – turned out it was all seaweed and coral and glowing algae, beautiful and haunting. “We shall erect statues of your faces, Naji of the Jadorr’a and Ananna of the
Nadir
. Our children’s children will not forget what you gave us.”

“I thank you deeply,” Naji said, bowing his head low, all serious and respectful. When I tried to do the same thing I almost turned a cartwheel in the water.

“Come,” the King said, “swim with me.” And then he began to slice through the water in his graceful, fluttering way, bubbles forming at the tips of his fins.

Naji and me paddled along beside him.

“I would like to know the story,” the King said.

“The story?” I asked. Naji kicked me, hard and on purpose.

“Yes. The story of how this all came to be.” The King stopped and floated in place, his seaweed hair drifting up away from his shoulders. “I know it was your magic–”

“And Ananna’s,” Naji said.

The King gave him a polite smile. “Armand saw
you
,” he said firmly. “He saw the spells you cast into the sea. You were trying to defend your vessel, I know.” The King fluttered his fins. “Armand saw that as well. But what we know of magic – it is all intention, yes?”

“Technically,” Naji said. “But when a great deal of magic is cast, the way it was when I – when Ananna and I – were working to defend our ship… it sometimes takes on a… a life of its own.”

The King gazed at him with flat black eyes. “Our life,” he said. “Our lives.”

“Yes.” Naji bowed.

“So we really are creatures of magic.”

“Magic and the sea,” Naji said. “And yourselves, given the time.”

That was a nice touch, I thought. You could tell Naji was used to dealing with royalty.

The King nodded. “I don’t entirely understand,” he said, “but I will set my scholars to studying the phenomenon.”

Naji frowned a little, but I thought that was reasonable enough. Why wouldn’t they want to know where they came from? ’Sides, the King was a fish. Couldn’t expect him to understand everything about the land, just like we can’t be expected to understand everything about the sea. Any pirate in the Confederation and any sailor on the up-and-up could tell you that.

“Regardless of our origins, you are welcome back to my kingdom any time you wish,” the King said, and he gave one of those bows, deep and sure-finned in the water.

“I will visit as often as I can,” Naji said, returning his bow, and I knew he meant it.

Armand appeared at the entrance to the garden, accompanied by a pair of shark sentries.

“Ah,” the King said, “it’s time.”

“Your water-breath will wear off soon,” Armand said. “We should wait in the air-hall.”

The King turned to us. “Are you certain you wouldn’t like to stay longer?” he asked. “You can stay in the air-hall. I’m certain we could provide food for you.”

“We need more than food, I’m afraid.” Naji smiled, polite as could be. “We can’t go long without fresh water – ah, that is, water without salt.”

“And we want to make sure our ship’s still waiting for us when we get back,” I added.

Naji’s voice flashed a warning in my head, but the King only nodded. “I look forward to your future visit,” he said to Naji. “I will investigate this matter of saltless water. And remember, all you must do is come to these coordinates. We will know it’s you.”

Armand rippled in the water like he was impatient. “I don’t wish to be rude, your Grace,” he said, “but if the water-breath were to wear out here in the open, the effects would be disastrous.”

“Ah yes, of course, Armand.” The King bowed one last time.

We swam out of the garden and through the city to the big empty hall where that hissing glass box sat waiting for us. The potion kept working all through the trip, and for about five minutes or so after we arrived in the big empty hall. When it did wear off, though, it wore off quick as it had come on. One minute my breath was churning through my head and the next I had that tightness in my lungs that meant I was drowning. I pushed myself out of the water, onto the platform. Naji shot up a few seconds later, gasping. It felt weird to breathe air again. It was so thin and insubstantial, like spun sugar. I felt like I couldn’t get enough of it.

Naji and me didn’t really talk on the ride up, though he held me close like he was afraid I would disappear. I didn’t feel all that different now that the curse was broken, but Naji was filled up with light, like the glow of the algae down there in the depths of the ocean.

Part of me was afraid he’d leave, now that he wasn’t bound to me, but I told myself over and over that he was bound to me in other ways. I told myself he didn’t have to be bound to me at all in order to love me. And the way he held me on the way up, his face pressing into my hair, water pooling at our feet, it helped convince me that I was right.

The
Nadir
was waiting for us when we surfaced. Thank Kaol.

Naji watched us load up the treasure, crewmen carrying it down to the holding bay – we were gonna split it proper, on account of how little actual pirating we’d been doing. Me and Marjani’s idea. Naji didn’t seem to care at all, and he watched us load up the cargo in happy silence. The only time he spoke was when he leaned over the railing and thanked the shark sentry.

“No,” said the shark. “Thank you, Naji of the Jadorr’a.” Then he turned to me and said, “And you, Ananna of the
Nadir
.”

The shark and the glass box disappeared beneath the waves. You’d never know there was this whole city down there, full of talking fish and a king like an underwater manticore. Naji slipped off into the captain’s quarters, and I moved to chase after him, but Marjani stopped me.

“What happened down there?” she asked. “Naji seems–”

“Cured?” I asked.

Her eyes widened.

“Yeah,” I said. “The last part of the curse, remember? Create life out of an act of violence?”

She nodded, and I told her about the city and its inhabitants, the overflow of his magic. I told her how my blood, with its little trickle of ocean-magic, had mixed with his, and that’s how everything came together.

“So we’re done,” she said. “We don’t have to sail around chasing after his curse anymore.”

I nodded.

“Now what?”

“You’re captain,” I said. “What do you want to do?”

She stared at me for a few seconds. “You know what I want to do,” she said softly.