The Pirate's Wish (10 page)

Marjani glared at me when we got up on deck.

“I was really hoping that’s not what you were going to do,” she said.

“She’s
starving
,” I told her. “You expect me to keep her locked away while we’re piling up dead men out here?”

Marjani crossed her arms in front of her chest.

“It’s an Empire ship! They won’t come peaceful and you know it.”

She did know it. She nodded at me, and then turned to Naji, started telling him the protocol for boarding a ship. He stared at her, face blank.

I wondered if he was as scared as I was.

The manticore growled. “Where are the red-and-gold men?” she asked me, her breath hot against the side of my neck.

“There.” I pointed out to sea with my sword. The Empire ship was coming closer, her red bow veering in for us. Dots of light flashed on her deck. Empire swords.

“We’re gonna board her,” I added, cause I figured the manticore was wondering.

And then Marjani’s hand was on my arm. She pushed me toward the rowboats that hung off the side of the ship. “You want the manticore, you get to take her across the water.”

“You got rope?” I asked.

“What?” said Naji. “You’re going to send her out there… no. No, absolutely not. It’ll completely incapacitate me–”

“Then go with her!” Marjani shoved Naji at me. “I’ll take the
Goldlife
crewmen and swing across. You don’t have much time before they start firing.
Go
.”

For a second Naji and me stared at each other and I knew I couldn’t let him get to me, not now. An Empire man’ll die for his ship. I wasn’t gonna die for my broken heart.

“Come on!” I climbed into one of the boats, the manticore at my side. She trumpeted – not the way she had when we were racing across the beach. This sounded like a damn battle horn.

The
Goldlife
crew let out a cheer, all throaty with bloodlust.

And then the Empire fired its first volley of cannons.

Naji let out a shout and jumped into the boat beside me. Marjani swung her sword through the rope and we crashed into the water, the air thick with black smoke and the scent of cannon fire. The manticore wasn’t trumpeting no more, but flattened down in the center of the boat, one paw pressed over her head, whimpering. I grabbed hold of the oars and pushed off toward the Empire ship, trying to ignore the booms and thuds echoing overhead.

Naji flung himself on top of me, his weight pressing me into the manticore.

“What you doing?” I shouted. I could taste the gunpowder in the air.

“Protecting you,” Naji snarled. He was already covered in sweat; it must be hurting him, us being out on the water.

“Then help me row!”

He grabbed one of the oars and we pushed off together, the Empire ship looming tall in front of our little rowboat, sunlight making the water sparkle. Debris showered down on top of us, bits of wood and sail and metal and probably blood and bone, though I couldn’t think about that. Naji screamed, the muscles bunching up in his arms, and he kept shouting, “The shadow! The shadow!” and I didn’t know what the hell he meant at first, cause all I could think about was getting us out of the water. And then I realized the Empire ship was casting a long dark shadow across the sea, and once we got there he could slip us on board so we wouldn’t have to scamper up the side of the ship.

I rowed harder. Water splashed over the side of the boat, soaking me through. I could hear men screaming up on the ships, both of ’em, and pistols going off, and the cannons, booming and booming and booming like never-ending thunder.

And then we crossed the shadowline. Naji wrapped his arm around my shoulder and shoved his hand in the manticore’s fur, and all the noise fell away.

It was nice in the shadow, quiet and cool, with Naji’s body pressing up against me like maybe we were lovers after all. And I floated there in the darkness like I was underwater, and I didn’t want to come out, I didn’t–

We slammed onto the deck of the Empire ship.

The
Goldlife
hadn’t fired on her yet, of course, cause we were looking to take her, not steal from her, but those Empire soldiers were firing off their cannons quick as they could, and the deck was thick with the residue from the powder. Nobody noticed us at first, not in the fury of the battle, but then the manticore reared up on her hind legs and roared so loud the wood vibrated.

Everything stopped.

I pulled out my sword and pistol. Naji lifted his sword over his head.

All those Empire men turned from the stations and stared at us, a Confederation pirate and a Jadorr’a and a hungry manticore.

I’d never boarded a ship during a battle before. I’d always stayed with Papa’s boat and fought alongside Mama. But I heard the stories from the crewman who’d come back, bragging up their fighting, and all those Empire crewman were staring at me like they were expecting something.

“We’re here to take your ship,” I said, and I’m proud to say my voice didn’t waver none at all.

The manticore roared again, and then she lunged forward, knocking down this poor Empire soldier with her great sharp claws, burying her face in his belly. Blood splattered across the deck.

I looked away, my stomach clenching.

And then all those Empire men started screaming – I didn’t blame ’em one bit – and shooting at the manticore. She lifted her head out of her meal, blood smeared all over her face, teeth gleaming in the sun, and hissed.

Spines shot out of her tail, impaling soldiers in the heart, in the head, in the belly.

Naji yanked me down to the deck, slapping his hand over my head. “I think this is one battle where we’re not needed,” he said.

“They’re gonna kill her!” I squirmed away from him, lifted my head up enough to see a soldier running up to the manticore with his sword outstretched. I shot him.

“Ananna!” Naji hissed my name like he did when he was angry. I ignored him, just jumped to my feet and launched into a crush of soldiers, slicing at them with my sword to keep them off the manticore. Her spines whizzed past my head but none of them ever hit me.

And then Naji was fighting alongside me, his sword spinning out in a flashing silver circle. He moved like a shadow, darting between soldiers, keeping them off me as I kept them off the manticore.

Where the hell is Marjani? I kept thinking, cause I’d no idea how to take a ship. I knew in theory, but here in practice all I cared about was keeping me and Naji and the manticore alive. So I poured all my concentration into fighting, and I didn’t feel no pain or fear, just my heartbeat and my breath.

Dully, I was aware of the manticore taking down another soldier, his screams echoing out across the sea, the scatter of soldiers rippling backward across the deck as he fell.

I fought.

And then the fighting stopped.

I wanted to keep going, all that blood rushing through my veins, all that blood soaking into my skin, but Naji got me in a lock and pulled me still. The Empire peace horn was blowing, long and low. The Empire men had all thrown down their weapons.

Marjani was standing up at the helm, a knife pressing into the captain’s neck, two
Goldlife
crewmen at her side.

The manticore was eating.

“It’s over,” Naji told me, his mouth close to my ear. “We have the ship.”

I felt like I’d woken up from a fever dream, everything distorted and strange. The sunlight was too bright. The blood on the deck too red.

The peace horn died away.

Marjani dropped her knife from the captain’s throat, and Gorry and Ajim took him by the arms, dragged him away from the helm. Marjani leaned forward.

“This ship is under the control of the Pirate Captain Namir yi Nadir.” She jabbed her finger toward Naji, who tensed his arm. “Any man who wishes to join our crew may do so and no harm will come to him. Those of you who wish to die for the Empire…” She turned to the manticore, who was still hunched over the remains of the soldier. “You will have that chance as well.”

Goldlife
pirates were streaming on board, but nobody moved to stop them. Tavin hoisted up the boat’s new colors, some flag Marjani had sewn before she picked us up at the Isles of the Sky: a black background and a dancing skeleton stitched in red silk. It snapped and fluttered in the sea wind and for a second the scent of blood and fear got wiped away, and the ship was almost silent.

Silent. Peaceful. And all I wanted to do was lie down and sleep.

I slept in the captain’s quarters that night, after stripping away my bloody clothes and swimming in the cold ocean to wash the blood from my skin. There was a real bed in there, big enough that two people could share. Naji let me and Marjani sleep in the bed while he hung a hammock from the comer and slept there. I fell asleep easy enough. I woke up in the middle of the night, the cabin dark and shadowy and unfamiliar.

I listened to Marjani and Naji breathe for a while, their breaths soft and out of synch, and when I realized I wasn’t gonna fall back asleep I rolled out of bed and pulled on one of the Empire captain’s gold cloaks and went up on deck.

Nearly all of the Empire men had chosen service over capture – Empire don’t train ’em as well as they think, I guess – but we were still headed for Bone Island, on account of Marjani not trusting a ship full of ex-soldiers. I didn’t blame her. We’d dump ’em there and let ’em find their own way back to their lives, then pick up a crew of our own.

But for now, we had ’em running the night shift, and they all shrunk away from me when I came up, turning back to their ropes and riggings. I ignored ’em, just walked up to the bow and leaned over the edge to feel the cool salt air on my face.

“Girl-human.”

I turned around. The manticore padded up to me, her face cleaned of blood, her mane brushed and shining – some poor Empire sap had been assigned to tend to her grooming needs.

“What are you doing up here?”

“I do not like the underneath,” she said. We hadn’t locked her up in the brig, but I’d asked her to stay down below in the hold on account of her presence making the men jumpy.

I didn’t say nothing and she added, “It stinks of human filth.”

“Hard to take a bath on a ship,” I told her.

“You’re surrounded by water!”

I didn’t have anything to say to that.

The manticore sat beside me, wings tucked into her sides, her tail curling up along her back. We didn’t speak for a long time.

“Thank you for allowing me to eat.” She sounded sincere, too, and kind of sad. “I had been very hungry before.”

“I know.” I stroked her mane and she nuzzled against my hand like a pet.

“I will not eat any men without your permission.”

It still creeped me out a little, that she ate humans, but part of me knew it was just the way things were, like me having to eat fish and sheep and goat. It wasn’t her fault that she ate people.

And I’d killed more men than she could eat that afternoon, all cause they were trying to kill her, but I tried to put it out of my mind the way Papa told me to, cause dwelling on it can turn you dark. But it was hard.

She gave me one of her sharp smiles and turned back to the sea. “It is strange, living with humans. But I am growing used to it.”

“I thought you lived with humans on the Island of the Sun.”

The manticore flicked her tail. “That’s different. They are our servants, girl-human, our slaves. Here, we are equals.” Another flick. “Or as equal as human and manticore can be.”

“Oh, is that so?” I leaned over the railing and looked down at the black ocean water skimming up along the side of the boat. “So tell me, how was it a human managed to kidnap you?”

The manticore let out one of her low, quiet hisses. “He was treacherous and dishonest. Not like you, or even the Jadorr’a.” She licked her lips and looked up at me. “You should not trust wizard-humans, as a rule.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“It was my parents’ fault,” she went on, like I hadn’t spoken. “His water-nest crashed onto our beach. We were going to eat him, of course, but he had magic, and my parents were willing to strike a deal.”

That caught my attention, since everybody’d been warning me about the dangers of striking a deal with a manticore. Looks like it got Eirnin killed.

“Did he double-cross them?” I asked. “Your parents?”

“Of course, he did, girl-human! We traded him his life for some of his spells and potions, but during the trade he cast a great smoke-cloud and paralyzed me. I do not know how he dragged me back to his water-nest, but I learned quickly that it hadn’t been broken at all. It had been a ruse, designed to ensnare me.”

“Why?” I said. “It’s not like he tried to sell you or anything–”

“Sell me! If only he had tried. No, he planned to cut me open and use my heart for some foul wizardry or other. Every morning for those three life cycles he taunted me with his knife. The morning that I escaped was the morning he was to kill me.”