Chapter 8
We rowed through the night, eager to put as much distance between us and Aden as possible. Shortly before daybreak, the wind
picked up enough for the sails to be raised, God be praised, and I left my captain’s bench to check on Tinbu.
I had ordered him to rest in the small galley, one of the few places on the Marawati where one could enjoy a bit of privacy, but found him awake and arguing with Dalila as she attempted to apply a foul-smelling
poultice to the lash marks on his back.
“—I am moving because it stings like a hundred wasps are attacking me. There are times, Dalila, that I think you enjoy—Amina!” Tinbu’s
eyes lit up as I ducked inside the galley to join them. “Save me. Dalila says she is here to help, but I’m fairly certain
I’m being experimented upon.”
“You know the price for my skills,” Dalila chided. “If you don’t like it, stop getting caught so easily.”
Tinbu grumbled and I took a moment to look him over in the dawn light filtering through the cracks in the wall. Other than
his wounds and the morose look in his brown eyes, Tinbu appeared criminally unaffected by the last ten years, his waist trim
and his arms well muscled from ship work. His glossy black hair was thick as the day I left, now streaked with a dashing stripe
of silver. The only other change was a jaunty mustache, the curled tips of which I could tell from a glance he oiled every
morning.
“Nice mustache,” I remarked. “Is that to impress the pretty-eyed merchant?”
Tinbu’s expression grew even glummer. “Would it be so wrong to kidnap him?”
“My friend, he just found out you’re a criminal. Give it a little time before you commit a crime against him. Speaking of which... what were you thinking, attempting to bribe a new government official? You know they need a
few months to become properly corrupt.”
“He was winking at me!”
“You were on a boat in the middle of the day,” Dalila pointed out. “Did it not cross your mind that he was blinking in the
sun?”
“It was entrapment.”
“Sure it was.” I sat across from Tinbu, leaning against the galley’s thin wall of woven branches as the Marawati crested a gentle swell. “I trust you are otherwise well? How was the visit with your family?”
“Like all such visits. My parents are healthy and hale, but did I know how much happier they would be if I returned home for
good? Especially since so-and-so has a daughter looking to wed.” Tinbu sighed. “My brothers and sisters have provided them
with a dozen grandchildren. You would think they would be content.”
I gave him a sympathetic look. Like me, Tinbu hails from a long line of sea raiders, though if mine were wandering pirates,
his were scavengers who rarely strayed from their homeland on the Malabar Coast, preferring to plunder the rich merchant ships
when they passed by, then returning to their crops and villages for the harvest. It is a lucrative but risky profession—Tinbu
was captured during a raid gone bad when he was a teenager and spent ten years as a slave before our paths crossed.
“Perhaps it is less about grandchildren and more about wanting their son safe at home,” I argued gently. “I can scarcely blame
them.”
“I know.” Tinbu winced and sat up so Dalila could finish his bandages.
“But I cannot live the life they want, and I spent too many years serving the whims of another to cage myself again. This is best. They get money and occasional visits; I get pretty-eyed merchants. But I know you did not come to Aden to harass me on my parents’ behalf, so let’s talk about this job. ”
“Has Dalila filled you in?”
“Less than I had to,” Dalila cut in. “Tinbu had his own run-in with Falco.”
“ What? ” I was immediately tense. Falco had tracked down Asif’s family and gotten a letter to Dalila. Now he had also learned of
my first mate?
Tinbu held up a hand. “It wasn’t as bad as she makes it sound. His agent sought me out, that was all. An old acquaintance
of mine from Hormuz by the name of Layth. He used to work for the pirate princes out of Kish, but he must have run afoul of
someone because he’s been on this side of the peninsula putting crews together for captains with less-than-savory business.”
I glanced at Dalila. “The letter you received from Falco... his agent had the same name, no?”
“He did,” she answered. “But it wasn’t Tinbu whom Falco was seeking. It was you , nakhudha.”
“ Me? ”
“You,” Tinbu confirmed. “Layth said he had a Frank who was looking for a captain and gotten his heart set on Amina al-Sirafi.
Falco apparently spoke of your exploits day and night, saying he had been promised you were the best smuggler in the Indian
Ocean and there was nothing you couldn’t steal.” He paused, a hint of apology in his eyes. “He seems to believe you are blessed
by the supernatural.”
Blessed . A sour taste bloomed in my mouth, the word lodging in my gullet. Granted, such gossip had long swirled around me. Men find
it easier to believe they have been swindled by a witch than outwitted by a woman. I used to find the stories entertaining,
the more outrageous the better.
I stopped finding them entertaining a long time ago. “What does he want with me?”
“He probably hopes you will take him to new places to plunder,” Dalila suggested. “You heard his letter. He’s a treasure seeker,
out to collect all the shiny, fascinating things that catch his eye.”
“Regrettably, I am not feeling very collectible,” I said curtly. “What did you tell him, Tinbu?”
“The usual lies. That last I heard you’d retired somewhere beyond India to surround yourself with wine and jewels and beautiful
men. Layth seemed to believe it; he said he’d already told Falco that no one had seen Amina al-Sirafi in years.”
“Did you not think to warn me?”
Tinbu gave me a pointed look. “You were with your family in peace, Amina. Perhaps I did not want you to be tempted by his
offer.”
I scowled, but his was not an entirely unjustified point, considering Salima had already lured me out.
Dalila started pacing, tugging at the cross around her neck, something she did only when she was truly worried. “I don’t like
this. It’s been a decade since we were active and there are a dozen other captains he could have hired. Amina is notorious
enough to attract idle gossip, but the rest of us...”
“The Frank isn’t working off idle gossip,” I realized, the insight sending a finger of ice down my spine. “He’s been speaking
with someone who knew us. Knew us well.” I paused, not wanting to say the name. “A candidate comes to mind.”
The insinuation landed like a thunderclap. We all knew who I meant.
“It would fit,” Dalila agreed. “He never did like me very much.”
Tinbu’s expression grew stormy. “Majed would never sell us out. I know you two didn’t part under the best terms, but he wouldn’t betray us.”
“Didn’t part under the best terms” was an understatement. What happened to Asif shattered my crew in different ways, but for Majed—my navigator and a man who had once been like an elder brother—it was an end a long time coming.
“I’m not saying Majed willingly sold us out,” I clarified. “But what if the Frank gave him no choice?”
“Falco could have killed him for it,” Dalila offered unhelpfully. “Majed was never very good in a fight.”
Tinbu shook his head. “I had a letter from Majed last month. He sounded fine.”
I was immediately, unjustifiably stung. “Majed writes to you?”
“He does. I have visited his family in Mogadishu.”
His family? Now I felt like an ass. “I didn’t even know he had married.”
“Oh, yes. To a widow from one of the local clans. They have a young son and a baby girl.” Tinbu rolled his eyes. “Beautiful
family, but the man has gone completely, violently, annoyingly straight. He’s been on hajj multiple times and cares for a whole bunch of orphans with a, get this, government job. He reports directly to the muhtasib, though I believe he still does a bit of mapmaking on the side.”
I shuddered. Majed reported to the market inspector? The market inspector? That was as close to turning traitor as I could imagine. “Has he ever taken the portion I set aside for him?”
“No. He said it’s the devil’s money.”
“Stubborn idiot. All right.” I rose to my feet, swaying with the movement of the Marawati . Through the cracks in the wall, I could see the golden-brown line of the distant coast, the rising sun sparkling on the
pink water. “So if not Majed, who else could have told Falco about us?”
Dalila threw me an annoyed glare. “Maybe if we had not triggered a prison escape and lit multiple warships on fire back in
Aden, we would be able to ask around. As was our original plan.”
“Ah, but then you would not have rescued me from a dire fate,” Tinbu pointed out cheerfully. “Besides, I might have a lead.”
“Which is?”
“Layth, Falco’s agent. We got to talking quite a bit.
As I said, I knew him from back in the day, and he sounded like no matter how good the money was, he was getting tired of dealing with Falco’s shit.
He mentioned that once he’d found Falco a ship and a captain, he was thinking about going to Zabid to spend his earnings. ”
My spirits brightened. Zabid was farther north but not too far away. And finding Falco’s recruiter sounded more promising
than chasing gossip in Aden. “Clearly breaking you out of prison was very worth it,” I said, giving Dalila a victorious smirk.
“We’ll head to Zabid after picking up supplies.”
Tinbu smiled. “See, Dalila? Nothing to—oh! Payasam!” Tinbu dropped to his knees, recent wounds be damned, to peer through
a stack of crates. He rubbed his fingers together, making a soothing sound. “Come on out, beautiful girl. I was getting worried
about you!”
There was a loud, pitiful meow, and then the most bedraggled ship’s cat I had ever seen emerged. A skinny, rust-brown thing
the color of a tool left in the sea air, its fur stuck up in clumps and it was missing an ear.
Tinbu rushed to collect the cat, cuddling it close to his chest. “Did those nasty soldiers scare you?” he asked in a singsong
voice.
The cat made a sound between a death rattle and a wheeze in response, knocking its head so hard into Tinbu’s chin it had to
hurt.
“Your... mouser?” Dalila asked, sounding doubtful.
Tinbu flushed. “We are still working on the ‘catching mice’ part. But Payasam noticed a spider the other day. Even put a paw
on it!”
He shared this accomplishment with the pride of a father announcing his child’s marriage, and I rubbed my temples, feeling
a headache come on. “Tinbu, please tell me that you did not choose the only cat incapable of catching mice to bring aboard
my ship. What does it eat? Because its name better not indicate you are wasting rice and sugar on it.”
The cat gave me a doleful look.
Tinbu crossed his arms defensively over the creature. “Payasam is not an ‘it,’ and she eats from my rations alone. The crew is very fond of her; she has brought us only good fortune.”
“You were all about to be crucified for murder and brigandry.”
“Until—in an astonishing bit of luck—my best friends turned up to save me.” His eyes danced. “And now that you have connected
with me, I am to lead you directly to Falco’s own agent.” Tinbu snuggled the cat to his face and kissed it very loudly. “My lucky,
million-dinar cat.”