Chapter 10 #2
“Because the Moon of Saba is what Dunya offered Falco in exchange for him taking her along.”
Salima dropped her gaze to her lap. Her hands were shaking, but I watched as she smoothed the tulips decorating the hem of
her shayla, as though to collect herself. “She did not run away,” she said, her voice quiet but no less firm. “She was kidnapped.”
I threw up my hands in frustration. “Sayyida... I have no interest in airing your family’s private matters. No interest
in ruining Dunya’s reputation or harming whatever marriage prospects you have arranged for her. But I was once sixteen. You
would be shocked how determined a teenaged girl who wants her freedom can—”
“My granddaughter is nothing like you.” Salima drew back, her lip curling in disgust. She looked genuinely appalled at the prospect. “Dunya
is a noble-born scholar who’s never been so much as alone with an unrelated man. You...” She raised a shaking finger in
my direction and the guise of unshakable matriarch briefly fell away, replaced by something wild and grief-stricken, as though
by yelling at me, she could deny the truth of what I had laid at her feet. “You are a thief and a murderess who has slept
with sailors in every port from Aden to Kilwa. You know nothing about Dunya.”
Her words landed with a thunderous air, shattering our previously tense but restrained exchange.
I’ve had far worse insults slung at me, of course.
But as I glanced around the dusty kitchen chamber again, the only place she had deemed acceptable to meet someone of my ilk, I felt the connections that tied Salima and me together vanish.
It didn’t matter that we were both mothers, that we had both loved Asif.
The Sayyida might have pulled on those strings of sentiment to convince me to take this job—no, she had pulled on them, successfully; I could admit that weakness now.
But it was damnably clear Salima had never forgotten who I was. What I was. And that was beneath her.
To hell with her. To hell with all of this . Salima wasn’t going to tell me anything useful about Falco if she wouldn’t even admit her granddaughter had run away with
him. But she wasn’t the only one with relatives to worry about, and I’d sworn to my family to return, to step away if things got too dangerous. I’d already saved Tinbu’s life, rescued my crew, and had ten
thousand dinars sequestered at home. Not for the first time, I realized Dalila had been right.
It was time for this adventure to end.
I was sorry for Dunya, truly. But I’d watched Layth die in an unspeakably grisly manner from magic I didn’t understand at
the hands of a predatory Frank who was already too interested in me and mine. And she had chosen to follow him.
I stepped back. “Then I am done. You wish to hold on to your secrets? Fine. But I will not risk my crew or myself to find
a girl who does not want to be found, nor go up against an enemy I do not understand.”
My response seemed to rock the old woman; maybe she didn’t think thieving murderesses who’d slept with half the Indian Ocean
made those sorts of decisions. “You-you’re quitting ?”
“I’m quitting. I will keep the money you have given me thus far. Falco’s agent said they were headed to a large island. I
have no further details because the coins I paid him to betray his master somehow wound up in the agent’s throat and choked him to death.”
Salima went parchment pale. “ What? ”
“You heard me. I do not know what sort of man you invited into your home, but I want no further involvement with him. God be with you. Truly.”
“You cannot leave—nakhudha!” she shouted as I turned my back. “You go out that door and I swear... I swear ... you will never see your daughter again!”
My fingers stilled on the doorknob.
“ Excuse me? ” I glanced back, half thinking Salima was having a stroke. She better be having a stroke. “What did you say?”
Salima was clenching her hands so tightly the bony knuckles had gone white, but however frail she appeared, there was nothing
but bitter determination in her gaze. “Dunya is my world. I lost my son to your ship, a death I can tell you are not being entirely forthcoming about. Now you remain my best, possibly my sole hope of recovering the only family I have
left. If you walk away, I will destroy yours.”
I had drawn my dagger and stepped closer before I even realized it. “I assume grief has driven you to madness to threaten
me like that,” I hissed. “I could kill you right now and be gone.”
Salima laughed, a shattered sound. “Are you na?ve enough to think that would stop me? I am no fool, nakhudha. I told you back
at your home: If something happens to me, letters go out to every ruler on this sea. Your enemies will find you. They will
find your family. You won’t even have time to return home.”
I was shaking with rage. You fool. You absolute fucking idiot . How had this gone so wrong, so fast? “I do not believe you.”
“Then try me,” she challenged. “I’ve had guards watching your house since your stunt in Aden. I meant them to apprehend you if you were trying to run off with my money, but I am certain they can make far swifter work of your family.”
It was my turn to rock back, the brutal threat shocking me to my core. “You met my child,” I whispered, still disbelieving
I had misjudged Sayyida Salima so badly. “You... you ate by her hand .”
Salima flinched. Perhaps she was not entirely heartless.
But she pressed further. “I did. And she seems like a blessing, a true one, but you’re forcing me to do this, Umm Marjana.
So let’s cease this talk of quitting and make sure you return to her.
” She pulled a small purse from her robe and tossed it at my feet. “Finish the job.”
The purse was red velvet with silken tassels, far finer than the purse I had given Layth, but the message it sent was clear.
Salima had me trapped. Her world of letters and connections was not mine, and I had no idea how to stop the flow of information
she might have set in process; if she had lawyers or clerks or perhaps simply powerful friends waiting in the shadows. But
it was suddenly, horrifically clear that if she chose to level her privilege and wealth against me in a true vendetta, I would
be crushed. My family would be crushed. My daughter, an innocent child who had smiled and brought her fruit, would be crushed.
Have I ever told you what happens when you capture a ship? People paint such bloody, terrifying portraits of pirates you would
think passengers would be begging for their lives, for mercy? Sometimes they do, and I grant it. I have never been a killer
and always preferred smuggling to outright piracy.
But on the occasions that I did capture ships, let me tell you: I could judge the wealth of a passenger by their outrage.
By their fury . Men and women who were more offended at the audacity of a poor local demanding a cut of the riches they built on our sea
than by the possibility of losing their lives. How dare we? Did we not know that our place was to shut up and stay silent? To beg at the masjid if decades of ferrying them from
place to place, diving for their pearls, and making their goods left us crippled. To hush our starving children when they
travel past our reed huts draped in jewels and silks. To bite our tongues when the traveling scholars who owe their lives
to our boats toss the food we’ve prepared them in the sea because they deem it unclean.
For the greatest crime of the poor in the eyes of the wealthy has always been to strike back. To fail to suffer in silence and instead disrupt their lives and their fantasies of a compassionate society that coincidentally set them on top. To say no .
Salima wanted her granddaughter back. In her eyes, I was not a mother myself then, I was a tool, a draft animal to be beaten
into obedience if I balked at her command.
The coins inside the purse clinked gently when I picked it up. I could barely think through a haze of rage, but the threat
to my family cut through everything, cold and piercing as the sharpest blade. Ten years ago, I would have told this woman
to burn in hell and risked running. But I would not risk Marjana. Not ever.
I cleared my throat, struggling to speak. “Where does she think it is?”
Salima blinked at the change in topic. “What?”
“Where does Dunya think the Moon of Saba is?” It sounded ludicrous to even ask. “People have been searching for the Moon of
Saba for hundreds of years. Kings, scholars, professional fortune-hunters... all have failed. Tell me how some teenaged
girl has gotten it into her head that she knows the location of a mythical, magical gem no one has seen in millennia.”
Salima took a deep breath. I did not miss her posture relax at my question: how relieved she must have been to threaten the
recalcitrant pirate into submission. “If there were ever a teenaged girl to uncover such a thing, it would be Dunya. Recall
that I already told you our ancestors had an interest in ancient texts and talismans.”
Ancient texts and talismans. How vague and unthreatening it sounded. I decided to be obnoxious. “Asif said your people were
some sort of necromancers and exorcists in the jahiliyyah, the time of ignorance before Islam.”