Chapter 17
Raksh marched us out of the grove and along a twisting trail that cut deep into the hillside. It was almost too narrow and
thorny for a human to walk, likely a leopard’s path, but with an angry demon glaring at me every time I slowed or stopped
to readjust the wrapping on my now-throbbing knee, I managed to keep up even as I wondered, desperately, how the hell I was
going to get us out of this one.
Dalila and Tinbu snuck occasional glances my way, but we didn’t dare converse. Raksh had never struck me as a warrior (he
preferred to flee from danger), but he was strong, had access to magics I didn’t understand, and already distrusted us. There
was no need to make the situation worse by openly conspiring against him. Even if I did briefly entertain notions of shoving
him off the cliff. The motherfucker would probably bounce and then climb back up to murder me.
Which I suppose begs the question... why hasn’t he murdered me? It was a rather obvious way of severing a bond, and back in the copse, Raksh had at first seemed furious enough to try. But
before I could ponder the delightful topic of my not-murder more deeply there came a sliver of hope on a salty-sweet sea breeze.
We had made it to Socotra’s northern coast.
The limestone cliffs were even higher here, but I spotted no cave entrances.
However, between the dying light of the setting sun and the eons of salt and mildew covering the cliffs’ craggy face, I suspected such an entrance would be easy to miss.
The area was desolate—no ships drifted in the blue-green water and no fishermen were dragging in nets.
Even so, I was overly conscious of every footfall and snapped twig.
When darkness fell, my companions and I took what shelter we could beneath sparse bushes.
After seeming surprised and mildly stung that I did not wish to sleep with him, Raksh retreated to a nearby tree and climbed into its branches to pass the night.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Amina,” Tinbu muttered. “I really do.” Dalila said nothing. Whether her silence was due
to my decision to work with Raksh again or whatever had passed between us at the Christian village, I didn’t know.
Sleep didn’t come easily. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Marjana’s sweet little face. Ten years ago I had burned Asif,
buried my treacherous husband, and eight months later had an impossibly tiny little girl swaddled and nestled in my arms.
Raksh and I hadn’t been married long, and we’d never even discussed the possibility of children. Whether it was the sheer
labor of ship work, the limited diet of a sailor, or something else, my cycles had always been irregular. Three previous husbands—human
husbands—had failed to leave anything in my womb; I never imagined Raksh could.
And once Marjana was born... I never thought of her as Raksh’s. Never thought of her as anything other than my daughter, innocent and kind and wholly, entirely human. My heart would not allow it.
He cannot know of her. By God, he will not.
The oath went through my mind again and again. When I finally did fall asleep, my dreams were full of scorpions that flew
like seagulls overhead as I raced after a toddling Marjana along the decks of a Marawati that went on forever, screaming her name as she disappeared over the edge.
I awoke exhausted and in pain, my head pounding and a pulsing shudder jolting my knee, sharp enough to bring tears to my eyes.
I choked down a damp biscuit and we departed, taking advantage of the early morning cool that chilled the salty air.
It was dusk when Raksh finally called out, “Just ahead—do you see that thicket? Stop there.”
I reached the stand of trees, peered through the thick leaves, and then jerked back when a warm breeze batted my face. Just
beyond the thicket was a sheer, lethal drop to an inlet where a tumbling river poured down from the hills and into the sea,
a churning maelstrom of jagged, glistening rocks and crashing water. I immediately threw out a hand to halt my friends and
glared daggers at Raksh.
“You might have warned me before I fell to my death!”
He smiled sweetly. “I did tell you to stop. Now, look. Do you see where that sapling emerges from the cliff? The tunnel entrance
is just past that.”
My stomach dropped. “That is a good deal farther down than I had imagined.”
Dalila scrutinized the spot. “My ropes will reach it,” she said, giving one of the surrounding trees a tug. “And these are
strong enough to serve as an anchor.”
I nodded, and as quickly as we had fallen back into our sailing duties, we resumed the usual preparations for a job. Tinbu
and I set to cleaning our weapons and readying oil lamps. Dalila tested her ropes, tying the ends of three into strong foot
loops. We had run more complicated schemes with worse odds, but they had been against familiar foes: rival smugglers and spoiled
nobles, two-timing merchants and kidnapped minor royals. Not against a foreigner with a blood-soaked past and magical tricks
who had managed to scare off the actual demon I had married. I prayed maghrib with more intention than usual, adding extra raka’at and looping my oft-neglected misbaha
around my wrist.
I finished my prayers to find Raksh crouched across from me, the expression on his face incompatible with salah.
“You are different,” he declared.
“Of course I’m different,” I said, irked at his presence and at myself for how quickly my gaze settled upon his thighs. “It
has been over a decade since you last plagued me.”
“That is not what I mean.” There was a note of curious wonder in his voice. “Your desires, your ambitions; they are not the
same. They are—”
“Less impressive, I know. I’m old. That’s what happens to humans.”
“They’re stronger.” Raksh’s eyes darkened with what might have been lust in another man, but that was not the kind of ardor
he favored. Well, not the only kind. “ Sharper .”
A chill ran down my back. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
He didn’t seem to register my response, eyeing me like I’ve seen others hunger after gold. “I sensed you coming, you know.
About a week ago. I did not know it was you, of course, but I had a feeling, a premonition things were about to change.” He
shuddered. “Did you feel it? The magic between us?”
A week ago was when the skies had cleared and I’d been blessed with the best sailing weather of my life. With fish that jumped
into our nets, a cistern that never emptied, and winds that pulled us in the direction of Socotra like a leash. I recalled
how I had heard Raksh laughing as he stalked us in the grove, long before my companions had noticed anything.
“There is nothing between us,” I denied. “Why would you even want there to be? I left you to starve. You greeted me by throwing
a knife at Tinbu and then threatening to burn us one by one on the beach.”
Raksh shrugged. “Grudges are for humans. Why cling to some petty disagreement from the past when a future prize might be sweeter?
And you...” A flicker of crimson glowed in his dark eyes. “You have always been promising. But you are getting older. Surely your body can’t do this sort of thing much longer. What are grudges when you and I might have a few
last adventures?”
I knew what Raksh was doing, and his words still struck close. Hadn’t that been part of why I’d taken this job, a weakness I’d nearly admitted to my mother? The ache for just one more escapade, one more chance to see the ocean spread before me and shower my loved ones in riches.
I drew back, realizing only as I did that Raksh had crept closer, his knees brushing my own. “I will never forgive you for
Asif,” I said, hating the tremor in my voice. “And I want nothing to do with magic.”
Tinbu strode up, seeming to sense trouble. “Stop talking to that ghoul. He’s a lying waste of breath.”
Raksh cackled. “Oh, people of the Marawati , I have missed this! The energy that comes off you when you are excited and terrified...” He inhaled. “Delicious.”
“Are you ready?” Dalila called.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.” I took the length of black cloth she handed me and wrapped it around my face. She and Tinbu were
already similarly dressed, and Raksh had his own way of blending in when he didn’t wish to be seen. “Let’s go.”
The inlet was more fearsome at dusk, the waves smashing into glittering shards on the black rocks at the bottom of the cliff.
I tried hard not to imagine that water tinged with the scarlet of our blood.
“You first,” I ordered Raksh, handing him the rope.
He made no move to take it. “I do not need rope.” In the blink of an eye, he shape-shifted, his skin turning the color of
a storm-tossed sky, and then stepped neatly off the cliff.
Tinbu let out a choked cry of surprise. But Raksh had not jumped to his doom; rather he was climbing down the precipice’s sheer face, his clawed hands and feet gripping holds I doubted we could spot, let alone use. The sun’s
dying light played on his striped skin and the muscles flexing across his bare back. No one who sported tusks should be that
attractive, and I wondered again how I could have ever believed he was human.
Palm wine. Palm wine was the reason you believed he was human and why God has wisely forbidden such a thing.
“Is he wearing a heart around his neck?” Tinbu asked.
“It appears so.” Dalila glanced at me, a hint of suspicion in her eyes. “How did you not realize what he was? You married
him. You slept with him.”
“That is not the man I married.” But it was the truth that skirted her question, an evasion I feared Dalila was savvy enough
to soon detect.
Below, Raksh reached the tunnel. He flashed a triumphant grin, then slipped inside.
Dalila and Tinbu climbed down next. I grew more and more uneasy as I watched them. I hate heights; I fell from the Marawati ’s mast as a child, and though I landed in a pile of sailcloth that softened the blow and saved my life, I have never forgotten