Chapter 30
I will come out and confess that is it a very strange experience to plot the theft of one’s beloved ship. Yet after two days
of furious, speedy travel along Socotra’s northern coast, two days of arguing and scheming with Raksh, Magnun, and his top
commanders, two days of praying my people were still alive and Dunya’s deal had kept the crew safe, we approached Falco’s
camp outside the cave where the Moon of Saba resided, on a dark night whose moon was about to be swallowed in an eclipse with
a scheme only pirates could concoct.
What we decided on was a diversion: we were going to pretend to steal the Marawati . Which meant even now, Magnun’s magnificent ship—its sails and hulls painted black and gray, its lights doused, its expert
oarsmen pulling with a grace and discretion that made me want to weep in envy—was coursing through the dark water, nigh invisible,
toward my beloved ship, with Magnun, a proper pirate if I had ever met one, in command.
However, I was not on Magnun’s attacking ship. Instead, I stalked across the cliffs overlooking the cave’s mouth, staying
low to the ground. Raksh was at my side, ten of the fiercest pirates behind us. Magnun had dropped us off in the inlet with
ropes and climbing equipment, and I would be lying if I said I had no misgivings about the Egyptian nakhudha possibly having
ulterior motives.
But it turns out I hadn’t told the truth to Dalila back in Aden: my people were more important than the Marawati , and if I had to risk my ship to free them, so be it.
We settled into a vantage point hidden by scrubby bushes from which we could spy the bonfire blazing at the heart of Falco’s
camp. The moon was bright and round as a silver coin, no sign of the eclipse yet. Creeping forward, I tried to make out what
I could of the dark flitting figures below. My vision was no longer great at night, but what I could see of the dancing flames
was enough to turn my stomach, memories of nearly being made Falco’s thrall flooding over me. Hands shoving me to the sand and the foul potion wriggling down my throat. The skittering army of scorpions pouring into the pit...
Focus. Steadying myself, I pressed the strange meteor blade sheathed at my waist, and it instantly warmed, tingling beneath my fingers.
A few weeks ago, a celestial weapon activating at my touch would have been deeply unsettling. Now it was reassuring. I had
indeed been changed. But not at the Frank’s behest.
Closer to the beach, a breeze must have blown in off the ocean. The bonfire flared, its flames briefly illuminating a small
knot of people whose faces filled my heart with joy.
My crew . Not all of them, but relief coursed through me as I recognized Tinbu, Hamid, Tiny, the ship’s carpenter, and a few more
of the talented boatwrights. They were the group you would want to do repairs on a wounded vessel; indeed, I could now make
out my Marawati bobbing not too far from the shore, moonlight rippling and breaking on the rolling swells surrounding her. It was too dark
to assess my ship’s state, but at least she was floating. I rocked up onto my toes, searching for the rest of my people.
Instead I spotted something far less promising. What I’d taken to be part of the landscape—a rocky outcropping jutting out
of the shallows beside a sandy dune—suddenly moved, an undulating shudder followed by the waft of infection on the salty air.
It was Falco’s marid , the enormous creature half beached on the shore.
I stilled, fearing it had somehow caught sight of us, but the monster merely flopped a few tentacles before slowly opening and closing one enormous claw.
Was it dying? Sleeping? Its behavior seemed sluggish, though I’m not sure how much that meant when you were a leviathan the
size of a building. A jumble of broken timbers and glimmering boils were still fused to its skull, all that was left of Falco’s
wrecked ship.
One of Magnun’s warriors joined me.
“I assume that is the creature?” he whispered. I had filled them in as best I could on the journey, describing the camp, its
fighters, the cave, and my people to Magnun and his crew and trying to take some assurance in the fact that they apparently
conducted successful midnight raids on supposedly larger, more lethal targets all the time (and I should know, for they spent
the trip boasting, Magnun’s men in particular making sure I knew how skilled, virile, and successful their nakhudha was).
“Aye.” I glanced his way, hoping the sight wasn’t enough to scare him off, but the man’s eyes were shining.
“It will be a glorious fight,” he murmured, sounding like his boss. “Do you see your crew?”
“Only a few.” I pointed out Tinbu and the rest, peering through the darkness a second time in hopes of spotting more faces
to little success. “But I don’t see the others, nor the Frank himself. They may be in the cave.” At least, I prayed they were in the cave; Dalila, Majed, and Dunya were among the missing faces.
“Then we await my nakhudha’s signal.”
We withdrew to join the others. Raksh was breathing fast and holding his mace the wrong way.
I plucked the mace from his hands, turning it right side up and handing it back. “Please watch where you swing that. I don’t
need you attacking our side.”
He wet his lips, his eyes bright with fear. “I have mentioned the not-being-a-warrior thing, yes?”
“At least a dozen times. Just keep reminding yourself of the alternative.”
“Believe me, I am,” he muttered, pulling a sour face. “Fucking lunar idiot had to go and screw us all over.”
Before Raksh could fall deeper into self-pity, Magnun’s signal came: at sea, his rowers picked up speed, intentionally splashing
enough to make visible the large pirate vessel heading directly for the Marawati . We watched in tense silence, waiting, but it wasn’t more than another minute before Falco’s mercenaries noticed, one of
them shouting:
“There is a ship approaching!”
Still aboard his vessel, Magnun’s archers lit their arrows, fire flickering to life from the bows of a dozen men in perfect
symmetry (my God, had his fellow pirates underestimated the Egyptian; I was half ready to sign on with him myself), and then
true panic seemed to set in at Falco’s camp.
A large man shot to his feet—Yazid, I recognized, mostly from the sight of my own scimitar hanging at his waist. “Go tell
our master!” I heard him cry.
Perhaps awakened by all the commotion, the marid let out a sickly roar. It sounded far weaker than it had before, but it was
still very capable of heaving its vast body up onto its many legs. It returned to the water, the entire beach trembling with
its mighty steps, and I whispered a prayer for Magnun and his crew as the creature swam directly toward his ship.
Time for the second part of our plan.
“ Go! ” I hissed to the fighters accompanying me.
We poured down upon the beach. Magnun’s warriors were clearly more skilled hunters of men than I, perhaps even more so than Falco’s loutish brutes, used to daring raids and split-second decisions.
They were deadly quiet, fast as a javelin as they pierced the camp.
I had barely spotted the Frank’s lookout before one of the pirates seized him from behind, slit his throat, cradled his fall to the ground so it would be silent, and moved on.
The ease of it both stunned and slightly intimidated me—these were some salty killers. But then the sight of the dead scout
stopped me cold. Not only did the man appear as monstrous as he had when the Frank forced his foul potion upon me, with four
clouded gray eyes on stalks that erupted from his brow and fish scales covering his skin, there was something even more bizarre:
a thick cord of what looked like braided seaweed sprouting straight from his chest. It was glowing silver but rapidly disintegrating,
the light within fading.
What in God’s name is that ? Disgusted and yet strangely compelled, I gave the cord a slight tug and nearly fell flat back on my ass as the seaweed cord—and
the gray-blue stinger it was attached to—erupted from the man’s sternum with a repulsive wet splotching sound.
It looked exactly like the stinger Raksh had pulled from me.
Raksh himself ran up just then. “What are you doing ?”
“What is this?” I asked, keeping my voice below the crash of the surf. I gestured to the remains of the seaweed chain, now
so decayed it was hard to pick out. The stinger had already crumbled away, leaving nothing more than a curved pile of broken
shells.
His gaze darted between my face and the ground. “What is what?”
“This cord ,” I explained. “It was attached to a stinger like the one you cut out of my chest. And it stretches—” But I couldn’t see
where it ended, the tether no longer glowing in the dark night. “Somewhere over there.”
Raksh visibly startled. “You can see a cord ? Coming from a stinger like the one that was in your chest?” When I nodded, Raksh gave me a wild look. “That sounds like
the oath he made to Falco made manifest; magical bonds exist in some realms as physical forms. But you should not be able
to see that. I cannot see that.”
Now also wasn’t the time to discuss it, pandemonium erupting around us.
Offshore, Magnun let out a burst of naft toward the marid, which shrieked in response.
In the scattered moonlight and flickers of burning naft reflecting off the midnight ocean, it was difficult to see anything save grappling limbs and gleaming weapons as Magnun’s fighters threw themselves upon Falco’s.
These were the sort of battles I’d spent my career avoiding—a smuggler who wants to live to retirement relies on tricks and
thievery rather than open, bloody fighting. I’d been in plenty of skirmishes. Killed my first man at eighteen. But I’d never
savored violence.
However, as I left the scout’s body and rushed to join the fight, something came over me, energy singing through my blood.