Chapter 33
I did not allow myself to relax even a hair until we were four days at sea. I had spent the past week doing everything I could
to ready the Marawati for departure, even if we would be traveling at a sluggish pace and against the monsoon; true repairs needed a better harbor
and more supplies than we had at hand.
But I wanted to be home , desperately. I wanted my child and my family and to set this all behind me—for however long the peris would permit.
Magnun had entreated me to stay, offering use of the well-stocked boatyard and skilled tradesmen back at his base. But I was
not eager to try the luck of his comrades twice and told him so.
“Then perhaps you should join us truly,” he had suggested with a hopeful glint in his eyes as he packed up the plunder from
Falco’s camp. “Take the oaths, add your Marawati to our fleet, and raid the sea as a proper bandit queen again.”
I’d shaken my head, giving an admittedly regretful look at the spoils he’d earned. My people had been permitted to take a
few pieces, but I would not renege on the deal I’d struck with the sole nakhudha who’d been willing to help me.
“I’m done with that life, but thank you for coming to my aid.” Far more reluctantly, I handed over the meteor dagger. “And
thank you for this.”
“Ah, ah... did I say the loan had ended?” Magnun folded my fingers over the dagger. “You battled a sea monster with that, al-Sirafi. Hold on to it a bit longer, see where it takes you.” He winked. “If anything, it means I will have to track you down one day to retrieve it.”
I could see a hundred ways being tracked down by Magnun could go badly, but honestly, the Egyptian nakhudha ran a tight ship
and seemed like a good time. And it was a remarkable knife. Besides, I had four more magical items to retrieve—I could probably use a celestial blade. “Then until
we meet again, God willing.”
With Raksh aboard again, we ran into blessedly good luck, the wind and current exactly what we needed despite the season.
“Amina, go rest,” Dalila said, shoving my shoulder when I began to nod off on my captain’s bench. “You have not slept in days.”
I shuddered awake, wincing as one of the muscles in my neck twinged in protest at the movement. “I’m fine,” I mumbled. “Never
better.”
“Even your lying is affected. Go .” She pushed me in the direction of the galley. “Else I will slip a knockout potion in your next meal.”
I muttered a curse but staggered away as commanded. The galley was wondrously cool, my cushion alluring. I was taking off
my cloak and unwinding my turban when a feline growl caught my attention.
“ Payasam? ” I said in disbelief. The cat had survived the attack on the Marawati because of course it had; it was a curse and had already returned to trying to sleep on my face. But the growling, hissing
feline hunched in the galley’s roof beams bore little resemblance to Tinbu’s happy idiot of a pet. “What has you all...”
I trailed off as I followed the cat’s glare.
On the ledge of the narrow window, glittering in a shaft of sunlight, rested a single lime-green feather.
Khayzur .
With a final hiss, Payasam jumped down from the ceiling and tore out the door. A chill ran down my spine, at odds with the
warm day and pleasant breeze as I stared at the peri’s feather.
Five . The number rang through my head; five Transgressions I was to retrieve. One was done, four more to go. They could be anything. They could be anywhere.
I dropped my cloak and turban and picked up Khayzur’s feather. It was cold, buzzing in a strange but not unpleasant way.
Who are you? I wondered. For now that my loved ones were out of imminent danger, my mind had cleared, and in hindsight, it seemed extraordinarily
fortuitous that Khayzur—one of the few peris who would save a human—had been exactly where I needed him when I was dropped
out of the sky. Where was the line between God’s plan and something being too good to be true? Yes, Khayzur seemed kind and
had saved my life, but that did not mean I trusted him. I did not trust any magical being.
Even though, as much as I hated to admit it, I might now be one of them.
A shadow fell across me, and Raksh spoke from the doorway. “A gift?”
“A message,” I grumbled. “I suspect the peris want to make sure I know they’re watching me. They’re likely not pleased I destroyed
the Moon of Saba myself instead of handing it over.”
He plucked the feather from my fingers. “Do not worry yourself over those birdbrained fools.”
I smacked his arm. “Maybe I should be blaming you for the bird-brained fools. What were you thinking back on the island, suggesting I sign my entire life over to them!”
Raksh frowned. “Was it not obvious?”
“That you were sacrificing me to save yourself?”
“ Sacrifice you?” Raksh burst into laughter. “Is that what you’ve been thinking this whole time?” His eyes began to glow. “Oh, Amina...
no. Not at all.”
Nothing that got Raksh this excited was good. “Then what were you doing?”
He dropped the feather and closed the distance between us. “You don’t even see it, do you?” he asked, seeming to marvel at
me anew. “Amina, I am going to make you a legend .”
I stilled. That word was very dangerous when it came to Raksh. When it came to me. “What?” I asked in a whisper.
His eyes locked on mine. Without me realizing it, he’d taken one of my braids in his hands, weaving it through his fingers.
“A supernaturally blessed warrior tasked with traveling the world and hunting down some of the most marvelous treasures ever
created,” he breathed, sounding almost reverent. “Do you not realize your potential ? I am going to spin such tales that your adventures will live on in epic poems grander than that of Antarah and Dhat al-Himma,
your name sung in odes to heroes whose mighty feats surpass those of Alexander.” Raksh’s voice rose in merry delight as he
pulled me closer, so enraptured he seemed to forget doing so risked him getting stabbed. “It will be like we dreamed the night
we first met!”
The night we first met. I remembered the ill-fated evening Raksh and I had crossed paths. How I had laughed and sighed under
the stars, bewitched into revealing my heart. How I wished to travel the world. How I wished to be the best , the adventures of the great Amina al-Sirafi told around courtyards and campfires.
“I-I cannot,” I stammered. “You heard the peris. They told me to be discreet.”
“Ah, but you did not actually strike such an ironclad deal with them. Were they to put consequences into the ‘loose agreement
under which they would not let you fall to your death...’” Raksh rolled his eyes, before a far more cunning expression
stole onto his face. “ That would have been a proper pact with a mortal. They would never admit to such an abomination. And truthfully, there’s nothing
they can do to stop the spread of human stories: to interfere would be against their own code.”
I was completely taken aback. “You tricked them?”
“I did! But you need not look so fretful. It’s what you want, isn’t it?” He kissed my fingers. “You shall have your adventures,
shall explore the world and for righteous reasons. We heard how dangerous those Trans gressions are: now you will be the one to rid the world of them.” He winked. “Do some good to counterbalance all your misdeeds, no?”
I knew Raksh cared nothing for good deeds; he was merely reading my heart’s desires and using what he sensed for his own reasons.
However, the future he painted so prettily no longer sounded like the ridiculous dream of a decade ago. I had yet to wrap
my mind around what had happened to me on the peris’ island, yet to sit and let the implications of my “not-deal” settle.
But I had dueled with a sea leviathan. Battled a wizard and set free an ensorcelled lunar aspect.
What else might I do?
Go home and be a mother to your child for as long as you can . And truthfully that was what I desired more than anything right now, my heart aching at the very prospect of holding Marjana
in my arms. And yet...
And yet...
I wanted everything Raksh had just purred. If I was being honest, I wanted more . I meant what I had told Nasteho back on the beach in Mogadishu: I had never stopped being a nakhudha, never stopped being
an explorer . It wasn’t this accursed demon or spirit of discord or whatever he called himself putting alien desires in my soul: I wanted to travel the world and sail every sea.
I wanted to have adventures, to be a hero, to have my tales told in courtyards and street fairs, where perhaps kids who’d grown
up like me, with more imagination than means, might be inspired to dream. Where women who were told there was only one sort
of respectful life for them could listen to tales of another who’d broken away—and thrived when she’d done so.
I wanted to show Marjana that. Not now. But when she was older, when it was safer. I wanted to teach my daughter to read the
waves and the night sky, to see her eyes widen with wonder and curiosity when I brought her to new places, new cities. I wanted
to give her all that I’d had to take , positioning her to enjoy opportunities I could never imagine.
Was it possible? Could I be an adventuring nakhudha and a mother?
Did I even have a choice? For I was obliged to recover four more Transgressions, and a strange niggling guilt gnawed in my
belly at that. If I had no choice but to go adventuring, then perhaps I didn’t need to delve into the dark, murky part of
my heart that wanted to do so for selfish reasons.
Raksh had held his tongue, his eyes flicking back and forth across my face as my mind raced—he was, after all, well practiced
in waiting for foolhardy humans to dream their delusions. But watching him do so was enough to shake me from my dreaming.
For I wasn’t the only one with ambitions and I recalled another night with Raksh—our last on the peris’ island. When my husband