Chapter 23
The pirate darkens my door before Honey sends me anything else interesting.
“Oh no,” I say, glancing up as his shadow crosses my desk.
“Oh yes,” he says. “New prince.”
I sigh. “Have you seen him? Which one is it?”
“Very…” The pirate pauses. “Droopy. I think your melancholy friend will like him a lot.”
Droopy. That probably means Belancz, crown prince of the city-state of the Five-Fold Night, who has made it very clear over the years that he’d prefer to spend his time writing epic poetry instead of governing. Or socializing.
“I doubt this one will be much fun for an audience,” I say. “You needn’t bother.”
“On the contrary, I have very high hopes for this one,” he says. “He looks exceedingly glum about the prospect of breaking your curse and being stuck as your one true love.”
“You say the nicest things,” I grumble.
“So far you’ve had one who was quite excited about the prospect, and one who worried that breaking your curse would mean he wasn’t in love with someone else. This one seems very certain that he will break the curse, but that he won’t like it at all.”
“He wouldn’t,” I agree. “And neither would I.”
He laughs. “Cheer up. Maybe this kiss will be transformative for you both.”
An hour later, the pirate is still lounging about on the stairs, and Bel hasn’t shown up yet.
I’ve tried very hard to ignore the pirate, but it’s hard work, given how immensely and utterly aware of him I am.
I busy myself with a letter to Honey, which is mostly just doodles.
At one point, the pirate shifts, knocking over a few books, and I look up.
“If you haven’t got anything better to do than make a mess,” I say, hoping he’ll catch my drift and leave.
“I haven’t,” he agrees, showing no sign that he’s going to take my meaning and depart.
“Fine.” I set my quill down. “Why do you leave things in exchange for what you take? I’ve sent for a book about water magic but it hasn’t arrived yet, so if it’s to do with your curse, I might understand. But otherwise, it’s just…” Sasha’s opinion comes to mind. “Weird,” I conclude.
He leans back on the stairs and grins at me, and I feel myself blush. “It’s just good manners, really,” he says. “If you take something, you have to leave something behind; else things become unbalanced.”
“You don’t have to take things, you know.”
“I’m afraid I do, actually. Pirate code.”
“You’re not a pirate now,” I point out.
“Once a pirate, always a pirate: On the sea or not, we are what we are.” His voice is light, but I get the sense that he means what he says very seriously.
“Do you steal from other townsfolk? Do you have a collection of…of…lettuce leaves and threads and thimbles and pipe stems that you keep in my teacup?”
He shrugs. How irritating.
“You didn’t leave anything behind when you stole my books,” I point out. “The first time you were here.”
“Perhaps,” he says. “Perhaps not.”
“Then you did leave something,” I say.
“Maybe.”
I scowl. “I haven’t found anything.”
“Maybe you didn’t recognize it for what it was.”
I decide to ignore that. “In any event, you must be running out of things to leave behind now—I made you empty your pockets that time, remember? And now the contents of your pockets from that day are, in sum, in a bowl on my table.”
“Intriguing conjecture,” he says.
“I just want to understand what you’re doing,” I say, annoyed.
He grins, his aggravating dimple reappearing. “Like I said, it’s just good manners.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Folks generally don’t.”
“Oh for…” I blow out a breath. “Talking to you is like…like…”
“Birdsong in spring?” he suggests.
“Fencing practice,” I say. “Only we’re fencing with feathers.”
“Extraordinary simile,” he offers.
“Look, if you haven’t got anything better to do…”
“I still haven’t,” he agrees.
“Why don’t you go bother someone else for a while, and just come back when Bel shows up.”
“I like it here.”
“Where do you live?”
That takes him by surprise. “Excuse me?”
“Here, in town. You must be living somewhere.”
“Well,” he begins.
“If you’re going to stay here and irritate me, we might as well have a proper conversation.
” I fold my arms and glare at him. “You can’t possibly actually live in a barn.
Where do you live? The inn? What do you live on?
I suppose you might have buried a treasure chest somewhere about, one which you visit when you need funds; I gather pirates go in for that sort of thing.
You didn’t have any money on you besides that one coin that day, and now you’ve left the coin here.
I can’t imagine the locals extend that much credit to you. ”
“You’re right; they don’t. I do live in a barn.”
“A barn?” I echo. That does explain the barn-pirate thing, but it’s still hard to imagine. “An actual barn?”
“A nice old lady farmer and I came to an agreement. I muck out her stables and she lets me live in the hayloft.”
I look him over. He hasn’t got so much as the husk of an oat stuck to him anywhere, which you’d reasonably expect from someone living in a hayloft. And it’s hard to imagine him mucking out a stall. Regularly.
“Do you have a friend in town?” I suggest. “Are you renting a room?”
“You don’t have to believe me,” he says, “but I’m telling you the truth.”
“That sounds awful,” I say. “Very drafty. And wet when it rains. And chilly.”
“It’s not bad. I hung a hammock; on rainy days, it’s almost like being back shipboard.”
“What will you do when it gets cold?”
He shrugs. “Worry about that then.”
“How long have you been here?”
“A little longer than you.”
I sigh. Getting him to talk is like drawing teeth from a very good-natured…I rack my brains for the appropriate beast. Something that can retract its teeth, perhaps. Or a shark; no matter how many teeth you extract, more appear.
I look up at him and find that he’s watching me with the most aggravatingly knowing expression, as though he’s completely aware of the mental gymnastics he’s inspired. I raise my nose in what I hope is an expression of proud disinterest.
“And you’re really not just going to go and leave me alone, are you?” It’s not really a question.
“The show hasn’t even started yet. Why not tell me about your glum potential husband?”
I shrug. There’s not much to tell about Bel. “He likes poetry.”
“Ah, say no more.”
“We’ve never gotten along particularly well. I think he thinks I’m…rather superficial.”
“Because you prefer tragic romances to epic poetry?” He chuckles. “Can’t say I really see the difference, honestly.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway; he’s not going to break the curse. None of them are.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“I presume, once they’ve exhausted all their options, my parents will drag themselves up here to read me the riot act about being careless enough to get caught by a curse.”
“At which point the curse will scurry away, tail between its legs, and you’ll be free.”
I laugh despite myself. “I’m honestly just holding out hope for Honeyrose’s ability to locate a clever sorcerer before my parents send all seven princes to Little Pepperidge.”
“Ah, the mysterious Honeyrose,” he says. “You’ll have to tell me about her.”
“No,” I say. “I want you to tell me about yourself.”
He smiles in that lazy, infuriating way. “Do you.”
“If you’re going to hang around stealing my things and bothering me, you might as well.”
“Fair enough; what would you like to know?”
“How’d you get cursed?”
He chuckles. “Pissed off a sea witch.”
I sigh. “And?”
“That’s about it, really.”
I put my head in my hands. “Honestly, do you keep everyone at this good-natured kind of distance or is it a special kind of aggravation you reserve just for me?”
“This is very much a special aggravation I reserve just for you.”
“Ugh,” I say, and bury my head in my arms on the desk. “Why, in the name of the great winged serpent?”
“You look awfully comfortable for a princess cursed to be stuck in the same place for all eternity. I haven’t really got anything better to do, so I might as well spend my time reminding you that there’s more to life than sitting behind a desk in a cursed bookshop.”
“Charitable of you to act so selflessly on my behalf,” I say, my voice muffled. I still have my head in my arms. There’s really no point in letting him know that I’ve been quite enjoying sitting behind a desk in a bookshop. And I’m the cursed one, not the bookshop.
There’s a pause, and then he speaks, his voice lower and much nearer than it had been. “I told you, Princess. Something binds us together. There’s some sort of sympathy between your curse and mine. I’m sure of it. I simply haven’t figured out what yet.”
I look up in surprise, and turn beet red. Again. He’s standing at the desk, hands braced against it, looking down at me with an expression of very serious intent.
“Coincidence,” I murmur, my voice hopefully sounding less strangled than it feels. The wild scent of the sea is filling my senses, making it hard to focus.
“Perhaps,” he says. He is staring deeply into my eyes, almost as though he’s searching for something. It’s nearly unbearable.
“Why do you smell like that?” I blurt out, sitting back abruptly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Salt water. You smell like…” Like the sea on a cold day, mist rising off the water, like fog and sand and dark, hidden places. “Brine,” I amend, turning, if possible, redder.
He leans back, the mad pull I feel toward him weakening a bit. I hope.
“I’ve heard it drives women wild,” he says, the mask he wears dropping back into place. “Eau de dead fish.”
“Is it a spell?”
He sighs. “I think it’s the curse. Some sort of side effect.”
“Oh no, that’s not a side effect. That’s an ironic curse.”
He raises an eyebrow at me and I blush, annoyingly. “That is, according to what I’ve read. It sounds like an ironic curse.”
“Isn’t my whole situation essentially an ironic curse?”
“To be cursed to be afraid of the sea, but to always smell it.” I sigh. And truly, the thought of it makes my heart hurt. The sea witch who cursed him thought of everything. “Yes, probably.”
He gives me a funny look, almost as though he’s surprised I should find the idea tragic rather than comic.
“Do you love the sea?” I ask, suddenly very sad. “I’ve heard that for sailors, the sea exerts a pull that’s almost supernatural in its power.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “Get that from one of your tragic romances?”
I frown. I did, actually. “I’m trying to be understanding. Some people call it kindness.”
I think, for a moment, that he might leave; he draws a breath, as though to say something—probably to warn me off from kind impulses, as Honey has so often—but finally he seats himself on the stairs opposite me again and resumes his lounging, insouciant pose.
“Yes,” he finally says. “I do love the sea. The witch probably thought it would drive me mad, to smell the sea air at all times while feeling nothing but terror at the idea of the sea, but…” He pauses, examines his nails for a moment.
“I grew up seaside; my parents were fishmongers. I’ve never known anything but the scent of salt water.
To live in eternal dread of the ocean is one thing, but to smell the sea air wherever I go; it’s no curse. It smells like home.”
I wait, but it seems his moment of honest introspection is over.
He shrugs. “That’s how I knew your loud prince hadn’t broken my curse. I could still smell the sea.”
“Ah,” I say. We’re silent for a moment too long. It’s much too intimate. I clear my throat. “Tell me how you get into and out of my shop. And steal my things.”
“You know already—magic,” he says, smiling.
“Is it an incantation? Maybe if it’s something you speak…I know it can’t be a spelled object you carry around,” I say, more to myself than to him. “We both know you haven’t got anywhere to put it.”
He looks up at me and grins, devilishly. “Princess, what do you know about sailors?”
“Very little,” I admit.
“You haven’t got much, and what you do have is generally at risk of getting lost or traded or swept overboard.
Some of us wear jewelry, amulets, earrings.
But I started my life in the merchant marines, where such things aren’t allowed.
” He sits up, unbuttons the cuff of his left sleeve, and rolls it up his arm.
There, on his sun-darkened skin, on the swell of his muscle, just above his elbow, I can see a black symbol inked into his skin.
“Oh,” I say, softly. “How foolish of me.”
Tattoos. Of course. He wouldn’t carry magical objects, which could be lost or washed away. He wears his magic on his own skin.
He’s rolled his sleeve back down and is buttoning his cuff.
I watch him for a moment: the sun-gold hair falling over his cheekbones, tied in a neat queue at the nape of his neck; the soft, perfectly white shirt; the almost obscenely tight black breeches; the perfectly polished boots.
If he truly does live on a hammock in a barn, there’s no way to tell by looking at him.
He’s utterly out of place here, in this tiny town with its rolling hills and steep cliffs and sheep, endless sheep.
The tidy pink and yellow buildings; the small joys and sorrows of day-to-day life in Little Pepperidge.
Even if I didn’t know he was a cursed pirate who speaks only in ironic detachment and smells like the wild sea, I think I would be able to see it. Eventually.
He looks up and my face bursts into flame, again. He leans back and smiles at me. “Any other questions?”
“Yes.” I cough, and clear my throat noisily. “What kind of a name is Bash?”