Chapter 4
Dalila’s assessment was blunt. “You should have killed him.”
I hung my head in my hands. “I know.”
“We had the perfect opportunity. He was already in chains. We could have weighted his ankles and tossed him overboard. Let him try and make one of his deals with a shark.”
“He’d probably succeed.” I rubbed my neck, tension radiating down my spine.
My hands were quaking with the need to strike, to throw; to do something to spend the nervous energy boiling in my blood.
At times like this, my transformation was a curse: supernatural strength unequipped to share space in a body with mortal emotions.
“God only knows if Raksh even can be killed.”
“He certainly fears it,” Dalila declared. “And I suspect that would have accomplished the task if you had taken the chance.”
She nodded to the meteor blade at my waist, and I grimaced.
I had indeed been tempted; when last we met and Raksh spoke so dreamingly of traveling together, of using his magic to “make me a legend,” I had been seized with the fear he would never let me go.
My instincts had screamed at me to take the mystical dagger to his throat, to sever our attachment like a broken sail threatening to capsize my life.
I had stayed my hand. (I had done more, but we needn’t dwell upon it. Married ladies have needs.) And now I was in another mess because of him.
“He is Marjana’s father, Dalila,” I said quietly. Desperately. “How can I be the one who slays her father? Especially now, when she is aching for answers about her heritage?”
“And you would do what? Introduce them? Invite him to dinner with your family so he can coach your daughter in the best ways to murder and deceive?” She scoffed.
“We both know you are not going to entangle that demon any deeper into your life. Allowing him to live only gives him more opportunity to endanger you. To endanger all of us.”
I said nothing, despair snaring me as thoroughly as it had since I had bid Marjana good night, kissing the top of her head and promising the morning would bring lighter spirits, knowing all along it was a lie.
It was only after breakfast that I succeeded in dragging Dalila out of earshot, claiming I needed the petite, not very nature-loving “apothecary” to join me fishing.
Dalila sighed, tossing the net she’d been doing a poor job of disentangling at my feet. “This is a mess.”
“What isn’t?” I asked bleakly, picking up the net. “Regardless . . . Raksh is not the immediate problem.”
“Ah, yes, the delightful task of stealing the most dangerous object I’ve ever heard of from an immortal sorceress.”
I glared at her. “You did insist upon taking part in these quests.”
“Her island better have some uniquely lethal flora,” she grumbled. “And if I come upon any more magical apothecary tools, I will be taking them, the peris be damned. Have you a plan?”
“Not yet.” I picked through the net, plucking free snarls of seaweed and clumps of shells, severed crab pincers and other such detritus.
It felt good to accomplish something with my hands, the action helping my fevered mind settle.
“Despite Khayzur’s pleas of urgency, this mortal can travel only so swiftly, and it will take a couple of weeks to summon the Marawati back from Aden.
” Tinbu and Majed had sailed on after dropping us off, and it was going to take some diplomacy to command them back, convince enough of the crew to join, and find other arrangements for the cargo my ship was supposed to carry on to Mogadishu.
The peris were going to cost me a lot of money.
No, Raksh is going to cost you a lot of money. I tied a knot with more force than was necessary and the netting snapped.
“And then?” Dalila asked. “We wander around the Persian Gulf?”
“No wandering the Persian Gulf,” I replied. “Well—not exactly. Khayzur said peris typically witness human beings snatched as they traveled southward and so that is what we shall do. But first, we go north for more information.”
A look of understanding washed over Dalila’s face, followed by something more complicated. Trepidation, fear . . . I could scarcely identify it before it was gone, her face its usual mask.
“Baghdad,” she said, her voice flat. “You seek Jamal.”
“Judging from his letters, that uncle of his has an admirable library on the occult and Jamal himself has likely forgotten more about the supernatural world than I’ve learned in my whole life. God willing, he can tell us more about this Lab and her accursed spindle.”
“That is quite the detour.”
“I see no other option. The peris can squawk about me dragging my feet, but it is a risk I’ll take if it increases our chances of surviving and escaping her kingdom.
” I met her gaze—or rather tried to, for she was staring at the sea.
“You need not come,” I added, hoping to avoid sounding patronizing.
Dalila had not returned to Iraq since we first met, adamant that the Banu Sasan were still after her. “We can meet—”
“And what about Raksh?” she asked, changing the subject. “You don’t believe he, or more importantly, that escapee he’s dragging around might be able to offer better information?”
I shook my head. “It’s not worth the risk. I don’t need Raksh learning about the spindle and wondering what chaos he could wreak with such an object.”
“You’re only putting off the inevitable, Amina. And turning down the chance to learn about Lab directly from the last man to deal with her.”
“We don’t have time to search every den of dreamers and criminals in the Persian Gulf, Dalila. We must steal a magical object and outwit a witch, and the person who might know how to do both lives in Baghdad.”
For a long moment, we stared at each other in mutual irritation.
Neither of us said the accusations hanging in the air, that the other was letting their personal fears color their judgment, but we didn’t need to.
There may be many blessings in long-standing friendships, but they also have their pitfalls—such as someone knowing when you’re full of shit.
Finally I stood, unraveling the net. Ahead the sea sparkled in the morning light, my rowboat waiting. “Let’s go. I’ll need to write Majed and Tinbu, but we should come back with enough fish that our stealing away to talk doesn’t provoke suspicion.”
“You underestimate how savvy your family already is.” Dalila fanned herself with her headdress, giving the sea a dubious look. “Also, you do realize I am not accompanying you in that rickety boat to go sweat in the sun?”
“It is a beautiful day! What place more blessed to spend it than upon God’s most glorious ocean?”
Dalila grimaced. “You and I have a very different relationship to boats. Besides, I need to check part of my experiment before noon.”
“Why?” I asked, alarmed.
“Stop delaying me and you won’t need to find out.” She shooed me off. “Go. We have a lot of work.”
* * *
We certainly did. Recalling the Marawati and disrupting the plans of my crew and business partners was no easy task, requiring me to pull more contacts than I had for some time.
As for my family, they remained in the dark about my plans at first, delighted to have me safe at home and enthusiastically discussing the possibility of moving to Salalah.
Marjana stuck close, spinning at my feet as I wrote and dispatched letters to my companions and clients, but my careful inquiries into our conversation about magic or suggestions we walk together in the groves and coves where she felt the Unseen were quietly shut down, and it was impossible not to feel as though I had failed her.
She had turned to me for comfort, for answers, and I had left her with only disquieting revelations she couldn’t explore.
Though I was happy to savor every moment we had together before parting yet again, it was heartbreaking to see the speed at which she shut down the curiosity that had so briefly lit her face that night on the roof.
And I was starting to fear that my mother was correct: our quiet, isolated life—one in which I had tried to shelter Marjana from my past and her origins—had instead smothered a spark I should have nourished.
I would watch her silently working at her loom and entertain wild dreams of taking her on one of my journeys, of finding gentler magics we could explore and telling her she was not alone . . . That I, too, could see this world.
But then I would be reminded of the pitiless peri court, of Khayzur’s astonishing power and Raksh’s casual cruelty.
Was it not better to keep Marjana away from this world as long as possible?
There had always been people who claimed a connection with the supernatural.
Women who tied love knots to secure a match, scholars who drew talismanic squares with sacred numbers, unfortunates whose seizing fits were blamed on djinn.
If Marjana’s affinity never went beyond sensing the sighs and jewel-bright gazes of creatures from the Unseen, she could learn to live a normal life.
If.
As she had pointed out, however: I needed to leave again—and sooner than I had anticipated, with Tinbu and Majed’s surprise arrival on the Marawati barely a month after I wrote.
Majed had been in Mecca with his family, a far easier journey down to Aden this time of year than from Mogadishu.
They arrived so soon, it took my own family by surprise, forcing me into a lie about chasing down a good opportunity in Baghdad.
And they were not happy.
My mother all but smacked me with a wooden spoon when I brought her the last batch of fish I caught the night before we departed. Mustafa could take the boat if needed, but he’d never had much talent at fishing and was needed in his workshop.
“Is this your peace offering, then, eh?” she accused. “Make more work for me to do the salting while your poor child weeps in a tree?”