Chapter 39
On the morning of our departure, as the Marawati waited in the shadows, Arno took his shahada.
He had wanted me as a witness and I agreed, with reservations.
Many people choose to become Muslim, but I’m pragmatic enough to know that faith isn’t always the primary motive.
As Dalila would remind me, religion is a mark of power, admittance to a shared language and culture; something entire families, castes, or villages might choose to seize a better life, the decision of a savvy trader as much as a devoted one.
Arno had been studying the Quran with Majed, but Majed was still quietly avoiding me, and I didn’t want to press him for details on the youth’s readiness.
But it felt very soon. Very sudden—especially for a young man who’d been raised with such a startlingly different understanding of the world.
“You know you don’t have to do this,” I’d told him. “I will still take you on my ship. My crew comprises multiple faiths; there is no compulsion.”
“I know,” Arno had said softly. His bright innocence had been dimmed by the loss of his home, the devastating realization of what it had been built upon. “But as odd as it might sound . . . this decision feels like the best way to both honor my culture and join a new one.”
“I don’t understand.”
He’d given me a sad smile. “I’m Khatti Ugalan, nakhudha. How many foreign castaways were told to adapt to our ways? I will do the same.” He’d shaken his head, sounding more than a bit lost when he added, “And truth be told . . . I could use a little guidance.”
Arno was the only local to make that choice, however.
The rest of his people had decided to stay, slipping away one night without warning and leaving in their place several chests of recovered treasures from the ruined palace.
It felt like both a ransom and a gift, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t fear for them: such a small, vulnerable group on a lush island now likely more accessible to raiders.
But I’d uprooted their lives enough; it was not my place to judge their future.
Instead, I prayed they found some measure of peace in whatever new Khatti Ugal they managed to build.
It was time for the rest of us to leave.
* * *
In the end, no sea creatures attacked as we sailed away from Lab’s island.
The stars stayed fixed in the sky and the ship did not sink due to any rushed construction.
Admittedly still lost, we sailed due west—or rather tried, hoping to find land before we ran out of fresh water.
The Persian Gulf was not that large; we hoped it might be a matter of weeks.
But even with Raksh aboard, it took another two months.
They were not pleasant, each additional day away from our loved ones agonizing.
The weather was sweltering, we had to row through several patches of doldrums, and though we came upon a number of islands, all were mere spits of rock and sand, unpopulated and dry as dust. However, we persevered.
We taught Arno how to raise a sail and swear in ten different languages, how to pray and read the waves.
I healed. Unevenly at first: the fevers finally faded, but the joint pain increased.
Then the joint pain stopped, but a new round of blisters burned across my palm.
Each turn sent Dalila in a tailspin of further tweaks to her formula, new rounds of increasingly foul-tasting potions.
But then, finally, the blisters healed and didn’t come back.
“I knew you could do it,” I said as she checked my hand for the umpteenth time. “Look at you, beating your supposed master at his game.” I licked my lips. “We should go tell him.”
“Don’t even jest,” Dalila warned. “Raksh’s presence might have done more to heal you than all my skills. Having a demon of luck on our side feels like cheating.”
“Dalila . . .” I squeezed her hand. “We are pirates. Cheating is to be respected.”
That drew a small smile, the first I’d seen, in stark contrast against her shadowed, haunted expression.
“Fair, nakhudha.” She glanced at Raksh on the far side of the ship as he swung his pendant before Payasam’s stupefied feline expression.
“Does he do anything useful?” She cut her eyes at me. “Other than the obvious.”
Heat filled my face. “Do not make assumptions.” I had yet to invite Raksh back into my bed, both because I was still disturbed by my interactions with his double and because, well, perhaps common sense was finally winning out over lust. “I fear I may have committed adultery,” I admitted.
“But there is not a cleric alive to whom I can turn for guidance.”
Dalila burst into laughter. “No. No, I suppose there is not.”
“I think I took its virginity. It would explain a great deal.”
“Stop.” But Dalila was now laughing so hard that tears glimmered in her eyes. “You deranged woman, I am not being drawn into your crazed theological speculation. Though I believe this, Amina: God knows your mistake was truly innocent.”
I touched my heart. “Thank you.”
“Besides, I cannot judge.” Her face softened. “I fell for a household tool.”
It was the first time she’d mentioned Lab and I didn’t know how to react, aware of how easily discussing personal matters could cause Dalila to clam up.
So I returned the jest. “In fairness . . . she was quite stunning for a spindle. What is it about these demons and their beauty?”
Dalila’s mirth faded a hint further. “I don’t think she was a demon. Not at first.” She hesitated. “I saw her memories when she possessed me.”
That stopped me short.
“You saw her memories?” I gawked. “Was she not several thousand years old? How are you not—”
“Mad?” she asked plainly. “I don’t know. It’s all still quite foggy—there were just so many hosts. But sometimes when I’m sleeping . . . the memories return.”
I didn’t know what to say. “I take it that they’re not particularly good memories?”
“Some are,” she countered. “There are memories of children, of love, of worlds so old and so different from ours that it’s as though visiting a separate realm.” She paused. “And then there are some of the worst atrocities I suspect humans have ever committed.”
My heart sank. If there was ever a person who didn’t need more violence and communal terror in her mind, it was Dalila.
But she must have sensed my dismay. “I’m not telling you this to gain your pity, Amina.
I’m telling you because I think you should know that you were right to destroy her in the end, to bring down Khatti Ugal.
And you weren’t alone. The locals were helping you, far more than I think you realize.
The women that Lab enslaved in the textile workshop knew what you were doing with your hair and made sure those strands ended up in every scrap of cloth they could. ”
I sucked for air, the confession unexpected and going to my heart so swiftly that tears pricked my eyes. I’d been almost unconsciously pushing away my guilt over my actions in Khatti Ugal, aware that to sit with them might destroy me at a time when my crew still very much needed their nakhudha.
But this . . . “Thank you,” I said, swallowing past the lump in my throat. “I pray . . . I pray they found some measure of peace in the end.”
“I hope so. I-I think I have, at least,” she added, almost as an afterthought. “Seeing the history, the bloodshed and the grief that created Lab . . . it’s helping me put her in perspective, helping me forgive her.” She paused. “Perhaps I am a better Christian than I thought.”
I squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry for what I said about your adopting their faith. I shouldn’t have doubted you. Or judged you.”
“And I probably should have included you in my plan,” she admitted with a grumble. “And told you about the poisoning. But I’m hoping we can move past that. Your demon husband may have had a point.”
“He did?”
She scowled, clearly reluctant to admit Raksh might have done something positive.
“I’ve had centuries’ worth of vengeance poured into my soul and seen it destroy every person it touched, every person who hungered for it.
I . . .” She sighed. “I don’t want that.
I still have things I want to accomplish in this life.
Besides, I’ve lost one family,” she added, grief lacing into her voice.
“I don’t wish to lose another because I pushed them away. ”
She was staring at the sea, prickly defensiveness in every line of her body. I suspected that was as much vulnerability as Dalila was capable of expressing for the day. Possibly for the year.
So, I didn’t push her. Instead, I suggested gently, “You should tell Jamal.” When she gave me a questioning look, I explained, “Your memories. Their memories. Don’t let them be forgotten. And it might be cathartic.”
Dalila seemed to mull my words. “Perhaps.”
And that itself was an opening. For as Dalila had healed me, I quietly determined to do the same for her.
I pulled her out of her stillness, her isolation when I saw the darkness beckoning, making stupid jokes and offering easy opportunities to mock me.
Included her in small groups of me and the crew, never forcing her to interact, but making it clear she deserved to be there—to both our shipmates and her.
There was still stiffness at first, the hurt we had done each other undeniable.
But it eased, day by day, week by week. I talked more honestly about my fears for my family, my doubts over how I was raising Marjana, than I had before, than I had with anyone.
Dalila spoke in unpredictable starts and spurts about her time with the Banu Sasan, and I caught her interacting more with the men on her own—and not just Tinbu and Majed.
She offered to take watch for the first time and was clearly forming a cautious partnership with Jabril, the “bone-breaker” insult seeming more and more like a nickname.
And then, on a tiny spit of land populated only by camels, while the rest of the crew feasted around a campfire on the opposite beach, Dalila finally said, “I think, my nakhudha, I should like to tell you my name. To tell you where I am from.”
She refused to look me in the eye, her gaze firmly on the midnight surf. It was too dark to discern her expression, to spot tears that might have glistened—almost certainly an intentional choice. A dozen jests rose to my mind.
I quieted them. “I would be greatly honored, my friend.”
So Dalila, the infamous Mistress of Poisons, the woman who in another life might have risen to advise the caliph, to lead an academy, finally told me her name.
She told me where she was from and about her people, her family’s background both something I wouldn’t have predicted and yet oddly unsurprising.
Of a squabbling, affectionate band of siblings and countless cousins.
Of the ways they prepared favorite meals and celebrated their holidays.
Of a vibrant, ancient community and a beloved pet snake.
And then she spoke of the day it ended, in fire and blood, and cruel, unnecessary violence by petty men relishing the only power they could—the destruction of people who in this time and place were said to be inferior for worshipping the Creator in a different way and whose now-ruined church, rich in both history and gilded relics, could be plundered.
Of a little girl who witnessed the absolute worst of humanity, the lives of everyone she knew and loved ended in terror and pain.
The little girl so scarred that she would not speak at all for several years, a mute beggar until she was picked up by the Banu Sasan.
Of how her own native tongue was left in shattered fragments, the one language she could not master without an accent.
When she finished, tears ran down both our faces.
“Do not tell anyone,” she said, a broken plea. “I know Jamal is recording your tales. I may indeed tell him some of Lab’s. But not this, Amina. Not mine.”
“I shall tell no one, my friend.”
And I never have.
* * *
It was a heavy conversation, a heavy night, and so when Dalila fell asleep before we rejoined the group, I did not wake her. But I must have passed out myself for it was light when I awoke, Tinbu shaking my shoulder.
“Awaken, my nakhudha,” he said softly. “There is news you should hear.”
The somber tone of his voice was like plunging into an icy stream. I scrambled up, instantly alert and reaching for weapons. “What is it?”
Tinbu steadied my hands. “Not that kind of news.” But he was trembling, his brown eyes so heavy with hesitation that my heart sank. Whatever message he had to relate . . . he clearly didn’t want to be its bearer.
“Tinbu, speak,” I pressed, anxious. “What is it that has you so worried?”
“We spotted some fishermen.”
I blinked. “Truly? That is good, that is wonderful!” Excitement chased through me. “Did anyone approach them? We must be close to the mainland.”
Tinbu nodded. “Yes. Majed and Hasan took one of the canoes and spoke to them. We were blown out of the Persian Gulf but not terribly far. We are but a day’s sailing from Muscat.”
Muscat. Tears sprang to my eyes. We were desperately close to my homeland. I assumed by now that Jamal had likely returned Marjana to Oman. Sooner than I would have dared hope, I could be with my family, my child finally in my arms.
“God be praised,” I whispered. “Where is Majed? Why did he not come with you?”
“He is back at the camp. He . . .” Tinbu seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “He became quite distraught at what else the fishermen said.”
Fear washed over me. “What is it? Has there been plague since we left? War?”
Tinbu shook his head. “No, nothing like that. I mean, given everything, there’s likely to have been some of that . . .”
“Tinbu, will you stop deflecting and tell me what you know!”
He met my gaze. “The way time passed differently between the city and the surrounding land in Khatti Ugal, Amina; how it felt like weeks for you and months for us? It wasn’t just there.”
“What are you saying?” I frowned. “How long have we been gone?”
My friend’s expression was heavy with remorse.
“Ten years.”