The Assassin's Curse (15 page)

  "Ananna," Naji said. "Stop. She's going to help me."

  "If I can," Leila said, her arms still wrapped around Naji's shoulders, her mouth right on the verge of smiling.

  That was too much. I stalked out of the house, back out into the sunlight, all the way down the steps leading into the river. Naji's headache be damned. I sat down at the top step and stuck my feet in the water. Fish swam up to me and nibbled on my toes but nobody came out of the house. I didn't expect 'em to.

  I stayed out there for a while, until the sun set and my stomach grumbled. I thought about swimming over to the other side of the river and setting up camp. But by now it was too dark to see, and I doubted I'd be able to catch any fish to eat. The air had gotten cold again, and the river was cold, and I kept on shivering out there in my ragged, cut-up dress.

  My pride kept me from walking back in the house until it was late enough I figured both of 'em had fallen asleep. I crept back in slowly, pulling up on the door handle so the hinges wouldn't creak. The floors were stone, so my bare feet didn't make too much noise.

  "I'm glad to see you came back inside."

  I yelped.

  Naji was stretched out on a cot in the corner of the room. He pushed up on his arm when he saw me.

  "Where's Leila?"

  "Asleep, I imagine."

  I sat down on the floor beside the cot, drawing my feet up close against me.

  "I don't like her," I said, pitching my voice low.

  "I'd prefer not to talk about this." A rustle as he rolled over onto his back and pulled the thin woven blanket over his chest.

  "She's beautiful," I said.

  "I know."

  I wanted to slap him for that, but I didn't, cause I knew I didn't have no good reason. "It means she ain't trustworthy."

  "What? Because she's beautiful?"

  "Yeah. Beautiful people, things are too easy for 'em. They don't know how to survive in this world. Somebody's ugly, or even plain, normal-looking, that means they got to work twice as hard for things. For anything. Just to get people to listen to 'em, or take 'em serious. So yeah. I don't trust beautiful people."

  "I see." He dropped his head to the side. I didn't look at him, but down at the floor instead, at the fissures in the stones. "No wonder you were so quick to trust me."

  I heard the hard edge in his voice, the crack of bitterness. And so I lifted my head. He was staring up at the ceiling.

  "You ain't ugly," I said.

  He didn't answer, and I knew my opinion didn't matter none anyway.

 
 
 

Leila didn't do much to sway me over to trusting her those next few days, mostly cause she toyed with Naji, not giving him a straight answer one way or another with regards to the curse.

  "He needs to rest," she told me that first afternoon. "Before I can examine him to see if I can help." She had come out to the river to gather up a jar of silt and a few handfuls of river nettle. I spent as little time inside the house as I could, and it surprised me that she said anything to me. I hadn't asked after him, although I'd been wondering.

  "He's a lot more injured than he lets on," she added, scooping the silt up with her hand. It streamed through her fingers and glittered in the sunlight. "I'm surprised he made it as far as he did."

  "I took care of him," I snapped, even though I was trying to hold my tongue.

  She looked up from the half-filled jar. "Of course you tried, sweetling," she said. "But you aren't used to that sort of magic." One of her vicious half-smiles. "Or any kind of magic at all."

  The water glided around my ankles, and I thought about that night the river spoke to me in her babbling soft language, that night she guided me into action.

  "By the way," Leila said. "I have some old clothes that might work for you. Men's clothes, of course. You're not going to fit into anything of mine, I'm afraid."

  I knew I really wasn't going to hold my tongue against that, so I slipped off the edge of the steps and into the river, the cold shocking the anger right out of me. I kept my eyes open, the way I always do underwater, so I could see the sunlight streaming down from the surface, lighting up the murkiness.

  Naji'd told me Leila was some kind of river witch, but the river didn't seem to play favorites, didn't seem to care about the differences between me and her. It wasn't like Naji. And so I stayed under long as I could, cause it was safe down there, everything blurred, the coldness turning me numb.

  Naji did seem to get better. I guess I'll give Leila that. He got the color back in his cheeks, and he didn't shake when he shuffled around the house. The wound was slow to heal, though, despite the river nettle Leila pressed against it every evening. Sometimes I watched them, studying the way her long delicate fingers lingered on his chest. When she sang, her voice twinkled like starlight, clear and bright and perfect. That was when I figured out that she and Naji had been lovers before he got the scar. Cause she touched him like she knew how, and he stared at her like all he thought about was her touch.

  It left me dizzy and kind of sick to my stomach. At least she never did say nothing about his face again. Not in front of me, anyway.

  We'd been there close to a week when Leila announced over dinner that she was ready to talk to Naji about the curse.

  "Finally," I said.

  Naji kicked me under the table.

  "You need to be there too," Leila said.

  "Be where?"

  "The garden, I imagine," Naji said. He poked at the fish on his plate. All we ate was fish and river reeds, steamed in the hearth in the main room.

  "There's a garden?"

  "Yes, out back," Leila said.

  That didn't make no sense. The house was built into the wall of the canyon, and even if she had stairs leading up to the surface, the surface wasn't nothing but desert.

  "Magic," Leila said, and tapped her chest. I scowled. She smiled at me like I'd said something stupid that she found amusing.

  I slumped down in my chair and pushed the fish around on my plate, my appetite gone. And I kept doing that till Naji and Leila decided they were finished up, at which point both of 'em filed out of the kitchen, toward the back of the house. I took my time, dawdling till Naji strode back into the main room. I was sure he was going to command me to follow, but instead he looked at me real close and said, "Please, Ananna."

  I shot him a mean look, and he watched me for a few minutes like he was trying to think of something to say. I can wait out a silence just fine, so I crossed my arms over my chest and stared right back.

  He said, "I went into Kajjil last night and spoke with the Order."

  "What does that have to do with anything?"

  "The Hariri clan hasn't hired another Jadorr'a. If you're worried that curing me will leave you vulnerable – if this is some pirate's scheme for protection–"

  "I told you," I snapped, "I can take care of myself."

  "Of course. I just thought that might be a reason for your reticence."

  "Well, that don't surprise me none. That you'd think that." I gave him my best glare. I didn't want to think about the Hariri clan. I didn't want to think about Tarrin. "I just don't understand what Leila needs me for."

  "She says that she needs your help."

  "What?"

  "You're part of the curse."

  "Yeah, an impossible one. I don't see how I'm gonna make much of a difference–"

  The expression on Naji's face stopped me dead. I'd never seen a man look so desperate. It made me aware of my own desperation, that ache that had settled in the bottom of my stomach after the battle in the desert.

  "I just don't see what good it can do," I muttered.

  "The least you can do is give me five minutes," Naji said.

  That was enough for me. I followed Naji to the back of the house, through the dark, dripping stone hallway, past rooms glowing with something too steady for candlelight. And then the hallway opened up, the way corridors do in caves, and there was the garden.

  So it was underground. There wasn't no sunlight in the room, though the ceiling had that same weird glow to it as the rooms in the house. And the plants weren't like any plants I'd ever seen: All of 'em were real pale, so pale you could almost see straight through 'em. They wriggled around whenever we walked past, as though they were turning to look at us.

  Leila sat in the center of the garden, on a stone bench in the middle of a circle carved into the wet rock of the cave. She had on this floaty white dress that made her look like one of the flowers, and when we walked up she patted the bench beside herself. I let Naji take it. She obviously meant for him to sit there anyway.

  "Everyone's gathered, I see." Like we were some big crowd, not three people who'd been living in the same house for a week. "Naji, I'll need you to look at me." That damn smile again. "I know it's hard for you–"

  I took a step toward her, my hands balled up tight into fists, and so help me, her voice kind of wavered, and for a minute she actually shut up. Then she cleared her throat and said, "Look at me, and don't move. It's important you don't move."

  Then she glanced over at me and said, "I need you over here too. Come along, yes, put your hand on Naji's hand there. No, palm down. Good."

  She pulled out a blue silk scarf and tied Naji's and my hand together.

  "Now," she said, looking up at me. "You need to stand there and not move your hand from his–"

  "I'm tied to him," I said.

  "And don't interrupt."

  Naji didn't look at either of us while she spoke. He just kept his head down, his hair pulled over his scar.

  "Don't give me a reason to interrupt," I said. "And I won't."

  That got a glare from her and nothing else. She turned her attention to Naji. Put her hands on his shoulders. Closed her eyes. Hummed. The flowers trembled and shook and danced. Naji kept his face blank, and I wondered what was going through his head. I wondered if he bought it.

  Cause I'd seen a lot of magic those last few weeks, and Leila's humming and swaying didn't fool me one bit. There was magic down here, for sure – have to be, with those creepy flowers – and Leila certainly could work a charm when she needed. But she didn't need to do anything right now. She was faking.

  She carried on like that just long enough to be annoying. I shifted my weight around and tapped my foot and looked at Naji's scar. My hand was starting to sweat from being tied up with his.

  And then she stopped. The cave seemed to let out a sigh.

  Naji stared at her, and his eyes were so hopeful it almost broke my heart.

  "Sorry dearest," she said. "There's nothing I can do."

  "What!" Naji jumped to his feet, his whole body springing tight like a coil. The scarf fluttered to the ground.

  I felt like the earth had been pulled out from under me. Nothing she could do. I realized then that I'd been thinking she could help too. I hadn't even recognized the hope for what it was until it got dragged away from me and I felt its absence in my heart. I couldn't let go of that old vision of my future life and the thought of what it was going to be like now.

  "What do you mean? Nothing? Not even a charm against–"

  "It's an impossible curse," Leila said lightly. "What did you expect?"

  "But you said… And the Order…" Naji threw up his hands and stalked away from her. The flowers shrank away from him, curling up into themselves. "I can't believe this."

  I was numb. I figured Leila knew from the moment she opened her front door that she couldn't help Naji, but she strung him along, cause – hell, I don't know why. Cause she was beautiful and he was all in love with her and so she could. This was why I hated beautiful people. They build you up and then they destroy you. And we let 'em.

  "Naji, darling," she said. "I still might be able to help you, of course."

  Naji picked up his shoulders a little, although he didn't turn around.

  "Liar," I said. It didn't give me the satisfaction I'd hoped for.

  She glanced at me as though I were as insignificant as a piece of pressed copper. Then she stood up and glided over to Naji, her dress rippling out behind her. She set one hand on his shoulder and whispered something in his ear. He sighed.

  "The impossible curses are all from the north," Leila said. "A northern curse needs a northern cure. Even if it's impossible." She smiled. "Especially if it's impossible."

  "What are you saying?" Naji asked.

  "I can give you a boat."

  "What'd you whisper to him?" I asked.

  "None of your business." Leila swatted at me. "Naji, I can give you and your ward a boat and a promise of protection on the river."

  "We can take care of the Hariri clan ourselves."

  "I'm not concerned about some gang of unwashed pirates."

  "What?" I asked. "Who else is after us?"

  She twisted around, her hair falling in thick silky ropes down her spine. "The Mists, of course."

  The garden suddenly seemed too cold. "What's the Mists got to do with it?" I was trying to sound brave, but my voice shook anyway, at the memory of a pair of gray eyes swallowing me whole. "Why didn't you say anything? I thought it was just the Hariri clan we had to worry about. I mean, you kept going on about us being under protection–" I was babbling. The words spilled out of my throat the way they always do whenever I let my fear get to me.

  Both of them ignored me.

  "The river will take you down to Port Iskassaya, where you can book passage to the Isles of the Sky."

  "Kaol!" I shouted. "The Isles of the Sky!"

  Naji and Leila both looked at me.