CHAPTER FIVE

I slept straight on through till nightfall, and when I woke up my entire body ached so bad I could hardly push myself off the bed. Naji was sitting over in the corner, his eyes glowing. I waved my hands in front of him a couple of times and when he didn't so much as twitch I went ahead and peeled off my dress, stiff with sweat and blood and sand, and put on a fresh one. I transferred the bag of coins into my new dress. Just cause he was protecting me didn't mean he wouldn't steal from me.

  Then I sat down on the edge of the bed and waited for a few minutes. He didn't come out of his trance.

  "Hey," I shouted. "Sure would be easy for me to sneak out on you right now."

  That did it. The glow went out of his eyes and he stood up, unfolding himself gracefully like the fight hadn't affected him at all.

  "Not as easy as you would think." He had taken off his armor and his cloak while I slept, and his arms were covered in strange, snaky tattoos the same iceglacier blue his eyes got whenever he settled into a trance. He didn't say nothing, though I know he saw me looking at them.

  He walked across the narrow width of the room, to the rickety old table where he'd draped his cloak, and began to rummage through it.

  "I'm hungry."

  "I'm sure you can get something downstairs."

  "I don't have no money," I said, trying my hand.

  "Nonsense." He peered over his shoulder at me. His hair fell in dark ribbons over his forehead, and I felt silly for noticing. "You have a pouch of pressed metal in your pocket."

  Immediately, I forgot his hair. "How do you know that?"

  He smiled, touched one hand to his chest in the manner of the desertlands, that gesture that's supposed to stand in for an answer you don't want to give. Then he said, "I would like you to go to the night market for me. I'll give you money for that, but I expect you to return with everything I request. And I will bind you to me if I feel it's necessary."

  I scowled at him. "You can't go to the night market yourself?"

  "No vendor would sell to me." He didn't look at me when he spoke. I got a weird feeling in my stomach, thinking about the innkeep from the night before, and blood magic I'd seen Naji perform out on the street. The threat of Naji tying me to him.

  "What exactly are you going to do?" I said. "With the, ah, the things from the–"

  "Nothing that'll hurt you." He pulled out a stack of pressed metal, gold and silver both and worth much more than what I had in my pouch. I took a more or less involuntary step forward, trying to see where he'd yanked them from. One glare stopped me.

  "And what about the Mists lady?" I asked. "Don't you think she might come back after me?"

  "No." But there was a gap in his voice, some information he was leaving out.

  "You don't think she's going to try again?"

  "Not her, no."

  "But someone."

  Naji rubbed his head. "They won't come after you," he said.

  "They came after me before."

  "No, you happened to stumble across them. It's not the same thing."

  I watched him, trying to decide if I wanted to tell him that I didn't get the sense that I'd stumbled across anything. I'd almost made the decision to say something when he turned away from me and said, "Run downstairs and ask the innkeeper to borrow some paper and ink."

  "You don't need to write it down. I'll remember." I tapped the side of my head. My stomach rumbled.

  When I didn't move he glared at me again, and I did as he asked. It was a different innkeep from the one who tried to convince me I was about to die. Too bad. I kind of wanted to reassure the poor bastard, or at least see the expression on his face when he saw I wasn't dead.

  The new innkeep gave me the paper and the ink without too much fuss, though he said he'd charge me if I didn't bring the ink down after I finished with it. I waved him off and then bounded back upstairs. The smell of food rolling in from the kitchen, spicy and warm and rich, made my mouth water. That didn't incline me toward screwing around with Naji just cause it would annoy him. The sooner he got me his list, the sooner I got to eat.

  Unfortunately, he took his time writing it out. He had this special quill that he produced from out of his robes, long and thin and the kind of black that sucks the color out of everything. I sat down on the bed while he puzzled over his list, scratching things out, shaking his head, muttering to himself.

  "I'm hungry," I said.

  "So am I," he said. "But this is far more important than either of our appetites at the moment." He held the list at arm's length, squinting a little in the lamplight. Then he pressed it up against the wall and wrote one more thing.

  "There," he said. "That should be it."

  I jumped off the bed and snatched it out of his hand and scanned over his sharp, spiny handwriting. It was all in Empire, and most of the items were plants. Rose petals, rue, dried wisteria vines. Soil-magic stuff.

  "Midnight's claws," he said. "You can read."

  "Of course I can read." I folded the paper down as small as it would go and slipped it into my pocket. "And why would you give me a list if you thought I couldn't read?"

  "I assumed you'd hand it over to the vendors."

  "Oh, that's wise," I said. "Let them give me some fountain grass when I paid for swamp yirrus. Whatever that is." I shook my head. "How'd you get your supplies before you met me, anyway?"

  "Not from a night market."

  I let him have the last word, cause I was so hungry I could hardly think straight. I stuck my hand on the doorknob and was halfway to turning it when he roared, "Stop!" like a troop of Empire navymen were about to come bursting through the door. I froze, all my aching muscles preparing for yet another knife fight. But Naji just slouched toward me, the heel of his hand pressed against his forehead. "Curses and darkness," he said.