The Girl from Everywhere (The Girl from Everywhere #1)(57)

“Kashmir.” Did he really not understand? “If the map works and . . . if I’d had a different life, we never would have met. You would have been cornered on that dock in Vaadi Al-Maas.”

He waved my words away, trying to look nonchalant; if I didn’t know him so well, I might have been fooled. “You shouldn’t worry about me, amira. You shouldn’t worry at all.”

“Why not?”

“Well. If we’d never met, neither you nor I would have known it could have been different. But even if the captain rewrites his own history, how could it affect your reality? I’m from a place you call a fairy tale, and I’m still here.”

“But . . . the Vaadi Al-Maas was real once. People believed in it.”

“I believe in you. Simple enough, right?” His smile was heartbreaking.

I pulled the pins out of my hair, letting it fall down in coils on my shoulders. Of course it wasn’t that simple, but I didn’t want to argue against his point. “Why should I take the risk?”

“He’ll take it for you, either way.”

“You’re not even angry,” I said with wonder. “How can you forgive him?”

“How can you hold it against him?” Kashmir returned. He shrugged off his jacket and folded it over his arm. “Love makes fools of us all. He has to believe it will work, because he’s in love.” He ran his hand through his hair, mussing the gel, and leaned against the railing, watching the full moon shimmer on the water. “And I have to believe it will not.”

I tried to read his face, but his eyes were a mystery. I pulled my shawl tighter around my shoulders. The silence was unbearable. “At least it seems like you had fun at the party,” I said finally.

He laughed a little. “Ah, yes. I did enjoy the dancing.”

“Mrs. Hart is quite a good dancer, I hear.”

Kashmir scoffed. “That woman. I’ve been chased by policemen with less tenacity. I tried to shake her on the lawn, but she found me coming out of the study. She very nearly dragged me into the drawing room by the collar. Thank all the gods she didn’t notice I was holding the map.”

“You certainly found a clever way to distract her.”

“It was necessity, I assure you. Nix,” Kashmir said, a smile creeping into his voice. “Are you jealous?”

“No!” Suddenly the whole dock seemed very quiet, the sound of many ears listening. Unasked for—and unappreciated—my brain reminded me of an Arab proverb: Jealousy is nothing but a fear of being abandoned. I lowered my voice, flustered. “I’m not jealous. I just don’t . . . I’m not jealous.”

“Oh. Good.” Kash bit his lip, but the ghost of his smile lingered. “I’d hate for you to be a fool, as well.”

We stayed there a long time, then, the only sound the water lapping on the pilings. Kashmir seemed to be waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t—I couldn’t. Finally he took a deep breath. “Good night, amira.”

For a while after he left, my eyes wandered across the sky as though the answers were there. Then I dropped my shawl on the deck, kicked off my shoes, and gently removed the crimson lei from my neck. I hung it from the bar at the top of my hammock, then I lay down hard. The full moon swam like its own reflection in my vision.

Had I been too selfish? I had never known my mother, but I knew my life as it had been without her: the ship, the sea, the myths, the maps . . . and, yes, Kashmir. The pain I felt at the thought of losing him—the same pain that kept me at arm’s length—gave me a hint of my father’s own struggle.

But what if I could Navigate? I could forget about my father and his search and finally be free to do—and to feel—whatever I wanted. And all that it would cost was a king’s ransom.

I buried my head in my pillow. Kashmir had been right about one thing. This wasn’t a fairy tale.




The morning watch was mine, but I only half-registered the sound of the caladrius crowing for her biscuit, and I was definitely sleeping when Rotgut came on deck to relieve me at eight. It was a relief too. I’d been having a nightmare: standing before a mirror, gazing into a pair of eyes that weren’t brown like mine, but as black as the abyss, and they were gazing back into me. After Rotgut woke me, I fell back into a light doze, twitching at every sound. The sun pried my eyes open sometime after noon, so I rolled out of bed and put my foot on something cold and slimy.

“Ugh!”

On the deck, in the shadow of my hammock, lay a striped silver fish about the length of my hand. Its eyes were still clear and its scales hadn’t yet lost their opalescent sheen: no more than an hour old. The only marks it bore—aside from a flattened area in the shape of my heel—were twin puncture wounds right behind the eyes. Swag had left me a present.

Rotgut glanced over his shoulder at the sound of my voice; he was standing on the quarterdeck, casting his bait into the blue water. “It’s you and me today,” he said. “Hey, nice dress.”

I reached behind me; the huge pink bow had been crushed as I slept, and the hem was a ruin. “You and me? Double watch?”

Rotgut looked embarrassed. “The captain actually asked me to watch you. He doesn’t want you leaving the ship.”

“I see. And what are you supposed to do if I try anyway?”