Gifting Fire Alina Boyden (romantic story to read .txt) 📖

an ajrak scarf around my eyes, totally blindfolding me. In Daryastani, he whispered, “If you’re a good girl, and you keep quiet, there’s a chance I won’t kill you. If you scream or try to move, we’ll club you over the head and leave you for the crocodiles.”

So there were crocodiles in this lagoon. I didn’t know why that thought came to me, when I’d just been threatened with murder, but I had fully intended to keep quiet anyway, so I didn’t feel that threatened. Whatever this man did to me, I didn’t think it would be as bad as being Karim’s wife. He could have pulled out my fingernails with a pair of tweezers and I still would have considered it a step up in the world.

When he saw that I wasn’t going to say anything, the captain muttered, “Good.” I heard him move away from me, but I didn’t know where he was going, or what he was planning. The man who had been keeping his hand on my mouth finally let me go, as did the man holding my limbs down.

I knew that I’d been ordered not to move, but I rubbed the life back into my arms all the same, trying to knead out the bruises the Zindhi sailor had surely left there. Nobody seemed to mind, because I wasn’t clubbed over the head and left for the crocodiles. I resisted the urge to sit up, or to give any appearance of looking around. It was difficult, because the longer the boat wobbled in time with the movements of its sculling oar, the more I worried that I was being taken too far from the palace to get back before morning. If I wasn’t back in bed by the time Karim arrived to escort me to breakfast, all would be lost.

But I’d been told to keep quiet, and I was fairly certain that the captain intended to make good on his threat if I disobeyed him. He didn’t know who I was or what I was worth, and until I knew who he was, I wanted to keep it that way. So that meant staying put and keeping my mouth shut and hoping that I could get back before sunup.

I heard movement all around me. There was the sound of metal clunking against wood, of cloth being moved. I felt something heavy land on the timbers on either side of me, and then my whole body was covered in a thick canvas cloth. It was draped loosely enough that I could still breathe, so I didn’t panic, but I thought I understood what was happening. These men did live in Kadiro, and they were hiding their weapons as they returned to the port, just in case a sharp-eyed Mahisagari guard caught sight of their boat. The silhouette would look like a fishing boat, not an armed gunboat.

I didn’t really think that would be enough to save them, not when they were out so late with so many men packed into the vessel, but I supposed they had to take every advantage they could find. It couldn’t have been easy sneaking out into the harbor with weapons, not when the Mahisagaris were such natural sailors, and so accustomed to watching harbor traffic.

The boat bumped into something. Men started piling out. They were moving quickly, but quietly. I felt their movement more than I heard it, as the boat slowly rose higher in the water as it was relieved of its burden. The cloth came off next, and I was grabbed an instant later by strong hands around my arms that hauled me to my feet. I hadn’t yet had the chance to change out of my climbing shoes, so it was hard for me to walk, but even through the reinforced soles of my slippers, I could feel that I was walking on stone rather than wood.

“May I change my shoes?” I asked, because the man holding me was marching me along at a pace that made it almost impossible to keep up.

He stopped for a second, and though I couldn’t see him, he must have looked down at my feet to check them. He let me go, and asked, “What are those things?”

“Climbing shoes,” I replied, kneeling down and peeling them off my soggy feet, replacing them with the slippers I’d stuffed in my pockets earlier. I shook out the climbing shoes, trying to get rid of as much of the water as I could before I stuck them in my sodden pockets and stood up once more.

The captain, for I had recognized his voice, took hold of me once more and we continued our march along the stone path. I didn’t know whether I was inside or outside, but the floor was so level and so smooth that I had to imagine we were indoors. “Where are you taking me?” I asked.

“Enough questions,” he replied, his voice harsh enough that I knew better than to push my luck. I just shrugged instead, and kept walking.

We ascended a stairwell, which must have been quite an impressive one, because the steps were shallow, and made of smooth stone, and after we reached a landing, we had to turn and keep climbing. We must have been in a haveli of some kind. There was a lot of light streaming through the ajrak cloth wrapped around my eyes, not enough to see by, but enough to know that there were torches or lanterns hanging at regular intervals along the wall, visible as dull halos through the indigo fabric.

We turned a sharp corner and came to a stop. Somewhere in front of me, a man’s voice demanded in Zindhi, “What’s this?”

“I don’t know, my lord,” the captain replied in the same language. Then he said a bunch of things I couldn’t follow, though I thought he was referring to me, because I heard the words for “water” and “boat.” But Zindhi was even more different from Daryastani than Mahisagari was,