“I will, yes. But right now I want to know what’s in that spice satchel. Mara, what could you possibly be carrying that is more valuable than saffron?”
She moves around to face me. Her eyes sparkle. “Just a little something I brought for us.”
I watch, wildly curious, as she retrieves it and lays it out on the bed. She reaches into a pocket and pulls out a clay figurine. It’s ochre-colored, shaped like a naked woman from the knees up. She’s voluptuous, and she crosses her arms over her stomach, as if protecting it.
Mara pulls off its head; it comes uncorked with a popping sound. She tips it, and a few tiny grains spill into her palm.
“Lady’s shroud,” she says. “I have two bottles, one for each of us. Had to sneak it past Ximena. I knew she wouldn’t look in my spice satchel.”
At my confused look, she sighs. “Ximena never told you about lady’s shroud, did she?”
“No.” There are many things Ximena never told me about.
“Take eight to ten of these seeds once per day. No more. Chew them well and swallow.” She pours them back inside the bottle and stoppers it, then shoves it into my hand. “It will keep you from getting pregnant.”
My hand closes around the bottle like a fist. “Oh,” I breathe.
“You don’t have to take it, of course. But I just thought, well, we were going on this journey, and there was so much talk of splitting off, and I knew Hector would be with us, and sometimes the look you two share could liquefy sand, and . . . I wasn’t too presumptuous, was I?”
“No. Well, I don’t know.” I stare at the figurine. She is lush in my hands. Naked. Shameless.
Mara’s voice is softer when she says, “You could have a first time with someone you trust and love.”
I look up at her, startled. So she knows how I feel. If she knows, then Ximena assuredly does too. “He might not have me,” I admit.
“Elisa, he wants you desperately.”
Warmth floods my neck. “I think he regrets staying on as my guard. He may leave after we find the zafira. To go home. And my sister, Crown Princess Alodia, has expressed an interest in betrothal with him. So, you see, it would go nowhere. There is no future for us.”
She moves the satchel aside and sits next to me on the bed. “But you love him,” she says, and at her simple acceptance, the last of my barriers crumbles away.
“Oh, Mara, I do. I love everything about him. I love that he cares so much about honor and duty. I love how, when he’s working hardest to mask his feelings, they’re actually leaking out all over the place. I love the way his hair curls when it gets wet, his slightly crooked smile, the way he smells. When he laughs, I feel it in my toes.” I let my forehead drop onto her shoulder. “I sound like an idiot.”
“Yes,” she says, and I hear the smile in her voice. “You do.”
“He kissed me. In the sewer.”
“Holy God,” she says. “That was very bad timing.”
“The worst.”
“And very unlike Hector.”
“Very unlike him, yes.”
“I really think you should start taking the lady’s shroud. Just in case.”
I straighten, take a deep breath, look calculatingly at the figurine in my hand. “Ximena wanted him to promise not to form an attachment with me.”
She wraps an arm around me and hugs me tight. “Ximena is a wonderful woman, and she loves you very much, but she is a meddlesome fishwife.”
I choke on surprise and laughter.
“You have to be the one to decide, Elisa. Not Ximena. What do you want?”
“I want Hector.” There. I’ve said it.
“Even if it means you can only have him for a short time?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fair enough.” She scoots behind me and reaches for my hair to put it in its sleeping braid. We sway a little as the wind picks up and rocks the ship. It’s comforting, like being rocked in a cradle.
“You said you brought two,” I say. “One for each of us.”
Her fingers on my hair still. “Yes. Belén and I . . . He is so handsome. And capable. Quiet and fiery, both at once.” She sighs. “We’ve both changed a lot. He’s scarred too, now. So maybe he won’t mind that I . . . even after everything that happened between us, I thought . . . maybe . . .”
“Just in case,” I say.
“Just in case,” she agrees.
Tonight, I decide not to take the lady’s shroud. But I wrap it carefully in my spare blouse and stash it in my pack. I lie awake a long time, wondering which would be more foolish, to prepare for something that may never happen, or not to prepare for something that might.