Adijan and Her Genie by L-j Baker

Author:L-j Baker [Baker, L-j]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Gay, Fiction, Lesbian, General, Lesbians, Fantasy, Fantasy Fiction, Jinn
ISBN: 9781934452059
Google: -16ENwAACAAJ
Amazon: 193445205X
Publisher: Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company
Published: 2008-12-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Adijan worked the rope net from the hook and signaled to the waiting seaman. The hook and chain, fixed to one end of the yard, swung up and away to pick up the next load from the dock.

"How you doing, sweetie?"

Adijan turned to see Qaynu, the captain's woman, grinning down into the cargo hold. Zobeide, the object of her question, stood to one side of the hold with both hands in the small of her back. Had she been fully human, she probably would've been crumpled in a heap on the damp cargo hold deck by now.

"If you wanted something a little easier to do," Qaynu said, "maybe we could come to some sort of arrangement. Pretty thing like you shouldn't be working like a grunt."

"Any conceivable occupation," Zobeide said, "you might offer—"

"What did you have in mind?" Adijan stepped to Zobeide's side and slipped a hand around the back of her waist. She felt Zobeide stiffen, but Adijan kept her arm in place and smiled up at Qaynu.

Qaynu grunted and frowned at Adijan. She turned and disappeared past the hole in the planking.

Zobeide moved away from Adijan's touch. "You need not feel obliged to intercede for me with every objectionable individual or comment."

"I won't be able to with so many people around. But you can't just disappear to get out of trouble. Piss off Qaynu, and the bitch can make our lives hell. Keep that in mind before you tell her, in all those big words, to go and poke herself. You're back in the real world, not a bedroom."

"It is the world to which I was born. It's where I truly belong. I am capable of surviving in it."

To the accompaniment of much shouting and swearing, they finished loading with little time to spare before catching the noon tide. Adijan had to help setting the sail. She was clumsy and slow to climb the rope stays up to the yard. The other seamen made fun of her. The captain bellowed at her. When she finally crept along the yard she couldn't help noticing the deck and sea looked a long way down. Zobeide contrived to stand almost directly underneath her—at the furthest reach of the allowed separation between them. Qaynu blew Adijan an ironic kiss.

Between pulling on ropes and running across the deck whenever someone shouted at her for being slow or in the wrong place, Adijan barely had time to think. The huge square sail bellied in the wind that carried them out of the harbor. The ship creaked alarmingly, as if every timber strained on the point of splitting. The uneven silhouette of the city of Pikrut shrank as the ship slid along the rocky coastline.

The deck gently lifted and lowered beneath her feet. Water slapped at the sides of the hull. Her stomach moved to its own queasy rhythm. She swallowed back saliva in increasing amounts. The crew smiled knowingly at her. As the ship rounded the jutting finger of land, which blocked the last of Pikrut from sight, she dashed for the side.

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