The Bird King(100)
“Hassan,” said Fatima, preparing herself to ask the question whose answer she dreaded. “How long have we been here?”
“Weeks,” said Hassan.
“Months, surely,” said Gwennec. “Four months, I think.”
“That long? No—I say ten weeks at most.”
“It’s been four months,” insisted Gwennec. “I keep track because I know how long it takes me to build things. A big tub for the washhouse takes three days, including salvaging wood and nails, and so on. It’s been four months.” He paused. “At least, I think it has.”
Fatima shook her head. Her mouth was dry, despite the constant press of wet air, and she licked her lips.
“Stupid couldn’t have survived nearly that long in the water,” she said. “How long can a horse keep itself afloat by swimming? A day? Less? Look at him, look at how he’s breathing, look at the way he recognized us—it’s as if he only just went overboard.”
Hassan’s face, every inch of which had grown freckled from long hours in the sun, fell into an expression of dismay.
“What are you saying?” he asked in a very different voice.
“I’m not sure,” said Fatima. Driven by something she could not describe, she continued down the beach, walking at first, and then, when she caught sight of a black lump rolling in the surf at the waterline, breaking into a run.
The lump was a bundle of sodden velvet, a black dress collapsing under its own weight, and inside, like a corpse washed and shrouded for burial, was Luz.
Fatima stopped so fast that her momentum nearly carried her over. For a few moments she wasn’t sure whether Luz was alive or dead, but then she heard a little moan, as low and grating as an animal’s, and Luz, shaking, propped herself up on her hands. Her hair hung over her face and trailed onto the sand, the blonde waves stained green with seawater. A stream of bright blood leached toward the surf from a wound Fatima could not see.
Luz began to cough. The sound of it made Fatima’s stomach turn: it was deep and full, a grotesque, efficient spate of productivity, and with it, Luz brought up shards of wood and glass. Fatima found her legs would no longer hold her and dropped to her knees. It was as if Luz had swallowed the wreckage of her ship: she was returning it to the sea splinter by splinter, upholding some unspeakable bargain, her own body a borrowed vessel embalming the dismembered wood and metal in a rush of blood. Fatima watched, stupefied. The sea pulled everything toward itself in its insensible rhythm. In no more than a minute all was gone, wood and blood and metal, and Luz lay silent on the beach.
It was in this state that Gwennec and Hassan found them. They hovered behind Fatima’s shoulder and stared, their mouths identically slack. Fatima realized she should offer some explanation, or at least some description, but words had deserted her and instead she reached for Hassan’s hand. She had resisted touching him, or even looking at him more than was necessary, since he had moved his sleeping mat away from the fire; she sensed that this hurt him, though she would not allow herself to meet his eyes long enough to confirm it. Now she needed to remind herself that he was solid, that the island was solid, that there had been victory and peace, for if this was true, the crumpled figure on the beach was not, as she feared, the end of everything.
Hassan gripped her hand with a little cry that told her he had missed her. Sensing she would not have another chance, Fatima turned to look at him and say the things she should have said weeks ago, when a cleaner understanding was possible. Love was awful; this she had always known, but it was other things as well. It was real enough to thwart empires, to summon land out of the barren sea, even when the sentiment of it was entirely used up, even when the pleasure of it was gone, even when it was no longer a feeling at all, but a purpose. And she still loved him.
But she said nothing, for Gwennec shouldered past her with a howl, drew his foot back, and kicked Luz in the stomach with such force that Fatima could feel the impact in the sand.
Luz convulsed, coughing more blood. Gwennec raised his fists and brought them down on her slack body over and over again, the sound of it terrifying, at once too muffled and too loud. Hassan let go of Fatima’s hand to wrap his arms around the monk, straining to pull him away.
“What’s wrong with you?” he bellowed, half lifting the shorter man off the bloodied sand. “Damn it, Gwen, what are you doing?”
Gwennec struggled in Hassan’s arms, sobbing.
“She’s killed the things I love,” he quavered, lunging again toward Luz. “She and her Holy Office. A holy office! They mutilate and terrify and shame and say they do it out of love. But they’ve killed love. They will burn down the Church itself so they can rule over the ashes. I will never see my abbey again, I will never see the Sacrament in my life, I will die unshriven, but that’s not enough—no, like a pestilence, she raises herself from the dead so she can poison more lives, even in this place at the end of the very earth.” He lunged again, but Hassan’s arms, no longer those of a hunched scribe, held him fast; defeated, he collapsed against Hassan’s shoulder and went slack, giving himself to his grief.
“It’s all right, you silly boy,” murmured Hassan, speaking, or so it seemed, into the monk’s matted hair. “You think Luz has decided to be a particularly awful sort of person, and if you kill her, the evil will go away. But it’s not like that. Plenty of ordinary, peaceful men and women think someone like me ought to be murdered, even if they’d never dream of doing it themselves. Get enough of them together and the Inquisition will spring into existence all by itself, as if called from the very air.” He stroked Gwennec’s hair, untangling one of the many knots that had formed in it, and looked over his head at Fatima with an expression she couldn’t read. “But she’s alone here. Just a half-dead inquisitor, cut off from all that ordinary evil. We have the king of the birds. She can’t hurt us.”