The Bird King(20)

“Tribunal of the Holy Office,” she said lightly, dipping her hands in a dish of rose water nearby.

“What’s that?”

Lady Aisha picked up her bowl and set it down again, as if she couldn’t decide whether or not she was hungry.

“I never used to underestimate people,” she said. “I must be older than I think I am. She’s very clever, this Queen Isabella of Spain—or if she isn’t, there are very clever people advising her. I assumed the general was their hawk—that they sent their military man to bully our military men. But they know us better than we know ourselves, it seems. They know my son does not love his viziers or his generals. The people he loves are here, in the harem. They sent their dove to the men. The hawk, they have sent to us.”

Fatima was not often afraid. She had never known a time without war; when it was not outside on the battlefield, it was inside on the birthing bed, or in the winters when the very young and the very old and the very ill died in their sleep without a sound. Yet now she had a sick feeling, as though she were looking off the edge of a tower. She swallowed to keep from gagging.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “What does that letter mean? What does it mean about Luz?”

Lady Aisha resumed her lunch, scooping up a quivering mass of mutton fat with a fragment of bread.

“It means that Luz was sent by the Inquisition,” she said.





Chapter 5


The moon rose early that night. It lay fat and red in the clear sky, a solitary blemish unattended by stars. Fatima found Luz in the courtyard staring up at it. The garden was softened by lamplight, its straggling roses and withered palms rendered less offensive than they seemed in daylight hours, when the neglect was palpable. Fatima felt a strange, dislocated ache. Even the things with which she had grown impatient—this courtyard, this garden, the many restless hours she had spent there—seemed precious now that she knew she would lose them. The back of Luz’s golden head, made pale by the dim evening, mocked her. No kindness was ever freely given: each followed from its own secret ambition. Fatima knew this, yet somehow Luz, who was so unlike Nessma and the others, had caught her off guard. There was a chill in the garden, a finality, as if the diminutive figure in black had drawn all the warmth from it, and all the memory of warmth. Fatima felt her lip tremble. No one was coming to save them. No one was coming to save them.

Luz’s hair was plaited for the evening. She played with the frayed end of her braid, looking so like a little girl that Fatima hesitated, biting back the furious speech she had prepared in her mind.

“What do you call the game you play with Hassan?” Luz asked, as if continuing a conversation she had begun in her head. She held out her hand for Fatima. “The one with the naming of birds.”

“It’s not a real game,” said Fatima after a baffled silence. “It started as a joke. There’s a long poem by Al Attar about a party of birds who go on a journey to find their lost king. Lady Aisha bought the first few pages. We could never find the rest. So we’ve been making it up as we go.”

“A shame,” said Luz, half to herself. “It’s always helpful to know how things end.” She looked over her shoulder with a puzzled frown. “Why are you standing so far away?”

To her horror, Fatima felt tears prick her eyes.

“You’re an inquisitor,” she said.

Luz looked back at the moon. “Only priests can be inquisitors,” she murmured. “I have no title.”

“But you’re still …” Fatima had begun to shake. She wrapped her arms around herself to keep it from showing. “You said we should think of you as a friend. An advocate. Those were the words you used. You were lying.”

Luz turned, wide-eyed, and crossed the courtyard to Fatima. Gently, she unclasped Fatima’s hands and took them in her own, rubbing them as if to make them warm.

“I am your friend,” she said. “That wasn’t a lie. It’s because I’m your friend that I want—more than anything in the world—for you to accept your Savior, the Son of God. I can’t bear the thought of you in hell, Fatima. I would do anything to prevent it.”

Fatima had no adequate response.

“What are you going to do to us?” she asked. “When the city falls?”

“Nothing,” said Luz firmly. “A forced conversion is unworthy of Our Lord. I only want to remove certain bad influences—certain people who might stand between you and salvation. There are those who, through no fault but their own human weakness, have fallen under the sway of the Enemy, and they must be dealt with. Delicately, if possible.”

“You torture people.”

Luz released her hands and shrugged, as if the suggestion was tiresome.

“With heresy so widespread, unfortunate methods have become necessary,” she said. “Even according to your own faith, the student of religion—a talib, I think you call him?—has a duty to spread his knowledge to those who have gone astray. And that’s what we are. Yes? Simple talub.”

Fatima shook her head. She couldn’t think; there seemed no rational thing to say, no retort, for Luz’s argument depended on its own impenetrable logic. Luz held out her hand again. She was smiling now: an upturned slash of sympathy as fixed as a corpse’s. It made the fine hairs on Fatima’s arms stand up.