The Bird King(26)

“Hassan,” she forced herself to whisper. “Something’s coming.”

The sound of Hassan’s breathing ceased. Fatima heard the dry rasp of metal against leather and realized he had drawn his knife. She hurried to do the same. Her dagger slid free of its sheath with the readiness of a well-made weapon. It was a prompt she did not know how to follow, except to grip the hilt as tightly as she could and point the blade away from herself.

The lights paused. Out of the dark came a volley of laughter.

“Little children,” said a man’s voice, as low and merry as a jackal’s. “Little children have sprouted little teeth. What exactly do you plan to do with those pretty knives? Shave?”

Fatima couldn’t move. She had a terrible feeling she was about to wet herself and clamped her legs shut. The lights drew closer and resolved themselves, shedding a pale, cold light on the familiar shape of the palace dog.

“Hello, young Fatima,” it said. “What are you doing so far from the harem?”

Fatima fainted. She had never fainted before, so the order of things that came next was unclear: she was awake, then not, then there was screaming—not hers—and the face of a man hovering over her, his lean, handsome features marred by an expression of contempt.

“Oh, get up,” he was saying. He had many teeth. “There are worse things than me down here, and you’ll meet some of them presently if you keep shrieking and falling over.”

“Nessma was right,” slurred Fatima, half-conscious. “I used to think she was just being an idiot. You’re a demon.”

“I’m not a demon,” said the dog-man. Invisible hands pulled her upright. “But I’m not far off, either. On your feet, little sister.”

Fatima struggled to stand. Somewhere behind her, Hassan gave an angry yelp and slashed about in the air with his dagger.

“Put that knife away before you cut your own necessities off,” said the dog-man. “There’s a good child.”

“Who are you?” demanded Hassan.

“Who are you, it asks,” laughed the dog-man. He shook himself, and for a moment, Fatima saw a dark pelt and a pair of clawed feet. “It has a little spirit after all. You know who I am, Hassan. You’ve passed me in the halls of the palace any number of times these past ten years. A better question would be, ‘Where am I?’ for on that point you are clearly ignorant. Look here. Look where you two almost stepped.” He turned away and the light from his eyes seemed to brighten, illuminating the faint edges of the tunnel around them. Inches from where Fatima stood, the ground stopped, falling away so sharply that the hole it created appeared like a flat blot of emptiness even darker than what surrounded it. The tunnel continued on the far side, a bit farther than Fatima could jump.

“I nearly just died.” She felt no fear, only a wild solemnity.

“Life is a series of near misses,” said the dog-man, slipping his talons beneath her elbow to guide her away. “Death happens only once. This way.”

Fatima felt Hassan wrap one hand around her sash again. They padded behind their guide, whose molten eyes cast enough light to let them see a few feet of the path ahead, but no more. He led them along a ledge that wound around the sudden drop, hugging the far side of the passage. Fatima clutched at the wall as they went, digging her fingers into the pliant earth until her nails were so packed with dirt that they pained her.

“The roads that lead to hell are cold,” said the dog-man to himself, half singing. “The fires of hell are colder still, and darker than the hour before dawn. Light, light, let’s have a little light.”

Fatima did not try to make sense of this. The path widened and narrowed at her feet, seemingly at random. She didn’t dare look up from it at the creature loping beside her, whose scent alone—hot metal, glass pulled from a forge fire, the smell of something that was neither alive nor safe—alarmed her. Nevertheless, they had walked a long way without coming across any promising landmark, and her fear began to give way to curiosity. “What is this place?” she asked after what seemed like a prudent interval. “It feels less and less like something built on purpose.”

“Ah.” The dog-man turned and looked at her. The light from his eyes illuminated a predatory smile. “Finally a little sense. This isn’t rightly a place anymore, only a crossroads between places. Some old and very nervous sultan tunneled under the Alhambra years ago, and a few of his cruelest descendants kept prisoners down here to die in the dark. But not for many decades now—or is it centuries? Now things that like the dark live here instead and have made little improvements of their own. That oubliette you nearly walked into is one of them.”

Fatima felt gooseflesh break out on her arms.

“What things?” she asked. “Jinn? Ghouls, effrit, marid, corpse-eaters, and all the rest? What things?”

“Shut up.” The dog-man halted so suddenly that Fatima stumbled into his coarsely furred back. An eddy of cold air seeped past her neck. The darkness before her remained inscrutable, but the timbre of the silence had changed, muffling her footfalls with a hollow sound, a half echo. The noise was so slight that Fatima could barely hear it, yet it filled her with terror.

“Something’s there,” she whispered.

Shut up, repeated the dog-man from somewhere between her ears. Say nothing, do nothing. I’m going on ahead. Stay right here and keep your high-strung friend quiet.