The Bird King(28)

“A Virgo,” mused the dog-man, as if this was a perfectly reasonable explanation. “Yes, they do have relentless, systematic little minds. But that doesn’t explain everything. No matter. Watch your step, we’re nearly there.”

A faint light, emanating from a source Fatima could not discern, revealed the edges of the tunnel and the ground beneath their feet, outlining them in pale gold. The dog-man was suddenly a visible thing, solid and almost ordinary from the navel upward: tallish, cleanly muscled, neither fair nor dark, with an uncombed net of black hair as long as a woman’s. He did not appear to be wearing clothes. Fatima found herself staring at his flank, which swam coquettishly in front of her eyes: one moment it was the curve of a rather pleasing buttock, the next the hairy extremity of something meant to go on four legs.

“What are you staring at?” snapped the dog-man.

“You,” admitted Fatima, too disturbed to be anything but honest. The dog-man looked at her for another moment and then burst into laughter.

“A truth-teller,” he sang, loping toward the evanescing light. “Ever since it was a child. What steel it has beneath those pretty silks! I’ll happily rut with you, if that’s what you’re after, though this is a somewhat uncomfortable place for it.”

“No thank you,” said Fatima, freshly alarmed. If he was offended, the dog-man gave no sign, but hummed to himself again, leaping over a mound of earth and rubble and landing on all fours. The light had taken on a piercing quality, filling the passage ahead of them. Fatima’s eyes began to water. The dog-man rose and became a silhouette, the shadow of a beast standing upright.

“I’ve found them, my lady,” he called to the flickering brightness. “They were lost in the borderlands of the Empty Quarter. Here they are, safe and sound.”

“Good boy,” came a familiar voice. Fatima put up a hand to shield her eyes. The light shifted. It was a torch, Fatima realized, held up by a slim figure in a robe and a saffron-colored veil.

“Well, Fatima,” said Lady Aisha, lowering the light and pulling her veil down to reveal a wry smile. “Did you really think you could run away in the dead of night without saying good-bye?”





Chapter 6


Fatima stood dazed in the torchlight with her hands hanging limply at her sides. Her mistress was, in some strange way, a greater surprise than the dog-man had been: Fatima could count on one hand the number of times Lady Aisha had left the palace in her recollection, so to see her there in the darkness, with the bluish light of false dawn rising behind her in the rocky mouth of the tunnel, was an eventuality for which Fatima had not prepared. She was used to thinking of her mistress as indolent: rising late, sleeping often, spending hours at the baths. But this was—or rather, must be—an illusion, a sort of camouflage, like a mountain cat blending into the rocks, cultivated to outwit anyone who might be sizing her up.

“I’m hurt,” she said now. “I don’t mind saying so. I think I’ve been very good to you. I’ve certainly taught you much more than any concubine needs to know. I preferred you above my own freeborn daughters-in-law, my own stepdaughter. Yes! I’ve been an excellent mistress. Yet here we are.”

“I couldn’t let them have Hassan,” said Fatima. Her voice had shrunk somehow and came out high and timid.

“My lady,” said Hassan, stepping forward. “Forgive Fatima—you know what she’s like, impetuous and so forth, and very loyal, which is a credit to you, my lady, if you’ll forgive me for speaking, but she’s still just a girl if we’re being honest, so if—”

“No, stop. It’s too early in the day for so much talking. There is only one question that needs to be answered: now that we’re all together again, why shouldn’t we go quietly back to our own rooms and have a little breakfast? No one need know about this misadventure.”

Fatima looked at Hassan. There was an animal grief in his earth-colored eyes, a terror of death which he was trying valiantly to conceal. He met her gaze and managed a smile.

Fatima lifted her chin.

“You don’t think it’s right either,” she said to Lady Aisha. “Let us go. You know Hassan isn’t a sorcerer.”

“Of course I know that,” snapped Lady Aisha, tossing her torch to the ground. It whuffed hot air in protest. “That’s not the point. These treaties are made for polities, not people. Lives are ground up beneath the wheels of peace. Why should Hassan live when so many others have died? And why should I lose you into the bargain?”

Fatima wondered whether Lady Aisha wanted an answer. She didn’t understand why someone like Hassan, who had no power over anything save his maps, should be expected to make such a sacrifice for those who had plenty.

“There is another solution.” The dog-man slipped forward, slinking along the ground to sit at Lady Aisha’s feet. “If this fellow can blunder into the outskirts of the Empty Quarter just by scribbling on a piece of paper, he is a liability to my people. If the black-cloaks put him on the rack and he squeals, he ceases to be a liability and becomes a threat.” Before Fatima could react, the dog-man was on his feet with his face an inch from Hassan’s throat. “Let me take care of him here, now. You can have what’s left over. The black-cloaks won’t care if he’s been chewed up a little, as long as they can still put his head on a spike.”