The Bird King(32)

Fatima wanted to smash something.

“Stop telling me what to do,” she spat. “No one is going to order me to take off my clothes, ever again.”

The haughty lines on Vikram’s face softened. He set down their bags in the dust of the riverbank and leaped into the water, landing on all fours at Fatima’s feet.

“As you said yourself, I’m a monster,” he told her, his mouth twitching upward wryly. “But I’m not that sort of monster.”

“Why should I believe you?” Fatima rubbed her arms, her teeth chattering.

“I never lie,” said the dog-man. “Lies are for those who are afraid or ashamed of what they are, and I am neither.”

“I think we should do as he says,” called Hassan, hopping on one foot as he pulled off a dripping shoe. “Let’s not die today. It would be such an embarrassment if we barely even got away before we were captured again. If we’re going to die, let’s do it tomorrow at the very earliest.”

Fatima looked closely at the hawkish face staring up at her. It was not as spiteful as it had first appeared, and the yellow eyes, though they reflected nothing, had a feral wisdom in them.

“Don’t look at me while I change,” she said.

“I won’t,” promised Vikram. He turned away and loped back toward the shore. Hesitating a moment longer, Fatima peeled her tunic over her head. The air that had been warm when she was dry felt very cold now that she was wet. She wriggled out of her trousers as quickly as the sodden fabric would allow, then tossed the bundle of wet clothes toward Vikram’s back, as a sort of test, and was only half pleased when he caught it with one hand.

Fatima waded into the shallows on the far side of the river and stepped out onto an embankment of rubble on the far side, squatting to rummage in Hassan’s pack. Hassan himself was splashing contentedly in midstream, cursing and woofing under his breath at the cold and the rocks underfoot. Fatima stole a glance at his bare form. His back was as pale as a northerner’s and his ribs were visible; freckles dappled his shoulders. In this light, shivering and naked in the river, he seemed unremarkable, his genius invisible, yet he was alive, and her hope lived with him.

“You’re judging me,” declared Hassan, standing up and spitting water. “I can feel your eyes boring into the back of my skull.”

“I’m not,” protested Fatima, turning away with a grin.

“Yes you are. We can’t all be as lovely and formidable as certain people. Some of us have flaws. Some of us even like flaws. If you were a man, I’d be afraid to flirt with you, no matter how much I might want to. You’d fix me with that knowing little smirk when I was in some terribly vulnerable state, and that would be the end of me.”

“Am I really that bad?” asked Fatima, unsettled.

“Yes,” said Hassan, clambering out of the river with his clothing piled on his head. “But it’s all right. I love you nonetheless.”

Fatima flushed and turned her attention back to the wad of clothing she had stuffed into Hassan’s pack. It was all wrinkled now and smelled of canvas on the verge of mildewing. She pulled out the plainest robe she could find: it was a light felted wool dyed blue with indigo and embroidered with red yarn along the hem and cuffs. It was cut for a man, but she and Hassan were roughly the same height, and when she pulled it on, it fell where it should. Vikram took the two bundles of wet clothes in his arms and stood on a rock.

“Your daggers,” he said, flinging them into the dirt at their feet. “Don’t forget those. You will almost certainly need them.”

Fatima dug out a dry sash and wrapped it around her waist, securing the dagger at her hip.

“That’s better,” said Vikram, eyeing her critically. “You don’t quite look like a peasant, but you look much less like a royal concubine who has run away. Time to go, children! There are miles between you and a safe place to sleep.” He climbed up the riverbank and into the scrub, passing through it as soundlessly as a shadow. Fatima hurried to follow him. Her feet squeaked in the wet boots, but on the whole she felt well enough: the water had refreshed her, Hassan’s robe was less confining than her own had been, and though the afternoon threatened rain, the prospect of walking in a straight line, without corners or walls or doors in the way, was new enough to feel full of promise.

Vikram led them south, following the pebbly foothills of the Sierra Nevada. To their right, the Vega stretched westward, as flat as the palm of a hand, curving up at the horizon to meet the more forgiving hills that defined its farthest reaches. The farmland was empty now. Fatima could see the white remains of houses and stone walls that had once marked the perimeters of fields, like chalk lines dividing up the landscape. Years of siege had made them into roosts for crows, the roof tiles looted or smashed, the walls quarried for other uses. The little streams and tributaries that watered the Vega were at their summer ebb and in some places had run completely dry: they reached out into the silent plain like fingers of gray mud, withdrawing moisture rather than replenishing it.

Fatima watched Vikram as they walked. He seemed to know where he was going, for he rarely raised his head: instead he grumbled without cease, though in a voice almost too quiet to make out, and in languages Fatima could not decipher.

“You know Lady Aisha,” she hazarded at one point, desiring to make conversation. Vikram looked over his shoulder, one elegant brow arched with scorn.