The Bird King(34)

“Wait,” she said, coming to a halt. “Wait, wait. I do have something.” Bending down, she unlaced her damp boots and withdrew one foot. The anklet clung to her flesh, its double row of tiny silver bells silent. She unclasped it and peeled it off, holding it up triumphantly for Hassan and Vikram to see.

“How resourceful it is,” said Vikram with a toothy grin. “Well, well. Throw your pretty bells away, as hard and as high as you can, and we’ll see whether they make any difference.”

Fatima hurled the anklet toward the yellow flank of the hill alongside which they had been walking. The bells twinkled for a moment before vanishing into the scrub, landing with a merry sound. The falcon folded its wings and dived after them.

“Well done,” said Hassan, clapping Fatima on the back. “All that shrieking was driving me mad. What would you bet that’s a tame bird? Some wealthy merchant probably set it loose before fleeing across the Strait. It’s lonely and hungry, poor thing—just like us.”

Fatima said nothing, regretting the loss of her anklet. She could hear it jingling in the scrub as the falcon pecked at the bells.

“Can we get it back?” she asked. “After the bird has gone?”

Vikram laughed at her.

“It wants its pretty things back. Be glad, Fatima! Better the bird should make noise and draw the dogs and you walk a little lighter in your boots.”

“Don’t laugh at me,” muttered Fatima, scuffing the dust with one foot. “I only own three things, and that’s counting the ring Lady Aisha gave me. That bird is half as rich as I am now.”

“You have many things more valuable than those bells, or even the borrowed ruby on your finger,” sang Vikram, loping onward down the shallow crater of the streambed. “Youth, intelligence, health, strength of will, surpassing beauty, and now, freedom. Your anger, too, would be a gift, if you would only decide to harness it. There are many men in this world who have bells aplenty, yet are not half as rich as Fatima.”

Fatima set her jaw, formulating a response. She did not have the opportunity to try it, however, for a moment later there came the baying of not one but several hounds, very close by. The sound echoed off the barren hillside and landed in Fatima’s ears with a loud crack.

“How silly we’ve been,” whispered Hassan, his face as white as the bleached stones under their feet. “Standing here making all this noise.”

Vikram said something in a language Fatima had never heard before, a pair of harsh syllables like a cross between a growl and a log splitting open in a fire.

“Come,” he murmured, taking one of their hands in each of his. “Stay close.”

Fatima felt a tug on her wrist. Dazed, she stumbled to follow, breaking out into a run when the pressure increased, taking longer and longer steps until it seemed her feet barely touched the earth. The banks of the streambed blurred around her, becoming a tangle of stone and scrub and stunted trees tinted yellow where the sun struck them and blue where the shadows of the hills fell. Her lungs ached. Beside her, Hassan was a blot of red hair and green felt and heavy breathing. Fatima felt unconsciousness pressing out from behind her eyes. She struggled against it until the banks of the stream began to go dark, as if night were falling.

If you faint, I will get angry, came a voice in her head. If you faint I will have to leave you behind, and then you will die, and I will have broken my promise.

Fatima forced herself to breathe more deeply. She counted each breath in Arabic and in Sabir and in Castilian and in Latin. She counted until she ran out of numbers.

“Stop,” she begged, her voice ragged.

The world began to slow. The pressure on Fatima’s wrist relaxed. Gasping, she fell to her knees and pressed her forehead against the earth. A bitter tang rose up in the back of her throat. She tensed, retching.

“That’s right,” came Vikram’s voice, tinged with amusement. A clawed hand thumped her across the shoulders. “Get it all up.”

“It” was water and bile, for there was nothing else in Fatima’s stomach. She coughed and sputtered and rolled onto her back. Images came into focus around her. Above, the sky was golden, the morning mist burned away. They had left the streambed behind and passed into open country. There was dry grass beneath her; beside her, the humming of cicadas in a lone willow. Hassan passed in front of her eyes, his hair a windblown halo about his face.

“Let’s never do that again,” he muttered.

Fatima attempted to sit. The ground tilted at a nauseating angle. Moaning, she lay down again and dug her fingers into the earth. The sweet tang of grass and dust pooled in her nose and the back of her throat and soothed her.

“Look at the horizon,” instructed Vikram. “It will help.”

Fatima blinked to bring the distance into focus. The Sierra Nevada began at her head and ended somewhere past her feet, pulling back in the middle as if out of modesty, like a lady drawing her veil across her shoulders. At this distance, the mountains were profoundly blue, succeeded at the tree line by an icy color as the snows that lay on the highest peaks surged upward toward their birthplace in the sky.

Between Fatima and the mountains, the ground was flat. Great squares of it were furrowed in preparation for crops that had never been sown. The willow tree under which she lay was the only upright thing in sight, aside from a charred, boxy shape a little way off that might be the ruins of a farmhouse. A path of packed earth led up to it before trailing away toward some long-disused high road. Everything was empty: the plain, the fields, the path, the skeletal house. It was vicious, somehow, the emptiness, as if the Vega was waiting to strike at them for the war that had left it fallow and burned.