The Bird King(36)

Fatima’s head knocked against a root and for a moment she could see nothing but bursts of light. There was a great weight on her chest. She struggled to free herself, to scream again, but a dirt-perfumed hand clapped over her mouth and pressed her head back against the bony foot of the tree. The pain in her skull was so great that Fatima thought it might crack open, that this sorry, furtive wriggling was what death felt like.

Hassan was awake now and scrambling to his feet: she heard a cry of dismay and then a grunt as he kicked the man hard in the ribs. The pressure on her mouth relented for a moment. Gasping, Fatima squeezed her hand down along her side, drew her knife, and pointed it up.

Hot liquid gushed over her knife hand. The man made a choked, frightened sound and rolled away. Hands wrapped themselves beneath her shoulders and pulled her upright, and then she was in Hassan’s shaking arms.

“Are you all right?” he panted. “Is any of that yours?”

Fatima looked down: the front of her robe was soaked in blood.

“I don’t think so,” she said. Her feet went out from under her; Hassan tightened his grip.

“Are you sure?” he pressed. “Your face is this awful color that I can’t quite explain. Say something, Fa, for God’s sake.”

“I haven’t cut her.” The man was lying on his back, his own face an awful color, one fist stuffed against the spreading wet spot on his doublet. He was speaking Castilian. “Though the little bitch has cut me pretty well.”

Fatima was still holding her knife. She felt no desire to let it go. She held it up in front of her, though the man at her feet was hardly in a position to rise again. There seemed to be no connection between the things that she saw: the knife, the blood, the labored breathing of her assailant. Something else must have happened, something benign; there had been a terrible misunderstanding.

“Do you know what this is?” The fingers of the Castilian’s free hand twitched, gesturing at his sopping doublet. “This is a gut wound. It takes a long time. Hours.”

Fatima did not understand. She looked from her bloody knife to the man and back again.

“Do the right thing,” he snapped, phlegm rattling in his throat. “The soldierly thing, since you’ve got a soldier’s knife.”

Fatima’s knife hand began to shake.

“You want me to kill you?” Her Castilian came out blunt and accented. The man gave a horrible laugh.

“You’ve already done that,” he said. “I’m asking you for mercy. Mercy is a virtue, yes? Even for an infidel like you.”

“I can’t.” Fatima let the knife slip from her hand. “I can’t. I’m sorry.” To her horror, she felt herself begin to cry. “I’m very sorry.”

There was a rush of air at her back. Vikram boiled up beside her, snarling. He tossed a brace of freshly gutted rabbits at the roots of the tree.

“What is this?” he barked. “Can’t I leave you alone for an hour without coming back to a mess?”

The Castilian stared up at Vikram in horror.

“Ave Maria,” he wheezed, “gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulierib—”

Vikram fell on the man’s throat with his teeth bared. The world around Fatima grew dim with screaming; she smelled blood, and then something worse than blood, and then the man went abruptly silent. Fatima could hear her own breathing. It came in high, whistling gasps she could not control, as if some exterior force was pushing air into her lungs and just as quickly withdrawing it, leaving her desperate for more.

The calls of insects returned to fill the quiet. Their trills were punctuated every now and then by the stony crunch of teeth through bone and another more unspeakable sound, the slip and hiss of viscera being separated from itself. Vikram ate methodically. His long hair, matted with gore, obscured his face; his arms and legs were pulled beneath him, bent at angles no human limbs could form.

When he looked up again, his face was painted crimson, a color that was almost beautiful, the same shade as the dark ruby adorning Fatima’s finger. She stared at him and saw the gardens and baths and orderly days of her former life grow faint and irrelevant, something that only imitated what was real, a simulacrum tiled in blue and white. Vikram saw her watching and gave a smile that was almost sad.

“You should have done it,” he said. He picked Fatima’s dagger out of the dirt and began to clean his talons with it. “Then the poor idiot’s last vision of this world would have been the face of a lovely girl, not a nightmare like me.”

Fatima wanted to sit down. The Castilian’s blood was stiffening on her hand; she wiped it on her robe, futilely, and succeeded only in smearing her forearm with more of the tacky substance. There seemed nothing left to do but cry and let the ground hold her up.

“Give me my knife back, please,” she said to Vikram between sniffles, holding out one hand.

“Ha!” Vikram wiped the blade clean on his own shadowy pelt and handed it back to her, hilt first. “Of all the things you could have said, that was the most impressive. Here, take your weapon. Little murderess! My God, what a day.” He squatted beside what remained of the Castilian, prodding the shredded arm of his doublet.

“Was that necessary?” quavered Hassan, leaning against the tree, his face waxy. His own knife was out, Fatima noticed, balanced between his long fingers like a very sharp quill. “Was that fair? Did you have to—did you have to—”