The Bird King(47)

“?Una mujer! ?Veo a una mujer!”

The air sang in Fatima’s lungs. Panting, she crested the hill, cursing at the bushes that snagged her robe. Beyond the downward slope was another valley, much wider than the first and still concealed in gloom. It was papered with overgrowth, a thick, undifferentiated mass of brush and turning leaves that petered out into a colorless darkness. Fatima kept running, lifting the skirt of her robe to keep it from tearing in the dense brush. For a moment she felt giddy with triumph: the voices behind her were growing fainter and farther away and it seemed she might escape them entirely.

She was dismayed when she felt herself begin to fall. First there was packed earth beneath her feet and then there was air: she twisted, reaching for something to grab onto, and felt her fingers brush the woody bark of a tree. It was not brush and overgrowth she had seen from the hilltop but the canopy of a scrub forest. Fatima had thrown herself off a cliff.

Instinct overtook her. When she hit the ground, she was already curled into a ball, her legs tucked against her chest and her arms around her legs, her forehead pressed against her knees. The impact drove the breath from her body. For a moment, she thought she was drowning, and began to flail, reaching for a surface that did not exist, tearing up handfuls of loam and rock. Ground and sky switched places and then switched again. Fatima reached out a hand to stop herself. The world came to a halt and went silent.

Fatima could hear herself breathing. Faint, rosy outlines of clouds were visible overhead, and all the stars had gone save the herald of morning. She opened and closed her hands. There was a sharp pain in her left side when she breathed in. When she turned her head, she saw white, chalky gravel bordered by pines, the demarcation between the two abrupt and purposeful. Turning on her side, she lifted herself carefully to her knees, repeating in her mind the little lullabies Lady Aisha had sung when she or one of the other children scraped a knee or an elbow in the courtyard of the harem. There was no one to kiss her now: she rocked back and forth, singing to herself under her breath. Her head pounded in time with her heart. It was several minutes before she felt ready to sit up and examine her surroundings.

The white gravel scar was plane and level and wide enough to admit several wagons abreast; it curved into the distance between the rust-colored cliffs that flanked it on each side. Fatima got to her feet and turned in an unsteady circle. The scar continued behind her, leading briskly uphill, cutting a path through the scrub until it vanished beyond her range of vision.

It was the road.





Chapter 10


It was empty: at such an early hour any sensible merchant or mercenary would still be breaking his fast and readying his horses. Fatima limped a few steps, testing herself. She wanted desperately to sit down, but there was nowhere to conceal herself: the road was hemmed in by cliffs with only a narrow ditch running along one side, a ditch where Fatima could see shattered wheel spokes and bundles of rags and animal bones, the refuse of human transit. An odd clarity overtook her. She limped to the edge of the road, slid down into the ditch among the discarded things, and drew her knife. The voices began again in the high ground. They were shouting, calling downhill toward someone she couldn’t see, and then there were hoof beats on the road behind her, where the ground rose.

She told herself not to look. The horses were armored or carried armored men: she could hear the chattering complaints of steel on steel. Someone ordered a halt and the clatter ceased. A single rider came forward, the dull iron of his mount’s shod feet grating against the stone, and stopped near Fatima’s head. She closed her eyes.

“Ho, old boy,” came a woman’s voice, as high and ringing as a girl’s. The horse danced a few steps and chewed noisily on its bit. “That’s enough now.”

Fatima looked up and into Luz’s face. The sight of her braided hair, the snowy crest of her collarbone above the bodice of her black gown, filled Fatima with a feeling she couldn’t name and didn’t like, something that wandered between fury and regret. Luz was not looking at her. She was staring down the road with a frown, her brows knit together, one hand soothing the neck of her coppery gelding. Fatima adjusted her grip on the knife. Its weight was familiar now; the heft of it calmed her. She couldn’t kill a battalion of armed men with it, but she might kill one woman.

“Fatima,” came Luz’s voice softly. “Come out, come out.”

Fatima froze in terror. Luz’s gaze was fixed on the road. At first, Fatima thought it was a trick: Luz was taunting her now, forcing her to reveal herself. But Luz gave no sign of having seen her. She pulled one hand from its black calfskin glove and chewed restlessly at her thumbnail, as if she did not know she was being watched. Her skin glowed faintly as the dawn intensified, illuminating the flush of her bowed lip; yet there was something in her left eye, a splinter perhaps, or a fleck of soot from a campfire, that made Fatima recoil with a disgust she could hardly justify. An unhealthy air clung to Luz’s black velvet shoulders like the residue of a long illness. Fatima’s head throbbed. She was certain she had been spotted—by whom, she couldn’t tell—and dug her fingers deeper into the yielding ground.

“Are they certain the girl came this way?” Luz called above her. “And that she was alone? No one else was with her?”

“No one else, my lady,” came a man’s voice.

“Strange,” murmured Luz. She was silent for a moment. The throbbing in Fatima’s head increased. She closed her eyes again.