The Bird King(54)

“Help me!” called Hassan. He had drawn his knife and was sawing furiously at the rope, just beyond the deck rail. Fatima hurried to do likewise, fumbling as her dagger balked at such a menial task, better suited to a sailor’s knife or a pair of shears. There were raised voices on the wharf. Fatima said another prayer, for herself, for Vikram, and most of all for the rope, which unwound strand by strand, complaining as it pulled against itself. Hooves clattered against wood, too close. Fatima looked up as the last strand of hemp snapped and the cog glided free, its sails belling eagerly in the night wind.

Luz was sitting astride her copper gelding at the edge of the wharf. For a moment, she was almost close enough to touch. She said nothing, only looked at Fatima with a colorless expression, her mouth set in a rigid line. Fatima looked back at her. She wanted to speak but could find nothing to say that Luz did not already know. The intimacy between hunter and prey had rendered speech unnecessary. Luz raised one gloved hand. A salute, or a farewell, or a warning; Fatima couldn’t tell. She raised her own hand unconsciously. A smile formed on Luz’s lips. Then the ashy fog that clung to the shoreline closed around her gelding’s feet. The lights, the town, the Roman fortress on the rise above it, the aqueduct standing guard in the hills above that: all were muted in gray, and there was only Luz, clothed in a veil of smoke.





Chapter 12


Fatima sat down where she was. Waves lapped at the sides of the cog, which heaved in time with the rising water. Hassan took her hand. They leaned against one another, panting for breath, until Luz had vanished, her image swallowed by the nervous sea. The stars returned to their stations in the darkness overhead. Fatima realized she was still holding her dagger and slid it back into its sheath, flexing her cramped fingers.

“Vikram—” said Hassan anxiously.

“Don’t.” Fatima pressed her hands against her eyes and bit back a sob. “Don’t.”

“What are we supposed to do now?” demanded Hassan, loosing her hand. “Without Vikram, we’re just two hapless idiots with a map. How do we steer this boat? How are we to provision ourselves?”

“Vikram’s lying dead on the wharf where we left him and this is all you can think about? He never promised to hold our hands for the rest of our lives. He said he’d take us across the Vega and he did, and now—” Fatima broke off as her breath caught.

“He abandoned us,” insisted Hassan. “We were meant to board a ship with a captain, a crew even, to buy passage as Lady Aisha said, not to commandeer a vessel like a couple of sad pirates.”

“Buy passage? Buy passage? To an island nobody can get to without your map?”

“Yes! That ruby on your finger would’ve been enough to convince an unscrupulous captain, and there are more than a few of those in Husn Al Munakkab.”

“This was your idea.” Fatima slammed her fist against the deck for emphasis. She looked about her for something she could throw for yet greater emphasis, but found nothing useful: only the salt-bleached wood of the deck and a coil of rope listing against the stern castle behind her. Instead, she lay down where she was, curling into the railing of the deck, which lifted and dropped her in an easy rhythm. Sleep suggested itself. The deck was warm and level, a better and safer bed than any she had had in recent nights. Thinking too hard, about Vikram or anything else, seemed wildly irresponsible.

She sat up when she heard a door bang open and shut again.

Hassan seized her arm with a startled cry. On the narrow wooden steps leading down to the galley stood a young northern man in the white woolen habit and black cloak of a Dominican friar, his straw-colored hair tousled from sleep. He froze where he was, staring at Fatima and Hassan in blank disbelief. Though he was not a tall man, the breadth and heaviness of his shoulders gave him the appearance of one. He had a face like a butcher’s cleaver: all thick, reddened angles beneath a prominent brow, yet his eyes were very blue and had a candid, appealing symmetry, rendering the sum of his parts less hostile than it might have been.

He frowned at them, fumbling in his corded belt for a weapon he did not seem to possess. For a long moment, no one spoke.

“Fa,” whispered Hassan. “I think we’ve kidnapped a monk.”

The monk looked from Fatima to Hassan with his lip curled.

“Penaos oc’h deuet?” His voice was low and grated on the ear. Hassan, in lieu of an answer, attempted to smile, and for a moment, Fatima thought everything might be all right. Then the monk seemed to coil up and threw himself across the width of the deck. He collided with Hassan, who shrieked, and both of them went down in a tangle of limbs. Fatima heard Hassan’s head hit the saltswollen planks beneath it. The sound froze in her guts.

“Stop!” She reached out and wrapped her hands around the first thing they encountered, the pointed end of the monk’s long cowl, and pulled as hard as she could. The monk fell backward with a squawk. Hassan was looking upward into the phantom darkness without expression, his eyes fluttering. Fatima drew her knife.

“If you’ve hurt him, I’ll kill you,” she said between her teeth. Blue eyes stared up at her in astonishment. “Do you understand me? I’ll kill you.” The monk struggled to sit: she drew back her foot and kicked him in the jaw, harder than she meant to, and sent him reeling back again, spitting blood. He moaned once, steadying himself on his hands. Fatima knelt on the deck next to Hassan and stroked his face.