The Bird King(57)

“We’re not going back,” she said. Though she had spoken as calmly as she could, her voice shook. “She can’t have him and neither can you. He’s mine. He isn’t a sorcerer. I’m not giving him up to die.”

Gwennec’s face rearranged itself, the lines and hard edges softening with incredulity. He looked her up and down.

“My God, but you’re made of stern stuff,” he said. “Somebody must have done you a terrible wrong if you’ve lost your natural fear of the sea.”

Fatima looked over the railing at the nameless hues rising and falling around them, the green that was also gray, the deep wine color that hinted at an element finer than water, an echo of the fire the alchemists said burned undying at the center of the world. Every sinew in her body was taut; the profound anxiety of being so close to both escape and recapture left no room for any other emotion.

“I’d never seen the sea until earlier this evening,” she said. “I don’t know it well enough to fear it.”

Gwennec was shaking his head, though whether in admiration or disgust, she couldn’t tell.

“They say people in love do mad things,” he said. “But this is madness of a purer sort than any I’ve ever seen.”

It was the second time he had implied that Fatima and Hassan were lovers. Fatima glanced at Hassan, but he had closed his eyes again and was pinching the bridge of his nose, taking long, dramatic breaths to quell his headache.

“We’re not in love,” said Fatima.

“You must think I’m an idiot,” said Gwennec. “I might be a monk, but I still know what two people in love look like.”

“It isn’t like that.” Fatima felt her cheeks go hot. “We’re not—we don’t—Hassan doesn’t—”

“In addition to being a sorcerer, I’m also a sodomite,” supplied Hassan. “But let it be known that I am passionately in love with you, Fa. I’d offer to marry you if it were even remotely fair to either of us. Alas. The world doesn’t supply happy endings to people like us.”

Fatima looked at Gwennec and saw her own bafflement mirrored on his face. She wondered with fresh alarm whether Hassan might really be injured, and tripped back down the steps of the stern castle to kneel by his side. He looked up at her and cocked one eyebrow.

“This blond, hulking fellow, on the other hand, I would tumble in an instant,” he said to her in Arabic. “If he could only be persuaded.”

“Shush,” said Fatima, looking over her shoulder. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you saying these things? I’m worried you’ve cracked your skull. And anyway, he’s celibate.”

“It only adds to his appeal.”

“You shouldn’t have made that little speech.” Fatima smoothed the front of his robe with hands that shook. “Northerners aren’t friendly to men like you. Who knows what he might do now that you’ve told him?”

“North, south—it’s all the same,” muttered Hassan. “Even in the Alhambra, all it would have taken is for four pious men of sound mind to open my bedroom door at the wrong moment, and I would have been banished or executed. The only reason I still have all my limbs is that everyone was willing to pretend I’m something I’m not.”

“They pretended because they loved you,” said Fatima. She smoothed and smoothed, as if her hands could brush away whatever had possessed him.

“That’s not love,” said Hassan, shaking his head. “You were the only one there who loved me, Fa.”

On impulse, Fatima bent and kissed him. She didn’t want him, exactly, but the intensity of feeling that overwhelmed her suddenly had no other means of expression. His lips were warm and soft and dry and parted under her own without returning their pressure.

“Marry me anyway,” she said, withdrawing only a little. “We like each other best of anyone. The other things don’t matter.”

The smile that rose to Hassan’s mouth was too quick. It told her he had considered and rejected this possibility, perhaps many times over.

“They matter, sweet friend,” he said. “They matter.”

Gwennec thumped down the stairs from the stern castle and sat down hard on the last step, splaying his legs and leaning back on his elbows like a large child.

“You’re a very strange pair,” he said. “And not to be trusted with a ship.” The wind was only skimming the mainsail now, and the ship rode over each swell at an angle, bringing the surface of the water up and down, up and down, as though the bow were a needle pulling through cloth. Fatima saw the lights of Husn Al Munakkab bobbing in the distance.

“Turn us back around,” she said to Gwennec, her chest rising and falling with the water. “Or show me how.”

Gwennec glanced out at the lights and rubbed his scalp vigorously with his fingertips, shedding dander on the shoulders of his black cloak.

“You don’t really want that,” he said. “There’s barely any food to speak of on board. A couple of casks of water, another of wine, though that’s not much good to you Mohammedans. Wherever it is you think you’re going, you won’t get there in this ship, not without resupplying.” He looked around the deck and laughed harshly. “And not without someone who knows a thing or two about sailing.”