The Bird King(73)

“Why he likes you.” She sighed and gathered Fatima into the crescent of her body as though curling around a kitten. Fatima went limp, stupefied by the heat of Azalel’s arms and not inclined to resist their invitation. If she wasn’t going to run, she might as well rest: her rest had been stolen from her too often.

“The way we want,” said Azalel, stroking her hair. “We do all those things the way we want.”





Chapter 16


Fatima awoke when the lamp burned out. At the sudden intrusion of darkness, she sat up, as alert as if she had slept for days, and reached instinctively for her knife. Azalel was standing in the opening of the tent, her ivory claws illuminated by starlight.

“Hush,” she whispered. “What do you hear?”

Fatima strained to listen.

“Nothing,” she replied.

“Yes, yes, exactly. The night has been quiet. The men assigned to the last watch have fallen asleep around their campfire. You’ll get no better chance than this.”

Fatima wiped the sweat from her cheeks with the sleeve of her robe. Every garment she wore smelled ripe; she thought with regret of the hot bath and the rose water and the gowns and the praise that would be hers if she could only give Luz what she wanted.

“I’m ready,” she said, grinding her teeth.

Azalel, bent in an odd shape, walked in a little circle on the pads of her fingers and rubbed herself against Fatima’s legs.

“Are you sure we have to collect the mapmaker first?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Very well. It will end badly. What a pity Vikram isn’t here! I don’t make promises or sacrifices or grant wishes or any of those sorts of things. I’m the wrong kind of jinn for that. None of it interests me.” She rumbled in irritation and slipped out of the tent into the moonless hour. Fatima hesitated on the threshold, her feet deep in the yielding furs, holding on to the dry warmth within a moment longer, and then followed Azalel out among the sleeping men.

Azalel walked silently between the white canvas tents, leaving no track in the dew.

Put your feet where I do, came her voice in Fatima’s head. One step at a time. I have turned you sideways so that the men see only what they expect. A camp girl, a serving woman, a fishwife on her way to the harbor …

Fatima trained her eyes on Azalel’s feet, the same color as the blue hour, their soles looking bloody with mud. The sight of them made Fatima giddy. The camp around her dimmed. She saw shadows, forms only slightly darker than the night itself, moving among the tents; when she looked at them, they paused to look back, staring across the distance between them through pinprick eyes.

Don’t linger, said Azalel mildly. Or my brothers and sisters might decide they like you too much to let you go.

Where are we? asked Fatima.

Halfway, came the answer.

A shape, heavy and earthy, lumbered toward her, clothed in a spattered gray cloak and reeking of onions. Fatima watched it for several moments before she realized it was a man—a soldier, on his way to piss perhaps, or to begin preparations for breakfast, or returning from a night in a brothel. He was all out of proportion, his limbs long and hanging like those of an ape, yet he lacked the vitality of any living thing, so that he struck her the same way a boulder in a field might: he was a feature in a landscape, a heap of moving mud.

Is this what we look like? asked Fatima in horror. Is this what we look like to you?

The man paused, frowning, and turned in a half circle.

Move back, snapped Azalel. You can’t very well hide if you let him run smack into you.

Fatima stumbled backward and let out a little shriek when her heel caught on a tent stake. There was a ringing hiss as the soldier drew his sword. Then a clawed hand clapped itself over Fatima’s mouth and pulled her away, drawing her into an intangible fire, muffled and suspended above the ground, and held her there for a moment that stretched out so long that Fatima forgot to breathe, until the soldier muttered a prayer and spat a ball of phlegm at the grass, and continued on his way between the damp outworks of canvas and steel.

Fatima went slack with relief. She leaned into Azalel, held up by eddies of warmth like the air above hot coals.

Pretty child, said Azalel half pityingly, stroking her hair. You want so much and are given so little. Forget your mapmaker and all the clay men like him. Come with me to the Empty Quarter. It’s nearly as beautiful as you are—everything fashioned from quartz and song and light from the oldest stars. Come with me and I will teach you to drink fire. You need never lay eyes on anything made of mud ever again.

So delicious was this offer that Fatima said yes, or thought yes, in an impulse over which she had no control, and felt Azalel dot her neck with delighted kisses, and saw the sky overhead grow bright, crowded with points of light on a canvas of pale violet. The tents of the men gave way to hills of white sand that billowed and glittered coldly in the starlight.

I promise you, said Azalel, I will deny you nothing. I will be a better master than any you could have had on earth.

At this, Fatima stood up, searching for the ground with her toes for several disorienting moments before she found it. She pulled away from Azalel, who was now little more than a pillar of flame, and blinked as hard as she could to replace the alien stars with the world that had preceded them. She felt wounded in a way she could hardly justify: the jinn had said herself that she had no honor, yet Fatima had taken her promises at their apparent worth.