The Bird King(81)

“No.”

“Odd that you shouldn’t miss a palace, yet I’m half dead with grief for a bare room in a monastery. I wonder what it means.”

“It means you can’t choose what makes you happy.”

Gwennec gave a sharp little sigh, and for a moment, Fatima thought he might start crying. She gave in to an impulse and stroked his fingers, one after the other, each knuckle white and taut against the deck railing.

“Do you really believe in him?” asked Gwennec. There was a note of pain in his voice. “In your bird king? Is he worth all this?”

Fatima thought about it. She no longer knew what she believed, but she knew what she was, and this, oddly, amounted to the same thing. She knew now what parts of her persisted when the things that didn’t matter were stripped away: the embroidered slippers, the quiet routines, the room in which she slept, her few possessions. Those were not her; they formed no integral part of her personality, though they had defined her for so many years. What remained was slight but strong, and what remained, believed.

“I don’t know whether I believe in him or not,” she said. “But I believe he is worth all this, yes.”

Fatima thought Gwennec might mock her for giving such a strange answer, but instead he looked out of the corner of his eye with puzzled respect.

“That makes me feel a little better,” he said, “though I don’t see why it should.” He had made no attempt to withdraw his hand as she stroked it, and now turned his palm up as if in supplication. His eyes, too, pleaded silently, like those of a man who is drowning. Fatima withdrew her fingers and wrapped them in the rough wool of his habit. She pulled him close, seeking his mouth with her own. He made a small sound, a whimper, as though from fear or need or both, and suddenly she felt his hands in her hair and on her face, as if he wanted to touch all of her at once.

She almost laughed: his ardor, so different from the sultan’s, was at once clumsy and impossible to resist. Then his lips strayed from her mouth to her jaw, her throat; he whispered her name into the curve of her neck again and again as if in prayer. The laughter left her. There was too much cloth, yards of it, habit and robe and cloak and shift. Fatima pressed her hands against her face in frustration.

Gwennec cursed and tore something at the seams. Finally she felt the warmth of his skin against hers, the pressure of him, the counterpressure of the railing against the small of her back. A wail slid from her lips: she was hungrier than she thought.

“No?” panted Gwennec.

“Yes,” she reassured him, “Yes, yes.”

When she woke, she saw Hassan outlined in lantern light on the lip of the hold, his face unreadable. She jerked upright, unaware she had fallen asleep. Gwennec was out cold, his body curled protectively around hers, his habit bunched about his knees.

“It’s your watch,” said Hassan.

Fatima pulled herself to her feet. There was an ache, not unpleasant, in the tendons of her legs; a corresponding ache in her lower back. The deck was silent, dark except for the ring of light where Hassan stood. Even the horse was drowsing: a bulky lump wedged against the rail in the widest part of the ship. Fatima swayed toward the ring of light, rubbing her arms to warm them. The chill in the air had deepened. It was her shift that had torn: she could feel air on her sides, where her tunic was slit, sending gooseflesh up the ladder of her ribs.

“Hassan.” She reached instinctively for his hand. He turned away.

“I need to sleep,” he said. “I’m the only one who hasn’t slept.”

“Sleep, then.” But they both remained where they were, saying nothing.

“I didn’t mean—” began Fatima, “or at least, I didn’t plan—”

“No, it’s all right.” Hassan sniffed and rubbed his nose. “Naturally it’s you he wants. It’s not as if I’m surprised. Only after that little speech you gave me when I said I wanted him, and you pretended to be shocked, I would have thought—no, I don’t know what I would have thought.” He sniffed again. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter.”

Fatima breathed on her hands to warm them and willed Hassan to look at her.

“Do you love him?” he asked.

It was this that stung.

“No,” said Fatima flatly. “I barely know him. I’ve only ever loved one person.”

Hassan finally met her eyes. His face was pinched, as if he was in pain.

“Sometimes I look at you and I think, ‘There goes my heart, walking outside my body,’” he said. “And yet—oh, Fa. How can this end any way but in a mess? Where are the princes with their legendary swords and white steeds, who love where they ought and fight what they ought? Why is it only us, all muddled up?”

She reached out: she touched his brow, his cheekbone, the fringe of coppery lashes above each eye.

“You smell like him,” said Hassan, brushing away her hand. “I’m going below.”

“Take Gwennec with you,” begged Fatima. Hassan glanced at the bundle of slumbering black wool and made a derisive noise.

“He seems fine where he is.”

“It’s freezing up here. Hassan, I’m serious—take him with you.”

Hassan gave her a withering look out of the corner of his eye but did as she bade him, walking toward the monk and toeing him lightly in the side. Gwennec groaned.