The Bird King(82)
“Let’s go, my Breton brother,” said Hassan. “She whose word is law says you’re not to sleep out in the cold.” He looped Gwennec’s arm over his own shoulders and pulled him upright.
“Hassan,” muttered Gwennec, stumbling beside him, “I’ve done something.”
“Oh, I heard all about it. Come on.”
Fatima watched them disappear into the hold, the blond head drooping against the reddish one. A light flared up from the stairwell and wavered a little before extinguishing itself: Hassan must have lit a lamp to make his way in the dark and then shuttered it. On deck, Stupid shifted in his sleep and whuffed through his stubbled nostrils. His breath hung in the air for a moment before dissipating. Fatima climbed to the stern castle and surveyed the quiet ship, feeling unwontedly satisfied. The cog was small and she had stolen it, but it felt like hers in a way nothing else ever had. Happiness, she decided, came only in pauses, neither regularly nor predictably. She breathed in and out, savoring the faint taste of salt and resin.
The tiller was warmer than the air and twitched as she pressed her hands against it. Fatima straightened and squinted at the compass. They had drifted northward a little: Fatima put her weight into the tiller and pushed until the compass needle swung west again. Hassan’s map, weighted under stones, trembled in the lamplight. Hassan had added something while she slept: now there were faint, parallel dashes in the emptiness of the Dark Sea, pointing northwest. Tracing them with one finger, Fatima realized they must represent the prevailing current that had been pulling them gently northward. She marveled at the little charcoal ticks and at the fingers that had drawn them, rendering a great force into a small mark with such economy. And for this, Luz wanted Hassan dead.
Fatima turned and leaned out over the sternmost rail. In the pitch black, the carrack that followed behind them had been reduced to a flickering dot, like a star that had alighted on the water. Fatima suddenly felt as though she were somewhere else, somewhere familiar, observing a series of events that had already happened. Luz was aboard that ship, and was staring at her from across the mute water, just as she was staring back at Luz. The thought grew so emphatic that Fatima began to rub her eyes as if to clear them of sleep. Perhaps the carrack would turn back. The pursuers would abandon their intention when they realized their quarry meant to keep sailing west. Fatima repeated this to herself until she was calmer. She did not look at the lights of the carrack again.
Piloting a ship that jerked and shied like a living thing was enough to keep her occupied until the sky began to pale in the east. In the hours before dawn, she lost the moon, and everything outside the circle of lamplight on the table beside her fused with the darkness; she kept her eyes fixed on the needle of the compass and her hands wrapped around the tiller, and remained there, unmoving, until the muscles of her arms began to ache and the stars began to fade. She heard the sails flap and drag, beating themselves rhythmically against the mast, and knew the wind had changed, but she didn’t dare leave the stern castle to examine them. Only when she heard a heavy tread in the hold below did she relax her fingers on the tiller and slump down to rest her head on her knees.
“We’re losing the wind,” came Gwennec’s voice. Fatima heard him cross the deck and grunt as he pulled himself up the ratlines. She knew she should say something to him, something appropriately poignant, yet she was too tired to summon the words. She was nearly asleep when she felt him throw himself down beside her with a sigh.
“We need to set proper watches,” he said. “Two awake, one asleep, eight hours on, four off, so that everyone overlaps. I wish I could tell how much distance that damned carrack made up overnight, but there’s too much damned fog this morning to see a damned thing.”
Fatima looked up: a weak, gray light had penetrated the gloom, revealing nothing. The air beyond the cog was wreathed in white. Gwennec’s breath ascended around his chapped face in puffs of vapor, giving him a haloed appearance, like a weary seraph. He was looking at her uneasily, waiting for her to speak.
“What are the chances there’ll be a baby?” he asked. His voice was low, as if he worried they might be overheard.
“Not good, I don’t think,” murmured Fatima, unwilling to admit the things she had done to prevent this possibility. In spite of all that had happened, he still felt unfamiliar; his gestures, his accent, the profound blue of his eyes, everything about him was too blunt. “I haven’t—I’ve never—”
“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me,” said Gwennec, sounding relieved. He found her hand and laced his fingers with hers. “Fa—”
“We don’t need to have this part of the conversation,” said Fatima, closing her eyes.
“I want to. Only to say—well, all right, have it your way. My heart belongs to someone else and so does yours. But we both know that already. So perhaps there’s nothing to be said after all.”
Fatima opened her eyes again.
“Who does yours belong to?” she asked sharply.
“Who do you think?” Gwennec gave her one of the lopsided smiles that were already beginning to irritate her. Fatima sat up straighter to get a better look at him. He seemed no different from how he had been the night before, only a little more rumpled, his cheeks golden with a day’s growth of stubble.
“You can’t mean—” She meant to say God but laughed instead.