The Bird King(87)

“Don’t treat me like an idiot,” Hassan snapped. “We’re not abandoning ship, surely. What’s the point? We’ll drown in any case.”

“We are abandoning ship,” said Gwennec. “All three of us. The tide will take us to shore or to paradise, or to hell, but at least we’ll arrive together.” His habit ballooned in the surf, not yet sodden enough to sink. Quickly, while he wasn’t looking, Fatima pulled at one edge, wrapping it under the cord, against the water-fattened wood of the barrel. Then she looped the strap of Hassan’s carry case over his shoulder and put her arms around his neck. She kissed his cheeks and the bridge of his nose and rested there for a moment with her forehead pressed against his. The pain she had felt, the small losses and slights, the lonely silences were all hallowed by memory: they had led her to this choice, this end, in which she might finally do something beautiful.

“I love you,” she said, and shoved the barrel into the surf.

Gwennec yelped when he realized his habit had pulled him overboard. He called her name, but she had already turned away toward the stern. He began to shout, to curse, to weep, and then the sound of the surf overpowered all human noise. Fatima allowed herself to look back. She saw a red head and a yellow one borne up on the crest of a wave and carried toward some unseen shore where the insistent tide was breaking.

Fatima returned to the tiller: it swung stiffly, catching on something in the bowels of the ship. The bowsprit was pointing past the carrack now, as if flinching before a larger foe. Fatima bit her lip until she tasted blood and threw all her weight against the tiller. Wood screamed and splintered. The cog heaved, pointing out toward the carrack’s rolling hull. Gwennec was right: she would never get up enough speed to damage the bigger vessel; at best, she would glance off the hull, at worst she might be pulled beneath it by the sheer force of the water rushing past.

Yet the carrack must sink. Love made some lives more precious than others. Fatima draped herself over the tiller and closed her eyes.

“Three people and a horse,” she muttered. “That’s all I wanted to save. And the horse is gone. And one person must make sure the other two get away safely. So two people. That doesn’t seem like very much to ask.” The sound of the surf intensified. It occurred to Fatima to be afraid. She clung to the tiller, telling herself she would not cry.

When the noise stopped, she lifted her head. Before her was a hill made of blue. White lace dappled its edges, and within it, as if under glass, she saw a frightened school of iron-colored fish and a long, furred tangle of water weeds. Atop the hill rode the carrack. It was leaning hard, falling on one side, and across the glassy water Fatima heard screaming. The sound of the surf returned. It built to a roar so loud that something popped in Fatima’s ear, and suddenly the great swell of water fell in upon itself.

Fatima was flung across the deck and hit the far railing. The cog snapped as cleanly as kindling. Water surged into the open hull, flooding up the steps and around her knees. Above her, the carrack groaned. The mast splintered, bearing down on the wreckage of the cog in a mass of pulverized beams and canvas. The world reversed itself. The sky was made of wood and water, and below Fatima was only air. Then the sky collapsed.

Fatima was in the dark. There was no sound but streams of air struggling to reach the surface. It was blessedly cold. She felt a blade of bright pain travel across the length of her face, and then nothing: not the ominous nothing of the fog, but the end of a sentence, the little moment when a deed is finished and is succeeded by silence.





Chapter 19


Someone was humming.

Too wet down here, came a bright-dark voice. Not enough air, or not enough for you, at any rate.

A mouth closed over her own, gently.

Breathe, said the voice.

Fatima breathed. The mouth withdrew; she sputtered water.

All right, now stop breathing. Little idiot! Do I have to explain everything?

Fatima’s lungs ached. She reached out blindly, clawing at the dark water.

More? You are a persistent creature.

Warmth encircled her; lips pressed against hers again, coaxing her mouth open. Fatima gasped and gasped, thirsty for air. She tasted salt and sulfur.

Vikram, she thought.

Who else would I be? Don’t try to speak. In fact, don’t open your eyes. The surface is still some distance away.

Fatima curled her limbs around the radiant heat and let it carry her upward. She only half believed the evidence of her senses, and felt at the edges of the darkness, searching for something familiar, encountering long hair, the ligament of a shoulder, a furred back.

In other circumstances, this would be an unspeakably pleasant reunion, came Vikram’s voice drily.

I thought I was going to die, said Fatima.

You still could, if that’s what you want. But it’s unnecessary.

Light bloomed, slow but persistent, before her eyelids, and the feeling of weight above her lessened. Fatima opened her eyes. Above, a rosy sky glistened through a film of clear water; below, in the darker gradients, she saw shadows with long fins slipping through the gloom.

Sharks, she thought with alarm.

Worse, said Vikram cheerfully. Sea folk. Nasty, smelly, half-intelligent things with glass teeth. If that one gets much closer, I’ll eat it whole.

There was a muffled squeal in the dark, and one of the shadows darted away.

That’s right, you ugly eel-spawn. I’ll strip out your fishy guts and suck them clean.