The Bird King(95)

“Where is he?” asked Fatima, her voice throaty with sleep. She sat up slowly and stretched her neck.

“Where’s who?” asked Deng.

“He’s upstairs,” said Gwennec, “opening and closing doors. Come and have some fish.”

Fatima sidled toward the fire, wincing as she unbent her cramped limbs. The bowl Gwennec was tending contained a row of smelts with blackened skins. Without further invitation, Fatima plucked one up by its tail and began sucking the meat from the bones.

“Deng and I have been up since first light,” said Gwennec cheerfully. “I made a sort of net from an old scarf I found, and Deng made a very excellent fishing spear out of some green wood, and we went down to the harbor to see what might come up out of the deep water at dawn. We did all right. I caught a lot of smelts, and Deng hooked his spear into a little cave between two rocks and got an octopus. An octopus. That’s lunch.”

Mary sat up in her berth of canvas and rubbed her eyes, sniffing appreciatively.

“Is that a proper meal I smell? I haven’t had hot food since—how long has it been, Deng?”

“Since France,” said Deng drily. “I ate a meat pie straight out of the oven from a bakeshop near the wharf in Calais. It was good, too. I don’t know what you’d have had, Mary. I don’t remember seeing you at all until the ship was becalmed and the madness broke out.”

“Most people find it easier not to see me until they have to,” said Mary with her broad smile. “How funny that we should be such good friends now, yet not have known each other at all just a few short weeks ago! There’s nothing like being threatened with death to make you feel close to someone. I saw you well enough, though, Deng, from the very beginning.”

“I’m hard to miss at this latitude.”

“That’s the truth! I’d never seen anyone like you before. There were others aboard the ship who were frightened by those scars, but I thought they were very jaunty, and I said so whenever anybody got sniffy about it.”

Deng touched the carved chevrons that arced across his forehead and smiled wryly. Fatima, unthinking, mirrored his gesture, touching the seam that ran across her own face, and felt, for the first time, something like regret.

“May I?” asked Deng in a softer voice, reaching toward her. Fatima stiffened instinctively. But something about Deng’s expression, an alloy of sympathy and brisk interest, made her stop and take his hand and rest it upon her cheek. His fingers were still and weightless.

“This is new,” he said in surprise, pressing gently at the edge of the seam. “It’s closed so neatly that I thought it must be older. Someone very skilled at treating wounds must have dressed this for you.”

“It was Vikram,” said Fatima. She frowned, looking up without moving her face. “Vikram isn’t here. Was he here?”

“The awful naked man with too many teeth? I didn’t notice him leave,” said Gwennec, stirring coals with a fat stick of driftwood.

“That’s how he is,” murmured Fatima, closing her eyes as Deng felt along the length of the scar. “You don’t notice when he’s gone, but when he’s here, you can’t notice anything else.” The pressure of Deng’s fingers was hypnotic. Fatima had never been touched this way, as a patient under the care of a doctor; as a body cherished for itself and not for the tasks it performed for others. She was almost disappointed when he pulled away, and thought fleetingly of inventing some unspecific pain for him to address, forgetting and then remembering the very real pain that still throbbed dully in her feet and her neck.

“You were gently raised,” said Deng, sitting back on his heels. “I can tell by the softness of your hands and the pallor of your face. But not a noblewoman, I think.”

“I was a concubine,” said Fatima.

“Ah,” said Deng. It was not the same ah that had always accompanied this revelation in the past: when Deng said it, it was wry and resigned and made Fatima smile.

“And now you’re a king,” he said.

“And now I’m a king,” said Fatima. “And you’re a doctor from France.”

“I’m a doctor from Timbuktu,” Deng corrected, “in the empire of the Songhai, where the great library is kept. I was trained at the university there. I was only in France by accident—I was on my way to England to treat the son of a wealthy man. The boy had childhood cataracts. No one in his own country could treat him without blinding him. I was to be paid a very handsome sum of money if I could manage it. Instead, here I am.” He touched her face again at the spot where the seam met her jaw in a sore, raised point. “This little bit pulls against your jaw when you turn your head—that’s why it’s not closing up. I have some salve that will help. It’s healing beautifully otherwise. But how did you come by such an injury?”

Fatima thought of the great wave and of the sea inverted overhead.

“Our boat was smashed,” she said. “I thought I was drowning. There were spars of wood everywhere in the water—one of them must have cut me.”

“We saw the two ships go under,” said Gwennec. He wiped sweat from his forehead, leaving a streak of white ash. “Hassan and I did, clinging to that damned barrel. They were shattered, both of them, masts in splinters, like wood being mashed up for paper. I’d never seen such a wreck. I thought for sure you must have died instantly. But Hassan wouldn’t listen to a word of it—just swore at me for even suggesting such a thing. And he was right, because nothing works as it should where the two of you are concerned.” He snorted and began poking the fire again. Fatima felt a little chill flow across her shoulders like an eddy of air from an open door.