The Bird King Read online

“Then I suppose I must lose you as well,” said Lady Aisha to Vikram. She stroked his head. “After all these long years.”

  “If you want these little palace-bred children to live, yes,” said Vikram. He caught her hand and pressed a kiss into it. “For your sake, I will help them cross the Vega.”

  Lady Aisha withdrew her hand and twisted a ring off her finger, wiggling it over the bony protrusion of her knuckle. Fatima recognized it: it was set with a dark ruby encircled by tiny pearls, a gift from her husband while he still lived. Lady Aisha dropped it into Fatima’s palm.

  “When you reach the edge of the valley, follow the harbor road south,” she said. “Stay off the road itself, if you can, but follow it, for there are few paths through those mountains and autumn is nearly upon us. When you reach the sea, this should buy you both passage on a ship, with a little left over if the captain is fair. Where you go then is your own business.”

  Fatima slipped the ring onto her own finger. It was heavy and still warm. She wanted to say thank you, but before she could open her mouth, she heard the faint baying of a hound, intent and anguished, echoing over the hillside.

  “They’re coming,” said Vikram, leaping down the rocks. “Follow me.”

  Lady Aisha turned away.

  “Go,” she said, pulling up her veil. “Let’s not spoil things with promises none of us can keep.”

  Fatima felt Hassan tug her hand. Stumbling, she followed him, feeling as though something needful had been left unsaid; longing, with a force that startled her, for the silk-shrouded figure that diminished in her wake. The palace above them had begun to cast its shadow over the medina, its red towers square and sharp, an extension of the hill on which they sat. They had stood for centuries and might stand for centuries more, but as she looked back, Fatima knew, though she could not say how, that she would never lay eyes on them again.

  Chapter 7

  Humming and picking at his ears, Vikram led them down the face of a sandstone cliff. The slope, all descending angles of umber and red, was so nearly vertical that Fatima’s guts heaved each time she forced herself to take a step. Too soon, she began to wonder whether she had made a grave mistake.

  “Your left foot goes there,” called Vikram, pointing. “Then your right, here. You’ve got four limbs: as long as you only move one at a time, the other three will save you.”

  “This is insane,” shrieked Hassan, who clung to a slanting boulder like a redheaded bat, his leather satchel swinging in the air below one shoulder. “We’re all going to die.”

  “Not if you follow directions,” sang Vikram, flinging himself into the air and landing silently on a largish rock below. “The hounds won’t come this way. You need free will to do something this mad. We’re nearly to the bottom. The hard part begins then.”

  Fatima wedged her left foot in the crack to which Vikram had pointed, uncurling one hand to shift her weight. She saw with dispassion that the skin of her thumb and forefinger had split open, leaving angry vertical tears. She was also profoundly hungry. None of it was pain, exactly—she was too alert for that, too focused to feel anything acute. Yet it was a hindrance. A small part of her quaked silently, convinced that she was ill-equipped for any purpose beyond that for which she had been raised.

  “Tougher hands,” she murmured. “A smaller stomach. Better shoes. Skill with a knife.”

  “Are you making a list for the greengrocer?” asked Vikram. He was standing below her on solid ground, looking up: Fatima had reached the bottom of the ledge.

  “What do I do now?” she asked, craning her neck.

  “Let go,” said Vikram. “I’ll catch you.”

  “I’m not sure I want to do that.”

  “There are other options,” conceded Vikram, scanning the mounds of tufted grass that led down to the Genil, and beyond that, to the treeless expanse of the Vega. “You could fall and break your legs and I could leave you here for the black-cloaks, though the crows might make a pass at you first.”

  “All right, all right,” snapped Fatima, sucking on her split fingers. “But if you cup something you shouldn’t, I’ll hit you.”

  “I will cup nothing,” promised Vikram with a grin. Fatima held her breath and let go of the ledge. The world tipped. There was a rush of air and a squeak that was probably hers, and then Vikram was setting her on the ground beside him, laughing.

  “You’re next,” he called up to Hassan, who was visible as a hemisphere of ballooning green wool overhead, one foot scrambling for purchase on a lichen-covered rock. With a wild yelp, the apparition tumbled down. Vikram caught him as deftly as he had Fatima.

  “A shame you don’t have more meat on you,” the creature observed. “You’ll be skin and bone before we’re out of the wilderness. I hope you like rabbit, for there’s very little else to eat between us and the sea at this time of year.”

  “I like rabbit fine,” muttered Hassan. He lingered a moment too long before putting his feet down. As Vikram loped ahead, Fatima pinched Hassan’s arm.

  “You’re attracted to him,” she hissed accusingly.

  “I can’t help it!” whispered Hassan. “He’s very well-formed for a jinn and he isn’t wearing a thread of clothing.”

  “Come, children,” called Vikram, without turning. “We must cross the river as swiftly as possible. If you put your feet in clever places, the dogs may lose your scent for a time. Every hour counts now.” He bent down, hunching his shoulders, and ran along on all fours, his feet and hands falling soundlessly on the dry grass. Fatima stumbled after him in her big boots. She felt herself begin to tire. Behind her, Hassan’s breathing was a labored staccato punctuated by the sound of his satchel as it thumped against his shoulder.

  “Can’t we slow down?” he complained between huffs.

  “Do you want to live or not?” asked Vikram, turning and snapping his teeth at them. “If we don’t cross the Genil, there’s no point to any of this.”

  Fatima wiped sweat from her brow with the back of one hand. It hung in droplets from her lashes and the tip of her nose, and she became aware of a smell, not pleasant, emanating from the curdling silk of her tunic where it clung to her body beneath her arms and below her breasts. She pulled at the hem angrily and heard it rip.

  “Already rending your garments?” Vikram danced on his toes and cackled.

  “I’m too hot,” snapped Fatima. “And I can’t run properly in these ridiculous boots, and I’m so hungry I might faint where I stand.”

  “We’re barely out of sight of the palace! What exactly did you think the rest of the world was like, little sister? Cool and clean and well-fed, with songbirds twittering in harmony and merry farm beasts shitting flowers?”

  Fatima bent to pick up a pebble and hurled it at Vikram’s head. He ducked and cackled again. The ground rose and then dipped and brought the river into view: milky green and smelling fecund, lined with gorse and thorny scrub alive with the trilling of cicadas. Fatima pushed past Vikram and made her way through the scrub toward the water. It was very low, as was often the case in late summer: a shoal of well-worn rock was visible in midstream and the exposed banks on either side were bone-dry, their skin of mud turned to pale dust.

  “Don’t go down to the water,” called Vikram. “You’ll leave a trail through that dust as plain as an invitation.”

  Fatima stopped where she was. The green water murmured restlessly to itself, cutting westward across the parched valley. A grid of fields left fallow by war undulated toward the feet of the mountains that surrounded the Vega on three sides, yellow-brown with the remains of untended olive groves and winter wheat choked with weeds. The sky that had been so blue at dawn was growing overcast, hinting at the first of the autumn rains. It reminded Fatima that she was thirsty. She clenched her jaw and felt granules of dust between her teeth.

  “Here, little sister.” Vikram bounded up to her, his hands cupped and dripping. “Drink.”

  Fatima put her lips against the edge of his palm. The river water was swe
et and cold and smelled faintly ripe. She gulped it down in needy mouthfuls, swallowing so fast that she was left gasping.

  “Better?”

  Fatima nodded, wiping her mouth on the back of one sleeve. Before she could protest, Vikram had thrown her over his shoulder and bounded into the current, depositing her in the knee-deep water with a splash. Fatima shrieked as her feet slid out from underneath her. As soon as she stood up, she collided with Hassan and went down again.

  “What was that for?” Hassan sputtered, his hair and beard streaming water. He floated on his back in the current, kicking up his pale feet in an attempt to right himself. Vikram danced on the far bank with Hassan’s satchel and the canvas sack of clothing Fatima had packed, holding each up like a trophy.

  “Wash,” he sang. “Scrub off all the sweat and the dirt and yesterday’s perfume. Perhaps we can convince the hounds you smell like a river, at least for a while.”

  Fatima dragged herself to her feet. Her boots were waterlogged and her silk tunic clung to her torso in one ruined sheet, the water drizzling from its hem tinted with purple dye.

  “Take off the wet things,” instructed Vikram. “Put on the dry ones in this clever sack of yours. Vikram will take the wet clothes a little way off and leave them on a rock to lead the hunters astray.”

  Fatima wanted to smash something.

  “Stop telling me what to do,” she spat. “No one is going to order me to take off my clothes, ever again.”

  The haughty lines on Vikram’s face softened. He set down their bags in the dust of the riverbank and leaped into the water, landing on all fours at Fatima’s feet.

  “As you said yourself, I’m a monster,” he told her, his mouth twitching upward wryly. “But I’m not that sort of monster.”

  “Why should I believe you?” Fatima rubbed her arms, her teeth chattering.

  “I never lie,” said the dog-man. “Lies are for those who are afraid or ashamed of what they are, and I am neither.”

  “I think we should do as he says,” called Hassan, hopping on one foot as he pulled off a dripping shoe. “Let’s not die today. It would be such an embarrassment if we barely even got away before we were captured again. If we’re going to die, let’s do it tomorrow at the very earliest.”

  Fatima looked closely at the hawkish face staring up at her. It was not as spiteful as it had first appeared, and the yellow eyes, though they reflected nothing, had a feral wisdom in them.

  “Don’t look at me while I change,” she said.

  “I won’t,” promised Vikram. He turned away and loped back toward the shore. Hesitating a moment longer, Fatima peeled her tunic over her head. The air that had been warm when she was dry felt very cold now that she was wet. She wriggled out of her trousers as quickly as the sodden fabric would allow, then tossed the bundle of wet clothes toward Vikram’s back, as a sort of test, and was only half pleased when he caught it with one hand.

  Fatima waded into the shallows on the far side of the river and stepped out onto an embankment of rubble on the far side, squatting to rummage in Hassan’s pack. Hassan himself was splashing contentedly in midstream, cursing and woofing under his breath at the cold and the rocks underfoot. Fatima stole a glance at his bare form. His back was as pale as a northerner’s and his ribs were visible; freckles dappled his shoulders. In this light, shivering and naked in the river, he seemed unremarkable, his genius invisible, yet he was alive, and her hope lived with him.

  “You’re judging me,” declared Hassan, standing up and spitting water. “I can feel your eyes boring into the back of my skull.”

  “I’m not,” protested Fatima, turning away with a grin.

  “Yes you are. We can’t all be as lovely and formidable as certain people. Some of us have flaws. Some of us even like flaws. If you were a man, I’d be afraid to flirt with you, no matter how much I might want to. You’d fix me with that knowing little smirk when I was in some terribly vulnerable state, and that would be the end of me.”

  “Am I really that bad?” asked Fatima, unsettled.

  “Yes,” said Hassan, clambering out of the river with his clothing piled on his head. “But it’s all right. I love you nonetheless.”

  Fatima flushed and turned her attention back to the wad of clothing she had stuffed into Hassan’s pack. It was all wrinkled now and smelled of canvas on the verge of mildewing. She pulled out the plainest robe she could find: it was a light felted wool dyed blue with indigo and embroidered with red yarn along the hem and cuffs. It was cut for a man, but she and Hassan were roughly the same height, and when she pulled it on, it fell where it should. Vikram took the two bundles of wet clothes in his arms and stood on a rock.

  “Your daggers,” he said, flinging them into the dirt at their feet. “Don’t forget those. You will almost certainly need them.”

  Fatima dug out a dry sash and wrapped it around her waist, securing the dagger at her hip.

  “That’s better,” said Vikram, eyeing her critically. “You don’t quite look like a peasant, but you look much less like a royal concubine who has run away. Time to go, children! There are miles between you and a safe place to sleep.” He climbed up the riverbank and into the scrub, passing through it as soundlessly as a shadow. Fatima hurried to follow him. Her feet squeaked in the wet boots, but on the whole she felt well enough: the water had refreshed her, Hassan’s robe was less confining than her own had been, and though the afternoon threatened rain, the prospect of walking in a straight line, without corners or walls or doors in the way, was new enough to feel full of promise.

  Vikram led them south, following the pebbly foothills of the Sierra Nevada. To their right, the Vega stretched westward, as flat as the palm of a hand, curving up at the horizon to meet the more forgiving hills that defined its farthest reaches. The farmland was empty now. Fatima could see the white remains of houses and stone walls that had once marked the perimeters of fields, like chalk lines dividing up the landscape. Years of siege had made them into roosts for crows, the roof tiles looted or smashed, the walls quarried for other uses. The little streams and tributaries that watered the Vega were at their summer ebb and in some places had run completely dry: they reached out into the silent plain like fingers of gray mud, withdrawing moisture rather than replenishing it.

  Fatima watched Vikram as they walked. He seemed to know where he was going, for he rarely raised his head: instead he grumbled without cease, though in a voice almost too quiet to make out, and in languages Fatima could not decipher.

  “You know Lady Aisha,” she hazarded at one point, desiring to make conversation. Vikram looked over his shoulder, one elegant brow arched with scorn.

  “Such powers of perception it has. Of course I know Lady Aisha. How many hours have we spent together in the courtyard while she played the lute and you moped about in corners, pretending to mend the linen?”

  “I mean you know her particularly,” said Fatima, exasperated. “You aren’t just a dog, and she wasn’t just playing the lute. You must have met her somehow.”

  “Ah.” Vikram smiled. “Well. That is a good story. Once upon a time, when Lady Aisha was simply Aisha, not yet the wife of one sultan and mother to the next, I stole a pair of jeweled slippers from her.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted her to run away with me.”

  “Run away with Lady Aisha?” Fatima laughed. “Why would you want that, and why would you steal her slippers if you did?”

  “She was bewitching as a girl,” said Vikram defensively. “She still is. Not pretty in the profound sense that Fatima is pretty, but compelling and sly and maddeningly aloof, like Scheherazade or Cleopatra. Everyone was dying of love for her. She would have none of it, of course. She wanted the most powerful man in Granada, and by God, she got him. It was he who gave her the slippers as an engagement gift. I thought that if I stole them and she was found to be without them, there would be a scandal, and the engagement would be called off.”

  “That’s not a very nice thing to do
to someone you love,” muttered Hassan, shifting his bags from one shoulder to the other.

  “I’m not nice, as it happens. And anyway, this was not precisely love. Jinn don’t love very often, or very much. We are prone to mild obsessions, however, which is what this was.”

  “What happened? I can’t imagine Lady Aisha in a torrid love triangle with a jinn. She’s always seemed so remote and forbidding to me. This is entirely new information.”

  “There was no torrid love triangle, so you’re excused from imagining it. No, Aisha didn’t care for me in the least, and told me so frequently. A day came when her betrothed—presently to become your master’s father, Fatima—visited her in her father’s villa, expecting to see her wearing his costly gift. She appeared before him barefoot, which was a shockingly intimate thing to do with a man to whom she wasn’t yet married. She told him she’d given the slippers to a beggar who had no shoes in exchange for his blessing upon their marriage. Her fiancé left even more pleased with her than when he’d arrived, and the wedding was pushed forward by a month. Thus ended my pursuit.”

  “What did you do with the slippers?” asked Fatima.

  “I gave them to my sister in the Empty Quarter. I’ve spent much of the last four decades paying off my debt. Which is why we are all here together. What a happy coincidence.” With that, Vikram put his head down and trotted onward on all fours, resuming his private monologue. Fatima and Hassan struggled after him and lapsed into silence.

  They walked until midday without seeing any sign of life. The foothills to their left turned white and shimmered in the heat, exhaling some internal luminescence. When the sun was highest, a lone falcon began to circle above their heads. It cried piteously and without cease, as if pleading for some response.

  “That thing is eerie,” Hassan said, stopping and huffing to catch his breath. Walking over the uneven ground had made his cheeks as florid as his hair. “Why is it making such a racket? Could it be a Castilian spy?”

  Vikram looked up at the bird and knit his brows.