The Bird King Page 9

  Fatima felt gooseflesh break out on her arms.

  “What things?” she asked. “Jinn? Ghouls, effrit, marid, corpse-eaters, and all the rest? What things?”

  “Shut up.” The dog-man halted so suddenly that Fatima stumbled into his coarsely furred back. An eddy of cold air seeped past her neck. The darkness before her remained inscrutable, but the timbre of the silence had changed, muffling her footfalls with a hollow sound, a half echo. The noise was so slight that Fatima could barely hear it, yet it filled her with terror.

  “Something’s there,” she whispered.

  Shut up, repeated the dog-man from somewhere between her ears. Say nothing, do nothing. I’m going on ahead. Stay right here and keep your high-strung friend quiet.

  The warmth before her withdrew. Fatima could see two dim halos of light weave back and forth in time with the dog-man’s strange gait, growing fainter as he moved away. A clammy hand groped in the dark for her own: she took it, wrapping Hassan’s arm around herself, pressing her back against his chest. He was gasping oddly, as if trying to stifle the sound of his breathing.

  “I might throw up,” he stammered. Fatima squeezed his hand and said nothing.

  A growl rumbled through the dank air. The halos of light had stopped and hovered, suddenly still, at the height of a tall man. They illuminated so little that at first Fatima saw only more darkness. She began to imagine she had invented the dog-man: she was asleep after the lamps had been put out, there was no moon, and she would wake presently at the foot of Lady Aisha’s divan to begin the day as she had always done. She populated the darkness with ordinary artifacts, withdrawing her foot to avoid kicking over the copper bowl of washing water that always stood near her mistress’s bed, expecting to encounter the prickle of her own woolen blanket.

  The effect was so vivid that she did not, at first, realize the dark was moving. It uncoiled, arranging its myriad scales, the light from the dog-man’s eyes gilding the lazy, variegated pattern of its hide. As it moved, Fatima saw the outline of muscle and sinew under skin: a limb she could not identify; a leg, or perhaps something else entirely, an assemblage of flesh from another way of being, from a place where nothing walked or swam or flew. The two spots of light did not waver. Fatima found herself pining for the dog-man with a sort of tenderness: he was surely just a jinn, dangerous but ordinary, the sort of creature that slipped into one’s house when one forgot to invoke the name of God before entering. This other creature was drawn from forces Fatima’s imagination could not touch.

  She thought again of Lady Aisha’s divan. She could smell the costly resins rubbed into the wood to make it glow and to perfume the air around it: sandalwood and oud, myrrh and aloe.

  Get out of the harem, came the dog-man’s voice in her head. And tell your friend to leave the fishpond at the bottom of his mother’s garden. Memory will not save you.

  Fatima began to back away.

  Damn you for a fool, snapped the dog-man. If you run from this thing, you’ll set it loose. It will lodge in your bloodstream like a splinter and you’ll carry it all your days.

  It’s too big for that, thought Fatima, half to herself.

  It’s small, said the dog-man. It’s very small. It began as a mote in the eye of the Deceiver. Keep your back straight and don’t look away.

  Fatima searched herself for the wherewithal to do as he asked. Every sense she possessed told her to run: a scream was already pressing at the back of her throat, waiting for her to open her mouth. Behind her, Hassan stumbled and whimpered, his voice so altered by terror that it was almost unrecognizable. The dark, the air, the childlike sound of Hassan’s distress gathered into a knot in Fatima’s gut.

  “Stop it,” she shouted, turning on Hassan. “Stop, stop, stop mewling like a baby and get up. What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you stand up?”

  There was a sudden roar. Fatima felt the breath knocked from her lungs and tumbled onto her side, rolling once before coming to a stop against a hot rasp of fur that could only be the dog-man. She felt in front of her face for the ground, which was not where she expected it to be, and pushed herself onto her knees, gasping.

  “I hope you brainless piss-stains are satisfied,” snarled the dog-man. “It’s gone, it’s fled. You’ve let it out. I kept it off you, not that you’ll thank me for it, and now it’ll doubtless go and find someone else equally brainless to feed upon. Your left-hand angels will wear out their wrists scribbling all of this in the book of your sins! Get up, you idiots.” The yellow eyes bobbed away through the dark.

  Fatima groped in the dark behind her for Hassan. His silence was beginning to alarm her. Her own sudden rage had burned itself out, as it always did, and weariness had replaced it, as always happened. She felt cocooned within it, separated from the world, and even from the darkness, by layers of heavy gauze. She needed things she could not name. When her hand brushed Hassan’s, he pulled away and got to his feet.

  “Say something,” Fatima pleaded. “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t want your sorry,” came Hassan’s voice, curtly. “I want to get out of here.” She heard the unsteady scrabble of his feet as he made his way after the dog-man. Fatima rose and followed him. They walked in a line, guided by the dog-man’s eyes and their own breathing, until it seemed, to Fatima at least, that the darkness had grown less profound.

  “What was that … animal?” Fatima asked as soon as she dared.

  “Knowing would only terrify you,” said the dog-man from somewhere ahead of her. “You already know enough, and this flame-haired fellow”—here one claw gestured at Hassan—“knows more than any human should, with his clever hands and bits of paper.”

  “I don’t know anything,” protested Hassan.

  “You are magnificently stupid,” agreed the dog-man. “Nevertheless, you have a rare and perplexing gift. You must have been born under a very lewd alignment of stars.”

  “I was born in August,” said Hassan indignantly. “Under the sign of the virgin, like any respectable person.”

  Fatima grinned in spite of herself.

  “A Virgo,” mused the dog-man, as if this was a perfectly reasonable explanation. “Yes, they do have relentless, systematic little minds. But that doesn’t explain everything. No matter. Watch your step, we’re nearly there.”

  A faint light, emanating from a source Fatima could not discern, revealed the edges of the tunnel and the ground beneath their feet, outlining them in pale gold. The dog-man was suddenly a visible thing, solid and almost ordinary from the navel upward: tallish, cleanly muscled, neither fair nor dark, with an uncombed net of black hair as long as a woman’s. He did not appear to be wearing clothes. Fatima found herself staring at his flank, which swam coquettishly in front of her eyes: one moment it was the curve of a rather pleasing buttock, the next the hairy extremity of something meant to go on four legs.

  “What are you staring at?” snapped the dog-man.

  “You,” admitted Fatima, too disturbed to be anything but honest. The dog-man looked at her for another moment and then burst into laughter.

  “A truth-teller,” he sang, loping toward the evanescing light. “Ever since it was a child. What steel it has beneath those pretty silks! I’ll happily rut with you, if that’s what you’re after, though this is a somewhat uncomfortable place for it.”

  “No thank you,” said Fatima, freshly alarmed. If he was offended, the dog-man gave no sign, but hummed to himself again, leaping over a mound of earth and rubble and landing on all fours. The light had taken on a piercing quality, filling the passage ahead of them. Fatima’s eyes began to water. The dog-man rose and became a silhouette, the shadow of a beast standing upright.

  “I’ve found them, my lady,” he called to the flickering brightness. “They were lost in the borderlands of the Empty Quarter. Here they are, safe and sound.”

  “Good boy,” came a familiar voice. Fatima put up a hand to shield her eyes. The light shifted. It was a torch, Fatima realized, held up by a slim figure i
n a robe and a saffron-colored veil.

  “Well, Fatima,” said Lady Aisha, lowering the light and pulling her veil down to reveal a wry smile. “Did you really think you could run away in the dead of night without saying good-bye?”

  Chapter 6

  Fatima stood dazed in the torchlight with her hands hanging limply at her sides. Her mistress was, in some strange way, a greater surprise than the dog-man had been: Fatima could count on one hand the number of times Lady Aisha had left the palace in her recollection, so to see her there in the darkness, with the bluish light of false dawn rising behind her in the rocky mouth of the tunnel, was an eventuality for which Fatima had not prepared. She was used to thinking of her mistress as indolent: rising late, sleeping often, spending hours at the baths. But this was—or rather, must be—an illusion, a sort of camouflage, like a mountain cat blending into the rocks, cultivated to outwit anyone who might be sizing her up.

  “I’m hurt,” she said now. “I don’t mind saying so. I think I’ve been very good to you. I’ve certainly taught you much more than any concubine needs to know. I preferred you above my own freeborn daughters-in-law, my own stepdaughter. Yes! I’ve been an excellent mistress. Yet here we are.”

  “I couldn’t let them have Hassan,” said Fatima. Her voice had shrunk somehow and came out high and timid.

  “My lady,” said Hassan, stepping forward. “Forgive Fatima—you know what she’s like, impetuous and so forth, and very loyal, which is a credit to you, my lady, if you’ll forgive me for speaking, but she’s still just a girl if we’re being honest, so if—”

  “No, stop. It’s too early in the day for so much talking. There is only one question that needs to be answered: now that we’re all together again, why shouldn’t we go quietly back to our own rooms and have a little breakfast? No one need know about this misadventure.”

  Fatima looked at Hassan. There was an animal grief in his earth-colored eyes, a terror of death which he was trying valiantly to conceal. He met her gaze and managed a smile.

  Fatima lifted her chin.

  “You don’t think it’s right either,” she said to Lady Aisha. “Let us go. You know Hassan isn’t a sorcerer.”

  “Of course I know that,” snapped Lady Aisha, tossing her torch to the ground. It whuffed hot air in protest. “That’s not the point. These treaties are made for polities, not people. Lives are ground up beneath the wheels of peace. Why should Hassan live when so many others have died? And why should I lose you into the bargain?”

  Fatima wondered whether Lady Aisha wanted an answer. She didn’t understand why someone like Hassan, who had no power over anything save his maps, should be expected to make such a sacrifice for those who had plenty.

  “There is another solution.” The dog-man slipped forward, slinking along the ground to sit at Lady Aisha’s feet. “If this fellow can blunder into the outskirts of the Empty Quarter just by scribbling on a piece of paper, he is a liability to my people. If the black-cloaks put him on the rack and he squeals, he ceases to be a liability and becomes a threat.” Before Fatima could react, the dog-man was on his feet with his face an inch from Hassan’s throat. “Let me take care of him here, now. You can have what’s left over. The black-cloaks won’t care if he’s been chewed up a little, as long as they can still put his head on a spike.”

  Hassan began to laugh uncontrollably. The dog-man laughed too, then kicked Hassan’s feet out from under him and sat down on his chest.

  “Don’t,” he said as Hassan struggled. “One little slit and you won’t feel a thing.”

  The dog-man had his back to Fatima. She grabbed a handful of his inky hair and yanked as hard as she could. With a yelp, the creature tumbled over. But Fatima could not keep her grip: the tangled mane in her fist turned to shadow, a flattened image of what it had been. The dog-man loomed over her in a dark plume and seized her throat.

  “I like you, little sister,” he said. “You’ve been kind to me and I haven’t forgotten it. But I only like you a little more than I would like to eat you. Remember that.”

  “Enough,” snapped Lady Aisha. “Put her down, Vikram, and let poor Hassan go before he dies of fright. Good God! You’re getting theatrical as you age.”

  Fatima felt the claws around her neck relax. She tore away, rubbing her throat and gasping for air.

  “You’re disgusting,” she snarled at him. “You’re a monster.”

  “Yes,” said the creature. Settling on the ground with a sigh, he lay on his back, stretching out the toes of one taloned foot, and began to hum again.

  Hassan, meanwhile, was laughing in a way that Fatima found alarming.

  “You’re Vikram the Vampire,” he crowed. “The master cartographer used to frighten us with stories about you after the fires were put out at night. You’re not real.”

  “People keep saying that, yet it’s never been true,” said Vikram bitterly. “I’m as real as you are. More so, even, for I’ve certainly lived longer.”

  “No,” Hassan insisted. He raised one hand as if to banish the dog-man like a conjurer’s illusion. “You’re a tale to scare children into behaving themselves. That’s not the same as something real.”

  “Fear can make anything real,” said Vikram. “The black-cloaks are afraid you’re a sorcerer. If they condemn you as a sorcerer and burn you for it, then you are, for all practical purposes, a sorcerer, whether you began as one or not. Fear doesn’t need to make sense in order to have consequences.” He rolled over and eyed Hassan’s stricken face. “The difference between us is that I am Vikram whether you fear me or not.”

  Fatima felt light-headed and wondered if she might faint again. She walked toward the mouth of the tunnel, taking deep, greedy breaths of the chill air. The light on the horizon had brightened in earnest. In the bluish dawn, she began to recognize where they were: the tunnel ended in a modest rock ledge downhill from the palace, whose outline abutted the sky above their heads. Below them, the shallow Genil River slid eastward, its banks lined with scrub and river rock. To the west, the medina was waking up: she could see rushlights winking in the windows of white plaster houses and shops. Milk cows were lowing quietly in their sheds, the sound carried up the hill by a wild little breeze. Before her, at the foot of the hill, was the Vega de Granada, flat and silent, stretching south toward the rim of the valley.

  “I will go,” came Hassan’s voice gravely. Fatima turned to gape at him.

  “You will not!” she declared. But Hassan held up his hand.

  “It’s all right, Fa,” he said. “There was never much chance of me surviving this anyway. One of us might as well live.” His eyes were watery and reddened. Fatima wanted to go to him, to put her arms around his neck, but with Lady Aisha and the dog-man watching, she did not dare.

  “Then it’s settled,” said Lady Aisha. “Hassan will go to the Castilians. In exchange, Fatima will not be punished for treason. Everything will fall back into its rightful place. We will have peace.”

  Fatima studied her mistress. She looked calmly back through her bloodshot brown eyes, her face still except for a tiny tremor in her mouth, which told Fatima all she needed to know.

  “No,” said Fatima.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  Lady Aisha began to pace across the mouth of the tunnel.

  “You are so eager to leave me,” she said in a caustic voice. “I can’t do without you, Fatima. I’m old. I am losing my home and my country. My son weeps like a woman for what he could not defend as a man. And now this little rebellion.” She gripped an outcropping of rock at the mouth of the cave and lowered herself to the ground. Fatima, unthinking, ran to help her, putting her shoulder beneath her mistress’s fragile arm. They sat on the cold earth, breathing the same air.

  “You want me to love you,” said Fatima. Her mistress’s scent filled her senses, an admixture of myrrh and wool and the faint, unsettling smell of age. “But I’m a thing you own, and property can’t love. I want to love you. Let us go and I wil
l. If this is peace, then I hate peace. Peace is unfair.”

  Lady Aisha chuckled. Her gaze became unfocused and almost sad, as if she was in the grip of some profound memory.

  “You’re very young, my dear,” she said. “Let me tell you something important. The real struggle on this earth is not between those who want peace and those who want war. It’s between those who want peace and those who want justice. If justice is what you want, then you may often be right, but you will rarely be happy.” She squinted at the brightening sunlight. “If anyone asks me what you’ve done, I’m going to tell the truth—I won’t risk what little I have left, not even for you. But if you leave now and walk very briskly, there is a chance you may outrun the Inquisition. A small chance.”

  For a moment, Fatima didn’t understand.

  “I’m setting you free,” said Lady Aisha gently. “You’re no longer a thing I own, since that’s how you put it. Go, make your escape.”

  Fatima let her head sink against Lady Aisha’s shoulder. She kissed the exposed sweep of collarbone, thinly clad in skin the color of the elms on the hill above.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  There was a sound above their heads, the sharp clatter of talons on rock. Vikram dropped to the ground beside them.

  “There are dogs out on the hill,” he said. “And silent men. You have minutes before they pick up your scent. It’s time to leave, one way or another.”

  Lady Aisha got to her feet. Hassan, who had been sitting in a daze with his knees pulled up, did likewise, clutching his leather case to his chest with the fervor of a lover.

  “What do we do?” he asked.

  Lady Aisha sighed and surveyed the hillside.

  “You’ll never outrun dogs in this terrain,” she said. “You’ll have to cross the Vega. There’s no help for it.”

  “The Vega?” Fatima looked out over the smoky plain and felt a stab of fear. “It’s so open—it’s just an empty field that goes on and on. There’s nowhere to hide, no trees, no hills, not for miles.”