Fatima looked down at the blood-stiffened embroidery along the front of her robe. Beneath it, her skin felt tacky; she had not yet washed.
“Is the whole world like this?” she asked, half to herself. “Full of endings? Does anything begin anymore? Are there places where people laugh?”
“Why should it matter to you?” Vikram picked himself up and shook the dust from his pelt. “You don’t laugh much.”
“Sometimes I think I might like to.” She watched as he ambled into the sunshine on all fours, growling incoherently.
“Vikram,” she called after him. “I’m serious.”
He turned and considered her.
“This isn’t the end of the world, little Fatima,” he said in a voice that was almost kind. “It’s only the end of the world you know.”
Boots scuffed toward the threshold of the house: Hassan stood in the ruined doorway, holding a sheet of paper above his head.
“Finished,” he said.
Vikram curled his lip.
“I still say we follow the harbor road. Why must I be the civilized one? You’ll add at least two days to our journey if you insist on taking this martyr’s route.”
“Better two days in the wilderness than the rest of our short lives in the hands of the Inquisition,” snapped Hassan, waving his map like a flag. “Lady Aisha told us to stay off that road, and you yourself say it’s always watched. Why can’t you be sensible?”
Vikram paced back and forth across the threshold on his knuckles.
“Fatima wants to live,” he said. “Let her decide. The map or the road, Fatima. Choose.”
“So you can blame me when things go wrong? You’re the ones who are bickering—you settle it. I want whatever route gets us to the harbor alive. I don’t care about anything else.”
“For God’s sake, woman,” barked Vikram, baring his teeth. “If you don’t pick something, I’ll eat you both and save us all the trouble.”
Fatima looked from the dog-man to Hassan and bit her lip. Hassan was doing a sort of pirouette, drawing the map across his body like one of the coquettish boys who danced for money in the medina, his face expectant.
“The map,” said Fatima.
Chapter 9
By nightfall, Fatima could no longer feel her feet. Long hours in large boots had left a mass of blisters on her heels and along the ball of each foot; long hours after that, the blisters had broken and bled. When she began to weep silently, Vikram had taken pity on her and carried her for a while, slung over his shoulder like a bear cub. Now she was walking again. Each step landed in her ankle, as though her feet had worn away entirely and she were walking on bone. The landscape that had looked so mild in the sunlight was alien in the dark, the soft hills swollen and pale as they listed south into the starlight. Beyond them, the Sierra Lújar rose in a jagged line, pierced here and there by campfires. At their lowest point, where the scrub-clad peaks dipped down to bow toward one another, was the southern pass, and strung along it, cloaked in the newborn darkness, lay the harbor road.
“We need to keep to the west,” panted Hassan, squinting at his map in the dim light cast by Vikram’s eyes. “See this flood basin? We’re going to pass by its southern tip presently. There’s a little river that feeds into it, running out of the mountains—we’ll follow it upstream, and then—oh God, give me a minute.” He sat down on a flat boulder, or perhaps a remnant of a stone wall, half concealed by grass. “I need to catch my breath. The harbor road—here, look. It runs along the river valley of the Río Guadalfeo, which we’d be able to see by now if there were still good light. That empties into the sea at Salobre?a. Any ship we might want to take will be docked at Husn Al Munakkab, just to the west. So the way we’ll take is actually more direct, after a fashion.”
“If you like sharp rocks and bandits,” muttered Vikram, “then yes, very direct.”
“Can’t we stop here for the night?” pleaded Fatima, easing herself onto the boulder beside Hassan. “I can’t walk another hour, and it sounds as if you mean to go two or three.”
“This isn’t a good stopping place,” said Vikram. In the dark, he was nearly invisible; a pair of eyes above a crescent of teeth. “We need to get to higher ground and find a copse of trees or a rocky hillside.”
Fatima curled her lip at him and reached down to work at the laces of her boots. Her feet stung as they slid free, peeling away from the damp leather only grudgingly. The shock of air on her raw flesh made her catch her breath.
“Is it bad?” asked Hassan, peeling back the hem of her robe with two fingers. “I hate blood. Or anything—pulpy. I have no courage at all.”
“You did all right with that old Castilian,” said Vikram. He squatted at Fatima’s feet and took her left heel in his talons. “It was Fatima who nearly fainted.”
“I was the one who killed him,” said Fatima, incredulous.
“I beg your pardon, but you were the one who refused to kill him. Hassan, on the other hand, landed some very creditable kicks on the man.”
“That was different,” protested Hassan. “It was just instinct. I couldn’t very well let him murder Fa while I stood there doing nothing.”
“What do you suppose courage is, for God’s sake? You’re not a palace sycophant anymore, young Hassan. There’s no need for any of this affected modesty. Blood doesn’t bother you one bit. Be yourself, it’s far less irritating.” Vikram bent close to Fatima’s foot and sniffed. “This isn’t good.”
“You wouldn’t smell like a rose either if you were forced to walk all day in those boots,” snapped Fatima.
“I don’t care about the smell. You were right: you can’t walk anymore tonight. We have to bandage these and find you some willow bark to chew on, otherwise you won’t be walking tomorrow either.”
Hassan went to kneel next to Vikram and peered at Fatima’s feet. His eyes widened.
“Oh Fa,” he whispered. “You must be in horrible pain.”
Fatima was glad it had grown too dark for her to see what he was looking at. She lay back against the rapidly cooling stone and shut her eyes. Free and toes up, her feet were beginning to throb.
“Is this really the farthest you’ve ever walked?” asked Hassan, massaging her ankles. “When I came to apprentice at the Alhambra, I walked for four whole days with a pack that weighed half as much as I did. I still remember the way my knees felt at the end. The other boys were all from wealthier families—they bought rides to the capital with the cloth merchant caravans. They made fun of me for weeks.”
“Hassan,” said Fatima, trying not to betray her frustration, “I was born in the harem, in the yellow-and-white guest room that opens onto the shaded part of the courtyard. The farthest I’ve ever walked in my life was from my room to yours.”
Hassan stared at her in disbelief. Then, impulsively, he leaned down and kissed the instep of her foot.
“Precious girl,” he murmured. “Your poor feet.”
“She’ll survive,” said Vikram with a long-suffering sigh. “Though I may not, at this rate. Up you go, Fatima. Put your arms around my neck. We’ll make for the foot of that slope, there. Hassan—stay close to me and clear of the lights. The men at those campfires are not your friends.”
As gamely as she could, Fatima laced her arms around the back of Vikram’s neck, clinging to him as he hoisted her onto his back. At this angle, all his limbs seemed disproportionate; it was difficult to look at him without a stab of revulsion, of primitive fear. Fatima laid her head between his shoulders and closed her eyes again, remembering the palace dog and attempting to forget everything else.
“This way, then.”