Instinct overtook her. When she hit the ground, she was already curled into a ball, her legs tucked against her chest and her arms around her legs, her forehead pressed against her knees. The impact drove the breath from her body. For a moment, she thought she was drowning, and began to flail, reaching for a surface that did not exist, tearing up handfuls of loam and rock. Ground and sky switched places and then switched again. Fatima reached out a hand to stop herself. The world came to a halt and went silent.
Fatima could hear herself breathing. Faint, rosy outlines of clouds were visible overhead, and all the stars had gone save the herald of morning. She opened and closed her hands. There was a sharp pain in her left side when she breathed in. When she turned her head, she saw white, chalky gravel bordered by pines, the demarcation between the two abrupt and purposeful. Turning on her side, she lifted herself carefully to her knees, repeating in her mind the little lullabies Lady Aisha had sung when she or one of the other children scraped a knee or an elbow in the courtyard of the harem. There was no one to kiss her now: she rocked back and forth, singing to herself under her breath. Her head pounded in time with her heart. It was several minutes before she felt ready to sit up and examine her surroundings.
The white gravel scar was plane and level and wide enough to admit several wagons abreast; it curved into the distance between the rust-colored cliffs that flanked it on each side. Fatima got to her feet and turned in an unsteady circle. The scar continued behind her, leading briskly uphill, cutting a path through the scrub until it vanished beyond her range of vision.
It was the road.
Chapter 10
It was empty: at such an early hour any sensible merchant or mercenary would still be breaking his fast and readying his horses. Fatima limped a few steps, testing herself. She wanted desperately to sit down, but there was nowhere to conceal herself: the road was hemmed in by cliffs with only a narrow ditch running along one side, a ditch where Fatima could see shattered wheel spokes and bundles of rags and animal bones, the refuse of human transit. An odd clarity overtook her. She limped to the edge of the road, slid down into the ditch among the discarded things, and drew her knife. The voices began again in the high ground. They were shouting, calling downhill toward someone she couldn’t see, and then there were hoof beats on the road behind her, where the ground rose.
She told herself not to look. The horses were armored or carried armored men: she could hear the chattering complaints of steel on steel. Someone ordered a halt and the clatter ceased. A single rider came forward, the dull iron of his mount’s shod feet grating against the stone, and stopped near Fatima’s head. She closed her eyes.
“Ho, old boy,” came a woman’s voice, as high and ringing as a girl’s. The horse danced a few steps and chewed noisily on its bit. “That’s enough now.”
Fatima looked up and into Luz’s face. The sight of her braided hair, the snowy crest of her collarbone above the bodice of her black gown, filled Fatima with a feeling she couldn’t name and didn’t like, something that wandered between fury and regret. Luz was not looking at her. She was staring down the road with a frown, her brows knit together, one hand soothing the neck of her coppery gelding. Fatima adjusted her grip on the knife. Its weight was familiar now; the heft of it calmed her. She couldn’t kill a battalion of armed men with it, but she might kill one woman.
“Fatima,” came Luz’s voice softly. “Come out, come out.”
Fatima froze in terror. Luz’s gaze was fixed on the road. At first, Fatima thought it was a trick: Luz was taunting her now, forcing her to reveal herself. But Luz gave no sign of having seen her. She pulled one hand from its black calfskin glove and chewed restlessly at her thumbnail, as if she did not know she was being watched. Her skin glowed faintly as the dawn intensified, illuminating the flush of her bowed lip; yet there was something in her left eye, a splinter perhaps, or a fleck of soot from a campfire, that made Fatima recoil with a disgust she could hardly justify. An unhealthy air clung to Luz’s black velvet shoulders like the residue of a long illness. Fatima’s head throbbed. She was certain she had been spotted—by whom, she couldn’t tell—and dug her fingers deeper into the yielding ground.
“Are they certain the girl came this way?” Luz called above her. “And that she was alone? No one else was with her?”
“No one else, my lady,” came a man’s voice.
“Strange,” murmured Luz. She was silent for a moment. The throbbing in Fatima’s head increased. She closed her eyes again.
“Bring the man who pursued her,” called Luz, sighing in a weary way. “And bring my implements, please.”
There was a rattle, a shuffle, the squeal of an offended horse, and several sets of footsteps approached.
“Here he is, my lady,” said a rough voice. “One of the mercenaries who followed the girl over the hill.”
Luz slid from her horse’s back. There came a pretty sound, the clang of fine metal conversing with itself, like an anklet or a necklace unrolled from a velvet pouch, but the sight of it, whatever it was, made the mercenary whimper in fear.
“Please, my lady,” he begged, “I told the truth, the absolute truth—I ran after her on foot through the gully on the far side of the ridge, and when she came out onto open ground, she jumped—jumped, as plain as could be, into the trees.”
“Bind his hands, please,” instructed Luz, her voice impossibly gentle.
“Please!” echoed the mercenary. “I’m telling you the truth!”
“You’re lying,” said Luz in the same gentle way. “Why would the girl jump? And even if she did—that drop is sharp and high. She would be injured, perhaps even dead if she fell the wrong way, yet I see no sign of her. And where are her companions? A man and a dog on foot with an injured girl—they couldn’t get far, not in this terrain. Yet I see no sign of them either.”
“Why would I lie?” countered the mercenary, fear making him ambitious. “I’d never laid eyes on her before this morning; I owe her nothing.”
Metal rang merrily against metal again. The mercenary’s breath went ragged.
“Perhaps you felt pity for her,” said Luz. “A beautiful girl lost in the mountains—it would be only natural if you did.”
“She was a slattern,” spat the man. “Out on her own, hair loose, dressed in a fancy man’s robe. Not a respectable lady like you, my lady. I could never feel pity for a girl like that. She was probably a Moor, even pale as she was. She had hair like a Moor’s. They say they’re all feebleminded, the ones that come from south of the Great Desert, no more than animals some of them—”
“That is a vicious lie,” said Luz calmly. “There is an empire south of the Great Desert larger than any in Europe. The best doctors in the world are trained at its capital. All they lack is faith. If ignorant men like you would not stand in our way, sir, perhaps we could bring it to them.” She drew away to where Fatima could no longer see her.
“Please,” said the mercenary again, “please—” Metal clinked and sang and the mercenary shrieked in pain.
“Where did the girl go?” asked Luz. Her voice was soft, maternal.
“I told you, I’ve already told you—” The mercenary shrieked again. Fatima could smell his fear from where she sat: it congealed with the bittersweet resin of Luz’s perfume to form something rank and almost solid. Fatima felt light-headed. She dug her fingers farther into the earth and pressed the back of her head into the dirt, telling herself to take small breaths, small breaths, though she longed to gasp and run.
She had a fleeting impulse to reveal herself and spare the mercenary further pain, though she knew he would hardly do the same for her if their places were reversed. Yet the guilt was there nonetheless: she would live and he would not, and though she preferred her own life above his, it hardly seemed fair that he should die for telling the truth.
“Where is the girl?” coaxed Luz. “This could be over in a moment. I’ll bathe your wounds myself, with my own hands. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“Yes,” wept the mercenary. “Yes.”
“Tell me, then.”