“Help me!” called Hassan. He had drawn his knife and was sawing furiously at the rope, just beyond the deck rail. Fatima hurried to do likewise, fumbling as her dagger balked at such a menial task, better suited to a sailor’s knife or a pair of shears. There were raised voices on the wharf. Fatima said another prayer, for herself, for Vikram, and most of all for the rope, which unwound strand by strand, complaining as it pulled against itself. Hooves clattered against wood, too close. Fatima looked up as the last strand of hemp snapped and the cog glided free, its sails belling eagerly in the night wind.
Luz was sitting astride her copper gelding at the edge of the wharf. For a moment, she was almost close enough to touch. She said nothing, only looked at Fatima with a colorless expression, her mouth set in a rigid line. Fatima looked back at her. She wanted to speak but could find nothing to say that Luz did not already know. The intimacy between hunter and prey had rendered speech unnecessary. Luz raised one gloved hand. A salute, or a farewell, or a warning; Fatima couldn’t tell. She raised her own hand unconsciously. A smile formed on Luz’s lips. Then the ashy fog that clung to the shoreline closed around her gelding’s feet. The lights, the town, the Roman fortress on the rise above it, the aqueduct standing guard in the hills above that: all were muted in gray, and there was only Luz, clothed in a veil of smoke.
Chapter 12
Fatima sat down where she was. Waves lapped at the sides of the cog, which heaved in time with the rising water. Hassan took her hand. They leaned against one another, panting for breath, until Luz had vanished, her image swallowed by the nervous sea. The stars returned to their stations in the darkness overhead. Fatima realized she was still holding her dagger and slid it back into its sheath, flexing her cramped fingers.
“Vikram—” said Hassan anxiously.
“Don’t.” Fatima pressed her hands against her eyes and bit back a sob. “Don’t.”
“What are we supposed to do now?” demanded Hassan, loosing her hand. “Without Vikram, we’re just two hapless idiots with a map. How do we steer this boat? How are we to provision ourselves?”
“Vikram’s lying dead on the wharf where we left him and this is all you can think about? He never promised to hold our hands for the rest of our lives. He said he’d take us across the Vega and he did, and now—” Fatima broke off as her breath caught.
“He abandoned us,” insisted Hassan. “We were meant to board a ship with a captain, a crew even, to buy passage as Lady Aisha said, not to commandeer a vessel like a couple of sad pirates.”
“Buy passage? Buy passage? To an island nobody can get to without your map?”
“Yes! That ruby on your finger would’ve been enough to convince an unscrupulous captain, and there are more than a few of those in Husn Al Munakkab.”
“This was your idea.” Fatima slammed her fist against the deck for emphasis. She looked about her for something she could throw for yet greater emphasis, but found nothing useful: only the salt-bleached wood of the deck and a coil of rope listing against the stern castle behind her. Instead, she lay down where she was, curling into the railing of the deck, which lifted and dropped her in an easy rhythm. Sleep suggested itself. The deck was warm and level, a better and safer bed than any she had had in recent nights. Thinking too hard, about Vikram or anything else, seemed wildly irresponsible.
She sat up when she heard a door bang open and shut again.
Hassan seized her arm with a startled cry. On the narrow wooden steps leading down to the galley stood a young northern man in the white woolen habit and black cloak of a Dominican friar, his straw-colored hair tousled from sleep. He froze where he was, staring at Fatima and Hassan in blank disbelief. Though he was not a tall man, the breadth and heaviness of his shoulders gave him the appearance of one. He had a face like a butcher’s cleaver: all thick, reddened angles beneath a prominent brow, yet his eyes were very blue and had a candid, appealing symmetry, rendering the sum of his parts less hostile than it might have been.
He frowned at them, fumbling in his corded belt for a weapon he did not seem to possess. For a long moment, no one spoke.
“Fa,” whispered Hassan. “I think we’ve kidnapped a monk.”
The monk looked from Fatima to Hassan with his lip curled.
“Penaos oc’h deuet?” His voice was low and grated on the ear. Hassan, in lieu of an answer, attempted to smile, and for a moment, Fatima thought everything might be all right. Then the monk seemed to coil up and threw himself across the width of the deck. He collided with Hassan, who shrieked, and both of them went down in a tangle of limbs. Fatima heard Hassan’s head hit the saltswollen planks beneath it. The sound froze in her guts.
“Stop!” She reached out and wrapped her hands around the first thing they encountered, the pointed end of the monk’s long cowl, and pulled as hard as she could. The monk fell backward with a squawk. Hassan was looking upward into the phantom darkness without expression, his eyes fluttering. Fatima drew her knife.
“If you’ve hurt him, I’ll kill you,” she said between her teeth. Blue eyes stared up at her in astonishment. “Do you understand me? I’ll kill you.” The monk struggled to sit: she drew back her foot and kicked him in the jaw, harder than she meant to, and sent him reeling back again, spitting blood. He moaned once, steadying himself on his hands. Fatima knelt on the deck next to Hassan and stroked his face.
“Please say something,” she whispered. He was gasping, his eyes wide and sightless.
“I see light,” he said. “I see light, but not you.”
Fatima put her cheek against his chest and closed her own eyes, battered by waves of hot and cold that seemed to break against her skin. It was impossible that Hassan should be hurt. Why had she come so far if not to avoid having to endure the world without Hassan in it? She thought of his narrow back as he hunched over his desk, his smile as he pretended not to notice her slip into his room and lift wedges of charcoal from the bowl beside him; he had been a boy, she barely more than an infant, and there had been a thousand other such moments, ordinary then but precious now, for they had been innocents together. She sat on her heels and howled, wondering if she could muster the courage to turn her knife on herself.
“Oh for the love of God—he’ll be all right.” The monk, smelling of wool and sweat, lowered himself to the deck beside her. He winced and rubbed his jaw. A line of blood was congealing across his clean-shaven cheek. “No reason to panic and carry on so. It’s only a bump on the head.” His Sabir was broad and accented, delivered with a singsong rhythm. “You can understand me when I speak like this, yes?”
Fatima forced herself to look up at him. There was no malice in his face, only a profound fatigue.
“Yes,” she said.
The monk nodded.
“I’ve a tooth loose,” he muttered, bending over Hassan. “You did me one better than I did this blev’ruz.” He cupped Hassan’s chin and turned his face one way and then the other. “You, friend. Does that hurt?”
“N-no.”
“I took you for brigands. Now I see you’re a couple of fops. You could have killed me twice over with those knives, as I’ve no weapon. But you can hardly even hold them properly.” He opened and closed his mouth experimentally, leaning sideways to spit a driblet of blood on the deck. “Your lover will live, madam, but he’ll shortly have a headache that’d make angels weep, infidel though he is.”
“It’s already here,” groaned Hassan, pressing his hands against his eyes. “It feels like being punished for something I didn’t do. I think I’d prefer death, all things considered.”
The monk laughed hoarsely. It was a good, full sound; an immodest sound; the laugh of a man who was not often afraid. Fatima felt her shoulders uncurl.
“I’m Gwennec,” said the monk. “Brother Gwennec, they call me. You’d best not move awhile, blev’ruz. If you think the pain’s bad now, wait until you get up and the blood rushes out of your head.” He looked as though he wanted to say something else, but his eyes traveled across the deck and out to the white-capped waves, and his smile fell.
“We’re at sea,” he said. The cog listed a little, as if to concur with him. Gwennec got to his feet, hitching up the skirt of his habit with one hand and nursing his jaw with the other. “Where is the harbor? Where is the lady Luz? What the hell have you done?”