“I’m going to get Hassan,” said Fatima.
There was a sigh or a snarl and Azalel appeared beside her again. She lifted her arm and sheltered Fatima beneath it, letting her long sleeve fall between Fatima and the white tents, so that when Fatima looked to her left, she saw only the piercing starlight of the Empty Quarter.
“Quickly then,” said Azalel. “Dawn is coming.”
Fatima rushed along the muddy path as fast as her sodden boots would allow. The tents were all identical, anonymous; some had armor piled outside, or disorderly weapon racks, or empty plates of food, but there was no sign of Hassan, nor any way to determine where he might be held.
“Where would they keep him?” whispered Fatima.
“Perhaps he’s over there,” said Azalel, who sounded bored. “In the tent with the guards outside and a scribe’s satchel lying in the mud.”
Fatima stopped where she was and batted Azalel’s sleeve out of her eyes. The starlight cleared: beyond it was another tent, larger than the others and set apart. Two men stood before it wearing half helms and holding pikestaffs, their heads nodding above their breastplates. In the mud at their feet, like the limp remains of a carcass on a butcher’s floor, lay Hassan’s leather carry case.
The sight of it filled Fatima with dread. She stuffed her knuckles into her mouth and bit down to keep from screaming. Not knowing what she did, she broke away from Azalel and began to run. The guard to the left of the tent flap, taller and heavier than the other, snapped awake, his head jerking up, his bloodshot eyes widening in disbelief. He lifted his pike.
There was a blur of black-and-gold and the jingling rebuke of small bells. The guard choked and stumbled, dark blood pouring from his neck, the scent of it so pungent that Fatima gagged. Dizzy, she reeled into the second man, who dropped as though felled by a lightning bolt, his throat open to the spine. Azalel stood over her kills impassively.
“Go,” she said, her mouth full of blood.
Fatima went. She pushed through the tent flap into the gloomy interior, blinking impatiently until her night blindness passed.
“Hassan?” she called softly.
There was motion in the darkness. Hassan, kneeling, looked at her with vacant eyes, his skin a sickly yellow. For a moment, Fatima couldn’t understand why he didn’t get to his feet. Then she saw the cord snaking between his wrists and ankles. She fell to her own knees then. Outside, Azalel growled and paced on all fours.
“You’ll bring the whole camp down on you if you don’t hurry,” she snapped.
Fatima ignored her. She tried to draw her knife to cut Hassan’s bonds, but her hands shook too much to manage it. He looked through her without recognition, his body slack, his lips moving soundlessly.
“Say something,” Fatima whispered. Hassan twitched. A wet feeling spread across Fatima’s knee, drop by drop: she looked down and saw a dark stain on the lap of her robe. Panicked, she searched for the source of the blood, folding back tunic and undershirt and sash, but Hassan’s clothes were clean, his face and arms unmarked. It was only when she looked down at his hands that she understood.
Tiny blades, as light and slim as bird feathers, had been shoved under the thumbnail and fingernails of Hassan’s left hand, the hand with which he wrote and drew his maps. The bed of each nail was a dark crimson, the effect of it oddly beautiful, as though he had decorated himself with henna for a festival, filing his nails to sharp points. The ghosts of his pain slid through her own hands, making them throb in time to her heartbeat. She clenched and unclenched them.
“Hassan,” she begged softly. “Please.”
Hassan blinked and attempted to focus.
“I’m thirsty,” he said. Fatima scrambled backward, searching in the dark; she encountered a small table and heard what might have been a wooden cup fall over and roll away. She grabbed at it, and at the pitcher that stood near it, and poured out a cupful of liquid she couldn’t identify, pressing it to Hassan’s chapped lips.
He drank in hurried swallows, moisture beading on the fringe of his beard.
“That’s mead,” he said in vague appreciation.
Fatima heard noise outside the tent: Azalel growled anxiously.
“My love,” she said, “we have to go. I’m going to—I’m going to—” she looked down at his hands and began to cry.
“Let me,” hissed Azalel, pushing past her. She squatted in front of Hassan and took his left hand between her talons.
“Look at her,” Azalel instructed, jerking her chin at Fatima. Hassan, stricken, did as he was told.
“Fa,” he whispered. “She’s got blue skin. And very sharp teeth.”
Azalel grinned. There was a small, terrible sound, like something sharp dragging against a wall, and one of the little blades fell ringing to the ground. Fatima fought the urge to gag. Hassan only moaned, rocking once on his knees.
“That’s right,” soothed Azalel. “Quiet and still and brave. They’ll feel much better on the way out than they did on the way in.” Another blade fell.
“Why did you let her do this to you? Why didn’t you just tell her what she wanted to hear?” said Fatima through her teeth.
“Because it wasn’t true,” said Hassan, too loudly. He looked awake now, his eyes bright and wild. “Because I couldn’t stand the little smile she had when she told me that I was loved, that she hated my sin, not me. I told her I’ve never seen the Devil. I told her I’m more certain of the truth and oneness of God than I am of my own miserable existence. And it made her angry.” He gave a strangled shriek as the last of the blades fell to the ground. They made a bright pile there, blood gleaming upon polished metal. Fatima looked at them as the light danced. There was despair in them somehow: despair in the knowledge that man could make something so beautiful, so precisely conceived, for the purpose of inflicting pain.
“There was a spot,” said Hassan. He was limp as Azalel took his wrists and cut the wire that bound them. “In her eye. Like a speck of dirt or a fleck of ash from a fire, only a thousand times more awful.”
“I’ve seen it,” said Fatima. “It’s helping her, whatever it is. Telling her things. She thinks it’s her own spotless merit.” She got to her feet and forced herself to take deep breaths. She could smell salt as the air shifted to accommodate the rising sun: the tide would be going out soon.
“If we don’t leave now, we’ll never leave,” she said.
“I don’t think I can keep up, Fa,” said Hassan. He sounded drunk, though whether it was from the pain or the mead, Fatima couldn’t tell. “I don’t have the energy for anything besides agony. I can’t summon any more.”
Fatima put her shoulder beneath his and helped him slowly to his feet.
“You’re damn well going to try,” she said.
It was nearly bright enough to read outside. Fatima watched as crisp avenues of light formed between the rows of tents, illuminating churned-up mud and the detritus of war. They would surely be seen: a redheaded, bleeding scribe and a girl as tall as a man could not escape notice, even with a jinn escort to shield them. So Fatima looked straight ahead, ignoring the shouts and curses that disturbed the limpid air as the men around them woke up. She could see their cog beyond the pigsties and washhouses and tents, its little sails askew and unkempt among the larger ships docked at the wharf.
“You can’t be serious,” said Hassan when he saw where she was looking. “Back to the ship? My God, Fatima—where do you suppose we’re going?”