“That makes me feel a little better,” he said, “though I don’t see why it should.” He had made no attempt to withdraw his hand as she stroked it, and now turned his palm up as if in supplication. His eyes, too, pleaded silently, like those of a man who is drowning. Fatima withdrew her fingers and wrapped them in the rough wool of his habit. She pulled him close, seeking his mouth with her own. He made a small sound, a whimper, as though from fear or need or both, and suddenly she felt his hands in her hair and on her face, as if he wanted to touch all of her at once.
She almost laughed: his ardor, so different from the sultan’s, was at once clumsy and impossible to resist. Then his lips strayed from her mouth to her jaw, her throat; he whispered her name into the curve of her neck again and again as if in prayer. The laughter left her. There was too much cloth, yards of it, habit and robe and cloak and shift. Fatima pressed her hands against her face in frustration.
Gwennec cursed and tore something at the seams. Finally she felt the warmth of his skin against hers, the pressure of him, the counterpressure of the railing against the small of her back. A wail slid from her lips: she was hungrier than she thought.
“No?” panted Gwennec.
“Yes,” she reassured him, “Yes, yes.”
When she woke, she saw Hassan outlined in lantern light on the lip of the hold, his face unreadable. She jerked upright, unaware she had fallen asleep. Gwennec was out cold, his body curled protectively around hers, his habit bunched about his knees.
“It’s your watch,” said Hassan.
Fatima pulled herself to her feet. There was an ache, not unpleasant, in the tendons of her legs; a corresponding ache in her lower back. The deck was silent, dark except for the ring of light where Hassan stood. Even the horse was drowsing: a bulky lump wedged against the rail in the widest part of the ship. Fatima swayed toward the ring of light, rubbing her arms to warm them. The chill in the air had deepened. It was her shift that had torn: she could feel air on her sides, where her tunic was slit, sending gooseflesh up the ladder of her ribs.
“Hassan.” She reached instinctively for his hand. He turned away.
“I need to sleep,” he said. “I’m the only one who hasn’t slept.”
“Sleep, then.” But they both remained where they were, saying nothing.
“I didn’t mean—” began Fatima, “or at least, I didn’t plan—”
“No, it’s all right.” Hassan sniffed and rubbed his nose. “Naturally it’s you he wants. It’s not as if I’m surprised. Only after that little speech you gave me when I said I wanted him, and you pretended to be shocked, I would have thought—no, I don’t know what I would have thought.” He sniffed again. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter.”
Fatima breathed on her hands to warm them and willed Hassan to look at her.
“Do you love him?” he asked.
It was this that stung.
“No,” said Fatima flatly. “I barely know him. I’ve only ever loved one person.”
Hassan finally met her eyes. His face was pinched, as if he was in pain.
“Sometimes I look at you and I think, ‘There goes my heart, walking outside my body,’” he said. “And yet—oh, Fa. How can this end any way but in a mess? Where are the princes with their legendary swords and white steeds, who love where they ought and fight what they ought? Why is it only us, all muddled up?”
She reached out: she touched his brow, his cheekbone, the fringe of coppery lashes above each eye.
“You smell like him,” said Hassan, brushing away her hand. “I’m going below.”
“Take Gwennec with you,” begged Fatima. Hassan glanced at the bundle of slumbering black wool and made a derisive noise.
“He seems fine where he is.”
“It’s freezing up here. Hassan, I’m serious—take him with you.”
Hassan gave her a withering look out of the corner of his eye but did as she bade him, walking toward the monk and toeing him lightly in the side. Gwennec groaned.
“Let’s go, my Breton brother,” said Hassan. “She whose word is law says you’re not to sleep out in the cold.” He looped Gwennec’s arm over his own shoulders and pulled him upright.
“Hassan,” muttered Gwennec, stumbling beside him, “I’ve done something.”
“Oh, I heard all about it. Come on.”
Fatima watched them disappear into the hold, the blond head drooping against the reddish one. A light flared up from the stairwell and wavered a little before extinguishing itself: Hassan must have lit a lamp to make his way in the dark and then shuttered it. On deck, Stupid shifted in his sleep and whuffed through his stubbled nostrils. His breath hung in the air for a moment before dissipating. Fatima climbed to the stern castle and surveyed the quiet ship, feeling unwontedly satisfied. The cog was small and she had stolen it, but it felt like hers in a way nothing else ever had. Happiness, she decided, came only in pauses, neither regularly nor predictably. She breathed in and out, savoring the faint taste of salt and resin.
The tiller was warmer than the air and twitched as she pressed her hands against it. Fatima straightened and squinted at the compass. They had drifted northward a little: Fatima put her weight into the tiller and pushed until the compass needle swung west again. Hassan’s map, weighted under stones, trembled in the lamplight. Hassan had added something while she slept: now there were faint, parallel dashes in the emptiness of the Dark Sea, pointing northwest. Tracing them with one finger, Fatima realized they must represent the prevailing current that had been pulling them gently northward. She marveled at the little charcoal ticks and at the fingers that had drawn them, rendering a great force into a small mark with such economy. And for this, Luz wanted Hassan dead.
Fatima turned and leaned out over the sternmost rail. In the pitch black, the carrack that followed behind them had been reduced to a flickering dot, like a star that had alighted on the water. Fatima suddenly felt as though she were somewhere else, somewhere familiar, observing a series of events that had already happened. Luz was aboard that ship, and was staring at her from across the mute water, just as she was staring back at Luz. The thought grew so emphatic that Fatima began to rub her eyes as if to clear them of sleep. Perhaps the carrack would turn back. The pursuers would abandon their intention when they realized their quarry meant to keep sailing west. Fatima repeated this to herself until she was calmer. She did not look at the lights of the carrack again.
Piloting a ship that jerked and shied like a living thing was enough to keep her occupied until the sky began to pale in the east. In the hours before dawn, she lost the moon, and everything outside the circle of lamplight on the table beside her fused with the darkness; she kept her eyes fixed on the needle of the compass and her hands wrapped around the tiller, and remained there, unmoving, until the muscles of her arms began to ache and the stars began to fade. She heard the sails flap and drag, beating themselves rhythmically against the mast, and knew the wind had changed, but she didn’t dare leave the stern castle to examine them. Only when she heard a heavy tread in the hold below did she relax her fingers on the tiller and slump down to rest her head on her knees.
“We’re losing the wind,” came Gwennec’s voice. Fatima heard him cross the deck and grunt as he pulled himself up the ratlines. She knew she should say something to him, something appropriately poignant, yet she was too tired to summon the words. She was nearly asleep when she felt him throw himself down beside her with a sigh.
“We need to set proper watches,” he said. “Two awake, one asleep, eight hours on, four off, so that everyone overlaps. I wish I could tell how much distance that damned carrack made up overnight, but there’s too much damned fog this morning to see a damned thing.”
Fatima looked up: a weak, gray light had penetrated the gloom, revealing nothing. The air beyond the cog was wreathed in white. Gwennec’s breath ascended around his chapped face in puffs of vapor, giving him a haloed appearance, like a weary seraph. He was looking at her uneasily, waiting for her to speak.