“Are you saying I was plain?” demanded Fatima, throwing a wad of paper at him.
“She was a skinny little tyrant,” Hassan said with a grin. “Always alone, or if not alone, then bossing the princes around. ‘You! Ahmed! Fetch the milk.’ That sort of thing. Never playing with the other girl children, or not that I ever saw, anyway. And then one day, it seemed, there was this siren swaying down the hall, who had grown half a foot overnight and could stop men in their tracks just by looking melancholy. And that was the end of the raids on my charcoal.”
A silence fell that was not entirely comfortable. Fatima tapped her foot to make her anklets jingle.
“It’s sad,” said Luz. Fatima tensed, guessing what might come next. She was not prepared to accept another woman’s pity.
“What’s sad?” asked Hassan, oblivious.
“This,” said Luz, gesturing with her hand. “All this is going to vanish in the next few weeks. The last summer of the empire of Al Andalus. I don’t mind admitting to you—you’ve all been so kind—that I will mourn it when it falls. I wasn’t expecting to be so taken with this place, or the people in it.”
“We’re not going away,” said Hassan with a forced laugh. “Right? Your masters don’t intend to put us all to the sword, do they? They could’ve done that at any time in these past ten years, since they conquered the last of our territories, but they haven’t.”
“No, of course not,” Luz assured him. “My masters are hoping to avoid further bloodshed. That’s why they sent the general—and me. Everyone would like to see a just end to this awful war.”
“Then why—” Hassan tugged at his collar, looking pale. Fatima tried in vain to catch his eye. “Why should you mourn anything? What will be so different? Power will change hands—the key to the city will hang on one neck instead of another. But the rest of us will go about our lives as we have been—only we will pay taxes to someone else, with different coins. The era of sacks and sieges and slaughter is over. Yes?”
Deep, sympathetic lines had appeared on Luz’s forehead.
“I wish it were that simple,” she said. “Truly I do.”
Fatima thought it best to put the conversation out of its misery.
“Come,” she said, sliding off the balustrade. “They’ll be serving lunch in the harem any minute, though it’s likely to be bread and olive oil again.”
Luz smiled, regaining her good humor, and reached for Fatima’s hand. “You’re in for a surprise, then,” she said. “We brought a wagonful of cured mutton and apples and wheels of cheese.”
Hassan’s eyes went wide.
“Is there any for mapmakers?” he asked. “Or is it just for insolent concubines?”
“I’ll have some sent here especially,” promised Luz. She shook the dust from her clothes and turned away. As she did, the hem of her tunic caught one of the leaves of paper hanging over the worktable and pulled it free, sending it fluttering to the ground like a flag of surrender. In a moment, as if snatched from a dream, Fatima saw precisely what was about to happen.
“I’ll get that,” said Hassan, bolting up. But Luz had already bent to retrieve it. She held it in her fingers a moment too long.
“What is this?” she asked. Her voice was so different—lower, coarser, as if she had descended several rungs in rank and breeding—that Fatima felt a physical thrill of alarm. She reached for the map, but Luz held it away.
“What is this?” she asked again.
“It’s a map of Zahara,” Hassan said quietly. “In Cádiz.”
“I can see that,” said Luz. “But what are these?” She pointed to several snaking lines near the map’s perimeter. Hassan gave Fatima a desperate look.
“Let’s go,” said Fatima, tugging on Luz’s arm. Luz didn’t budge.
“They’re tunnels,” said Hassan.
“Tunnels.”
“Yes.”
“Under the streets.”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever been to Zahara, Master Hassan? You’re clearly no soldier, and you would have been almost a child when—during that awful battle to reclaim it. I would like to understand how you could possibly know what you know. Please illuminate me.”
Hassan rubbed his eyes. “Why did you bring her here, Fa?” he said in Arabic. “You know how terrible I am at keeping secrets. Especially my own.”
Fatima began to comprehend the enormity of her mistake. In keeping Luz away from the sultan and the viziers and their burning papers, she had inadvertently taken her somewhere yet more tender. There was nowhere safe. Perhaps that was the point.
“Please,” said Luz. Her voice was gentle again, pained. “My late husband was at Zahara. We never knew how you—it was thought, we all thought, that the Moorish forces couldn’t possibly prevail, and yet—”
“I make maps,” said Hassan. Fatima watched him, her breath fast in her throat.
“I know,” said Luz with a terse smile. “That much is clear.” When Hassan said nothing more, she leaned forward and touched his knee with her fingers, her eyes like river stones, the weight of her gaze heavy.
“You can tell me,” she said in a half whisper. “The more I know, the more I can help. I do so want to help. Aren’t we all on the same side now that peace is inevitable?”
“You make peace sound like a threat,” said Hassan with a fluttery laugh. Luz laughed too.
“Only for the very wicked,” she said. “Let me be of use to you, Hassan. If I don’t know what you’re hiding, I can’t intercede for you.”
“Intercede with who?” Hassan asked, his voice trailing off. But Luz didn’t answer. Instead she waited, and Fatima saw in Hassan’s expression a fatal innocence. He never had his guard up; he had no guard at all.
“I make maps of things I’ve never seen,” he said. “And sometimes of things that don’t quite exist, except when I need them to. That’s what I do.”
Luz licked her lips. She set the map back on the worktable and smoothed its edges with her fingers.
“It’s funny,” she said. “For years, we wondered how Granada managed to survive while cut off from absolutely everywhere—to find new supply routes, to slip communications past our forces. We assumed you had an army of excellent spies. It never occurred to us that you might be using more arcane methods.” She laughed. It was a merry laugh, a forgiving laugh. Fatima dared to hope that things could still be all right.
“How did you come by this talent?” asked Luz, riffling the uneven stacks of paper on Hassan’s desk into neat piles. She wasn’t looking at him; her voice was light, as if they were all friends. “If talent is the right word.”
Hassan began to chew vigorously on his beard.
“It’s all right,” said Luz with a little smile.
“I don’t know,” said Hassan. “I’ve never been lost, and I’ve always liked to draw. That’s as much as I understand. It’s just something I do, something that happens.”
“And the sultan has been protecting you.”
“I don’t know what that means. As long as I’m accurate, he leaves me alone.”
Luz sighed and straightened, her face cheerful again.
“Please don’t look so frightened,” she said. “Secrets don’t matter now—the war is over, or will be very soon. You caught me by surprise, that’s all. I don’t know what to think or whether I should be frightened.”
“We all learned to get used to it,” murmured Fatima. “To Hassan being Hassan. You might try that.”
Luz took her arm.
“So practical,” she said, following Fatima out of the room. “Not an ounce of romance in you.”