Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Grey.

That was Nicolò di Genova’s life. And that was how it should be.

There was always the fear that, in catching the eyes of a parishioner, colour might burst into the world, but that had not yet happened, and he tried mightily to avoid their gazes like nuns and demure maidens did. It kept the world grey, and Nicolò had always been told grey suited the life of a man devoted to God. Colour was a mortal, earthly thing, the domain of artists, sinful men who travelled far and wide to meet the eyes of their One and thus depict the world as it was to some. Nicolò had no patience for such licentiousness. Grey was the world God gave them at birth, and thus that was the world they should be living in. Jesus had died for them in grey. Grey was the colour of piety.

The call led him across the (grey) sea to the (grey) expanse of the Holy Land, and from there to beneath the very (grey) walls of Jerusalem itself. A marvel, a wonder, and for the first time Nicolò perceived his colourless eyes to be a detriment; would that he could see the beauty of the Holy City in colour, a religious vision beyond any the Saints had experienced! Piero, who was married to his One and had left her behind in Genoa, described it to them as they walked its perimeter barefoot in reverent prayer, giving them words they had no reference for: the vast blue sky and the brilliant golden walls, the metal green of the olive leaves.

Then battle had commenced. With his sword Nicolò spilt the (grey) blood of his (grey) enemies, sweat pouring from him, slicking his undershirt to his skin, his hair to his brow beneath his coif. The ground became strewn with bodies of so-called ‘defenders’, the infidels who dared to sully this blessed ground with their cruel, pagan ways.

He charged forward towards another, every one dead a homage to Christ and a stain off Nicolò’s soul. The man turned, strangely curved sword ready, and their blades met. They sang, the piercing ring of metal on metal, evenly matched. The man fought like the devil he was, fierce and unyielding, until Nicolò, with God’s grace, found an opening. He plunged his sword deep, right through the man’s gut, even as the man slashed, opening Nicolò’s stomach, spilling his bowels. They fell against each other, and their eyes met.

Nicolò blinked. Even as consciousness ebbed away, slow like the drip of blood between them, he could see it. For a moment, he gazed in wonder as the other man’s eyes widened. He could not name their colour, but it was there, something deep and rich and entrancing, new and astounding.

And then, revulsion. Colour in the eyes of a man, a Saracen dog! With weakening arms he pulled himself away, his sword still lodged in the other’s belly, in a cloud of now-brilliant blood, and the other man seemed as disgusted as him, spitting words in his vile tongue and falling back against the dusty, glowing ground.

Nicolò wheezed as he himself fell, torn between awe at the rich black of the man’s beard and the unnamed sheen of his sweat-slick skin and the horror of it. What jest was this, as he lay dying? Truly, then, the scholars were right and colour was the work of the Devil, for only the Devil could have given Nicolò colour in the eyes of the enemy. He crawled away, his intestines dragging, puffing into the dirt.

And then colour vanished again, and he sobbed with relief as he, too, was taken by death, returned to the purity of grey as a final absolution of his sins.

When Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Kaysani awoke, he could not move. He screamed, but it was muffled, weight pressing upon him from all sides. He writhed, attempting to raise his arms, to push at the burden upon him, but it was so heavy, and it stank, filling his nostrils even as he fought to drag air into his starving lungs.

Somehow, he had survived, and this was then how he would die? No!

He struggled with his shoulders, kicked with his feet, wriggled like a worm, until there was enough space to move an arm. He knew now, by feel alone (for his sight was black) what was around him, and tears sprang to his eyes. If he thought too much of it, he would surrender, and he could not. He could not, not when the Nazarene devils were out there, with their sunburnt faces and braying, ass-like voices.

He burst from the pile of corpses, heaving for breath. He felt compressed as he rolled to the ground, his chest finally expanding to its right size, and he lay, for precious moments, staring up at the night sky. The stars were still there, twinkling as they always had been, heedless of the bloodshed below. Yusuf’s face crumpled, and he wept then, fists clenched, impotent in the face of such almighty indifference.

Eventually, he exhausted his tears. He rolled to his feet, straightened, looked down at his own stomach. There was a rent there, through the scale and underclothes, surprisingly small for the agony and misery it had caused him. He touched it, breathed slowly. There was no mark left at all.

He looked towards the city, for the corpses had been piled outside it, left to rot. Rage filled him then, at the defilement, but it was replaced by horror. The city was peppered with fires, smoke billowing, and the screams. Dear God, the screams. Women and children wailing and begging. Those that could fled, streaking past him into the night, but most could not.

He found his sword, by sheer dumb luck, and grabbed the first helmet he could find. Unthinking, unheeding of anything but the roar of blood in his ears, he charged into the city again.

He wandered the streets, and whenever he saw one of the vile Frankish dogs, he slaughtered them, without mercy, without hesitation. They showed no pity to women and children and the old, so why should he show mercy to them? Devils, the lot of them! And the world better without them!

He rounded a corner, the streets unfamiliar in the dark and the flickering grey firelight, and there stood a man. He was still, straight sword hanging loosely at his side, silhouetted against flames.

Yusuf felt no guilt at attacking the man from behind. He drove his scimitar up, through the man’s back, bursting from his stomach. The man let out a noise of choked surprise, dropping his sword to claw at his belly, cutting his fingers on the blade.

It was strangely intimate, as the man fell back against him, wheezing, shaking violently, as if Yusuf were embracing a lover. A foolish notion, he thought in disgust, as he loosened his grip and let the man fall, carelessly, to the blood-soaked cobbles.

Their eyes met, and Yusuf remembered.

He remembered the Frank at the gates, the one who had driven his sword into him, and how, in the moment of their deaths, colour had bloomed. The man’s eyes had been so pale, so captivating, and Yusuf’s poet heart had begun to sing praises, forgetting the nature of the beast that killed him.

It was singing again now, because there was that colour once more, that colour Yusuf had no name for, framed by red. Red red red everywhere, on the stones, on Yusuf’s hands. He fell to his knees, unable to find words.

And the man below him, the pale-eyed devil, let out a string of mad words in some ugly Frankish tongue, recognition on his face. Yusuf came to his senses, scrambled away, but not fast enough. With the unholy strength of the dying, the man lashed out, a humble eating knife in his hand. Humble, yes, but still deadly as it slashed, wildly, viciously, across Yusuf’s throat.

Yusuf’s hands flew to his neck, gasping for breath that would not make it to his lungs, fresh blood pouring over his fingers, down onto the man’s face. Red framing those pale, nameless eyes, as Yusuf died for the second time.

When Nicolò awoke again, it was with a spinning head and the creeping anguish that he was going mad. He should have been dead. He should have been dead, and yet there he was, breathing, seeing the grey sky above, covered in blood and soot and filth. He had clawed himself from a shroud the first time, arse-ropes back where they belonged somehow, with not a mark to show for it, and now he was awake again, and the agony of it all fell on him like the Temple of Dagon upon the Philistines. He pressed his filthy hands to his face and wept.

A voice near him said something, in a tongue he did not know, and he whipped around, his whole body taut, hand tightening around the blade of his eating knife.

There was a Saracen there, eyeing him with such profound loathing Nicolò almost felt ashamed, but the feeling did not last long. He met the man’s hatred head-on, and blinked.

Oh no. Oh, God’s mercy, not again!

There was colour once more, blooming like a flower from the man’s eyes, setting the world ablaze around them. The Saracen devil’s head drooped, murmuring something bitter, and Nicolò felt disgust bubble up in him. Again! This creature would not die, and kept forcing the sin of colour upon him. The Devil’s work, again.

Nicolò lunged. His hands found the man’s throat (there should be a slash there, a great rent, and all there was beneath his dirt-streaked palms was smooth, unblemished skin), and tightened.

The beast did not allow himself to be killed so easily. He fought, he writhed and flailed and kicked, snarling all the while. In some distant way, as Nicolò refused to be bucked off and continued to strengthen his grip, staring all the while into the man’s furious, beautiful eyes, it felt intimate. Sensual, some echo of the things he had denied himself as a man devoted to God. The man scrabbled at Nicolò’s maille sleeves, his surcoat, pushing at his face, but Nicolò did not relent.

Please, please let this be the last time I see the colour of those eyes.

Gradually the man’s struggles lessened. The fight ebbed from him, and with it his breath, and his life. Slowly, painfully, the colour leached from the world around Nicolò, retreating back to its wellspring, until the man went limp and his eyes went grey again.

Nicolò sobbed in relief, releasing the man’s neck, dark with bruises in the shape of Nicolò’s fingers. His hands shook, cramped into claws from their exertion, and he sat back. He was, he realised, still straddling the man, and he thought, with some distant perversion, that it could have been the position of lovers. He cast the thought aside with revulsion, and crawled away, struggling to his feet. He coughed, and picked up both his sword and eating knife. With deep breaths, he looked around.

The place they were– he was— was silent now, and yet only the night before it had been a place of slaughter. To see those who professed themselves followers of God, men of piety and mercy, set upon the women and children of the place, the old and infirm and simple, with such vicious bloodlust…

He looked at the sword in his hand, and up at the city. It did not feel… right. He stumbled forward, bent in two and retched, bile spattering the cobbles. He wiped his mouth, and set one foot in front of the other, his limbs like lead.

Yusuf drew breath like a man rising from the depths of the sea, hands flying to his neck. There was no ache beneath his fingers, air flowed freely as the phantom sensation of crushing and suffocation cleared.

He sat up. The city was eerily silent and Yusuf’s face twisted. All the hum of human life, the lifeblood of the city, gone. People of the Book, he thought sneeringly. There was no commonality between himself and the beasts who had slaughtered everyone.

And yet…

He took a deep breath, tasting bile in the back of his throat at the memory. That undying Frank with the pale eyes, the one who kept giving and taking the Gift of Colour. And wasn’t that its own madness? That Allah would curse him so, by setting his soul in the hands of a Nazarene devil. For years he had longed for the Gift, the see the world in the vibrancy of lovers, like in the songs and the poems. Like the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, and Khadija, Allah be pleased with her. And now he had seen it, however briefly, and it was thanks to that demon in the guise of man, the deathless, pale-eyed Frank.

It was a bitter thought, and he did not like thinking of it, but it gnawed at his mind like a dog with a bone.

He had not the strength for tears, and got to his feet, feeling all the filth of the last two days on him. When was the last time he washed? When was the last time he prayed?

As if to mock him further, he startled at the sound of bells. Ugly, clanging, deafening, ringing out across the silent city, no melody and holiness to them like the call to prayer. He spat, and wondered, as he picked up his scimitar, how he could leave the city. There was nothing left to save.

He wandered through empty streets, trying to ignore the vile stink around him. Rot in the sun, and blood everywhere. He would probably never forget the vividness of the red when he had seen it, those brief glimpses of it everywhere, as long as he lived. Which… would be how long? Was his life still the same as other men’s, or was it longer? Would he blessedly die of old age, or was he cursed to wander the Earth eternally?

To try and think of answers was useless, of course, and so he continued, staying alert for the crowing and cawing of Frankish voices and hiding from any he came past. They tended to move in groups, and while Yusuf knew he was skilled, he did not fancy his odds against five or six men together. But wherever the men were, it was not here, and he continued mostly unimpeded.

Until he passed one.

He was sitting, silently, in a doorway, completely still, and Yusuf would not have noticed him had he not moved. And move he did, startled into a flinch, babbling something in his dog’s tongue. Yusuf himself darted back, and the man crossed himself with a shaking hand.

Their eyes met, and Yusuf cursed as the world blossomed vividly.

The pale-eyed Frank. Again.

Fury twisted the Frank’s face into something ugly and misshapen as he screamed a question, probably to his God. He seized his sword, but Yusuf was quicker, already on his feet, and with the strength of God he disarmed the man. The Frank looked terrified, but it was brief, because Yusuf kicked him in the face, breaking that overlarge nose and making him spit blood from a tooth-cut tongue.

Then Yusuf brought his sword down in a great arc.

It did not hit where he wanted it, on the man’s neck. It embedded itself in his skull, cracking it, lodging itself deep in brain and bone. The world went instantly grey again, and Yusuf sighed in relief. With one foot on the man’s body he tugged his scimitar free, cleaning it as best he could on the Frank’s once-white robe, and continued on his way.

He did not dare dwell on the agony that with every blow, he was killing his One. It was too cruel to consider, too evil a business to contemplate. It could be that even God made mistakes.

Nicolò rose again, gasping against the cobbles, and groaned as he felt his nose slide back into place. That Saracen again, his own personal demon. Perhaps, he thought, almost deliriously, he had been sent by God Himself as a trial, a test of Nicolò’s faith. If he killed him for the final time, then perchance Nicolò would be granted his rest, and his place in Heaven.

It made more sense than the alternative. Nicolò did not want to think of that.

Tremblingly he got to his hands and knees, steeling himself before he rose to his feet. His head still throbbed, a steady, pulsating line across the back, cut hair fallen away. He touched it, licking his lips at the phantom pain with nary a scar to show for it. This constant renewal was making his head spin, enough to make him delirious. There was never anything left behind, as if each death were merely a feverish nightmare, and it left him feeling unmoored, adrift, out at sea without a single landmark to find land by.

He picked up his sword, and wondered vaguely in which direction his Sarac- the Saracen might have gone. He would not rest until the man was dead, and Nicolò free of this divine curse. No more Saracen demon, and no more colour.

He wandered, and something made him avoid his fellow pilgrims (calling them that felt like a defilement of the word, somehow), taking side-streets and alleys whenever he came upon them, from whichever city or kingdom they hailed from. He could not help but wonder what they had done two nights ago. How many innocents had they killed? Had they turned on their fellows to stop them, or joined the slaughter? The thought, mingled with the stench of the city, made Nicolò feel ill.

He was weary, and hungry – though the mere idea of food in these blood-drenched streets made his stomach tie itself into knots – and thirsty. The thirst was greatest.

He chanced upon a courtyard, a place used to water beasts of burden, with a trough. The water lapped clear despite the bloated, fly-ridden donkey carcass in a stall. Nicolò could not find it in him to care. He staggered forward, his sword clattering to the flagstones, and fell to his knees, plunging his entire head into the cool, clear water.

He emerged, gasping, and could taste the salt of his tears mingling with the water he drank. He cared little, ignoring the tatters of his soul in favour of scrubbing hands and beard and face, raking his fingers through his matted, filthy hair.

Shaking his head like a dog, he slumped to the ground, legs outstretched, bottom lip trembling. Perhaps the rest of him was trembling as well. He felt human, truly, for the first time in days.

But was he?

In the courtyard, the silence broken only by the hum of flies, his thoughts could flow back into the empty spaces they had been cast from. He stared at the palms of his hands, twitched his fingers to remind himself they still moved. Mankind lived and died, a finite existence to the mortal body, and the immortal soul either returned to the Lord’s side or was cast into fire. Not so for Nicolò, for he could no longer die.

He did not know whether to rejoice or weep for that. He had come to the Holy Land in search of either death or redemption, and had found neither. What he had found instead was some undying Hell he knew he had seen in vivid, sinful Colour.

He pressed his palms to his eyes, shutting out the light, too weak to cry.

He did not know what bade him to raise his head again, but when he did, his whole being turned to ice. Halfway across the courtyard, on careful, catlike step, with his sword raised, was the Saracen. He froze as well, statue-still, and their eyes met once more. Everything turned shadowed red and gold, bleeding out from the Saracen’s gaze, and for a moment they merely stayed there, locked into each other.

Perhaps Nicolò moved first. Perhaps it was the Saracen. Perhaps they moved together, at once, united by this tangled mockery of threads as they seemed to be.

Nicolò lunged for his sword. The Saracen leapt forward, blade descending. Nicolò parried, just in time, the clang of metal on metal ringing out around the courtyard.

The Saracen snarled something. Nicolò bared his teeth back, putting all his weight behind his blade as the Saracen bore down on him.

Perhaps Nicolò was simply unlucky, or perhaps they were both weaker than a soldier needed to be. With a twist, the Saracen’s sword went flying, and Nicolò’s followed it, clattering onto the cobbles. Barehanded, they still flew at each other, snarling, clawing and hissing like cats. They grappled, writhing together, kicking and punching, aiming for any part they could.

Nicolò gained a hit to the Saracen’s temple. He shuddered, his head lolling, his grip loosening and Nicolò grabbed him.

He thrust him forward, and plunged his head beneath the water of the trough.

The Saracen thrashed, gripping the stone basin and attempting to push himself away. Great bubbles of air burst on the churning surface, water sloshing over the sides, but Nicolò pressed all his weight against the man, held him down with all his strength.

He thought, briefly and viciously, of baptism. He had had that power, once, surely he could call on it again? He could cleanse this man’s filthy soul of paganism and turn him to the light of Christ. But he had not repented, and in any case, what use did a demon have for Salvation?

But… surely a man had need for salvation?

The Saracen had stopped moving. The world had returned to grey once more. Nicolò let go as if burnt, his chest heaving. The water settled. All was still but for the buzzing of flies.

He rose to his feet, scrubbing at his face, and took his sword in hand. He had to leave. He had to get out of this accursed city, stripped of its holiness, tainted by everything in it. It was impossible to believe the holiest of feet had walked these streets once.

He staggered towards the Zion Gate, ready to leave the city behind him.

Although they both chose to flee the city, they could not flee each other, it seemed.

Their eyes met again beneath the walls, the same place as their first deaths. Again, they fell. Again, they rose. A steady counterpoint, a danse macabre for two, the ebb and flow of the tide. Colour there, and colour gone, a whirlpool of it. Sometimes fast, gone in nary a heartbeat, sometimes slow, oozing from the corners of each other’s vision until finally the last pinpricks in the other’s irises were grey once more. Neither knew the other’s name, but they knew each other’s eyes, and that was torment enough.

Slowly the distance between them and the city they fought over grew greater. They pushed themselves deeper and deeper into the wilds around it, cursing each other in languages neither understood.

Far in the East, two women awoke. One looked at the other, who smiled.

Yusuf could feel the exhaustion welling in him. He was so weary of this trading, a mockery of his profession, a death for a death, constant, never-ending. Were they to be locked into this for eternity? What sin could he have possibly committed to deserve this punishment, worse than Jahannam? Enough, he thought deliriously, enough. He tried to run, but the Frank caught up with him, grabbing at him, screaming some madness Yusuf could not understand.

In desperation they tore at each other, swords abandoned, falling to the ground with bared snarling teeth. Yusuf clawed at the Frank’s face, the Frank bit at those fingers, colour flying everywhere. Yusuf kicked at him, causing the man to lose his grip and fall backwards. He leapt upon him, seizing a rock, and dashed it against the pale-eyed Frank’s face. Over and over and over, roaring wordless in his fury.

The cloud of red turned grey, and Yusuf blinked. The Frank’s face was a bloody pulp, caved in beyond recognition, and Yusuf rolled away, vomiting onto the ground, heaving into broken sobs. Dear God, what had he become?

He did not attempt to leave. He stayed there, on his knees, though he did not look at the Frank’s face as it returned to its former state. No, the sound was enough, the cracking of reforming bone and the squelching of flesh regrowing a horrid clamour. The Frank reawakened before it was fully fixed, and his moaning and sobbing made Yusuf retch again. Enough, he thought, enough!

Finally there was nothing but the Frank’s panting and Yusuf’s own shallow breaths. Al-Quds was distant, mingling with the mountains. Yusuf looked.

The Frank’s face was a mask of blood, like so many times before, and those eyes peered out from it. Pale, as always, colour flowering from them like a sudden spring, as always. There was a flicker of fear before anger rose in them again, the man’s face twisting, but… Yusuf was done. He was done with this.

He got to his feet, his head spinning from lack of water. He stood over the pale-eyed Frank. And extended his hand.

“I grow weary of this,” he said.

Nicolò watched the man rise, terror flooding him, but he was too weary to move. The Saracen stood over him, watching him with those rich eyes, their colour still nameless, and extended his hand.

He spoke something in his tongue, his shoulders slumped, every line in his body a surrender.

An offer.

Nicolò sat up slowly, his eyes never leaving that hand. It was filthy, much like his own, and the other one held no weapon. Was this a ruse? Nicolò could not tell, and the thought made him ill.

He was so very tired, deep in his very bones. He could not recall the last time he had eaten, he had drunk, he had dreamt. Licking parched lips with a dry tongue, he raised a trembling hand.

He set it in the one offered, and the Saracen hauled him to his feet. Nicolò swayed, and the Saracen kept him steady, a hand to the shoulder. The place where he touched burned through rent maille and gambeson and shirt, right to his skin, to his very core. Nicolò trembled beneath it. When was the last time he had been touched with any gentle intent? He could not remember.

The Saracen then spoke, something Nicolò could not understand, and pointed west. The meaning was clear. Did Nicolò have leave to follow? He did not know where else to go. He could not return to Genoa, or rejoin the ranks of his fellow pilgrims, that much was certain, and like it or not, he was alone. This never-ending resurrection set him apart from his fellow men, now. There was only Nicolò, and there was only this Saracen.

When the Saracen let go of his hand (and his palm felt cold without that touch) and left, heading west, Nicolò followed. The Saracen did not turn and rebuke him, and so Nicolò took that as acceptance. He kept his eyes, penitently, at the ground, at the Saracen’s shadow.

And then the man stopped, so abruptly that Nicolò almost crashed into him.

“What?!” Nicolò snapped, but the Saracen did not move. When Nicolò stepped closer to look at his face, he could see tears.

He can cry, he thought dazedly, but such a foolish notion, to think a man could not cry. He followed the Saracen’s gaze, towards the horizon.

Oh.

The sky was alight with more colours than Nicolò could ever have imagined existed. He had no name for any of them, not yet, but what did a name matter? His eyes could see the warmth of them, the way they blended together and set the entire sky alight.

“Subhanallah,” the Saracen murmured, wiping away his tears. Nicolò crossed himself, clasping his hands together. Surely such beauty could not have been placed on this Earth by evil. Surely this was a gift from God, to be admired, cherished, sung of with joyous voices.

Not solely a gift from God, either.

He glanced at the man beside him, at how the colours of the setting sun kissed his skin, turned his eyes to fiery jewels, bright and entrancing. He would never have seen this miracle without this man, and his eyes, and he wished he had names for all these colours.

He wished he had a name for the colour of this man’s eyes.

Chapter Text

Yusuf was, in truth, unsure of his true intent with his steady pace westwards. Had he been asked for the logic behind it by some curious passerby, he would not have been able to answer, but there was within him some mewling thing that begged for his mother’s embrace, and though he might not have been able to hear it with his ears, his heart could, and set his orientation for him.

Not that he would have been asked, since the only other person he saw was his silent Frankish companion. Even if they had been able to converse, Yusuf would not have wanted to.

For years he had dreamt of his One, his bringer of Colour, the other half of his soul, and to have it be some filthy savage invader felt like some sort of divine mockery. God was good, God was merciful, God tested all, but this could not have been an act of God in the slightest.

“Why do you plague me with this man?” he demanded one night, speaking to the stars in a fit of desperation. He should have known better to question the unknowable greatness of God, but he could not help it. He was so very lost in this new, unkillable existence, and lost in this Frank’s glass-like eyes.

The silence weighed on him, heavy, like he had been buried under it, sand between his teeth. Yusuf had never been a quiet man, thus the silence of the wilderness, of God and of the man beside him left too much room for his thoughts to clang together, like a housewife banging pots, or the infernal din of Nazarene bells.

Of course, there was not only silence. Whenever they halted for any reason the man would fall to his knees and pray, a constant, obnoxious drone that drove itself like an iron nail into Yusuf’s skull, incessant like the hum of the wind, none of the lilt and rhythm and melody of his own prayers. In retaliation, Yusuf would do his best to observe all five prayers with a fervour he had never truly shown before, performing tayammum for the lack of water, and in his heart he would ask why this, why him, why him, and receive no answer.

They passed signs that others had been there before them: the debris and refuse of a marching army, things lost in the haste of flight from a fallen city. Each well was poisoned far out into the countryside – Yusuf remembered being sent to do some of the work himself – but there were abandoned costrels, small but useful, which Yusuf gathered, and he didn’t even care that a few smelt of rotten wine within. The Frank eyed him warily, but did the same. There would be water eventually.

The same could not be said for trees, another labour Yusuf remembered dealing with. The mountains around al-Quds were bare, all the wood denied to the invaders. And what good it had done them! Ships dismantled and siege weapons still raised, the city gone. Yusuf thought of the man trudging beside him and seethed.

The Frank had not killed him since Yusuf offered his hand and it was taken, but the animosity remained. The Frank continued to look at Yusuf with distrust, and occasionally open contempt, and Yusuf could not deny that it stung. His father had told him, with deep fondness in his voice, of seeing his wife’s eyes for the first time, by chance, and how he had been struck by lightning, fixed in place by breathless wonder. Yusuf had dreamt of that.

But he also knew he looked at the Frank with much the same bitterness and loathing, hating these strings that tied them, chokingly, together. And yet, the fear of being alone in this world, without the only man who shared his supposed gift, was greater than any enmity. But he could not stand the silence any longer. He had a limit, an overloaded camel, and the idea of spending the rest of eternity saddled with this silent, resentful Nazarene with the glass-like eyes would have driven him mad. He should at least know this infernal man’s name.

(And there were the dreams, of course: flashes in new, vivid colour (when all his prior dreams had been naught but grey) of two extraordinary women, beautiful and wild, who fought like demonesses and loved with equal potency. He could not begin to fathom what they meant.)

They found shade, with an old shepherds’ well, overlooked in its hidden gully, and nothing to eat (which did not help Yusuf’s cantankerous mood at all), but the water was the sweetest he’d ever tasted. As he filled his skins, he glared at the Frank, whose responding glare held a hint of puzzlement.

Yusuf tapped his own chest. “Yusuf,” he said, and held his hand out, palm up, to the Frank.

The Frank eyed it, slowly looking from Yusuf’s hand to his face. For a moment Yusuf thought the Frank might be a simpleton, and not have understood, but then he touched two fingers to his own chest.

“Nicolò,” he replied, with a voice hoarse from disuse.

It was a start.

Knowing the Saracen’s name soothed none of Nicolò’s pain or doubts. His devil had a name and little good did it do him, especially because its offering led to a new deluge of chatter.

Nicolò was quiet by nature, and the silence of the place, the wilderness, the place his Lord Himself had meditated in, was soothing to his aching, ragged soul. It seemed that Yusuf was not the same as him, in that sense.

Won’t someone rid me of this noisome Moor? he thought, but then he was struck by a sudden fear. He did not want to be alone. Already he was condemned to this life without death, to face it alone would be maddening beyond imagination.

And there was also the matter of Colour.

Throughout his life, Nicolò had been convinced it was a sin, albeit an unintentional one: the Holy Church discouraged it in its clergy, but if a layman met his Soulmate’s eyes and thus saw the world in colour, it was not truly his fault, despite some scholars stating it was the work of the Devil. There were pagan tales, still told by old wives out of earshot of men of the cloth, of it being the gift of Venus, a sign from the Goddess of Love that the other half of one’s soul had been found. Most people would wed their Soulmates, and Nicolò had heard enough gossip (unintentionally, of course, for a priest should not listen to idle rumour) of political unions scuppered by colour newly revealed. Maidens sighed at night over the colour of their future husband’s gaze, men boasted over the brightness of their wives’ eyes, old maids grew bitter at never having had it. These were all frivolities Nicolò had avoided. He had thought, somehow, that he was not giving in to temptation, in avoiding the eyes of his parishioners and fellow churchmen.

It turned out his Soulmate was just on the other side of the sea, and wore unholy guise.

And yet… Yusuf had not raised a blade against Nicolò since that day he held out his hand and some weary madness possessed Nicolò to take it. He shared what he found freely, though with gritted teeth, and had even offered his name. All Nicolò’s unwavering certainties were being unwound like frayed cloth. This was supposed to be a heathen, a defiler of the Holy Land, a murderer and torturer of his fellow Christians, a worshipper of things pagan and demonic.

He had no idea what to think, anymore. Praying in this place, the Holy Land, the place Christ set his own feet, surely should have come with a clarity that Nicolò had longed for for so long, guidance he so sorely needed. None came.

(And then there were the demons in his dreams, those that took the form of strange women, who rode horses across great grassy plains and fought with sword and bow and laughed, carefree and wanton, and he awoke every morning wondering why God was sending him these visions.)

In any case, Yusuf was far more inclined to talk now, and Nicolò had no choice but to listen. He would speak in the Saracen tongue, something lilting and rhythmic that, even to Nicolò’s untrained ear, appeared to rhyme. Poetry? Or chants to Termagant or the Devil? Nicolò knew not.

It grew cold in the wilderness at night, cold enough that Nicolò wished deeply for a cloak, and only once did Yusuf risk a fire, when they found sufficient cover to hide them from prying eyes. Bandits, perhaps, or roving bands of Saracens. Or, he thought bitterly, pilgrims. They had seen them, the dust kicked by their horses, and narrowly avoided them. They found a dead Saracen, arrows in his back, trampled by vicious hooves, and the sight of him told Nicolò his fate plain enough: the fact he kept the company of a Saracen would be condemnation enough, should they be found. They would both be killed without remorse, and their curse of undying revealed. They had to keep far from the roads, and stay as hidden as possible when they walked.

It seemed, however, that Yusuf was cold enough to deem it a necessity, that night. He scrounged twigs and dried grasses (though in truth everything was dry, in this place) and coaxed a fire into existence. It would not last long, so Nicolò shifted closer, holding his hands to it, attempting to draw as much warmth into himself as possible before he fell into a tight-stomached, fitful slumber.

“Omilis tin ellinikin?” Yusuf asked suddenly.

Nicolò tilted his head. The accent was different to that he had been taught (and he wondered, vaguely, if that was a lacuna in Father Giambono’s own education) but he understood well enough. If they were destined for this, then they should at least be able to speak.

"Omilo tin,” he replied. Yusuf seemed surprised at that, his eyebrows rising high enough that even in the flickering light of the feeble fire Nicolò could see it, but he nodded.

It felt like the slightest parting of clouds after a storm.

To crest a hill and see a town felt like a blessing. To see what had become of the town was an ugly reminder of the world around them.

It had been abandoned. Not a living thing remained but the lizards and the scorpions, and Yusuf knew the cause. It set something vicious and bitter to writhe within him, and rightly so: these people had fled, fearful of the barbarian invaders, and here he was, travelling with one, tied to him by too many choking threads he could not seem to cut.

All thoughts of hatred vanished when they saw the well. There was a bucket, discarded by its side, still attached to its rope. Yusuf peered over the stony edge of it, into its depths, and all he could see was the outline of his own head against the sky.

Nicolò, beside him, picked up the bucket and threw it in, dragging it back up. They stared at its contents uncertainly.

It was Nicolò who drank first. Yusuf did not know why he protested as the man foolishly tipped the water to his lips, but he did, crying out and attempting to wrestle it away.

The bucket fell between them, and Nicolò wiped his mouth, eyeing Yusuf with fiery defiance in those pale eyes.

They waited under the baking sun, staring at each other.

“Well?” Yusuf asked. Nicolò frowned, and shook his head.

“Safe,” he said. He picked up the bucket and dropped it in again, and this time, when it returned to the mouth of the well, he held it out to Yusuf.

Yusuf drank. He drank deep and long, whimpering at the cool feeling on his dry throat and lips. He’d never tasted anything so divine in his life. Lives. He dipped his hands in, pooling the liquid, and buried his face in it, scrubbing it down with a long, relieved sigh.

He caught Nicolò’s gaze, and the other man looked away, quickly, as if he had been caught at something forbidden. The silence lengthened, tense as the string of an oud, and it prickled unpleasantly along Yusuf’s spine. He dipped his fingers into the water and flicked them at Nicolò’s face.

“You should wash,” he said, haughty in a way only this Frankish lout was able to bring out in him. “You stink.”

Nicolò scowled, and Yusuf knew he was a horrible hypocrite, because when had he himself last been able to clean himself? But that did not matter. The moment of tension was broken, and Yusuf could breathe again.

Their clothes were tatters, what armour they had had long-since discarded, lost to the stony ground at their backs, somewhere between al-Quds and this nameless village. Yusuf inspected the holes in his garments, the shreds torn by blade and many days of neglect in the wild, and sighed.

Nicolò did not stray far from him, he noted, as he went from house to house to see what he could find. He felt somewhat like a thief, raiding each dwelling like some pillaging barbarian. Like a… He stilled as he went through a chest of linens, and swallowed.

He felt a surge of hate once more, something cloying up the back of his throat. If Nicolò had not killed him, then… Then what? his mind supplied. He would have likely died from another hand, perhaps a worse hand.

He glanced behind himself, at Nicolò, and saw him knelt, something held in his hands: a simple toy, a crudely sewn cat with dried seeds for eyes, forgotten by a child in the rush to flee. He watched, keeping his breath quiet, as Nicolò rose and set the soft little thing upon the shelf inset in the wall, arraying it so it sat neatly, and patted its head.

Yusuf took a breath. He should feel anger. He should feel anger that this invader, this beast, showed more mercy and care to an object than people. And yet he could not bring himself to. He could only turn back to the chest and blink away traitorous tears.

At the end of their search, they settled in a house that still boasted a single lonely rug, and inspected their meagre bounty: enough clothes to split between themselves so as to be decent, and a single bag of flour, forgotten in haste and unlooted, that by some miracle did not yet smell rotten.

“Mashallah,” he murmured. A small blessing. God could still be merciful.

Nicolò hated this place. Its emptiness was eerie, and residues of fear seemed to linger in its corners. He realised quite quickly why that was; even though he had never set foot in this place before, never even imagined it in his wildest dreams, it was still a place he had somehow tainted. The fear was set here by his fellow pilgrims, fear of the sword, fear of rape and pillage. It left bitterness on Nicolò’s tongue, and the cold grease-film of shame on his skin.

He followed Yusuf like a shadow, until the man carried the bucket to the house they had decided to occupy. He unwrapped the long length of fabric from his head, revealing a head of thick, long curls, loosened his belt and began to strip.

Nicolò stared. His eyes refused to close, or to tear themselves from the sight of bare skin being revealed. Skin unmarked and unblemished, skin that made Nicolò’s fingers tremble.

Something in him, in the pit of his stomach, hissed like a snake. Desire, fanged and venomous. A desire he thought he had finally managed to carve from himself through devotion to a higher cause. He had been free from Colour, but not free from the basest of temptations.

He stumbled from the house, back into the sun, his face aflame. He ignored Yusuf’s voice, perhaps calling after him, and he hurried down the dusty road, his feet catching on themselves, his throat and tongue thick and his heart pounding.

He did not stop until he was in the cliffs around the village, wheezing from exertion. He fell to his knees, crossing himself, and clasped his hands together, willing them to stop shaking.

“O Lord, you forsake me in my time of need,” he babbled, his Latin clumsy in his desperation. “I require strength as I have never required before, and I have none. If this is a test, I am sure to fail it, and fall from your grace, undeserving and sinful. Please lend me strength. Please.”

His prayers fell into the easy and familiar, over and over, more and more desperate. Tears dripped from his cheeks to the ground, sizzling in the heat, his head spun from the sun, his knees ached, and still God ignored him.

He pitched forward, prostrating himself, sobbing his prayers into the ground, his arms tight to his chest. He prayed and prayed, and yet even as he begged for forgiveness and deliverance from temptation, God was nowhere on his mind. His mind was full of bared skin and thick curls, and eyes that haunted him, that seared into him, and everything in colour. Vivid, riotous, delirious Colour.

Perhaps, he thought dementedly, he could blind himself. He could tear out his own eyes and never have to see such temptation again, et si oculus tuus scandalizat te erue eum et proice abs te. Futile, of course, his eyes would simply heal. Perhaps a blindfold, then, forevermore, a world made soothingly, eternally dark in the place of humble, pious grey.

But then… would Yusuf’s voice not still exist? Would he perhaps touch him, then, lead him in his blindness? The thought made Nicolò ache more, ache harder, throbbing inside and out, and his chanted prayers turned to simple, wordless sobs.

He did not want to be blind. The thought was repulsive. He wanted to see. He wanted to see a thousand brilliant sunsets, and a thousand snow-capped mountains, and a thousand towering trees, and the sea! The wide, beautiful sea that he had loved since childhood!

And Yusuf. Yusuf’s skin and hair and hands and beard and nose and lips. And Yusuf’s eyes, perhaps watching him with a warmth of which he knew he was not worthy, and might never be.

He curled further in on himself, his sobs fragmenting into shards of glass in his throat, and thoughts of God gave way again to thoughts of Yusuf, a softer Yusuf than he deserved to know. Had this infidel bewitched him with dark, pagan spells, to command such desire? Somehow, in the pit of him where Nicolò rarely ventured willingly, he knew it was not so.

He did not know how long he lay there, but the sun was halfway to set by the time he rolled over, onto his back, and stared at the cloudless sky. His breathing was ragged, every inch of him felt burnt, and he was both thirsty and hungry again.

God had not replied. He did not think He would, now. Was he to every day be torn asunder and pieced together again anew in ways he could not recognise? All certainty was gone, and he was tired of it. He almost laughed at the lunacy of it all.

Would Yusuf be worried about him, he wondered. Would he be pacing, or come searching? He was torn in twain, caught between wanting that and abhorring the very idea. He whined in frustration at his own confusion.

Not far away, something squeaked, high-pitched like a marmot. He rolled over again, staying low, and blinked in surprise.

They were not unlike marmots, he supposed, but they were also different. Their faces reminded him more of small dogs, but they were round like fat rabbits. He watched them sun themselves in the afternoon sun, ignorant of him – perhaps on purpose. They thought him of little threat, and in truth Nicolò did not care to be seen as one. They provided a welcome distraction.

He wondered if they could be hunted like marmots. Would they taste similar? Perhaps he could ingratiate himself further to Yusuf by offering some meat.

Sorry, little friends, he thought, I shall be a threat after all.

He wandered back into the village some time later, carrying two of the peculiar marmots. When he appeared at the door, there was a glint of steel, and he froze. Dread seized his gut, the arresting fear of a return to trading deaths by each other’s hand. But then he met Yusuf’s eyes, and Yusuf lowered his curved sword, frowning.

“Where did you go?” he demanded.

Nicolò gestured to the south-east, where the rocky outcroppings were, and Yusuf then noticed his strange bounty.

“What is that?!” he cried, startling back. Nicolò blinked, and held up his prey.

“Ah, I think a… marmòtta?” He did not know the Greek, although, in truth, he was somewhat guessing, most of the time, at what Yusuf had to say.

Yusuf eyed them warily, leaning closer to inspect them. “I have never seen them before.”

“You do not know the animals of your homeland?” Nicolò asked.

Yusuf shot him a withering look. “I am not Palestinian,” he snapped. “I am from Ifriqiya. And I was not in the habit of wandering the wilds.”

“In any case, at least it is meat,” Nicolò said.

“I cannot eat that,” was Yusuf’s reply, and he sounded haughty.

“Why?”

Yusuf blinked at him. “It is likely forbidden.”

“Why would it be forbidden?”

Yusuf descended into mutterings Nicolò could not comprehend, pinching the bridge of his nose and gazing up at the ceiling in a universal call for strength from above.

“God forbids certain foods,” Yusuf said, explaining as if Nicolò were a particularly obtuse child. “And I doubt that has been killed properly, anyway.”

“I broke their necks,” Nicolò said. “They are delicate, like rabbits.”

Yusuf spread his palms as if that was explanation enough, leaving Nicolò none the wiser. He set the strange marmots on a low table in the corner of the room, and wondered what he could use to skin them. No doubt asking Yusuf for use of his dagger would be met with more rebuke.

In truth, his mind was only half on his task. Yusuf spoke of strange things, but the strangest thing of all was God. What god did he mean? Termagant? Something worse? He had no frame of reference other than what he had been taught of the infidel and the defiler, of course they would called their mockery of God by the same name. And yet…

He started when a bucket was dropped by his side, water sloshing over its rim and onto the baked clay floor.

“Wash!” Yusuf barked, pointing at it. “Then deal with your… rabbits.”

Nicolò looked at the bucket, swallowing. Even as Yusuf moved away, back to whatever he was doing, Nicolò could feel his presence like a burning fire. It was inescapable, it took up the whole room, made din where Nicolò would have preferred quiet even as Yusuf said nothing. And in turn his own body burnt, from the inside out, flames of humiliation, of shame, of sin. He could fight it, yes, but for how long?

In any case, his practical side won out. Being clean would be good, and make him feel less like some thing and more like a man again. He picked up the bucket and headed outside, to somewhere more private.

He washed with slow, methodical intent, deliberately thinking of nothing but the water, and how soothing it felt on hot, filthy skin. Dried blood and dirt sloughed off him, running to the earth around him, until at last he tipped the bucket over his head, shaking himself like a dog would.

He stood there, for a long moment, eyes closed, slowly breathing. He nearly fell, catching himself against the wall of the house with a choked noise, when a throat was cleared behind him. He sharply turned, aware of his lack of weapon.

Yusuf, gaze averted, stood there, holding out a pile of linens.

“You forgot these,” he muttered. With slow, wary hands, Nicolò took them.

“Thank you,” he said. Yusuf immediately left, square-shouldered and feet unsure, and Nicolò could only stand there like a fool, holding the linens, a lump in his throat.

He dressed slowly, attempting to figure out the clothing as best he could. His own braies and undershirt were yellow and reeked beyond salvation, but there were replacements. Or, at least, there appeared to be. His hose were nearly worn through from his endless days of walking, and he could find nothing to tether them to on his new, longer braies. He tore lengths from his old clothing, the least objectionable parts, and wrapped them around his feet.

He returned to the house with a newly-filled bucket, feeling all the more vulnerable for being clean, as if there were one less shield betwixt him and the world. When he walked in, Yusuf looked at him, holding his gaze. The back of his neck prickled.

Yusuf’s eyes dropped first. He took a deep breath, and then held out his dagger, grip first.

“Butcher those things outside,” he said. “It would not do to attract…” He hesitated, searching for a word with a slightly frown. “…banat awa.”

Nicolò blinked. He had no idea what that could be, but it probably would not be good, and so he did as he was told. He returned after his clumsy butchering to Yusuf baking some form of flat bread on a hot stone. It might have only been flour and water, but the smell alone was enough to make his stomach groan like a dying man.

Yusuf looked up.

“How do we cook your… creatures?”

Nicolò placed the cloth-wrapped pieces of meat on the ground. It was darker than rabbit, but in other ways much the same.

“Any way should be fine,” he said.

And it was. He almost wept at the smell of roasting meat, and when he set a piece in his mouth, hot enough to cause pain, the flavour did not matter: he did weep. Yusuf eyed him, chewing on a piece of lonely bread and Nicolò could see the tension in the lines of him, torn between morality and hunger.

“Astaghfirullah,” Yusuf muttered, and speared a piece of meat with his dagger. He brought it to his lips, hesitated, and bit. As he chewed, his head dropped, and his shoulders shook. Nicolò did not understand why, but the sight appeased him.

It was a meagre meal, but for them, with stomachs hollow from hunger, it was a feast.

Chapter Text

Yusuf awoke to the sound of birds, perhaps sparrows at the window, and for a moment he could almost make believe he was home. Home, in jewel-like Mahdia, just before the adhan for Fajr, when the birds would find the seeds he left on his windowsill and chirp in delight. But then his stomach growled potently, and he felt the chill of morning in his thin clothes, and the threadbare carpet and hard floor beneath him, and he curled in on himself, fists clenched against tears.

His back was warm, however, and that gave him pause.

He turned, and saw that Nicolò had rolled closer in the night. They were back to back, and Yusuf was acutely aware of him. Somehow, Yusuf always seemed attuned to Nicolò, both his presence and the lack of it. He could have told himself it was mere wariness, pure distrust. That did not feel right. Was it one of their dubious shared gifts? That seemed more likely.

He hesitated, staring at Nicolò’s broad shoulders. And then he moved away, and thought to fetch water from the well.

They continued westwards, trailing ever further south. As they grew closer to the coast, the bands of roving Frankish beasts thinned out, but Yusuf saw more of his own comrades, as ragged as the two of them, and his heart ached. They kept far from the roads, seeing them only in the distance.

They watched, hidden from sight, as seven men on horses, dust billowing around them, surrounded three survivors, and heeded not their desperate pleas for mercy that carried on the wind. They laughed as they slaughtered them. They stripped the corpses and strung them up from a nearby tree, and kept laughing as they left, their horses’ legs spattered with gore.

“Your brethren,” Yusuf sneered. “How merciful they are.”

Nicolò said nothing, his eyes clouded. He waited until the horsemen were gone, and in silence, headed towards the tree and its foul decoration.

Yusuf hesitated, and hated himself for hesitating. He would not be shown up by some Frankish dog! He followed, muttering to himself under his breath.

Nicolò shooed off the crows, staring up at the hanging bodies, at the horrible way they twisted slightly in the wind.

“Help me?” he asked.

Yusuf looked first at him, and then at the bodies.

He nodded.

They cut them down. The ground was too hard to dig, and so they piled stones, backbreaking work under a cruel sun, and at the end they were both too exhausted to do anything but pant, but it was done. A small mercy.

Nicolò crossed himself, and hauled himself to his feet. Yusuf watched him, his strangely broad shoulders sagging under some weight he could not fathom, and then followed, ever westwards.

“They were not my brethren,” Nicolò said eventually. Yusuf almost started, for the Frank never talked first, if he could help it. And then he scoffed.

“Are they not Firinjīyah? Are they not Nasara? Did you not come here with them, to take what is not yours?”

Nicolò gave him the sort of look a petulant child might, with defiance in his eyes and the set of his jaw. “They were Normanni. From Frànsa. Many, many miles from where I am from. They barely speak Latin.”

Yusuf waved a dismissive hand. “No difference to me. You came as a horde, as one, to do the same thing.”

Nicolò huffed, and all decent temper between them because of the human deed done was gone. It seemed to Yusuf that every step forward was accompanied by two steps back. Not that it mattered. Why would Yusuf want to be friends with this man in the first place? He had come to take and ruin and pillage.

He watched Nicolò’s broad back again. It seemed to be happening more often, of late.

The land had long since flattened into fields, leaving the mountains and hills behind. It took another day, but soon they reached the sea. The ground was sorely flat and exposed, save for soft rises of old, crumbling rock that were like sand dunes frozen by time. They clambered up one, and there it was: the Roman Sea. Yusuf only realised now how much he had missed it.

And how much it had changed in so little time.

It was entirely different now, with Colour in the world. The sight of it snatched Yusuf’s breath away, leaving him as speechless as that first, magnificent sunset had. It glittered in the brilliant sunlight, a vast expanse of dazzling silk all the way to the horizon. He had no names for all the hues it could show, unknown before al-Quds, before Nicolò…

He blinked. Oh. Oh, but of course.

He actually laughed, a surprised, slightly mad bark that startled even himself, enough that he attempted to smother it. Nicolò paused in his prayer, eyeing him quizzically.

Yusuf turned to him, to the sea, and finally back at Nicolò. At his ever-changing, pale eyes.

“Like the sea,” he murmured, though it must not have been in a tongue Nicolò knew, because he merely frowned. Yusuf had to clench his fist to not touch, and remind himself, with every thread of him, that he should not.

This meant nothing.

And yet did it also not mean everything?

So fitting that Nicolò’s eyes were as temperamental as the sea, and as himself. Glorious and devouring, drawing Yusuf in even as he struggled. To look into Nicolò’s eyes was to drown, as surely as being cast into the sea bestowed the same fate. And every day Yusuf drowned.

He took a deep, shuddering breath, and turned away again.

“Yusuf, look!”

Yusuf looked, shielding his eyes with his hand, following Nicolò’s outstretched finger. Dark wood and white sails glided along the waves, heading north. Ships. And not Frankish ships, either: the white flags streaming before the masts, emblazoned with script – too far for Yusuf to read, but there. If there were ships, then there would be men along the road from the south, the infantry following its leaders.

“Aid,” Yusuf said. “From Egypt.” He looked upwards, and closed his eyes in relief. God had answered at least some prayers. These dogs would be driven from the land, tails between their legs, and all would be well.

For most, anyway.

There was still the matter of themselves, of the myriad tangles that bound Yusuf to this Frank: the Gift of Colour, and their undying state. There was danger alone, and danger together, no matter what they did. The ships came before the body of the army – this Yusuf knew well, for had he not marched the same way towards al-Quds? – but to meet the army on the road would mean death, and discovery, and a destiny so uncertain Yusuf dreaded to consider it. What would an army do with two men who could not die?

“There is a village, there,” Yusuf croaked, gesturing to the south. “Come. Perhaps they can show us some kindness.”

The scent of the sea followed them as they made their way to the cluster of squat buildings along the shoreline. A man and a youth mended a boat with a bright painted eye, another sewed nets nearby. Women gossiped over the catch brought in that morning, baskets and babies on their hips, cats milling about their feet, waiting for the right moment to swipe a small fish. Children ran and laughed, chasing each other, chasing cats and birds. A donkey stood idly in the shade, flicking its tail, its master fanning himself with a wide-brimmed woven hat.

All noise stopped when they arrived. All stared at them, and, to Yusuf’s embarrassment, Nicolò stared back. He looked as if he’d never seen folk going about their day before.

Yusuf huffed, and chivvied him around a corner, out of sight.

“Stay here!” he ordered. “I will do business.”

Nicolò gave him a rather sceptical look that had Yusuf bristling, but he did not rise to the bait. He turned on his heel and left, back to the market and the vain hope that he might have something worth bartering.

Nicolò disliked being ordered around, but he was a stranger in a strange land. Better to let Yusuf do whatever he thought he could, though Nicolò doubted it would be much. The sun beat down on him, the length of fabric Yusuf insisted he wear in the Saracen style doing little to help, and he wandered off in search of respite.

He found an awning around another corner, unused, and took up position there, sighing at the coolness. He leant against the wall, arms folded, and tried to ignore the growing prickle of some gaze on him, boring into him.

He turned to find a cluster of wide, dark eyes peering at him from around the corner. They shrank back, and Nicolò turned away, keeping them only in the corner of his sight. They emerged again, and a couple grew braver, rounding the corner, standing not so far from him now. The others followed, gathered behind their taller peers as soldiers behind a shieldwall.

The children stared at him. It was not a sensation Nicolò was used to. At home, in his priestly duties, the children would sometimes follow him, ignoring the admonishments of their parents, and then Nicolò would gently remind them that it was their duty in turn to honour their fathers and mothers, but they had known him. On cold winter days with brief daylight and little work to be done he would gather them in the church and he would happily tell them stories of Jesus’ ministry, and sometimes the fables of Aesop, good lessons that he hoped would serve them well.

These children… were not like the children of home. And yet how were they different? How could any child be different to another? They held curiosity in their eyes and crowded close together, and giggled with one another, as all children did. They ignored the calls of their mothers in favour of staring at Nicolò.

What else could he do but wave at them?

They shrieked, more laughter than fear, and scampered away behind the side of the building, peering out again. Nicolò could not help but smile at that. It felt alien on his lips, a foreign action, as if those muscles were unused to working now. And they were, for when had he last smiled? Before Jerusalem, certainly.

His thoughts crashed back to that day, that bloody, horrid day, and his mind spun as he remembered how many children had died at the hands of men he’d thought were enacting God’s will. Children like these, with wide wood-coloured eyes and wild curls and skin like bronze pots. Innocent children.

The memories made him dizzy, made his stomach roil and bile rise in his throat, and he had to press his hands to his eyes, to block out the sun, to retreat into quiet, empty darkness. Despite the heat, he shivered, the cold coming from inside.

He felt a tug on his long foreign cotte, around his hip, and he fought the urge to flinch away in fear.

A child looked up at him, a boy of perhaps nine years, with crooked teeth, and said something, sounding concerned. Nicolò swallowed.

“I do not speak your language,” he murmured in apologetic Zeneize. The boy frowned at him, saying something else, and all Nicolò could do was spread his hands. He had nothing to give as a small gift, until he saw a piece of discarded twine.

“Watch,” he said, tying the loose ends together into a loop.

The boy might not have understood, but he did watch, mesmerised as Nicolò held the loop taut around his hands and slipped his fingers around the twine in a familiar, old dance, one he had not performed in years and years.

“Skein,” he said, in Zeneize, for he did not know the Greek. The boy laughed. Behind him crept others, eager to see what their friend had discovered from this strange man.

Nicolò let his hands go slack, and the cradle disappeared. The boy made a disappointed sound, but Nicolò gently lifted his hands, looping the string around them. Guiding him, Nicolò taught him the first figure, and then wove his own fingers within the taut twine – slowly, to show how it was done – taking it from him into the soldier’s bed.

From there, it was easy. The boy was bright, and took to it quickly, letting out a cry of triumph whenever he got it right. Another child, a little girl with long, sleek black hair, tugged insistently at Nicolò’s cotte and babbled with a whine in her voice, in the universal demand for her own turn. Nicolò acquiesced.

Eventually he ceased to play with them directly, allowing them to trade the twine between themselves, and was now seated to the side simply watching them, only intervening when clumsy little fingers made a mistake. Cat’s cradle was a good game, he thought: it taught patience, a great virtue to be endowed with. These children were clever, learnt quickly, and were careful to include the younger ones in their play, which Nicolò knew was always a hardship for an older child. They were admirable.

But they would speak to him, ask him questions with the guileless curiosity of the young, and he could give them no answers, even if the answers had been ones he wanted to give. It made him pensive.

If he and Yusuf were as tied together, then where Yusuf would go, Nicolò had no choice but to follow. And there would be moments like this, brief moments of separation, in which Nicolò would be alone. To not speak the tongue of these people was a vulnerability. He twisted his fingers together in an old, nervous habit there had been many attempts to beat out of him.

The little girl with sleek black hair noticed. It was her turn with the loop of string, and she hurried over to where Nicolò sat, quickly making the cradle. She offered her hands to him with a wide, white grin.

Nicolò smiled in return, and took the offer. The soldier’s bed, the candles, the star, the manger, back and forth in a way he remembered doing with his sister, Little Caterina, decades ago that seemed millennia now. He swallowed, and wondered whether her husband was treating her well, and how many children she had now. Were they as bright and happy as these? He hoped they were.

Yusuf was torn between feeling a distinct sense of pride in trading so much for nothing at all, and also a slight sense of twofold annoyance. He could have done better, he was sure, and what he had scrounged would no doubt stretch farther if he did not have to share with his companion.

His companion that had also gone missing.

This time, Yusuf did not hesitate. The shape of his annoyance changed, but not for a moment did he think of abandoning Nicolò in this village and heading off alone. No, he set out to find the man, and when he did, he would berate him for wandering like a child.

“I shall tie him on a lead,” he grumbled to himself. “Like a disobedient goat.”

He rounded a corner, and spotted the man sitting in the shade of an awning, fully of the mind to march over and scold him. He stopped, however, upon seeing him surrounded by children. A little girl stood in front of him, and they were trading string, an old game Yusuf hadn’t thought of in years. There was something wistful in Nicolò’s face, something pained and distant, but he still played, clapping when they reached the end of the game.

And he was smiling.

Small though it was, it lit up his face, made him softer and gentler. Yusuf knew the man’s face in anger, and recalcitrance, and guilt, but he had never seen a smile. And in truth, when had Yusuf last smiled himself? There was little to smile about, but who could deny a child a smile?

How was this man the same invader? The same murderer of al-Quds?

Yusuf took a deep breath, his steps towards Nicolò and the children more gentle now. They turned to look at him as they heard him approach, and Nicolò looked up at him, eyes wide.

“Forgive me, I must take him!” he said to them, gesturing to Nicolò with a tilt of his head.

The children let out disappointed cries.

“Do not! We still want to play!” said one.

“What language does he speak?” asked another. A tiny one, no older than perhaps three years, keened in a way that heralded tears.

“Peace, peace! We will no doubt come back, and you can play again!” He disliked lying to children, but he was also an uncle who knew the value of it when it came to nieces and nephews. He beckoned to Nicolò, who gave the children apologetic caresses to their heads, and followed.

The children trailed for a while, until one eagle-eyed mother called them back harshly, and the southbound road was left to them alone. Gaza was not far, less than half a day at most for two men with few burdens.

Few material burdens. The mental ones, Yusuf thought bitterly, were great and aggravating.

In his mind he still saw the tenderness with which Nicolò dealt with the children. Playful games, a smile, gentle touches. How was this the same man who took a sword to the people of al-Quds, the women and children and old men? The same man who set the city ablaze? It curdled in Yusuf’s stomach, the thoughts rotten, fermenting into wrath. He looked at Nicolò, whose gaze was on the road, watching where he placed his feet, ignorant of the turmoil within Yusuf’s heart.

“Have you nothing to say?” he said, waspish. Nicolò lifted his head, looking at him with those pale eyes that might have held confusion, if Yusuf’s anger would have let him see it.

“About what?” he asked.

“The children!”

Nicolò blinked. “They were good, pleasant children,” he said, tentative, as if unsure what he was supposed to say. It felt almost a mockery. Of Yusuf himself, of the innocent dead of al-Quds. How dare he extend kindness to some and not others? Did he perchance see himself as forgiven? Never! Yusuf would never! One or no, Colour or no, he could not overlook the barbarity of it, never would!

Yusuf could not contain his ire any longer. It rose, like floodwater after sudden, torrential rain, overflowing its banks, engulfing him.

“In al-Quds!” he spat. “You Frankish beasts killed women and children and did God knows what to them—!”

The look on Nicolò’s face stopped him. He knew the man was shuttered, guarded, enough that Yusuf had almost begun to believe he felt nothing but rage, but there was such raw anguish on display now that Yusuf could not go on, his anger faltering.

“Never!” he cried. “Never! I never—”

He turned, stumbled away, and retched, trembling, into the dirt beside the road. A waste of precious food, but also the truest show of horror Yusuf had ever seen from him. He stood and watched as Nicolò dry-heaved, nothing left within him to bring up but bile. He watched the man, kneeling on the stony ground, crumple in on himself, folded over. How a man so tall and broad could become so small was a mystery, and yet he had, he had become small and pathetic.

Yusuf heard small, shuddering sobs, and the repetition, like an obscene prayer, of “never, never…”

The day felt suddenly cold.

He stepped closer, his shadow falling over Nicolò, and held out his waterskin. Nicolò raised his head in shock, staring up with those eyes Yusuf could not bear, and then, with shaking, tentative hands, took it, cradled it like some precious thing. He took a sip, swilled it around his mouth and spat, and Yusuf could not begrudge him that waste of water either.

The quiet around them grew longer, broken only by Nicolò’s erratic breaths. To Yusuf’s relief, he did not pray.

“I was sent to kill men.”

Yusuf looked down at him, eyes narrowed, and the man who looked up at him was a pitiful sight, eyes bloodshot, face filthy and streaked with tears. And those eyes...

“I was sent to kill warriors. Soldiers. Men… men like you, Yusuf.”

“But then who would be left to defend the women and children?!” Yusuf snarled. “Who would defend them from the beasts you called comrades?!”

Nicolò lowered his head again. “I… I thought we would,” he murmured. “I thought we were men of God. I thought we were liberators.”

Yusuf scoffed, turning away to drag trembling hands down his face. “Men of God! Men of God!” He whirled around again, his fingers clenched like claws, desperate for the feel of Nicolò’s throat beneath them in a way Yusuf had resisted for weeks now. “Murderers! Invaders! Pillagers and rapists and thieves!”

Nicolò bent forward as if under the burden of every stone of al-Quds itself. “I… I did not…” he faltered, his hands clasped tightly in front of him, not in prayer, but in fear. At himself? At Yusuf? Yusuf did not know.

“I thought I was freeing Christians from evil! From tyranny!”

Yusuf leaned over him. He forced Nicolò’s head up, forced himself to look into those horrid, bewitching eyes that somehow God had seen fit to both bless and curse him with.

“We are just people,” he hissed, “no different to you.”

Nicolò flinched as if he had been struck. And perhaps, in some way, he had.

Chapter Text

They did not speak for a long while, and in any case Nicolò had too many thoughts and too few words within him, on the dusty road south. He kept his head down again, the gait familiar after years of avoiding the gaze of others, and watched his feet as they trudged over great stones that the Romans must have once trodden. He looked up, at that. The sea shone to their right, dancing under the sunlight, and its colour was beautiful. The stone beneath his feet glowed. The sky above was cloudless and immense, and blinding. There were scant trees lining the road, palms and wild olives and a lonely cypress. Dry, sturdy grasses stubbornly clung to the rocky ground around them.

Nicolò had the barest names for their colours. He knew the sky was blue, and the sea as well, in the way a scholar knew of far off lands and peoples. But now he was in those far off lands, and seeing those far off peoples, and the colours around him were brilliant beyond measure. Too much was changing too soon, and Nicolò felt like a cork bobbing in a great ocean swell, transported too swiftly to realise where he was headed.

He looked at Yusuf’s back. He wore a long, sleeveless cote the colour of bread. The scarf around his head was the colour of the sky, but paler. Beneath that he wore stripes like the colour of palm fronds and dust. At his hip sat his sword, on a belt the colour of tree boughs. Nicolò could only compare things to other things. Colour, he thought, was like this land, and its people: he compared them to home, to that which he already knew, and once upon a time he had found them lacking, some cruel imitation that had no right to be.

Nothing had turned out to be as he thought it was. Colour was beautiful, this land was strange but lovely, and its people were different, but not as he had imagined – or had been told to imagine. And Yusuf…

He swallowed. Everything to do with Yusuf seemed to make the world all the more confusing. He found a certainty again, a stable foothold, and Yusuf kicked his legs from beneath him. Each time Nicolò fell harder, and he was sick of tasting dirt.

He glared at Yusuf, ire simmering beneath his skin. He had spent years eviscerating his feelings to smooth, safe things, things he controlled so tightly, and now Yusuf made him feel every feeling to the point of delirium. Curse this Saracen, curse him to the place in Hell reserved for him! And yet, not for one moment, did he consider setting his hand upon his sword, or even leaving.

The prospect of returning home, to Genoa, flush with colour and new knowledge, a whole sea between himself and Yusuf, felt wrong. Genoa itself felt wrong, like shoes he had outgrown. And in any case, it hurt his head to look too far ahead. There was only now, and they were still bound together, whether they liked it or no.

The silence lengthened. It was the longest they had had between them for some time. It was bitter, and Nicolò contemplated not breaking it, letting it last forever, letting his pride be loud and speak for him. But then great walls loomed in the distance, the same colour as the land around them. The road snaked towards them, and the shadowed gate set within them, well-guarded.

“What place is this?” Nicolò asked, pride discarded in the face of curiosity.

Yusuf turned back to him, eyes narrowed. But he answered.

“The port city of Gaza,” he said.

Nicolò’s eyes widened, and he saw the city in a new light. “Oh.”

He knew of this place, and its saints. Porphyrius, Dorotheus, Silvanus, Vitalis and Zeno. Fathers of the Church, martyrs and holy men. He crossed himself.

Many people crowded around the gate, families with children, old men and women, carts and asses, the flotsam and jetsam of war. The heat of guilt slithered up Nicolò’s neck, and he kept his gaze low.

The guards sometimes stopped people, interrogated them, but they rarely stopped anyone but single young men. Yusuf huffed, stroking his beard.

“This will be harder than I thought,” he muttered. He looked at Nicolò, and then reached out. Nicolò flinched, and Yusuf hesitated, hands close to his face. “Let me?” he asked, with a softness Nicolò had never received from him before. Nicolò looked at him, into those beguiling eyes, and slowly nodded. He held his breath, but all Yusuf did was merely tuck the scarf around Nicolò’s face, hiding everything but his eyes, and Nicolò breathed again. The air felt strange in his lungs.

“I doubt it will help much,” Yusuf said. “But it is better than nothing.”

They approached the gate. One of the guards interrogated a boy, clearly alone in the world, and the lad shied away from the man’s loud voice. Yusuf headed towards them, with a confidence Nicolò did not entirely comprehend as he followed.

Yusuf cried out something in his tongue and wound an arm around the boy’s shoulders, explaining something to the guard. The man glowered at him, and then at Nicolò, and then, to Nicolò’s relief, waved them through with a grunt.

They halted by the gates, out of earshot of the guards, and then the boy asked something, clearly confused. Yusuf shook his head, and handed the boy three coins. He spread his hands helplessly. The boy looked from him to Nicolò, bowed his head, and disappeared into the city.

“Who was that?” Nicolò asked.

“Someone with nothing,” Yusuf said, and followed the boy’s lead into the streets.

The city heaved, but not with commerce. It groaned under the weight of refugees, abandoning the countryside for the perceived safety of the walls.

As had the people within Jerusalem, thought Nicolò, feeling ill. Life would become even harder for these displaced folk, and in part it was Nicolò’s fault. Even just a short while ago he had not paid attention to the suffering he saw, his gaze focused on the great prize for Jerusalem, and the salvation it promised. He avoided all their staring eyes.

Yusuf seemed to know where he was going, his stride confident, and Nicolò struggled sometimes to keep up, jostled as he was by the throngs of people and animals. Chickens shrieked underfoot, goats bleated, infants wailed and children cried. They passed poor houses and, shaded narrow alleys, people huddled in them, children and women gazing at them go by with wide, dark eyes.

They passed a church.

Nicolò stopped. He stared. There was a priest at the door, tonsured and wearing familiar grey, sweeping the street after he had thrown a bucket of water down. The doors were open, and inside was dark, its comforting coolness seeping into the road. He was unharried and serene, despite the chaos around him, in the street, in the city, in the whole land.

The priest glanced up, but he did not make eye contact. He kept his curious gaze on Nicolò’s chest, as he should.

“Nicolò!”

Nicolò startled, turning to the voice. Yusuf was glowering at him.

“Idiot! Do not stop!”

“I—”

Yusuf seized his wrist and dragged him away, and Nicolò could only gaze back at the priest staring after him. How strange was the contrast of his habit with the pale brilliance of the walls of his church. Was that how he had seemed to those of his parish with Colour? Something at odds with the world around him? It had made sense at the time, for even those clergy within the world should not become of it, but now…

Yusuf’s hold was like a brand on him. He continued to march forward, until the priest and his church were lost in the crowd. Nicolò looked forward then, as Yusuf finally slowed before a large building.

“I have just enough for both of us,” Yusuf said, as if that explained anything. Nicolò frowned, and Yusuf rolled his eyes. “Just go inside.”

Inside there was an attendant, seated in the corner, fanning himself lazily. He eyed Yusuf shrewdly, and then looked at Nicolò, and said something Nicolò could not understand. Yusuf replied. They argued back and forth, although it did not seem heated in the slightest, and in the end the attendant sighed and took Yusuf’s meagre coin. He then handed Nicolò a wooden cross on a length of cord.

“Wear that once you undress,” Yusuf said, pointing at it, and led the way through an archway draped with a curtain of wooden beads.

The air in the tiled room was damp, the light low, flooding in from a hole in the ceiling. There were other men there, in various states of undress, some talking amongst themselves, and now it all made sense. Nicolò could not deny that the prospect of a proper bath was more than tempting. He turned the wooden cross over in his hands.

“What is this for?” he asked, looking over to Yusuf. He wished he had not.

Yusuf, it seemed, held little concern for nakedness in front of Nicolò. His head was unwrapped and his chest bare, Nicolò could not stop his eyes from taking their fill. It was so much worse than in the abandoned village, because here there was no escape.

“As a Nasrani, you must wear that,” Yusuf said. “The Jews wear their star, in the baths, and the Nasara must wear a cross.” He paused. “I am not certain why, for it makes no difference, I think.”

To Nicolò’s horror, he removed his long braies and loincloth, freeing his full nakedness, and in the moment before he tied the slip of linen around his waist, Nicolò saw enough to flood him with base, repulsive lust. He looked away, breathing deeply through his nose, the grip on the wooden cross white-knuckled.

“Hurry up, or I shall not wait for you,” Yusuf said, and when Nicolò dared to look again, he had his arms folded across his chest.

Nicolò swallowed. “Yes,” he said hoarsely, and turned to the wall of spaces for belongings. His fingers were clumsy as he undressed, fumbling over hems and closures, until he too wore simply his long braies. The entirety of him burnt, searing beneath Yusuf’s gaze. Shame oozed across his skin, a physical, horrid thing, and his hands shook at the lacings, so aware he was of the jut of his ribs and collarbone, the long weeks of no food before Jerusalem and the long days after, as well. He trembled.

He flinched when he felt Yusuf step closer.

“What worries you?” he asked, less brusque than most times. He glanced down and smirked. “You have some pox?”

Nicolò scowled at him. The accusation ceased his trembling, and he wrenched furiously at the laces, dropping his braies. Yusuf blinked, and his cheeks went a vivid shade, clearing his throat as he looked away. Nicolò tied the linen around his waist, balled up his braies and shoved them in with the rest of his clothes. He set the cross around his neck and marched into the next room, furious at his own idiocy.

He was certain it was simply the curse of Colour that made him this way. Something about it caused him to become addled in these situations, the knowledge that, were they man and woman, something would happen, something inevitable, benedixitque illis Deus et ait crescite et multiplicamini et replete terram, what man and woman always did, what God had created them for. And this was why Colour was a curse and a burden, and it should not be heeded in ways that went against how God decided.

“A pox on you, Yusuf,” he muttered, in Zeneize. “You torment me like a cat with a mouse.”

The baths, he quickly realised, worked differently to the ones of home. The water ran, here, instead of merely sitting in pools, and that was how the men were washing. There was soap, far softer than the lye he was familiar with, and fragrant almost to the point of decadence. It smelt of roses, and despite his misgivings, he used it.

Yusuf sat next to him, with one raised eyebrow.

“You do not wait for the attendant?” he asked. Nicolò frowned at him.

“I can wash myself,” he said, quickly averting his gaze again, lest he fall into another spiral of hated desire.

“I was under the impression none of you knew how,” Yusuf said lightly, and then let out a muffled yelp as a wet rag flew into his face.

He tore it away to reveal a dark scowl, but Nicolò did not look at him. He simply ran soap-slick hands through his hair, and mourned the lack of a mirror and shears to at least trim his beard.

The attendant arrived, and spoke to Yusuf. He sounded pleased to be speaking in his own tongue, lacking the sharpness with which he spoke Greek, for he only ever spoke Greek to Nicolò. With his long hair curtaining his face, Nicolò could not help but watch, something painful lodged in his throat. He watched the man wet Yusuf’s hair, and lather the soap, and run his fingers through his thick curls. He watched the man rinse away the soap, leaving Yusuf’s hair dripping down his back, and then work sweet-smelling oils through the locks with fingers Nicolò found abhorrently tender.

The attendant then brought out fine shears, and clipped Yusuf’s beard, close to his chin and cheeks. Yusuf’s eyes were closed, not tightly shut, and he raised his face to the other man, the trust evident. Nicolò could not tear his eyes away. His palms ached, his fingers twitched in his own hair, stiff with longing. Would that he could…

No. Why should he? Why should he wish to tend to Yusuf so intimately? They shared no such closeness, after all. He forced himself to avert his gaze, and yet the image of strange hands touching Yusuf with such ease was imprinted on his mind. Bile bubbled up his throat, and he rinsed his hair with perfunctory speed.

He sank himself into the hot pool, into the deepest part he could find, and simmered. Perhaps if he remained here long enough, he would melt into the water, dissolve like a fine apothecary powder into nothing, and be rid of the morass of emotions within himself that he had no idea what to do with, or whence they came.

He half expected Yusuf to take a seat far from him. It would have made more sense, considering how Nicolò’s presence vexed him. Instead he finally joined him in the pool, perhaps a forearm’s worth of space between them, and for Nicolò that was even too close. He could smell the jasmine in Yusuf’s hair, and it made him light-headed. The water-dripped silence between them was agonising, even as other men around them talked and shot Nicolò curious glances he studiously ignored.

“So… whither do we head from here?”

We. As if Nicolò’s place were at this Saracen’s heels, like some obedient cur trotting along behind, collared and muzzled. He longed to bite his own tongue off at how easily he bent the neck to this man, as if compelled by some higher forced beyond what mocking Fate had bound them with.

Yusuf leant back against the wall of the pool. “My father has a business partner in al-Iskandariyya,” he said. “I shall find him, and throw myself on his charity until I can earn enough to return home.”

Nicolò did not miss the pointed use of the singular. Something bitter rose in him, bile in his throat, at being so plainly unconsidered. Did Colour mean nothing? Did this horrid deathless gift they shared stand for naught?

And yet, why should it stand for anything? The curse of Colour was, for all intents and purposes, a sign of love. They shared nothing of that. All that was between them was the bitterness of Jerusalem, and this incomprehensible second shared gift that Nicolò refused to call immortality. To call it such a thing made him think of the long, unending years of a future shrouded in darkness. Perhaps alone.

The notion made his stomach lurch, and he bent his head towards the water, closing his eyes.

Yusuf was quiet for a long moment, teasing the water with his fingertips. “I suspect you must at least come thither with me,” he muttered.

Nicolò looked at him, and despite all his misgivings and internal agonies, he clung to that offering like a child cupping a firefly. Thrice a fool he was, and he knew it.

Of course, Yusuf spoke of Abu Malik Samir ibn Muhammad ibn Rashid al-Qasim al-Wahhab as if he knew he was alive, and they were certain to arrive at al-Iskandariyya and all would be well. But without him, there was no way to return to Mahdia. He had not the coin, or anything to trade for so long a journey, and he lacked the documents and entourage that a merchant could rely on for safe and swift passage. Not to mention his Frankish shadow. The question of how to reach al-Iskandariyya troubled him so greatly he even voiced his frustrations to Nicolò.

“Would a ship not be best?” Nicolò ventured.

“Have you the coin?!” Yusuf snapped, and Nicolò flinched. “Where are your spoils from the sack of the city? We can buy passage with that!”

Nicolò remained silent, head bowed, but Yusuf could taste his resentment like bitter herbs, could feel it simmering on the air. He was well aware Nicolò hated him, and he did not care. Any camaraderie was incidental, thrust upon them by varied circumstances Yusuf took no joy in.

And yet it still displeased him that they appeared to both connect and split apart at the same time. Disillusioned though he was with the whole business of Colour and ties between souls, he could not deny that the fanciful youth in him, full of notions of great romance and epic tales of love for the ages, died with as much difficulty as his physical body. Every now and again Nicolò would reveal some side to him that was admirable, and Yusuf would forget the circumstances of their meeting.

Maybe, had we met differently… he thought. Had we met on the docks of some city, bartering over cloth, silver or copper, and our eyes had met thus… It would have been like lightning, the glorious spread of Colour, the brightening of the world. And perhaps Yusuf would have courted him, or whisked him away to Mahdia, and they would have been happy as indulgent uncles to Hamid and Nour’s broods, and travelled for trade or simply for the sake of fresh new lands and people, like ibn Fadlan and ibn Rustah. They would have made an odd pair, but would that have mattered, with the Gift of Colour shared between them?

These were all absurd fantasies, of course. He had not met Nicolò on some neutral dockside or in some bustling market. They had met when their blades had, under a vicious sun, and their existence as two was stained with blood, tainted with enmity.

Cruel, truly, because Yusuf was sure he could have loved Nicolò easily, were things different.

He did not like to admit that Nicolò’s idea was sound, but he still took to the docks, going from ship to ship with Nicolò in tow. Some ignored him. Some were due to stay in port for longer than was convenient. Most shunned him, cursing him away, and every one with a vicious look at Nicolò. As Yusuf had known, the Frank’s presence was now akin to walking side-by-side with a leper.

The last captain eyed Nicolò with distaste.

“I will not take a Frank,” he said, contemptuous.

“He works hard,” Yusuf protested. “He earns his share fairly and never complains.” This was the truth: Nicolò bore hardship with far more grace than Yusuf did.

“I do not want Nazarene filth on my ship,” the captain growls. “Not after what they did in al-Quds. He’ll sink the ship!”

“But—”

“No buts. Fuck off with you!”

The captain spat on the ground before going back to barking orders as his ship was loaded with cargo, leaving Yusuf stood there, shocked. He had never had a problem finding passage. But then again, he had always had enough money to pay.

Usually, he would be beset with fury at Nicolò: the useless Frankish son of a dog, impeding him as always. But Yusuf was furious at the captain. How dare he deny Nicolò? Was Yusuf’s word no longer worth anything? He turned on his heel and stalked off, back to where Nicolò lingered in a shaded corner, trying to look as unobtrusive as possible.

“No luck?” Nicolò quietly asked.

“Your presence is once again unwanted,” Yusuf muttered, folding his arms. “I do not know how else we will get to al-Iskandariyya.”

“Can we not go by land?”

Yusuf snorted derisively. “Through the desert? No, thank you. Not without a caravan.”

“Could we not find one?”

“Everything goes by sea, thrice-benighted idiot,” Yusuf said, rolling his eyes.

Nicolò bristled. “Forgive me for not knowing how things work in a land that is not mine!” he snapped.

“I thought you wanted to make it your own?” Yusuf countered, feeling the familiar viciousness bubble up. Nicolò glared at him, but he did not make to leave, and Yusuf huffed. “I will try another ship. There must be one.”

Nicolò picked at a loose thread in his sleeve. “We could… stow away.”

Yusuf stared. “And risk being thrown overboard if we are discovered?”

“We cannot die,” Nicolò reminded him.

“I still do not want to drown.” Yusuf paused. “Again.”

He could still remember the burning of it, the water like fire, and Nicolò’s hands on his head, forcing him beneath the water. It took all of his strength of will to not rub a fretful hand on his chest, as if calming his lungs. Nicolò winced, looking away, and if Yusuf did not know any better, he would have said it was done in guilt. There was a long silence.

“If we cannot truly find anything,” Yusuf said slowly, “then we shall try your method.”

Nicolò perked up at that, like some beaten dog being offered a tender caress. Yusuf looked away to hide the inexplicable heat of his face.

Nicolò hated the sense of uselessness cast around his shoulders like a shroud. He knew perfectly well that it would be far wiser to leave any negotiation to Yusuf: he knew the tongues of trade, and had a way with words that Nicolò could never hope to match. He was charming and he knew it, and Nicolò was not immune to that charm – not that he was ever on the receiving end of it, for him there was mostly rebuke.

So he hovered in the shade, arms folded, the end of his head-wrapping tucked around his mouth and nose so only his eyes were bare (done fastidiously by an exasperated Yusuf, and Nicolò could only hold his breath, stand rigid, and let him, as he had at the gate), and watched. He watched the hustle and bustle of the port, listened to shouted commands in languages he had no name for, and the clatter of crates and cargo, and thought, with an odd jolt in his stomach, that it was all so very familiar. When he had been young, he had gone with his father and brothers to the port of Genoa, and seen these very same sights, heard a similar patchwork of tongues. He had thought he might board a ship and travel far, some day. He had, but not in the way his child self had imagined.

He rubbed the back of his neck and lowered his gaze to the pale flagstones. The longer he was here, the fewer differences he could find, and the less everything he had known made sense.

He raised his head again, and his eyes, of course, found Yusuf. They always found Yusuf, now, drawn to him inexorably. Was this but a product of their uncanny bond? He was not sure, but he knew the sight both calmed him and flustered him. Yusuf was speaking to another captain, insistent, hands flying somehow elegantly, and Nicolò clenched a fist. He could not help it.

He straightened when he saw Yusuf turn and hurry towards him, and he seemed to be carrying less of a storm cloud than usual. He was almost smiling.

“Well?” Nicolò asked.

Yusuf clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “I have not found us passage, but this captain knows a caravan master heading south who requires another two guards.”

Nicolò stiffened, and the weight of his sword at his hip was suddenly greater than all the stone in the world. He might carry it, as deterrent and defence, but he had not wielded it since last he took it to Yusuf. The idea of using it again… Bile rose in his throat.

Yusuf did not seem to notice. He seemed all business now, more like the merchant he said he used to be, and immediately started to make plans. “His name is Bnouda, he is Coptic. A Nasrani like you!”

They found this Bnouda in a large building not far from the marketplace. About its canvas-covered courtyard milled camels and mules and asses, and their drivers. The place was thick with the stench of animal and all that entailed, hot with their bodies, and loud with the cacophony of their voices as they argued with each other, each jostling for more space, more food, more water. Yusuf led the way across and into the shade of the halls, where men sat around low tables on cushions and bartered and haggled. Nicolò recognised a hall of merchants when he saw it: a fondaco, the heart of a city’s trade. And yet, even with the throng of animal life outside, it seemed… emptier than it should. The war, perhaps? Nicolò kept his eyes low. Guilt was becoming second nature where a few scant weeks ago he would not have thought twice.

(Well, guilt over his part in this war. In truth some hovering miasma of guilt had always existed upon him, since he could remember.)

Bnouda was seated at a table, smoking something pungent that made Nicolò grateful for his scarf around his face. Yusuf greeted him, a profusion of things that sounded like platitudes, and then Bnouda gestured for him to sit. Nicolò remained standing, hovering awkwardly in a way that reminded him, unpleasantly, of when his brothers had been told to mind him and could not stand having him near.

Yusuf and Bnouda spoke a long while, with many gestures that Nicolò found almost familiar. In truth, when these people spoke, despite not knowing the words, he could follow the movements – that, at least, was like home. Yusuf sounded almost as if he was pleading, until finally Bnouda, recalcitrant, produced a scroll. Yusuf bowed his head gratefully, bobbing like a chicken, took a pen and wrote his name in the odd, serpentine script of the Saracens that Nicoló could not hope to decipher.

He then offered the pen to Nicoló. “Your name,” he said. He paused. “Do you know how to write?”

Nicoló scowled at him. “Of course I do! I was taught my letters!”

And write he did. His penmanship might not have been as elegant as a scriptorium monk’s but it was serviceable: Nicolaus Genuensis. Bnouda nodded at that, apparently satisfied, and opened a coin-purse and handed Yusuf a handful from it.

Yusuf accepted it with profuse thanks, bowing low, and got to his feet, beckoning Nicolò after him with a jerk of his head. Outside the building, they hovered in the entrance to an alleyway, in the shade. That was also like home: the constant search for respite from the sun.

“We have secured a place to sleep for tonight,” Yusuf informed him cheerfully, and it was the happiest Nicolò had ever seen him. “And an advance.” He counted the coins in his palm, wrinkling his nose. “Less than I’d hoped, but more than I expected.”

“And what will you do with this coin?” Nicolò asked.

“Fresh clothes. Shoes, if we can afford them. Dinner, of course.”

We. As if Nicolò was included in the matter. He swallowed, wondering if he had the courage to ask.

Yusuf held out his hand. “Your share.”

Nicolò blinked. “What?”

Yusuf rolled his eyes. “Some days you lead me to believe you are a simpleton. He has hired us both, therefore you have your half. The rest will be when we arrive in Dumyat.”

Nicolò tentatively held out his palm, and instead of dropping them carelessly, Yusuf placed them there with surprisingly delicacy, his knuckles brushing Nicolò’s skin. Nicolò’s knees trembled at that briefest of touches, and he held his hand steady through force of will alone.

It would be nice, Nicolò thought, to not sleep in some abandoned courtyard, for once.

While money, of course, meant independence, Nicolò had no idea where to go and no tongue to barter with, so he merely followed Yusuf, as ever, and stopped when he stopped. He eyed a cobbler’s wares longingly, sighing after asking the price. Yusuf, it seemed, had expensive tastes. He showed the cobbler his own boots, and must have asked for the price of repairs, for he sighed again, and the cobbler shooed him away.

“No luck?” Nicolò asked. He was becoming painfully aware of the blisters of his own feet, and the sorry state of his own shoes. He doubted they would last much longer, on this peculiar journey.

“Alas,” Yusuf said. “It appears we must look elsewhere.”

They left the marketplace, the streets becoming narrower, closer to the northern gate they had first entered from, the place full of people seeking refuge.

“Are you used to better things, then?” Nicolò asked, wincing. Such a question was sure to get him a scolding, insensitive as it was. Yusuf merely snorted, something mirthless.

“I have never been this destitute in my life,” he admitted. “I am a merchant’s son, and a paid infantryman.” He eyed Nicolò, and Nicolò then became aware they had never truly spoken of their pasts in great detail. “You?”

“I was a priest. My church was small, I owned nothing myself.”

Yusuf stared at him. “And why did you come here?” For once, it was not a question asked in anger, but in utter bewilderment.

Nicolò looked down. He no longer had any answer to that.

They found a cobbler, a poor one, and the price was much more agreeable to Yusuf. He demanded Nicolò remove his shoes and they waited, sitting against the wall, while the cobbler’s wife served them a mint tisane and some small honey cakes. A cat wandered by, and Nicolò caressed its small head as it purred, loud and rumbling like cartwheels over cobbles.

Nicolò’s thoughts drifted, back to the church he had seen as they entered Gaza. He could not remember the last time he had entered a house of God, forgoing even the entrance to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, so swept away by the cruelty of his fellow pilgrims. He could not remember the last time he had gone to confession. He had prayed, yes… when had he last prayed? Everything blurred together. He knew, rationally, that not that much time had passed since Jerusalem, but it felt like a century, a millennium.

He watched Yusuf drain the dregs of his tisane, and wondered at the strange company he now kept. He was not the same man who left Genoa those years ago, and he suspected Yusuf was a very different man as well, in some way, though he would never know.

The silence between them was soft, for once. It did not sit, heavy with the weight of words unspoken, or taste of bile. It was… pleasant, as much as Yusuf could say that. He watched Nicolò scratch beneath the chin of a rail-thin cat that ambled by, and propped his chin on his hand.

“Where do you hail from?” he asked. Nicolò glanced up.

“Genoa,” he said, with a child’s innocence, and Yusuf’s head dropped as he groaned. Of course! Of course, he could not simply be a Frank from any other place! There was another tangled string of ironic fate to choke them! All these insurmountable obstacles to any possibility of friendship. It was not his place to question God, of course, but it seemed that God greatly enjoyed making Yusuf the butt of his every jest, lately.

“What?” Nicolò asked, bewildered. Yusuf sighed.

“I am from Mahdia,” he muttered.

The thought of the burning fleet in the harbour barely riled him. He had, he supposed, seen far worse since then.

Nicolò remained quiet, but he ducked his head, wincing.

The silence tipped into discomforting again, leaving them both cast adrift in a bitter sea. One step forward, two steps back, a perfect idiots’ dance. It reminded Yusuf, with the sort of grim mirth that came with such realisations, of his own war in Palestine, al-Quds gained from the Seljuks and lost to the Franks. Perhaps that was his fate, in truth: to never gain anything, all things obtained slipping through his fingers like the finest sand.

“Were you there?” he asked, voice sharp.

“I was in the…” Nicolò paused, searching for a word, but then shook his head, “the pieve. It is where they teach priests. I do believe my father sent my brothers.” Nicolò’s face twisted bitterly. “The man was always chasing secondhand renown.”

Yusuf raised an eyebrow at the venom in Nicolò’s voice, a tone he had not heard the likes of since the walls of al-Quds, and vicious words spat at him in a language he did not know.

“Did he have that many sons, that two could be thrown so easily into battle?”

Nicolò shook his head. “Three, but only two of any value to him.”

The words settled between them, and it took Yusuf a moment to realise what Nicolò implied. He thought of his own father, and the boundless love he felt for Yusuf, his brother and his sister, and he felt suddenly a great outrage for Nicolò’s sake. They were not friends, but a father should love his children. He kept whatever harsh words came to mind to himself as Nicolò closed his eyes and breathed deeply, fists clenching as he sought to calm himself.

“I must not speak ill of my father,” he said stiffly. “It is un-Christian of me. One must honour one’s father and mother.”

Yusuf could recognise that, at least, but he also thought that perhaps some fathers and mothers did not always deserve to be honoured. He had had enough friends with thoughtless, careless parents to know this. But he kept his thoughts to himself – Nicolò should carry the weight of his own actions, his own shortcomings and sins, not those of his father.

The cobbler’s wife appeared, and beckoned them into the shade of the tiny workshop. The cobbler, wizened and old though he was, had done a good job, and Yusuf paid him more than they had negotiated at the start. He wished he could have offered more, but in truth each coin was counted until they reached Dumyat.

“Your friend wears odd shoes,” the old man said. Yusuf shrugged.

“One obtains strange things when one travels,” he said.

They donned their boots again – and such a relief it was to be walking on decent soles again! – and headed back towards the funduq. Suddenly, melodious and familiar, the adhan for Asr ribboned its way through the streets. Yusuf hesitated; he had shirked the previous two summons, and guilt sat heavy in his chest.

“I have heard that often,” Nicolò said. “I still do not know what it means.”

“It calls us to our prayers,” Yusuf said, slightly irked at Nicolò’s constant ignorance. “I must go.”

Nicolò looked at him. “You did not obey the last two.”

Yusuf’s face burnt at that. “And whose fault is that?” he snapped. Nicolò gave him a withering look.

“Then you go to your prayers, and I shall find a place for mine!” he said.

He turned on his heel and left Yusuf summarily alone, gaping after his broad, disappearing shoulders.

“Frankish dog,” he muttered under his breath, and stormed off in the direction the adhan drew him, his heart dark and heavy and unsuited for prayer. He washed his hands, his face and his feet with turbulent irritation, and fitted himself seethingly in line.

He did attempt to free his heart of its cares, and seek strength and guidance from God. He did. He failed miserably, for God seemed intent on clouding his mind and heart ever further, as if Yusuf’s torment amused him.

Why did you give me this man? This man who does naught but try my patience and twist my arm with pity, who has wronged me beyond measure and yet never ceases to somehow make himself needed? What do I gain from this man as my One? Surely you gave us our Ones to better bear the burden of life together, and he only adds to it! I buckle under the weight of it all.

He desperately sought clarity, and none came.

As he left, he wondered if Nicolò was lost in the same tangled woods as himself, seeking answers and receiving none. Was God tormenting Nicolò for the same reasons, some cosmic amusement they could not fathom?

It was probably heresy, thought Yusuf, rubbing the back of his neck, and the less dwelt on such thoughts the better. He wondered where Nicolò had gone, and some spark of memory reminded him of the Nazarene church they had passed before, upon first arriving.

He did not make it to the church. Instead he found Nicolò, holding something wrapped in cloth. They halted, eyes locked.

“I bought food,” Nicolò said. “I could not haggle, so I might have, perhaps, overspent.”

He held out the bundle, and Yusuf could smell it now, the familiar scent of spiced skewered meat and things wrapped in pastry. It was still hot beneath his palms as he took it, and he held it close, unsure of himself. Nicolò had a way of making him feel far too many emotions at once, and he had no idea what to do with them.

“We can eat on the harbour wall,” he said, pointing. “The fishing boats will be coming in soon.”

Nicolò nodded, once, and if Yusuf had been more foolish, he might have said there was the ghost of a smile at the corners of his lips.

Chapter Text

With fresh clothing, already used though it might have been, and fuller stomachs than most past days, they returned to the place where the camels and mules gathered. More men thronged the halls now, the volume louder, thick with the smell of smoke and food. No wine, at least not from what Nicolò could smell.

“They do not drink?” Nicolò asked, curious.

Yusuf looked around. “The Nasara will, but Muslims are not permitted.” He looked slightly guilty at that, as if this were a rule he often broke, and cleared his throat. “Come, we will be sleeping here.”

Bnouda, it seemed, thought a blanket and bedroom were to be provided for those he employed, and they found them in a corner, in a room shared with seven other men, not all connected with the endeavour they themselves were joining. Two of the men played dice, which Nicolò could not help but frown at. It seemed vice was a thing in all places such as this, where laymen convened. He missed the quiet and contemplation of the church. Colour was one thing, but iniquity was quite another.

He had gone back to the church he had seen and had stepped inside, enveloped in the candlelit womb of it. Familiar, yes – all churches were where God could be found most easily, and all carried the same light within – but also strange. He dipped his fingers in the stoup and crossed himself.

The priest appeared, his gaze lowered, as was appropriate, and Nicolò wondered if he should disclose his situation, his knowledge of Colour. He remained silent as the priest came to him, and said something in the local tongue, leaving Nicolò painfully lost.

“Scīsne latīnē?” he asked quietly. The priest nodded.

“Of course, my son. How can I help you?”

Nicolò glanced at the altar. “I would like to pray.”

The priest gestured for him to do so, and departed again, to leave him in quiet contemplation.

Nicolò knelt and crossed himself again, clasping his hands together. He was no less lost than when he prayed in the wilderness, but his torment did not feel as great and terrible as it had then.

He murmured familiar prayers, seeking the light, but even as he prayed, he remembered how it had felt. Nicolò had loved the Church, had loved his duties, had loved Christ as he should, but even then, he had felt as if he was seeing the light of God through a shutter. Gentle rays illuminated only part of him, leaving shadows on his skin when he desperately sought to be bathed in its entire beatific luminescence. And yet, he simply could not. He had never found the key to opening those shutters.

It seemed the key was no closer to being within reach – in fact, it might have been even further away than before. There was almost no light to be had at all.

No, that was not true. There was light, but it was different now. It shone like the sun with colour he had no name for, the colour of sand, of gold. The direction was different: the light of God had come from the west, though how he was certain of this he knew not, but this light… it came from the south. The shutters were still closed, and when he reached out his hand they still cast shadows across his skin, but the key felt closer, within his grasp if he only searched for it.

He had no idea what it looked like, or how to find it.

He prayed for himself. He prayed for the pilgrims that had committed the most terrible acts in Jerusalem. He prayed for deliverance from sin, and he prayed for guidance, and he prayed for peace of mind. And then he prayed for Yusuf. Not for his finding of the love of Christ, but simply for his wellbeing.

“Let us understand each other,” he whispered into his prayer.

He finished with a quiet “amen”, crossed himself again, and looked up to the cross before him. It was painted, yes, but in the stark black and white of all holy paintings. Christ, outlined in darkness, crucified, his eyes full not of pain and fear, but of pity and mercy for those he was saving with his sacrifice.

He got to his feet and left the cool shade for the mid-afternoon heat that set sweat prickling along his brow before he had even walked half a street. Would Yusuf almost be finished? Probably. He had come to hate when Yusuf was angry at him, for it seemed to be very often, and Nicolò felt like a child berated whenever Yusuf was brusque. It was a deeply unpleasant feeling. It reminded him too much of his father, who had seen fault with every breath Nicolò had taken.

And yet Yusuf still showed a kindness Umberto di Genova had never been capable of. When Yusuf’s storm clouds parted, the light that was there made Nicolò wish to forever be bathed in it.

He stopped by a stall, enticed by the scents of food, of skewered meat over flame. His mouth watered. He had no idea whether it was Friday, or a fast day, or any concept of the calendar he had once known so precisely.

It would be far easier, Nicolò thought, to please Yusuf than it had been to try and please his father. And to break bread together meant friendship, did it not? He bought the meat, and some pastry parcels, and let the woman choose the money from his open hand. He was surprised she left him with anything at all, but he supposed there were good people everywhere.

Yusuf had seemed pleased with the offering, and had eaten happily (or as happily as he could, in Nicolò’s obviously lacking company), and they had gazed out onto the sea in a silence that did not seem as ugly as others had been.

“It is beautiful,” Nicolò had said, though he was loath to initiate conversation, “the sea.”

Yusuf was quiet, and so Nicolò dared to glance at him, wondering whether he might glean some insight to his thoughts from his face. Yusuf was looking at him with some strange intent, and looked away quickly when their eyes met, looking down at his hands rather than the sea.

“Yes,” he agreed, very quietly. He got to his feet, dusting off his hands, all business. “Let us back to the funduq.”

Nicolò followed, and fell into a deep sleep, his back to Yusuf, almost as soon as they arrived.

He awoke at the sound of the strange, haunting call that often rose in these Saracen cities, blinking away the cobwebs of slumber and trying to remember where he was. It took long moments for his thoughts to disentangle themselves. He was pleasantly warm and comfortable, lying on his side, although his blanket felt oddly heavy around him, more than it had seemed the night before, old and well-patched that it was.

He heard a sigh in his ear and stiffened, pure terror seizing him by the spine.

Slowly, his breath caught in his throat, he moved an arm, and found one around his chest, holding him close. A body, he now realised, was pressed to his back, legs tangled. Behind him, he remembered, was only the wall and… and…

Yusuf.

He closed his eyes tightly, his terror morphing into something far worse as unbidden desire rose in him. Was this purposeful? It could not be. Yusuf would never, not so boldly, they had barely touched.

He tried to repel any stray thought of the warmth and presence of Yusuf’s body against his own, how his blood danced and his skin sang at the closeness. He dared not move, but his traitorous body reacted just the same, in the most humiliating fashion possible, and he attempted to will it away.

He felt Yusuf shift, and sigh again, the quality of his breathing telling him his companion had awoken, and the sharp intake of breath told him that Yusuf had realised their situation.

Nicolò kept his eyes closed, schooling his breathing into compliance as best he could to feign sleep. Slowly, and with great care not to wake him, Yusuf’s arm retreated, and he muttered something under his breath in his own tongue as he moved himself away. Nicolò instantly felt the cold of his absence, and yearned for its return.

He kept that to himself, and waited until Yusuf rose to stretch and playact his awakening. The warmth of Yusuf’s arm around him burnt like a brand in his memory, distracting him.

Under the coolness of dawn, they set out, at fixed points along the line of camels tethered to each other. Bnouda led them, riding the first camel, and the rest of them walked alongside their swaying, rumbling charges laden with wares. Yusuf had frowned at them, as if he was unsure of the endeavour, but he stayed silent, and Nicolò did not ask, though he would have liked to.

Genoa was hot, of course. It would pool with heat in the summer, caught by the mountains, sometimes gentled by the breeze from the sea. And there had been heat at Saint Symeon and on the road to Antioch, and heading south.

It was nothing compared to this baking heat, like flames were lapping at his skin. Even when they rested beneath shades during the hottest parts of the day, the heat still seared, even through layers of clothing. Water never felt enough, and it seemed, to Nicolò, that there was always too much time between one well and the next.

The winding snake of camels appeared endless, although Yusuf told him this was a small caravan compared to those he had seen go further east. Yusuf himself disliked the beasts, finding them disagreeable, and the camels disliked him back (perhaps with even greater fervour) but Nicolò thought them interesting. They grumbled and rumbled constantly, and riding them took more skill and grace, and a firmer hand, than any horse or ass Nicolò had ever dealt with, but if one was amiable to them they were amiable in return, like most beasts.

“You have a way with them,” Yusuf said on the third night. Nicolò eyed him, expecting insult or mockery, but none came. Yusuf merely stood there, leaning against a ruined pillar that must have once been part of some Roman edifice, watching. Nicolò smoothed his hand down the flank of one of the camels, and she gurgled contentedly. They did smell, yes, of hay and musk, but one got used to it quickly, and in truth no different to a cow, in that regard.

“Animals are sometimes easier to comprehend than people,” he said.

“I suppose that is true,” Yusuf admitted. “They do the same things for the same reasons, and rarely change their minds.”

“They have no need to,” Nicolò said. “Their destinies are simpler than ours. God’s plan for them is in aid to us.” He paused, scratching the soft shaved fur. “People forget that we must care for the beasts of the earth, as well as make use of them.”

Yusuf hummed thoughtfully, and the silence between them stretched, broken only by the sounds of laughter around the fire. It had seemed to become more tense, of late, laden with something Nicolò could not define, as if there were things unspoken between them. He could not fathom what they might be.

“There is food,” Yusuf said. “Adil butchered a sheep.”

Nicolò nodded. When Yusuf did not move, his shoulders tightened, anticipating… something. He did not know what – perhaps those unspoken things. Yusuf kept them to himself, whatever they were, for he quickly turned and left in the direction of the fire, and the rest of the group that travelled with the caravan. He tripped and stumbled on something unseen, cursing it, and Nicolò found the corners of his lips twitching.

He blinked. He had not felt mirth for what seemed like years. He turned to his camel friend again, and she nudged him with her head, liquid, long-lashed black eyes judging him fiercely.

“I know,” he muttered, though in truth he did not, and that was most of the problem.

He followed Yusuf to the fire. None of the other men spoke Greek, and so Nicolò sat, hunched over his meal, and felt himself trapped, as if in a jar, thick glass between himself and the world. Yusuf’s accent, even to his untrained ears, was different to that of the other men, but they understood each other well enough, and Nicolò watched as he talked with the others, far more animated than he had ever been with Nicolò. He laughed, even, as he gesticulated, expansive and amicable, and Nicolò felt something hot and vicious curl in his stomach.

Did he have any right to demand Yusuf’s attention? Of course not. This strange companionship they shared was not friendship. But the more he looked, the more he coveted.

He paused. To covet was a sin. To envy was a deadly one, at that. He shrank in on himself, attempting to banish such thoughts. Looking made it worse, and yet looking was all he could do. He watched Yusuf’s sleeves fall back, the firelight catching his wrists, illuminating a smile Nicolò had never seen directed at himself, speaking with emotion and fervour in a tongue he could not comprehend, and he lost all his appetite. He set down his bowl and drifted off into the night.

“Nicolò?”

He paused, his useless heart thudding maliciously, and looked over his shoulder.

“I am tired,” he said. “I will take a later watch.”

“Very well,” said Yusuf, and he seemed supremely unconcerned. Nicolò buried himself beneath his blanket and curled in on himself, the blackness of the vast night sky pressing down on him like on Atlas’ shoulders. He had been very young indeed when he had learnt to not cry, but at times he wished he had not. Tears might have some purpose, at least to empty him of his woes, for a time.

To his surprise, he heard movement behind him.

“Yusuf?” he asked.

“We share watches, remember?” Yusuf said, but he did not say it as if Nicolò were a simpleton he begrudgingly minded. He bedded down at Nicolò’s side with a long sigh, and there was barely a hand’s breadth between them.

Nicolò swallowed, and watched his outline against the fire.

“Yusuf?”

“What?”

Nicolò licked his lips. “Could… could you teach me your tongue?” he asked quietly, almost hoping Yusuf would not hear him.

Yusuf did, and turned to look at him, making Nicolò feel all the chagrin possible.

“You wish to learn al-Fusha? Arabic?”

Nicolò did not entirely trust his tongue, and so he merely nodded, hoping there was just enough light for Yusuf to see. Yusuf hummed.

“I could try,” he said. He was on his back, and he drummed his fingers on his chest, pensive. “God knows I am the only one who understands your Greek, it will do you good to learn something else. Goodnight, Nicolò.” He rolled over, and Nicolò could not help but stare at his shoulders, and the rise and fall of them as he fell into slumber.

“You are unnerved.”

Yusuf did not question how Nicolò could tell. Perhaps all the days with no other company had attuned them to each other too much. He looked back at the caravan, swallowing. A prickle of dread had been skittering hither and thither along his spine since they had set out, and now it only grew more oppressive, digging its claws into him the further they went. There should have been patrols along the road, deterrents for bandits and Bedouin raiders, and Yusuf had seen none so far.

“I am,” he said, not too proud to admit it, for once, for upon honesty hinged the safety of the venture. He leant closer to Nicolò, though why he did, he could not say – no others in their group spoke Greek. “This is not enough men for a train this long, shorter than most though it is. It should be double. Ambush is likely. We do not even have an archer.”

“Bandits?” Nicolò asked. He squinted out into the desert as if he would see great clouds of dust charging towards them even as they spoke.

“Or simply the Badw that live here,” Yusuf replied. “Caravans fatten their herds.”

“They attack their own?”

Yusuf rolled his eyes. “Do you Nasara not fight amongst yourselves? All people are in conflict, in some way.”

Nicolò looked down, but he seemed more thoughtful than cowed.

“It is a sin to kill another Christian,” he said. “And yet many sin with abandon, in war.”

Yusuf was quiet for a moment. Some pithy retort danced on his tongue, but he swallowed it. What would he gain from it but petty satisfaction? And even then, every new barb thrown gave less and less pleasure. “I believe people could do better. All people. But there is some baseness within that must be overcome.”

Nicolò nodded slowly, and then moved away again, back to his designated space, gazing thoughtfully off into the distance. Yusuf watched him, half-hidden by the bulk of a swaying camel, and was glad no one else could see him.

Sleep eluded Yusuf that night, even before his turn on watch. He was thinking of Nicolò, yes, for he was always thinking of Nicolò in some manner, but it mixed unpleasantly with his general sense of dread. He shared his watch with Tawfiq, who had the filthy habit of chewing hashish resin, and ignored all overtures at conversation. Yusuf was more than pleased when the sluggish hours finally passed and Adil and Herwoj came to relieve them, but even full of exhaustion, Yusuf could not rest. He stared out into the night, on edge, and he could see by the tense line of his back that Nicolò was the same.

Oh, for once how he hated to be proven right.

They came out of the night like ghouls, the ground rumbling beneath the feet of their camels. They burst out of the darkness, strangely silent until right on top of them, and then they cried out, chilling to the bone. Swords and spear-tips glinted in the firelight, and Yusuf had barely the time to wrench himself from his bedroll before he saw a spear drive itself through Tawfiq’s chest.

He scrambled for his sword and staggered to his feet, blocking the sweep of a swordsman as he charged by, and Yusuf had never been truly afraid of a camel before, but he was now. They seemed twice as enormous and twice as vicious ridden by these men who controlled them with an ease Yusuf would almost have envied, had he not been fighting for his life.

Most men had dismounted, all the better to slaughter the guards, and it was those men Yusuf leapt to fight. As his sword met another man’s, he distantly thought of the last time he had met a man in battle. That was Nicolò.

He stumbled back, the Bedouin gaining ground, but he rallied himself, threw himself at his adversary. With a slash, the man fell, bleeding onto the sand. Yusuf did not wait to watch: he dashed after another raider, looming over too-young Rashid.

He did not make it in time. Rashid died with a sword through his chest, but Yusuf made certain the man who killed him died as well, in a mockery of some child’s game of tag. It was chaos all around, and for a moment Yusuf felt lost. The screams of men, fear and bloodlust, the bellowing of camels, the thunder of their great feet, and moving shadows in the dark, silhouetted against the fires of tents and bedrolls.

“Yusuf!”

He whirled around at the sound of his name, cried out in fear, but there was barely a moment left to notice Nicolò before him, broad shoulders a shield against the man on camelback that bore down upon them, spear in hand.

Perhaps Yusuf cried out, but he could not have told whether he did or not. The spear drove itself through Nicolò, his entire body crumpling around it like wadded cloth, and all the fires around them turned to grey. The world was once more colourless.

Nicolò slumped back, into Yusuf’s arms, and Yusuf tumbled with him, sword slipping from his fingers, thudding to the ground under his weight. He knelt, stunned, until he realised the Bedouin had dismounted, sword drawn.

Yusuf snarled, rage bursting in his chest. He seized his own blade and lunged. Their swords shrieked as they met. Yusuf parried, dodged and disengaged, driving his sword up through the man’s stomach. He spluttered, blood spraying from his mouth, and all Yusuf could do was dispassionately wrench his sword from the man’s body and fall to his knees beside Nicolò. A noise of anguish tore from his throat.

Around him, men died, and the camels and their burdens were driven away, off into the night, plunder for some sheikh somewhere. Yusuf reached out with trembling hands.

“No… Oh, Bringer of Colour, no…”

Suddenly, it mattered. Suddenly, the thought of being without this Frankish dog was the worst of hells. To wander the world, eternally alone and without even the joy of Colour…

Dawn caressed the horizon. The light was greyer than Yusuf remembered. How many dawns had he seen now, to know their rosy-fingered bloom? Around him, bodies lay in the grey blood. He bent over Nicolò’s lifeless body, over those dimmed pale eyes. He was not awakening.

It seemed that the gift of life had been theirs, and only theirs, to take: others could kill them for good, and they had. Yusuf let out a keening noise as the true, horrific weight of loneliness settled upon him. How easy it was to become used to Colour, even in foul company! How easy it was for that company to become needed, sought after, longed for, when a secret was shared! Nicolò had been his curse and his burden…. But also the only other to share their undying nature.

And he had given him Colour, the thing he had longed for since childhood.

Now he had tasted it, grey seemed all the more the colour of ash. Nicolò had been a fire, destructive and warming at the same time, and now he was gone.

Yusuf touched his cooling cheek, a brush of his fingertips. Too late to change, too late to grow and bloom… Yusuf was alone.

A sob fell from him, tears pooling in the corners of his eyes, his face crumpling in anguish.

I could bear it, he thought desperately, I could bear his ignorance and the ignominy of him, as long as I am not alone.

There was a great inhale.

Yusuf’s eyes snapped open, and met Nicolò’s, which were no longer dim. The sea flooded his sight again. Blood bubbled forth from between Nicolò’s lips, dribbling down his bearded chin, and his limbs, his entire body, shook. He clawed helplessly at the wooden shaft in his chest.

“La lànsa…” he gurgled, and the world went grey again.

For a moment, Yusuf could only stare, heart pounding.

Once more Nicolò returned, spluttering and keening. “Yusuf… Yusuf, te prêgo…”

Yusuf gripped the spear with shaking hands, his fingers slipping on the wood, already slick with the blood of others, and heaved. It slid from Nicolò’s chest with a sickening squelch, and he tossed it aside as the world turned grey again. He waited, breath held.

With another great gasp, Nicolò rose again, and Yusuf’s shoulders slumped in relief.

“Allahu akbar,” he muttered, and bent over Nicolò, framing him with his arms. The flow of the sea from Nicolò’s eyes into the world was the most welcome of sights, even more than the door of home, and Nicolò lay there, panting and grunting in pain, as the hole in his chest mended itself, leaving naught behind but unblemished skin and a bloodstained rent in his qamis and thawb.

“Alive?” Yusuf asked once Nicolò’s breathing had calmed, his hands limp on his breast.

“For now,” Nicolò muttered, finding his Greek again.

The sun rose. The desert around them turned gold, with sprays of red and black from blood and fire. There was nothing but silence around them, no other living thing there but them, and the vultures that already began to circle above.

Yusuf moved back as Nicolò sat up, looking around with a bitter twist of his mouth.

“Do only we remain?”

Yusuf too looked around. “It seems so,” he said. He had not the energy to rise yet, the weight of the emptiness around them weighing upon him. The way was still long to Dumyat, and the prospect of the desert ahead filled Yusuf with dread. He looked up, finding the sun, and then west, away from it. He did not know this land. He could feel despair begin to rise, icy cold in his chest, causing his heart to race.

“Yusuf.”

He looked at Nicolò.

“Come,” he said. “Let us bury the dead.”

Nicolò rose, the phantom pain of the lance still beating in his chest. It had been agony, for after so long without death, he had forgotten how it tasted. Yusuf handed him his own waterskin, and Nicolò drank deeply. He seemed concerned, and he hovered for a moment, hands unsure of where to settle, as Nicolò remembered how it was to inhabit a living body.

Death was strange, at least their form was. There were no moments between going and coming, as if no time had passed when it so clearly had. He wondered how long Yusuf had been knelt beside him, waiting, and what he had said into the empty desert. Had he asked for Nicolò to be returned to him? Had he begged and bartered, or simply sighed and sat there, as if it were an inconvenience? The latter did not seem plausible. He had seemed relieved to have Nicolò awake again, and he had been so close, bent over him as Colour returned in all its glory, so tantalisingly, agonisingly close.

Nicolò could have woken upon alone, abandoned. He had not. Yusuf had been there. That alone was enough to make Nicolò’s heart feel as fragile as glass. No one had ever waited for him before, not like that.

They frittered away the last cool hours of morning by dragging the bodies of their fallen companions into a sad, sorry line. Nicolò had not known them, could not speak to them, yet he knew well they had not deserved death. Rashid, not even old enough to grow a beard, stared up at the empty sky with empty eyes and blood painting his chest.

They both stood there.

“I hate that I say this,” Yusuf said slowly, “but I think, ah…”

He gestured at the bodies helplessly, and Nicolò knew what he meant. Loath as he was to pick the pockets of men he had travelled with, they had little choice. Payment, such as it was, was to be given at the end of the journey, and hinge on success. There would be no payment at all, now.

There was little to take. Cheap trinkets, Tawfiq’s rotten vice (left firmly behind), a set of dice. Any waterskins and costrels found were poured into each other.

“The weapons?” Nicolò wondered.

“The swords will only weigh us down,” Yusuf said. “But any small blades we should take.”

A handful of knives and a single dagger, no more – this caravan had been a poor endeavour indeed. Nicolò thought of the mule trains through the Ligurian mountains, the men that travelled with them all armed with crossbows, and how many failed to make it to the duchies beyond, picked off by bandits in the mountains. This was no different.

What they did find was Bnouda’s manifest and the cross of the Copts around his neck, with writing on the back that neither of them could decipher. “We can at least provide proof of the attack,” Yusuf said, and then sighed. “This did not go how I thought it would.”

“God continues to test us, it seems,” Nicolò murmured, and Yusuf snorted.

“He could stand to test us less, for a moment, at least,” he said, and the way he spoke made it almost seem as if they shared the same God.

They buried the dead as best they could beneath haphazard cairns, and each prayed in his own way. There was, of course, little hope for the souls of the Saracens, infidels that they were, but perhaps the Copts… Nicolò’s prayer left him more uneasy, the bitter taste of doubt finding him once more, digging into his skin. Prayer had once brought solace, and serenity. Now it merely clouded his mind, as if he were asking God the wrong questions.

With what little they had gained, they set off, directionlessly west.

The sky was endless, infinite and painfully bright, and it was enough to drive a man mad, because it reminded Yusuf of water. Clear, cool, beautiful water, soothing parched lips and throat, and there was none of it to be found. It hurt too much to talk, and so Yusuf ceased. The silence between them was more painful than usual, though Yusuf did not have the strength to disentangle why.

They died in turns. The thirst was never-ending, since when they rose again, there was naught to quench it, to dull the gasping ache. It waited for them to revive, like a dogged man owed a debt.

Nicolò fell first. He barely heard the thump of a body collapsing, and Yusuf’s world turned grey again. He spun in alarm, thinking sluggishly of foes and sneak attacks, the Bedouin returned to finish their work. But Nicolò merely lay there, on the hard, dusty, unyielding ground, his dry lips parted and his pale eyes utterly unseeing.

Once, the thought that would have crossed Yusuf’s mind would have been that he could leave. He could have fled, escaped this Frank once and for all, and returned home unburdened, leaving this entire ordeal as naught but a hazy memory he never spoke of again. He would have lived his grey life and be content with it.

He did not move. He knelt beside Nicolò, and waited. He could no longer leave.

Nicolò surged again to life with a broken wheeze, slowly blinking his way back to reality. He looked up, into the eyes of the man who cast a shadow over him, and colour returned to Yusuf’s world, blooming like the desert in spring. He could not deny the sense of relief within him. Despite this being the man who had given it to him, Yusuf was growing used to Colour, and to Nicolò himself.

They continued. It was then Yusuf’s turn to die, his limbs heavy and aching, his throat burning, his lips aflame and desperate for a single drop of water. But there was none to be had, and so he fell, cheek hitting the coal-hot sand and burning his skin as he died.

When he awoke again, Nicolò was there, offering the same shade Yusuf had before, a fair trade. It was paltry solace, but it was something, to see the pallor of the man’s eyes go from the lightest grey to the colour of the wide, beautiful sea. He rose, a Herculean effort, and every part of him was agony as Nicolò steadied him on his feet. He did not throw off the touch as he once would have.

They continued to trade deaths in this way. They sucked night-dew from their ragged, filthy clothes before the rising sun could rob them of it. When one fell, the other waited. Occasionally they would fall together, next to each other, staring into each other’s eyes as they died and revived again. And Yusuf would sometimes dream of those two dark-haired dangerous women, and envy them every river, stream and lake they encountered.

They did not speak. They had neither strength nor the moisture to. Yusuf lost his sense of place and time. The sun revolved, their feet dragged, they died, and they trudged on.

Yusuf did not know how many days it had been when Nicolò finally looked to the horizon, shielding his pale eyes (How they must hurt in this sun, Yusuf thought vaguely), and pointed.

There was something there. It did not look like a rock, for once.

They hauled themselves forward. When one faltered, the other gathered him up. Strange, how close they could become with no words uttered between them. Finally, the vision coalesced into something real.

It was a hut. And there were trees around it.

One could not say they dashed towards it, for they had not the power to do so, but faster they went, and made it. Yusuf could almost smell it before he saw it: the cool crispness of it on the air, his entire body begging for it.

Water.

They found it in an animal trough, but neither of them cared. Yusuf plunged his head in the cool water, heedless of animal spit and the flash of memory of… before. He ignored it, re-emerging to see Nicolò do the same as Yusuf drank long and deep from his cupped hands. When Nicolò reappeared, his turban loose, and hair and beard drenched, he shook himself like a dog.

“Ya Allah! Beast!” Yusuf said, but entirely without malice.

It took them a long moment to feel the stares, too enraptured were they with the water before them, but it was Nicolò who noticed first. He looked towards the hut, and nudged Yusuf.

Three women stood by the food, an older woman with a bare face, wielding a broom as one would a spear, and two younger women peered out from behind her.

Yusuf scrambled to his feet, dusting down his ragged clothes. Nicolò snorted, and Yusuf kicked him for it.

“Peace be upon you,” Yusuf said sheepishly, a hand on his breast. The woman merely glared, herding her two girls backwards, towards the doorway to the hut – little more than a hovel, in truth, mud brick with a simply palm frond awning, and quite dilapidated.

“Please! Do not be afraid! We were guards, escorting a caravan! We were attacked, and have been wandering for many days.” He gestured weakly to Nicolò, who had also gotten to his feet, though, from his face, it was clear he understood nothing. “We seek only to rest awhile, before we continue to Dumyat.”

The woman did not look convinced, and Yusuf then wondered if she perhaps did not speak the Arabic of the Qu’ran.

“Here is the caravan manifest,” he said, reaching inside his thawb and rounding the trough slowly. The woman tensed, and did not relax when he revealed the scroll he had taken from Bnouda’s body. Instead she crept forward, still wielding the broom like a blade, and snatched the scroll from Yusuf’s outstretched hand, before scuttling back and handing it to one of her daughters. The girl quickly read it.

“It is as he says, Mama,” she said, very quietly.

The woman harrumphed then, and took the scroll back, tossing it at Yusuf’s feet. He scrambled to pick it up again.

“Then go to Dumyat! It is that way!” She gestured vaguely west. “I will allow no unmarried men in my house!”

Nicolò watched all this unfold with naught but bemusement on his face. He gave Yusuf a puzzled look, and Yusuf blinked at him. A last gambit.

“This man is my One,” he said, placing a hand on Nicolò’s shoulder. “You have nothing to fear.”

One of the girls giggled, then, hiding her face.

In truth, she would never have needed to worry in the first place: even without knowing who his One would be, Yusuf had suspected it would not be a woman. Some deep-seated knowledge of himself kept him looking for the eyes of men instead. Did Nicolò know that of himself as well? Yusuf was not bold enough to ask.

The woman squinted between the two of them. Yusuf wondered what she could see. He had not stopped to look into the eyes of others, but he remembered his parents, and others with the Gift of Colour, always spoke about knowing. Yusuf saw no evidence of a man here, which led him to believe this woman was a widow, so her sight was grey again, but perhaps she could still see something?

“The ways of God are a mystery,” she muttered. “Sit there!” She pointed at the threadbare rush mat in the shade of the awning. “Khadija, fetch them food!”

The girl who had read the manifest scurried away around the side of the hut, and left them there. The woman chivvied off her other daughter into the house, leaving them alone. Yusuf sat heavily, leaning against the side of the hut with a sigh.

“What did you say to her?” Nicolò asked, sitting beside him.

“That she had nothing to fear from us,” Yusuf mumbled. Khadija returned with two bowls of some thin goat stew, and he thanked her graciously. She looked between them, appraising, and disappeared again with a nod of her head.

Nicolò took a hearty bite, although the food smelt of little, and when Yusuf tried it it tasted of even less (it mattered little – he would have eaten anything, at that moment, hunger driving the delicious, rich food of home from his mind).

“It is true we pose no threat, but how did you convince her?”

Yusuf shifted, feeling suddenly guilty. Despite this condition being thrust upon them, he had made a decision to reveal it without asking Nicolò. As much as Yusuf was loath to admit it, he was half of the equation, and every right to have a say in who they told what.

“I explained to her that you are my One,” he said, more to his bowl than to Nicolò.

“What?”

The bowl toppled from Nicolò’s grip. His face grew pale as paper, his hands quivered, and his eyes were wide and filled with… fear?

“Why?!” he demanded, leaping to his feet. He backed away from Yusuf. “She could tell someone! We could be caught! Arrested! Hanged!”

Yusuf looked at him in alarm, hands raised as if attempting to calm a wild horse. “Why would they hang us?”

Nicolò swallowed, his eyes wild. His hands twisted in his jubba, and he reminded Yusuf of a man hunted. “Because…” He gestured between them. “‘Cum masculo non commisceberis coitu femineo quia abominatio est’.”

Yusuf raised his eyebrows. “I do not speak Latin.”

Nicolò threw up his hands in anguish. “Man shall not lie with man as with woman! It is abomination!”

Yusuf was certain his ears were failing him. He had never heard such absurd talk before. He got to his feet, his hands still held out placatingly, although when he stepped closer, Nicolò flinched away, and somehow that pained him and aggravated him at the same time.

“Nicolò, one’s…” He struggled to find the word in Greek. How strange, that he had forgotten such a universal term! “...rafiq ar-ruh. Bonded in the soul. Giver of Colour. Lighter of the lamps of creation in one’s eyes.” A cliché euphemism from third-rate poems, but it would serve. How ironic that finally he was reciting poetry to his One, and this was the circumstance. “It is chosen by God. He gives one unto the other, and no matter how strange it is, it is God’s choice. Man may live with man as he would with a wife, and so may a woman live with a woman as a husband. It is rare, but it is normal. My father’s cousin, her soul is a woman, and they live together as though wedded.” He knew there was an ayat on the matter, but Yusuf had never been a hafiz the way his cousin Hind was, preferring to memorise reams of poetry, much to his grandfather’s shame.

Nicolò almost went limp, staring at Yusuf with incredulity. He slumped to the ground, hands clasped at his chest.

“This cannot be true,” he said, his voice small, vulnerable, almost childlike. It was a wonder how a man so tall, and with shoulders so broad, could shrink so. “You lie.”

“I do not lie,” Yusuf said, and it was far softer than it would have been a mere month ago. “Nicolò… how does the Gift work in your homeland?”

Nicolò did not meet his eyes, he kept them downcast – a habit Yusuf had noticed and never thought to question, putting it down to simple shame. But with this new revelation, perhaps there was something more sinister about it.

“It is discouraged,” he said, and the words sounded thick like mud to Yusuf’s ears. “We come into the world seeing grey, as God wills it, and we should leave with that same purity, having never known the Sin of Colour. The laypeople… they do not always follow these teachings. They seek their Soulmates–” (The word! Yusuf thought eagerly, committing it to memory) “ –and wed them, but the clergy does not. We keep our gaze downcast, and do not meet the eyes of others, and thus we reject Sin.” He hesitated. “Colour is the work of the Devil, who seeks to lead us into Temptation as the Serpent did with Eve, and man with man, and woman with woman, is even greater abomination than any other.”

Such a bitter and cruel view of the world! Cold and distant and barren.

“And the Franks have the gall to call us barbarians…” he muttered in Arabic, shaking his head. “And so they would hang…?”

“Of course they would hang!” Nicolò snapped. “They would hang the both of us, and we would be cast into Hell to burn for eternity.”

“Through no fault of our own!” Yusuf retorted, and even though the day was hot, he felt cold, a chill that seeped deep into his bones. Nicolò being raised with such ideas explained far more than Yusuf could ever have guessed. To know so little joy and connection with others, it made sense that lies would work so easily.

Nicolò got to his feet again.

“Whither are you going?” Yusuf asked.

“Away,” Nicolò said. “I must think.”

Nicolò found a palm tree and sat beneath it, burying his head in his hands. It seemed at every corner he was fated to feel as if he had been lied to his entire life. He had never doubted before. He had never faltered before. And now he was not only limping, he was crawling, no use of his legs, no truth to use as a crutch.

He was so tired of it.

He tilted his head back, sighing, and let his thoughts drift, like clouds, never allowing them to land more than a moment before passing to something else, since he could not seem to rid himself of thoughts completely. He had tried, but quiet seemed to be an unattainable state. He listened to the breeze in the palm fronds above him, heard distant bleating – sheep, rather than goats, he thought – and wondered, vaguely, if anyone at home ever thought of him. Desiderio, perhaps? Father Giambono? Perhaps Little Caterina, in between her duties as wife and mother.

He did not know how long he sat there, but it was long enough that the sun had moved, and instead of chasing the shade he merely lowered his head and sheltered himself with his arm. A shadow found him, however, and when he looked up, it was Yusuf.

“Have you thought enough, yet?” he asked.

“All I seem to do now is think,” Nicolò replied wearily.

“And yet I never seem to see proof,” Yusuf said. He sounded remarkably flippant, and when Nicolò looked up to glare at him his beard seemed to be twitching. That could not be right, and Nicolò put it down to a trick of the light, of not being able to see Yusuf properly silhouetted as he was against the sun.

“Come sit in the shade,” Yusuf said. “The sun makes everyone an idiot.”

Nicolò did so, and Yusuf sat beside him.

“I am curious,” he said, “about what you know about my faith.”

Nicolò blinked. What did he know? He knew enough, or so he had thought before he left Liguria. He had known of persecution and cruelty, of blood sacrifices and barbarity and paganism. He had heard, in the potent, convincing voice of an itinerant preacher, the fervent speech of Pope Urban at Clermont, entreating all Christians to wrest the Holy Land from its infidel tyrants and rescue their Eastern brethren in Constantinople.

He sucked in a breath.

“Everything I was certain of was destroyed. I had built my entire life on these certainties that turned into pillars of sand, and you keep washing them all away with ease.”

Yusuf was silent for a moment. “Your certainties must not have been very strong, if I am all it takes to wash them away.”

Nicolò turned away roughly, scowling. How dare he speak so casually, so flippantly, about Nicolò’s faith? Nicolò’s faith was unwavering, constant and ever-true. God was with him, Christ was with him, and…

But was that true, now? Perhaps he might once have believed that, but it did not seem likely, anymore. If God was with him, then he worked in ways more mysterious than anyone could comprehend.

“But you have still not answered my question,” Yusuf went on. “What do you know of Islam?”

“Islam?” Nicolò echoed. It sounded familiar, but distantly. Yusuf sighed, the kind of sigh he let out when Nicolò was greatly vexing him.

“I am Muslim,” he explained, very slowly. “I follow the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, alayhi as-salaam, and you follow those of the Prophet Isa, alayhi as-salaam, for you are Nasrani. And then there are the Jews, and these three faiths are the People of the Book, for God revealed his message first to the Jews, and then to the Nasara, and then to the Muslims.”

Nicolò could only stare. What Yusuf was speaking made no sense. He spoke as if their Gods were one and the same. He shifted, rubbing at his forehead, as if such a gesture could aid him in comprehending.

“They say… I was always told you were pagans. Heathens. You worshipped the god Termagant in secret, evil rituals, or the Devil himself, and put good Christians to the sword because we would not follow those same ways. I was told your people tortured pilgrims, and wound their entrails on metal poles, and forcibly circumcised monks upon the altar of the Holy Sepulchre itself.”

It was Yusuf’s turn to stare, as if Nicolò were utterly mad. Perhaps he was, for in the end he had seen no proof of such things, and the Christians he saw put to the sword were those who held swords themselves, those pilgrims he had counted himself in the number of, once. Nicolò flushed under Yusuf’s gaze.

“It was what I was told,” he murmured.

“Nicolò, that is lunacy,” Yusuf said. “Are you perhaps thinking of the mad Caliph Hakim, almost a hundred years ago, whose cruelty brought misery to Nasrani, Jew and Muslim alike? He proclaimed himself messiah! You cannot judge all of us by that madman!”

Nicolò had never heard of the man, but a sense of shame had started to settle on him, like snowfall, melting onto his skin and seeping into his bones. The more he saw, the more he learnt, the more ignorant he felt, and the more foolish for following words said in wild fervour.

Yusuf shook his head. “In any case… if you believe the Jews follow the same God as you, why not us?”

“But the Jews refuse the Messiah, and Jesus’ message is–”

“And you Nasara refuse the Prophet. For Islam, you are all born Muslim, but are led astray by the teachings of your elders. Eventually all will return to the Light.” Yusuf shrugged. “Perhaps there will come another after, with another message from God, and he or she will be followed next.”

“That is highly heretical,” Nicolò said, askance. “You would be burnt for that!”

“Why, would you tell your Pope of this infidel’s heresies?” Yusuf asked, and his tone might almost have been jocular, but, once again, Nicolò was certain his ears were deceiving him.

He was silent for a long moment, at that. He kept his gaze on the ground, learning the shape and hue of each small stone, each little ant intent on its work. It was not as if Nicolò could speak to the Pope, not as a lowly parish priest and most certainly not as a ragged deserter trailing after a Saracen, but…

“No,” he said eventually, barely above a whisper. “I would not.”

He was aware of how small his voice was, but there was something within he could no longer contain. For whatever foolish reason – this undying curse, their sharing of Colour – Nicolò valued Yusuf’s presence, and his thoughts. And here he now was, offering himself in much the same way as Yusuf had once offered his hand, weary of fighting, though he did not know the right words, in Greek or any other tongue, to truly tell what he meant. Nevertheless, he felt as if he had taken a knife to his breast, and carved it open, laying out his innards for inspection.

If Yusuf found him lacking now, he would leave. He would walk into the desert to lose himself as the old church fathers once had in these same lands, or cast himself into the sea to drown forevermore.

Yusuf nodded. “Thank you,” he murmured.

Try as he might, Nicolò could not contain a sigh of relief. Whatever was inside him was worthy of being seen. He saw Yusuf’s hand move, as to reach for him, but he thought better of it and kept it to himself.

“I did not know any better,” Nicolò said.

“That can be amended, can it not?”

Nicolò looked at him, and Yusuf spread his hands.

“We might all be born Muslim, but we are not born learned. There are things I must learn too, no doubt.”

He did sound as if he did not think that particularly likely, but Nicolò had an inkling that Yusuf could be pompous, when he forgot himself, and Nicolò had not given him any reason to view himself more humbly. Nicolò huffed at that, his soul feeling lighter than it had for what might have been years.

They worked for a day, helping with jobs that were simply too much for an old woman and her young daughters to do. Yusuf did not seem that enamoured with manual labour, but Nicolò took to it well, and perhaps in another life that might have been his calling: a tiler, a woodcutter, a carpenter, a stevedore, a sailor. But that was not their lot.

On the second morning, the old woman gave them bundles of food, and they filled their waterskins. She sent them west again, for Damietta was three days thither, and they bid the small family farewell. The road was long, but they found small ways to pass the time. Lessons began, the sort one might give the youngest of children: Yusuf pointing to an object, saying its name as clearly as he could, and Nicolò failing terribly at repeating it, stumbling over the consonants and widening the vowels far too much. Yusuf called him a donkey for it.

At night they slept beneath the stars, wrapped in their bedrolls, the chill of the desert forcing them closer together. Each day they awoke, pressed together more tightly than they had started, and yet neither of them mentioned it.

In the East, closer than before, but still very far, two women awoke. One looked at the other and laughed.

“Donkey!” she crowed, and even her stoic companion had to laugh.