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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.

Chapter Text

The funduq at Dumyat was even larger than the one in Gaza. It was much the same, however, in its denizens: it was thick with animals, goods and people, and it took the two of them a long moment to fight their way through, into the building with its much quieter fountain courtyard.

A burly man stopped them, demanding to know their business.

“I seek Atre pshe Mena, brother of Bnouda pshe Mena. We bring sad tidings.” Yusuf removed the manifest from his thawb, showing it to the man.

“Atre pshe Mena?”

Another man approached, better dressed than others, with a well-perfumed beard, and Yusuf might have thought him handsome, once, though vain.

“Yes,” Yusuf replied, and showed the new arrival the scroll. The man grew grave.

“I see no Bnouda accompanying you,” he said grimly. He told them a street name. “The third house from the jewellers as you enter from the south. You cannot miss him. Tell him Karim ibn Marwan al-Sarraj sends his condolences, as well.”

He bowed, and Yusuf bowed in turn.

“Thank you.”

Yusuf had to stop three times to ask for directions; Dumyat had been his brother’s port of call in the family business, not his, and thus he did not know it well. But they eventually found the street, and the jeweller, and the third house. The door onto the main courtyard was open, as Yusuf’s own house would be, for the day’s business.

Yusuf led them to the qa’a, and there they found the man himself. He resembled Bnouda, but older and sharper, perhaps a whole ten years between the brothers. He looked up from his work, frowning.

“If you want alms, ask the housekeeper,” he said wearily. Yusuf blinked, and remembered his shabby attire. It was hard to keep oneself well-groomed when one seemed to spend half one’s time dying in the desert.

“No, sir, forgive me… I bring tidings of your brother Bnouda’s caravan.”

That caught his attention. Atre pshe Mena sat up straight then, eyeing them warily. “What news?”

Yusuf presented the manifest and the cross. No one could have missed the streak of blood upon the paper, and Atre took them both with trembling hands.

“What happened?” he asked, less a businessman, more a brother afraid. He turned the cross over, and read the writing, and his face became tight with pain.

“We were beset by Bedouin,” Yusuf said. “They came in the night, and took everything. My companion Nicolò and I were the only ones to survive.”

Would they have survived without their odd second Gift? Yusuf did not think so. And yet they had. At least they could bring a brother news, for it was better to know, than to remain full of hope even as the years made it clear there was none. They could be good for that, at least, even if they could save no one.

Atre clutched the cross with whitened knuckles. Fury set his jaw trembling, tisaners welling in his eyes.

“OUT!” the man roared. “OUT, YOU JACKALS!”

He threw an inkwell, which fortunately missed, crashing into the wall and leaving a great, black smear on the whitewash and delicate, colourful patterns. Yusuf exchanged a look with Nicolò, who shrugged helplessly, and together they hurried out.

A handsome woman appeared, hastening from the women’s side of the household while she haphazardly tied a scarf over a mass of dark brown curls, and marched into the qa’a.

“Where to now?” Nicolò asked, once they were again in the street. They looked remarkably out of place among the well-dressed denizens of the district, and Yusuf could feel their judgemental gazes like a physical touch. It rankled. Yusuf had never been so looked down on before in his life, always well-dressed and with a purse heavy enough to see him through most any predicament. For once, it was not Nicolò’s fault: he would have been down and out whatever happened at al-Quds.

He sighed. “We sell what little we have and see what it will get us. I doubt they will do business with us here, however.”

Nicolò looked around, and nodded, wincing.

Before Yusuf could decide on a direction, however, the woman from before appeared in the doorway to Atre’s house.

“Come back, come back!” she said, beckoning them both inside again. “Forgive him, please. You have given him bitter news indeed.”

“It was not our intention to be cruel,” Yusuf said. “Only to inform.”

The woman gave him a sad look. “I know. And thank you.”

Atre was now in the courtyard, seated on the edge of the fountain, weeping softly. He looked up when they stopped in front of him, and Yusuf could feel his pain as his own. He did not dare to imagine what he might feel if he had been given news of the death of Hamid or Nour, from total strangers.

“I apologise,” he said with a trembling voice. Yusuf shook his head and bowed.

“No, forgive us, sir,” he said. “It pains us to bring you such news. We survived by the mercy of God alone, Alhamdulillah.”

Atre nodded slowly. “That God left any alive is a miracle. Please, tell me your names.”

“I am Yusuf ibn Ibrahim al-Kaysani al-Mahdawi, and this is my companion, Nicolò al-Jinuwi.”

“Al-Jinuwi?” Atre repeated. “Ti êse de Zena?”

Nicolò’s face lit up. He hurried forward and bobbed his head like a dove, speaking far too rapidly for Yusuf to even understand what were separate words. Atre held his hands up, likely bidding Nicolò slow down, and Nicolò apologised.

The woman, likely Atre’s wife, smiled then, and set a hand on Yusuf’s arm. “Come, sit with me. Your friend seems to be very happy to have found someone to speak with.”

She led him to a seat not far away, and hailed a servant to serve them refreshments.

“You do not speak your friend’s tongue?” she asked.

Yusuf shook his head. “I have not yet had the chance to learn,” he murmured, distracted by the sight of Nicolò so animated. He spoke now with his hands, having to calm himself from his enthusiasm every now and again, and Atre seemed content to speak with him. Yusuf shared only Greek with Nicolò, and he was aware of the limits they both had. Sometimes they could not understand each other at all. If Nicolò was willing to learn Arabic, clumsy at it though he was, then surely Yusuf could…

The servant brought a platter of various sweets and fruits and piping hot mint tisane, which smelt divine.

“My husband spent some years of his youth travelling between here and Genoa,” the woman explained. “I did not think he remembered so much of the tongue.” She paused, frowning slightly. “I did not introduce myself, I am Hannah bint Ezra sitt-Dumyat.”

Yusuf nodded politely, and he resisted the urge to stuff his face with the delicious-looking figs before him. He could not remember the last time had eaten enough to fill himself, but he also knew how to comport himself in company. She noticed his gaze, and simply slid the fruit towards him.

“You have had a long journey,” she said. “You look very weary.”

Yusuf winced. “Is it that obvious?”

“I do not mean it unkindly, but yes. And by your manner of speaking, forgive me, but you do not seem one accustomed to such hardship.”

Yusuf sighed, lowering his head. “I have not seen home for many years,” he admitted. “I was at al-Quds.”

“We heard news of it,” Hannah said, her voice hardening. “But I will not speak more of it now. You must rest, the both of you. Both my husband and I are very grateful you came to us.” She took a sip of tisane, and let him eat a fig (a thing he attempted to do with dignity, and failed at completely). He then looked between her and Atre. By her name, manner and attire, Hannah was a Jew, and a forthright woman who carried herself with confidence and pride. She reminded Yusuf, strangely, of the women he saw in his dreams, although she looked little like them.

“How did you come to wed a Copt?” Yusuf asked, before he could stop himself. Hannah shrugged.

“He is my One. There is no more explanation needed. God chose, and we can only agree.”

“And what did your family think?”

Hannah laughed. “Oh, my father raged for a whole day and night – he had hoped to wed me to his friend’s son, as is the custom with girls who do not meet their Ones by their twentieth birthday, but God had other plans for us. And Atre is a good man, and a well-off man, that helped very much to soothe the tension of marrying out.” She gave Yusuf an appraising look. “You seem troubled.”

“How do you make it work?” he asked, and he hoped he did not sound too desperate. “How do you stay serene?”

She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “We try to remember what we have in common, what draws us together, rather than our differences. God gave us each other for a reason, which is not for us to understand, only to honour.”

“You make it sound easy,” Yusuf said miserably. Even as he had said the same to Nicolò at the women’s homestead, he had been full of doubts for a long while. It was something he had believed: God chose, and He always chose well. Nicolò had caused him to falter in his belief. Hannah snorted.

“It is anything but! Every day must be built all over again, for each day we are different people. It is a constant journey, not a destination.” Her eyes slid, shrewdly, to Nicolò. “I see why you might be asking.”

Yusuf winced. “We met under… less than ideal circumstances.”

“I see. Well, God has His reasons, that is all I can truly say. Take each day as it comes and you will be fine. You see, if someone tells you they fell in love at first Colour, they are lying. God shows you the path, but you must walk it yourselves.”

Yusuf was quiet. He thought of his parents, and the grand, romantic ways they spoke of their first meeting, of sharing the Gift and how bright it had made their world. He wondered, now, how much time had smoothed their edges like river water over stones, painting their first meeting in hues it had never actually taken. Perhaps his mother had demanded God explain Himself. Perhaps his father had wondered, awake in the depths of night, why her? Of course, there would not be the same insurmountable walls between them as between himself and Nicolò, but there were differences. His mother Amazigh, his father Arab, their customs differing. And in temperament they had also always been different, his mother fiery and his father calm, and yet they had always seemed to complete each other. Had that taken time? It must have.

“I find that everyone starts thinking of their parents, when I say that,” Hannah said with a chuckle. “We are used to seeing them polished by time, rather than rough and raw as they once were. I can assure you, your parents worked hard for it as well.”

Yusuf was certain Hannah was right. But did he even want to work hard for it? Did he want to tie his life to Nicolò the way God seemed to intend? Did he even have a choice? But in that case… did anyone? His parents had not. Hannah and Atre had not. But also, God merely guided them. He had gestured, and they had understood, rolled up their sleeves and gotten to work building a home.

Yusuf had seen it as a tether, a noose around their necks rather than the gentle binding of string. Perhaps it was not so. And if this gift of undying also meant a long life (something neither of them had spoken of, but Yusuf wondered about), what would it mean to share it for so long? Would time wear away at their edges as well? Time wore down everything: great monuments, men and women, empires. It could wear away enmity as well. Could time soften them to friends, even lovers?

He felt a hard tap on his forehead and yelped, rubbing at the sore spot even as the pain vanished instantly. Hannah withdrew her hand, grinning.

“You were thinking so hard I could hear it, like a grinding millstone. Just let things flow. All rivers find their course.”

He nodded meekly.

“Now, stay for dinner, and the night. The road to al-Iskandariyya is long and tiring, and you have already come very far.”

It was a relief to speak Zeneize after so very long. Atre’s accent was decent, though he sometimes struggled with vocabulary, but Nicolò cared little. He was simply happy to be using a language he had missed, a language he could express him well in.

“I thank you for bring me news of Bnouda,” Atre said. He offered Nicolò some of the fruit and sweets the servant had brought, and Nicolò thanked him profusely before sinking his teeth into a fig. It was inelegant eating, but Nicolò had never tasted something as sweet.

“I am sorry for your brother, sir” Nicolò said. “We were caught by surprise. It was chaos in the dark. I…” His eyes slid to Yusuf, in conversation with Atre’s wife, and he swallowed. “I almost lost Yusuf.”

Lost. As if he were Nicolò’s to even lose, or it were even possible to lose him, given their secret. And Yusuf had not been the one to die, rather himself, and it had been painful beyond belief… but he would do it again. And again. He would not stop if it meant Yusuf would be spared death. Too many times had he died at Nicolò’s own hand, he would not allow it to happen at the hand of others.

It had been hell to see him die of thirst. To kneel over him and wait, with bated breath down a parched throat, the world grey until he finally gasped and returned, flooding Nicolò with relief, and Colour once more.

But now they could rest, could they not? At least a short while.

“He be you…” Atre faltered, frowning. “Rafiq ar-ruh?”

Nicolò stiffened. His first instinct was denial, to proclaim it foolish, unreal. But then… Yusuf had said they were safe, here. The laws of this land were different, after all. They were not at home, in Genoa, where he had seen men hang for it.

He slowly nodded.

“God be mercy,” Atre said, patting Nicolò on the shoulders. “I think my wife say stay for food. But first, bath.”

Atre had a servant lead them to the baths. Hannah had provided them with fresh clothes, of far better quality than anything Nicolò had worn in years and years.

This bathhouse was far nicer than the one they had visited in Gaza, with its mosaics and beautifully patterned tiles. There were plentiful attendants flitting between patrons, most of them handsome boys, which Nicolò wrinkled his nose at.

He washed himself, shaking his head at any attendant that attempted to come near. The great polished mirrors showed him a sight he found most displeasing, and he tugged at the long, unkempt beard he had unfortunately become the bearer of. His hair, though now clean, was also a wreck. While he would not go back to the tonsure of a priest, he would have at least liked to be better groomed.

“Would that I could shave,” he muttered to himself.

“What?” Yusuf asked. He had no such compunctions about allowing himself use of a helper, and a youth was washing his hair. Nicolò felt he was doing a good job of ignoring it and the pinprick cat-claws of envy it caused in his gut.

“My beard,” he said. “I tire of it.”

“Do you wish for me to fetch you the implements?”

Nicolò nodded slowly. Yusuf said something to the attendant, who barely showed any surprise before nodded and hurrying away, and returning with a basin full of what was needed. Nicolò thanked him, in his poor Saracen, and the attendant bit back what was obviously a laugh.

They both startled when Yusuf snapped at him, and dismissed the boy with an irritated wave of his hand.

“What about your hair?” Yusuf asked. “Forgive me, but it is…”

“A mess?” Nicolò suggested. Yusuf made a gesture that said that was putting it tactfully. Nicolò sighed. “I would like it shorter, yes.”

“Then let me,” Yusuf said, taking the shears from the basin the boy had brought. “You shave.”

What a strange sight they must have made, these two men attending to themselves, but Nicolò had no time to bother about stares. He was too intent on not cutting himself, attempting, in vain, to stop himself from trembling at Yusuf’s touch. In the end he could not, and could only wait as Yusuf worked. Yusuf cut with precision, up to Nicolò’s neck, using his fingers as a guide.

“It is shorter at the back,” Yusuf said, with a frown. Nicolò remained studiously passive.

“I do believe that was when you cut into the back of my head,” he said lightly. Yusuf paused.

“Ah. Well, there is little I can do to fix it now.”

“It will grow, it can be fixed then.”

Yusuf continued his work, and by the end, Nicolò felt far more presentable, and less like a wild man or a hermit. He finished shaving, wiping his face with a cloth (far finer than most cloths Nicolò had ever touched) and sagged in relief.

Beside him something clattered as it fell to the floor, and he turned to look, alarmed.

Yusuf was staring, mouth agape, and if Nicolò had not known any better, he would have said his face was aflame, as well.

“Are you well?” he asked.

“Quite well!” Yusuf squawked, and gathered the basin he had dropped, and all the things he had spilt across the floor. Nicolò watched him a moment longer.

“Do you need any help?” he asked, denying to himself that there was any other reason for his asking beyond kindness. Yusuf shook his head quickly.

“No, no, I can do it myself!” He clicked the shears to demonstrate, and set to trimming his own beard and moustache, perhaps with more eagerness than Nicolò would have found usual.

It was a relief to eat a full meal, although Nicolò found he could not stomach as much as he would like. He had never been a glutton, but it seemed that hunger had shrunk him down, made him less capable of eating as much as he might have. The meal was also not lively, despite five children being at the table, and the conversation was quiet: the shadow of Bnouda’s death hung heavy across it. Atre did not touch his own meal, but still he conversed with Nicolò, and also with Yusuf, in Yusuf’s own tongue. The youngest of the children clung to Nicolò’s arm, despite admonishments, and Nicolò caught Yusuf’s eye. He raised his eyebrows, and thought he saw Yusuf hide a smile behind his hand. Atre and Hannah’s eldest daughter played a form of lute for them, and sang well, but the song was sad, and who could have blamed her? Her eyes were red from weeping.

They were shown, after dinner, to two separate guest rooms. Nicolò sat on his, staring about at the fine decorations painted on the walls and the lush rugs on the floor, and their mix of brilliant colours. He was not used to such luxury. He almost remembered a time before the pieve in Aosci, when he had been rich. It was a time he liked to forget, so clouded by his father and brothers, and he remembered nothing of his childhood room, and whether he wore good clothes and ate fine food. He remembered fasting days and the spun wool of his cassock with more fondness.

He looked up at the knock on the door.

“Please, enter,” he said, and Yusuf appeared, shutting the door behind him. He leant against it.

“Are you well?” he asked.

Nicolò nodded. “These are pleasant quarters, the bed is comfortable, and this part of the city is quiet.”

Yusuf took that as an invitation. He sat, cross-legged, on the carpet. “Atre offered us the whole pay we were going to receive, and some extra, as a reward. It will be more than enough to get to al-Iskandariyya.”

The quiet lengthened, something unspoken between them, but Nicolò feared to try and discern the shape of it. He feared it would be far too much like dismissal, like a diverging of paths. Yusuf cleared his throat, but still did not speak.

“Was there something you needed, Yusuf?” Nicolò asked. Yusuf seemed to startle, his eyes widening, and he quickly got to his feet.

“Nothing! I was merely seeing if you were well! Goodnight, Nicolò!”

And with that he was quickly gone, the door shutting with more force than Nicolò expected.

“I did not intend that!” Yusuf called through the door, and nothing more came. Unbidden, laughter bubbled forth, and Nicolò hastily stifled it with his hand. He lay back on the bed, hands clasped to his chest, and his mirth ebbed away in favour of doubt once more. Beyond Alexandria what was there? He was too afraid to look that far, and fell into an uneasy slumber, where dreams of the strange women were interspersed with visions of Yusuf, and dark, beautiful things he would forget in the morning.

There was no funeral, for there was no body. They remained in the house of Atre pshe Mena and Hannah bint Ezra for three more days, until Hannah deemed them rested enough for another journey. It was five days from Damietta to Alexandria, but there were villages along the way, taverns and caravan stops.

Nicolò tried hard with his lessons. He was slow, but he was stubborn, and learnt well by rote, and thus Yusuf branched out into more useful phrases, and numbers. Yusuf thought of poetry, and whether Nicolò would like it.

Yusuf pointed, and asked the thing’s name in the tongue of Nicolò’s homeland.

“Prîa,” was Nicolò’s reply. Yusuf’s tongue took to the new language far quicker than Nicolò’s did.

In the East, two women awoke. One looked at the other, her smile wide.

“See?” she said. The other nodded.

“I saw indeed,” she said.

The arrival in al-Iskandariyya was a welcome relief. They had had trouble on the road – no deaths, but a close encounter with some bandits. The bandits were dead, and good riddance to them – but Yusuf had almost lost an arm, and Nicolò had stared directly at the wound with owl-liked intensity until it had returned to unblemished flesh. Yusuf had not known what to make of that.

“We must see if I remember how to find the home of Abu Malik,” Yusuf said. “My father told me where it was, but that was years ago. I never thought I would need to remember it one day!”

“You will remember,” Nicolò said, and he sounded very certain.

They wandered until Yusuf threw his hands up in defeat. “Let us ask at the masjid!” he said, and led the way to the largest mosque in al-Iskandariyya, pale and beautiful like ivory in the sunlight.

He left Nicolò to dawdle outside and be pestered by the local children (they seemed to gravitate towards him, to Yusuf’s amusement), and entered, barefoot. He found the imam.

“Peace be upon you, I am seeking the house of Abu Malik Samir ibn Muhammed ibn Rashid al-Qasim al-Wahhab. He is a friend of my father’s from years ago, I wish to bring news of his health back home.”

The imam gave him a slightly suspicious look, but nodded. “You can find him five streets up from here, my brother, simply follow the Via Canopica east, and it is the second door from the corner. His door is often open, though he conducts little business, nowadays.”

With a direction, they left. The street was broad and well-swept, not quite noble, but certainly rich. Yusuf could almost smell the money. They found the right door, and Yusuf clapped and rubbed his hands together.

“Well, there we are.”

He could not deny the trepidation – his father had always spoken highly of Abu Malik, had said he was shrewd in trade and a kind, pious man. He only hoped the man would remember who Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Kaysani was.

He headed forward, head held high, but a man blocked the way. He wore a sword, straight as opposed to Yusuf’s curved one, and he glowered at Yusuf as if he were merely a worm.

“I must speak with Abu Malik,” Yusuf said. “It is important.”

“Many layabouts and beggars say that,” the guard scoffed. “That is why I am here. Away with you!”

Yusuf scowled at him. “Let me in!” He attempted to duck around the man.

“Get out, beggar!”

The guard made to push Yusuf back, but before he could, Yusuf caught sight of his quarry, crossing the courtyard. He launched himself forward, and at the same time Nicolò did also, throwing himself on the guard and apologising in clumsy Arabic. Yusuf ducked past the guard and dashed to Abu Malik.

“Abu Malik! Please!”

The man startled, looking Yusuf up and down in horror. Yusuf merely knelt.

“Please, Abu Malik, let me speak! If you ever held my father in any regard, I beg you!”

“Who are you?” Abu Malik demanded, as a thud from outside told Yusuf Nicolò had been effectively countered, and he now had little time.

“I am Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Kaysani al-Mahdawi. I am sorry you see me in this state, but it had been a long journey from al-Quds and my father told me, many times, that I would find a friend in you should I ever–”

Yusuf cried out as the guard grabbed him and began dragging him back to the door.

“Wait!”

The guard did so, eyeing his employer’s raised hand.

“Let him go. I remember his father.” He peered at Yusuf’s face. “You were much younger when I last saw you, not even knee-high. Release him!”

The guard let him go with great reluctance, and Yusuf sagged with relief.

“What of his troublesome friend, sir?”

“Friend?” Abu Malik asked.

“My travelling companion,” Yusuf quickly explained. “I can vouch for him as a good man, Frankish Nazarene though he may be.”

Abu Malik waved his hand. “I have done business with all manner of people. Let him in, let him in.”

The guard’s face was sour indeed as he bowed, returning to the door to forcefully gesture Nicolò inside. Nicolò appeared, a trickle of blood running down his chin from what must have been a split lip, quickly healed.

“What happened?” Yusuf hissed. Fear coursed through him at the lack of wound and at the thought of their most secret of secrets being revealed before they could find help.

“Tell him I bit my tongue,” Nicolò replied in a mutter. He bowed deeply and, in his poor Arabic, wished peace upon Abu Malik. Yusuf did not miss the look of distaste on Abu Malik’s face.

“You keep… odd company,” he said.

“God chooses our company for us, sometimes,” Yusuf said, feeling oddly defensive. Yes, Nicolò was a ragged, scruffy sack of bones, but he had somehow become Yusuf’s ragged, scruffy sack of bones, and God said judgement of others was haram anyway.

“Very true,” Abu Malik said. “It seems as though you have faced many hardships on your way here. Come, tell me of them.” He beckoned Yusuf forward, towards his qa’a. “What is your friend’s name?”

“Nicolò ibn–” Yusuf hesitated. He turned to Nicolò. “What was your father’s name?”

Nicolò was quiet for a moment, longer than it would take most men to recall their father’s name. “Giambono,” he eventually said.

“Nicolò ibn Giambono al-Jinuwi.”

Abu Malik was at least gracious enough to have a servant bring them tisane, though it was not very strong. Yusuf wove the tale as best he could, glossing over the secret parts he could reveal to no one, and hiding Nicolò’s origins as he had in the house of Atre pshe Mena, telling the story of a defector rather than an enemy tethered to him by God’s will. Abu Malik nodded gravely as he spoke, though Yusuf thought he did not truly care much.

He did not, however, hide the reality of Nicolò as his One.

Abu Malik made a face at that. “Your father will be greatly displeased,” he said.

Yusuf blinked. “Why would he be displeased?”

Abu Malik spread his hands, as if he were powerless to change anything. “Ah, no father wishes to see his son bound to a man, and a Nazarene, at that! Good gracious, it is much to take in.”

Yusuf stiffened, feeling his face hardening. “God chooses. We obey.”

Abu Malik waved a hand. “That is not always necessary, Yusuf, my boy. Oftentimes fathers and mothers choose for their children, when better matches are to be had. Although, Ibrahim was always a great dreamer, it would make sense his children saw it thus, as well.” He chuckled, and there was a hint of derision in it.

Yusuf’s fists clenched on his knees, his jaw tightening, and he struggled to keep his breath calm. Insult him, so be it! But his father, who called this man a friend?

The brush of hand on his arm startled him. He turned to Nicolò, and saw concern there in those seawater eyes. Yusuf shook his head ever-so-slightly, and Nicolò nodded back. His hand retreated, and Yusuf felt its loss as a chill on his skin, even through two layers of linen.

“My father wishes to see his children happy,” Yusuf said. “I am sure God’s will shall be revealed in time.”

“Of course, of course,” Abu Malik stroked his beard, nodding absently. “But in any case, it has certainly been a tale of great hardship. You have indeed come far, and it cannot have been easy.”

“It has not,” Yusuf said, waiting.

“Alas, I am afraid I cannot provide you with a place to stay. I have unwed daughters, you understand…”

Yusuf blinked. “But, Nicolò and I–”

“It would be unseemly, you understand. What would people take me for? I am certain, however, that with your cleverness, Yusuf, you will find a way home. Should you require more help, I am sure the masjid will offer aid.” He glanced to Nicolò, and Yusuf did not miss the distasteful wrinkle of his nose. “Though perhaps not to a Nazarene. We have churches here, for them.”

Yusuf got his feet, shoulders stiff, jaw tense. “Thank you, Abu Malik. Good day to you.”

And with that he bowed, and turned and left. Nicolò, thank God, followed him, from the pleasant shade of the courtyard to the heat of the outside.

“We are not staying here?” Nicolò asked, as they made their way down the street. Yusuf sighed.

“I fear my father might have overstated Abu Malik’s supposed generosity,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “We must find a place to stay for tonight, and worry about what we might do tomorrow.”

“Find work, I suppose,” Nicolò said. “There is always work in a city.”

The search for an affordable funduq was a weary trudge after their long journey. Yusuf’s feet ached, and he wondered what the limits of their regeneration were, that a cut could take an instant to heal, but weariness, hunger and thirst lingered.

He thought, also, of what Abu Malik said about his father. A dreamer, as if it were something to be ashamed of. His father was a wise man, a learned man and a pious man, who worked hard for his family!

His eyes could not help sliding to Nicolò at his side, keeping a weather eye on their surroundings. It was all well and good that Ibrahim had let his first son and only daughter marry their Ones: they had been good people of good families, of the faith, and the right sex to give Ibrahim and Rahima the grandchildren they longed for and deserved. What did Yusuf have to show for his hot-headed obstinacy? A former enemy, and a man, at that. Had Nicolò been a Nazarene woman, perhaps it might have been easier, but he never would have been. Yusuf knew himself too well.

But even then… a fine Muslim boy from a well-to-do family would have been far more appropriate, a balm for his poor mother’s heart. A sense of shame welled in him at the thought of being a disappointment, but also… he had not chosen this. God had, as Hannah had said, and Yusuf could only see it through.

(The less said of their innermost secret, their undying, the better.)

Nicolò was there, for better or worse. And it could, of course, have been far, far worse. Nicolò knew how to bathe, for one thing. He spoke Greek, barely intelligible though it was, and he seemed inclined to learn new things instead of retreating into pig-headed ignorance. Children and animals drifted towards him – Yusuf had yet to see a stray cat he could not befriend, and Yusuf trusted the judgement of cats. He could have been some unwashed, straw-headed barbarian from some cold, wet, miserable place with the table manners of a goat, the braying laugh of an ass and the stench of a horse’s arse.

Yusuf let out a small chuckle, loud enough that Nicolò stared at him.

“What was that for?” he asked.

“Relief that things are as they are,” Yusuf said, unwilling to explain further. Nicolò eyed him with the same suspicion one would use with a madman, but Yusuf did not care overmuch.

They found the lodgings they needed, a room shared with three other men, but they had fared much worse in getting there. Only little more than a week ago, they had been dying of thirst, vultures circling overhead. It reminded Yusuf to be grateful.

Yusuf gestured to the building as they left the next morning. “Funduq,” he said. Nicolò blinked.

“Fondaco!” he exclaimed, and almost smiled. “There are some words we share after all.”

Yusuf turned away, for he could not entirely fathom why his heart was thudding so strongly, as if he had run a great distance.

Chapter Text

Alexandria was not like the tales Nicolò had heard tell: it was less bustling than Damietta, and he could see the wear setting in at its edges, with its quieter streets and scattered buildings falling into disrepair. Once, perhaps, the harbour might have been swarming with men and black with ships, the markets thrumming with a hundred different languages, people from all corners of the world converging for trade. The lighthouse was still a marvel, but long gone were the days when armies of scribes copied every scroll that entered the gates by land or sea. It was a waning moon of a city, but it was still a city, and cities hunger for those from afar who can work.

It did not take long for Nicolò to find work at the port, where enough people spoke enough Greek for him to make himself understood and be understood in turn. Despite the city’s obvious decline, it was still a melting pot of people and faiths, and people mingled freely, doing business with each other, gossiping, even eating together, Christian and Copt and Jew and Muslim alike.

Yusuf enquired elsewhere for work, and found it copying texts in a small workshop (it surprised Nicolò, that copying would be done outside the monasteries, and Yusuf had to explain to him that they did not have monasteries), and so during the day Nicolò saw little of him. But at least they could eat together. Yusuf would find him at the harbour, something bought from a stall for a few coins, and together they would sit on the quay facing west, and Nicolò would remember that first sunset over and over. The first sunset that had shown him Yusuf was truly a man. An absurd thing to think now, so much so he almost laughed at his own past stupidity.

He did not think he had ever met anyone as human as Yusuf.

And when Yusuf was not watching, Nicolò would look at him, drink in the sight of his profile, the striking black of his beard and the flush of his lower lip, the softness of his gaze that Nicolò longed to have for himself. His heart would ache in his chest as if held in a vice.

Was it sinful? Of course it was. It was a sin to lust, and to covet, and to envy. Nicolò wondered if he should go to confession, unburden himself of everything and pay penance, but the longer he did not, the less he felt as if he should be paying penance at all. He still awoke, in the dead of night, the anguish of Hell sitting heavy on his chest, but then he would turn to the side, and see Yusuf asleep (for Nicolò preferred him close to the wall, himself between Yusuf and any danger that might occur) and simply fall asleep again, with more serenity than perhaps he deserved.

Things had changed quickly, almost too quickly to comprehend. He felt as if clay, moulded into something new. Was this how God felt? Ah, now that was blasphemy and heresy, and so he cast aside that thought.

It was after four days in the fondaco that Yusuf arrived, full of excitement.

“I have found us a place to live!” he announced. Nicolò took his meal and together they headed towards what was fast becoming their spot, with the lighthouse half-bathed in the warm light of the sunset.

“Oh?”

“Daoud’s sister-in-law is renting a room in her building,” Yusuf said. “It will… take time to earn money for passage.”

Nicolò nodded slowly, and some sense of dread welled up within him, the same that had seized him in the house of Atre pshe Mena.

“It would be simple to find passage to Genoa, from here,” Yusuf mused.

Cold horror seized hold of Nicolò, grasping him about the neck with claw-like fingers. He could feel his certainties unravelling again, and he bitterly thought he should have known better by now. Genoa held nothing for him, and yet where else could he go? He had thought there was an understanding between them now, and it seemed there was none.

“I shall leave then,” Nicolò said, his voice hollow. His food tasted like ash in his mouth.

“Do you wish to?” Yusuf asked, too fast. Nicolò did not look at him.

“If you wish me to…”

Yusuf was quiet. “You do not have to,” he said. “You are free to do as you like.”

Nicolò saw his hand hover. He coveted it, perhaps on his arm, his shoulder, even his thigh… His heart hammered, and he closed his eyes at the sting of Yusuf withdrawing again, quickly, nervously.

“If that is so…” Nicolò murmured “Then there is no reason for me to return to Genoa.”

“Not even your family?” Yusuf’s voice was low. Nicolò thought of them, and how, before he had returned to Genoa to beg for sponsorship, for maille and a sword, he had not seen them in over a decade. They had barely welcomed him, and his father had only consented to sponsor him because no doubt he had known that Nicolò was likely to die on such a pilgrimage. He had not said so, but of course he thought it. Nicolò knew Umberto di Genova.

“Genoa holds nothing for me.”

“Then you stay,” Yusuf said, shrugging as if it did not matter, but some thickness in his voice made Nicolò suspect any nonchalance was a façade. Yusuf dusted off his hands, tossed his rubbish in the harbour and got to his feet. “Tomorrow we see the room. I think it will be good.”

Nicolò followed suit, and together they set off for the fondaco. Yusuf chattered in a way that reminded Nicolò of their first days, but Nicolò understood most of it, now.

You are free to do as you like.

It was maddening, sometimes, to try and interpret whatever Yusuf had to say. He meant one thing and yet said another, and Nicolò could not parse him. He did not expect Nicolò to find a place to stay on his own, he expected them to share. It seemed he expected him to return to Mahdia with him. Sometimes Nicolò wondered if he would ever truly understand him.

Ah, well. If he had been told to do as he liked, then Nicolò would stay at his side.

The next morning Nicolò hovered outside the mosque, waiting for Yusuf to finish his prayer. He could not deny he felt some excitement, at the thought of finally being free of the fondaco and the ever-changing cast of other men that shared their room. Privacy was impossible.

(Though privacy for what, exactly, Nicolò could not parse. It was merely a sense of anticipation he could not give name to, or perhaps did not dare to give name to.)

The woman was called Souad, and she led them up the cool stairwell to a locked room, showing them inside. She spoke with Yusuf, clearly organising some things, and because Nicolò barely understood a word, he looked around the room.

It was sparse, yes, but to Nicolò it looked replete enough with everything anyone could need. There was an area to prepare food, a low table with threadbare but serviceable cushions, and a large chest in the corner, which Nicolò surmised would be where the dough was kept, before being taken to the communal oven he had seen on the way there. A rail and curtain bisected the room.

Money and a key exchanged hands, and Nicolò heard the door shut.

“Only one key,” Yusuf mused, spinning it on the end of his finger.

“You keep it,” Nicolò said. “You finish work earlier than I, and in any case you are dealing with all the business.”

It felt rather like Yusuf was the husband and the wife, in this sense: Nicolò gave most of his money to him, requiring little for himself, and Yusuf made all the bargains. It struck him that he trusted Yusuf entirely and completely, now.

“If you are sure… we could have another one cut?”

Nicolò shrugged. “As you see fit.”

Yusuf rolled his eyes. “I am not your keeper, Nicolò.”

You might as well be, Nicolò thought, and I do not mind it.

Yusuf headed to the curtain and drew it back to observe where they might sleep. He made a face.

“It will be… cramped,” he said. Nicolò peered around him. His mind went blank at the sight of a cramped pallet, just enough for two grown men together. It then sped like a greyhound after a hare. He thought, unbidden and uncontrolled, about being pressed so close to Yusuf he could feel his warmth, how their bodies might entwine by accident, leading them deeper and further into darker things…

“I shall sleep by the table,” he said, wincing at the hitch in his voice. Now, as he had been constantly of late, he was certain he was the most obviously infatuated man in the world, and Yusuf was tolerating him through some superhuman pity. His face burnt.

Yusuf merely scoffed. “Do not be stupid. We can share easily.”

Nicolò felt he might burst into flame. “I do not wish to inconvenience you.”

Yusuf laughed then, as if Nicolò were a fool (and in truth he did feel like a fool most of the time, and had for a while). “You have done nothing else since al-Quds. I am used to it by now, I would even miss it!”

Nicolò could not fathom how to react to that. He merely set down his meagre pack by the cupboard and washstand in the corner. A silence fell between them, something thick and suffocating like a heavy fall of snow, and it was awkward, begging to be broken by something, anything.

“I must go to work,” Nicolò mumbled. “It starts early, on the docks.”

“Of course,” Yusuf said. “Go! I know where to find you.”

“You have done nothing else since al-Quds. I am used to it by now, I would even miss it!”

Yusuf could have thrown himself from the very top of the lighthouse in the harbour. He had never felt so unbearably foolish in his entire life. If this were to be the start of some sort of actual friendship, he was doing a poor job of it.

His old self would be appalled. Befriending an invader! The very man who had killed him! Idiocy at its finest. But the longer he spent with Nicolò, the less he seemed like the beast he had first met. There was a willingness to change, and be better, and Yusuf could not deny that any longer. Nicolò contained more than he had first imagined.

It was becoming harder for Yusuf to even understand how one such as Nicolò could have come to believe such heinous lies. How convincing those words must have been to make Nicolò, who Yusuf was now sure possessed a general kindness, commit such barbarity! He now wondered if the right words uttered with the right fervour would push himself to such base and vulgar cruelty. If someone told him of Muslim brothers and sisters treated harshly, persecuted for their faith and denied their worship, if Makkah had fallen to infidels deemed unworthy.

He paused in his thoughts. He had joined the army, had he not? Had he not gone against his father’s wishes and his mother’s pleading, run from Mahdia to al-Fustat to don maille and helm and a war he had no business fighting, for caliphs that had not ruled Ifriqiya for decades? And then, had he not marched from al-Fustat to al-Quds? Had he not strapped the sword his uncle gave him to his hip and taken a spear in hand and travelled miles to wrest al-Quds from Seljuk hands? The Franks had not even arrived when he had run, full of pride and arrogance, at a call that was not even for him.

Perhaps he was not as immune to zealous words as he had thought.

“Write!”

He yelped as something slapped him upside the head. He turned to see Abu Omar with a roll of scrap paper in his hand, wielded like a cudgel.

“I do not pay you to daydream, I pay you to copy!”

Yusuf turned mutinously back to his writing desk.

“You barely pay me at all,” he muttered in Greek under his breath, and went back to copying the agonisingly boring law treatise of some long-dead alim no one in their right mind should have cared about.

The monotony was painful, but the need to concentrate on his work successfully banished any circuitous thoughts of Nicolò and al-Quds for the rest of the day, and he managed more pages than he would have supposed from such dreary material. Abu Omar even praised him as he left, and Yusuf wondered how a man could be such a slave-driver one moment and a sycophant the next.

“Come with us for tea, Yusuf?” asked Daoud at the door, as Haroun threw a companionable arm around his shoulders. Yusuf hesitated. Perhaps he might have, once.

“I must go home,” he said, apologetic, thinking of the food he would choose from the market and have ready for when Nicolò returned, exhausted, from the docks.

“What, a wife to go home to?” Haroun teased. “You’ve never said!”

Closer to the truth than Haroun knew, and Yusuf startled at his own thoughts. “No, no! But other duties, you know…” He ducked from under Haroun’s arm. “Another time, brother!”

Haroun sighed theatrically, throwing his arms up. “We tried, Daoud, we tried!”

Daoud laughed. “We bid you goodnight, Yusuf.”

They headed in the opposite direction, and Yusuf did not watch them go. Instead he went along streets and saw faces that were fast becoming familiar, headed to the docks. He bought dinner, as he did every evening, and he found Nicolò in the same place he always waited, looking ever-so-slightly out of place. He always looked slightly out of place, and Yusuf wondered if it was simply because of where they were, with Nicolò looking so different to the people around him, or whether he would also look out of place in Genoa, surrounded by people who looked like him. Nicolò was like a puzzle piece that never quite fit.

And yet Yusuf did not know, now, what he would do without him. He had been slightly afraid, on his way there, that Nicolò might have been offended at what he had said that morning, and gone to eat dinner on his own and return later, perhaps even to the funduq, but he was there. His expression brightened when he caught sight of Yusuf, and Yusuf wondered if he even knew it. Nicolò was guarded in his emotions and face, but Yusuf had learnt to read him very well. That made him proud.

“Lamb, tonight!” Yusuf announced. “I thought we should celebrate.” He looked around, and showed Nicolò something hidden in his sleeve: a bottle of wine.

Nicolò’s eyebrows rose. “I thought you were not supposed to drink.”

Yusuf shrugged. “I admit to sometimes being a poor excuse for a pious man.”

Nicolò chuckled at that, smothering it with his hand, and Yusuf’s heart almost burst from his chest. Such a rare and precious sound, he had never heard it before! He longed to devour it, capture it in a seashell and hold it to his ear, listen to it as one would the sea.

Could he make Nicolò do that again? He wanted to.

He wanted, far more than he probably should. Somehow, by some twist of fate, by some miracle, this enemy had become wanted. The thought of being without him made everything seem hollow and brittle… greyer. There would still be Colour, yes, if Nicolò were to go, but would it matter anymore? God had revealed them a path, and they had taken it. Perhaps from the very walls of al-Quds they had been taking it, step by step. Working on it, as Hannah bint Ezra had said.

Yusuf no longer found it repulsive. God had given him Nicolò, for whatever reason, and Yusuf would keep him.

His hands ached, his heart ached, and longing set in, like a bird home to roost.

Nicolò had encountered a new torment, and it came in the form of sleeping beside Yusuf.

Of course, they had slept beside each other many a time, it was no novelty, but there had always been some space between them (despite Nicolò’s traitorous body seeking Yusuf’s in his sleep), or the threat of danger, or the presence of other men. Now they were to be plastered shoulder to shoulder, barely enough room to move.

“Perhaps if we slept top to tail?” Nicolò suggested weakly the first night, as they stood over the pallet. Yusuf scoffed.

“Do not be foolish,” he said. “We are grown men, not children.”

The fact they were grown men was, thought Nicolò, very much part of the problem.

It was impossible to not realise his growing desire, at this point. He yearned, and he knew the form of it. He did not seek friendship or brotherhood, he sought the sort of union a man and wife had, foolish though it was. And perhaps this was brought on by all that he had learnt of Colour and Soulmates in a land where people embraced it fully as a gift, but he suspected that was not entirely it. It was simply Yusuf. Prickly and exasperated with Nicolò’s ignorance, and yet kind, willing to teach and guide. It did not hurt that he was comely, either, for Nicolò had eyes – eyes that saw in Colour, even – and he was not ignorant of the darker parts of his nature. It had always been men’s eyes that he had avoided most arduously.

Furthermore they had always slept fully clothed, everything of theirs upon their persons for fear of theft. Here they did not need to, and there was another problem. The thinnest linen between them instead of layers of clothing would be torment.

And it was. It had become unspoken habit for Yusuf to sleep at the wall, and for Nicolò to sleep toward the room, and that did not change. But now Nicolò felt every shift Yusuf made, heard every huff and sigh, felt every breath upon his skin. He pressed his face into the pillow and willed himself to sleep, even as his body sang with longing.

They say, o Lord, that You will deliver us from evil, and lead us not into temptation, Nicolò thought miserably. They lie.

Of course, the whole point was to resist temptation through the strength of faith. Bollocks.

He froze when Yusuf turned, pressed tightly against him, his breath the deep breath of one asleep, and he could not help the stirring of his loins, half-made thoughts whirling madly in his mind. He thought of Yusuf’s hands upon him, lifting the hem of his shirt and finding his hardness, whispering sweet filth to him.

Fancies, no more. Illusions and nonsense.

He closed his eyes. He would be merely content with Yusuf’s presence. It was more than he had ever thought he would deserve, or obtain. Yusuf was there, and that was gift enough, was it not?

With that thought, he finally slept, fraught with heated dreams though his slumber was.

Even in a city in decline the markets were a maddening flurry of people, animals, noises and smells. Spices Nicolò had no name for, fabrics in every colour imaginable that he also had no name for, expensive luxuries and common basics that every man required. It was often dizzying, for Nicolò had never been one for great crowds and much excitement, but he was still curious, and Yusuf did enjoy the markets greatly. They shared little time together, after all, and Nicolò would take any chance he could to be by Yusuf’s side.

Nicolò made certain not to drift very far. His Arabic was improving, but so slowly it almost seemed like it was not, he could not read anything yet, and unscrupulous folk knew an easy mark when they saw one, even with a knife at their belt. As long as Yusuf was within sight, Nicolò could allow himself to dawdle, though in truth he had always required little in life and never sought to make a purchase. Frivolous things were pretty to look at, but why would he need them?

Nicolò halted. The stall he was standing before was replete with jewellery, elegant things for ladies’ necks and wrists and ears, but it was not the brass and copper that caught his eye. No, it was the stone in a single silver pendant. The woman behind the stall eyed him as he stared at it, no doubt thinking him a thief. The stone had been well-shaped and polished to a good sheen, but it was not the craftsmanship he was drawn to, it was the colour.

“What be?” Nicolò asked in his atrocious Arabic. The woman’s face softened somewhat, now that he had spoken.

“Aqiq,” she replied. “From Siqiliya.”

“Aqiq,” he repeated, or attempted to.

He had never wanted much of anything before, much less a jewel, but this… it was of the exact same colour as Yusuf’s eyes. The first colour he had ever seen.

He stared a moment longer, before tearing himself away. He had no coin, and in any case he could never have afforded such an item.

“What have you seen?”

He turned, blinking in surprise, to see Yusuf at his elbow, and to his own horror he could feel his face burning. He tried to will it away; there was no shame in looking at objects, and here he was, acting as if Yusuf had caught him peeping in a bathhouse window.

“Ah, er… that.” He pointed.

“I had no idea you liked those sorts of things,” Yusuf said, sounding amused. Nicolò swallowed.

“I do not,” he said. “Usually. It is simply…”

“Simply?”

Nicolò quickly shook his head. “It is no matter. It merely caught my eye. Come, let us continue.”

Yusuf hesitated, looking from Nicolò to the stone, but in the end he acquiesced, and they went on their way side by side.

“You know, you can keep some money for yourself,” Yusuf said. “It is yours, you have earnt it.”

“Well, I must pay my share of the rent,” Nicolò said. “And your coinage confuses me.” He had never used money much, before.

“This is not my coinage, this is al-Fatimiyyatu coinage… But in any case, do not feel as if you need to… compensate me.” He stopped, looked around, and dragged Nicolò into the entrance to an alleyway. “You are free to do as you like, and I am as well.”

They were close, and somehow standing close was more intimate than sleeping side by side. He could smell Yusuf, the lingering undertone of bathhouse soap, the dust of the dry streets and the stronger, headier musk of his body. He could see the sheen of sweat upon his brow, the single lock that never liked to be contained by his wound scarf. He could feel his heat.

There was a tension between them, the cord of a lute desperate to be plucked, the threads of fate that tied them together pulled taut, and yet never snapped. If Nicolò tilted himself forward, they would be chest to chest, almost embracing. His mouth was dry, and his whole body trembled.

He reached a quivering hand out, seized the hem of Yusuf’s sleeve, held on to it so tightly that, hand he pulled, it would have torn.

Does he know what he does to me?

He backed away, licking his lips, eyes downcast.

“I know,” he said. “I have always made my own choices, Yusuf. I like to think I am making better ones, now.”

And he moved away, despite his body wailing in agony for what it simply could not have. He heard a sound behind him, something small and mournful, and paid it no heed. It could not have been Yusuf, after all.

Yusuf watched Nicolò leave, and it felt as if part of him had been torn away. He rubbed a hand down his face, willing his heart to stop thundering like a stampede of gazelles, willing his body to cease its clamouring for Nicolò’s. How was one to continue like this, plagued with such desires? Every day was a test, it seemed, a labyrinth Yusuf had no concept of how to navigate.

He drifted after Nicolò, glancing at stalls with no interest, until one caught his eye. An array of books of many different kinds.

Usually it would have been his future mother-in-law to give him such a gift. The two most important books of one’s life: the Qu’ran and the Kitab al-Alwan. He remembered when Hamid had come home, beaming from ear to ear, and showed his finely decorated book with immense pride. Nour had also received one, inlaid with the finest filigree and filled with the most intricate illustrations of animals, birds and flowers alongside each colour. There were plenty arrayed on the merchant’s table, set out from the most elaborate and exquisitely crafted to the simplest little brown leather things, for tucking in a pocket. Even the poorest of mothers would find the coin for a book for their child’s One.

He felt Nicolò appear at his side. “Oh!” he exclaimed, in obvious delight.

“Do they have these in your land?” Yusuf asked.

“Little books?” Nicolò said, frowning. “Of course, but they are not so casually found at a marketplace.”

“Not just any little books,” Yusuf said. “Kitab al-Alwan. The Book of Colours.”

He picked one up – one of middling cost, its leather cover embossed finely, but lacking any precious embellishments – and opened it, and Nicolò gasped. Each page gave a name to each colour, listing the things that bore it. The more expensive the book, of course, the more numerous and detailed the colours and the more elaborate the illustrations, but even the least costly of them was a careful and thorough listing. Yusuf had been thinking excitedly about his art, of late, and how he had unlocked a boundless new view of the world.

Ah. But he had not been the one to unlock it. That had been Nicolò.

Yusuf watched him. He was entranced with the book.

“I have never seen such a thing,” he said. “But then again, the clergy should not know of Colour.” He hesitated a moment before stiffly handing the book back to Yusuf. “The names of Colours are as sinful as the thing itself.”

“You are no longer a clergyman, though,” Yusuf said, allowing himself to grin. Nicolò, to his amusement, flushed.

“True,” he mumbled. He looked at the books again, something quick and guilty.

“Is there no one in your whole Church who can see Colour?” Yusuf asked, thumbing through the book again.

“Of course there are, but they are accidents. Some of the very holy wear a blindfold for the rest of their lives. Saint Bago of Colònia blinded himself when he met the eyes of the Emperor’s daughter, and retired to a hermitage in penance.”

Yusuf stared at him. He spoke with such nonchalance, as if such fanatical mania were normal. Of course, there were fanatics everywhere, Yusuf knew this very well, but sometimes Nicolò would say something that made him think that every Nazarene was utterly mad.

“And you worship that man as a saint?” he said, incredulous.

“He has a great following in Provénsa,” Nicolò said. He finally picked up a book, eyeing it with great covetousness, which Yusuf was sure was another Nazarene sin that he should not be indulging in. The look ignited something within Yusuf, something deep and potent in the pit of his gut, like a flame, and it shocked him so he clapped a hand to his belly. Nicolò looked at him in alarm.

“Yusuf? Are you well?”

“Yes,” Yusuf said, slowly. The burning did not ebb, and Nicolò’s gaze was deep and intense, so Yusuf merely looked away, desperately to distract them both. “I suppose to your people artists are as good as whores.”

Nicolò only turned away again slowly, still concerned. “Painters are. Those who draw in charcoal and ink are respected, even revered, and a painting in Colour is seen as an earthly item, a licentious item.”

“And do you still abhor colour?”

Nicolò looked at him again, and Yusuf felt as if he were tumbling, consumed by the depth and potency of those eyes. He wondered if there was a true name for their colour, and all of a sudden a great wave of possession came over him. No others should see those eyes, or name their Colour. They were his own private sea.

Yusuf tore himself away, turning his head even as his eyes lingered, and spoke to the vendor. “Do you have one in Greek or Latin?”

The man hummed thoughtfully. “I do believe I have two in Greek. No Latin, I am afraid, but perhaps you might order one?” He looked him up and down. “You look little like a mother-in-law, I must say.”

That made Yusuf laugh. “Very true!”

The man picked out the two Greek volumes, one plain and workaday, the other decorated with gold leaf and buckled with silver.

Yusuf held the two in his hands. He wondered if he should wait, and give Nicolò one in Arabic to give to his mother to give to Yusuf – convoluted, but it would maintain the tradition. But then he remembered that their bond was forbidden in Nicolò’s homeland, and not simply because of Colour. Whoever Nicolò’s mother was, she would not welcome him into her home with a warm embrace and a Kitab al-Alwan.

But would his own mother welcome Nicolò? Would she see this Nazarene, this invader from beyond the sea whose countrymen had killed her brother when they attacked the fleet, and see a son-in-law? He was not certain of that. Perhaps they could dispense with tradition – nothing else about them was as it should be, after all.

He set down the expensive one – no doubt it would cost more than passage to Mahdia for two, anyway – and leafed through the plain one. It was far more beautiful on the inside that Yusuf would have at first imagined: its images were small, but exquisitely detailed, its creatures realistic, and it even depicted the human form, as a tome meant for ahl ad-dimmah. It was, he thought, much like Nicolò himself.

He looked at the vendor. “How much?”

The man spread his hands, and said his price.

Yusuf had been taught to haggle almost as soon as he could talk. He was the son of a merchant, the grandson of a merchant, and the brother of one, as well. It was second nature to strike for the fairest deal he could.

Nicolò, however, was looking from the vendor to him in unabashed alarm. “Yusuf, what are you–?”

Yusuf ignored him. “Ten!” he said. The vendor threw up his hands, raising his gaze to the heavens.

“He seeks to rob me! Very well, very well, ten!”

Yusuf let out a laugh of triumph, and reached for his coin purse, counting out the price carefully. He stiffened at a hand on his wrist. The touch seared through linen and cotton, filling his entire being with its presence.

“What are you doing?” Nicolò demanded. “Are we not meant to be saving for passage to Mahdia?”

Yusuf gathered himself enough to roll his eyes. “Do you not think I can make a deal? I am not leaving us destitute, Nicolò.” In a fit of childishness, he pinched the back of Nicolò’s hand, which was retracted with a hiss. He handed the vendor the money, and took the book. “Here.”

By rights he should keep it, and give it to his mother, but he and Nicolò were past the point of normality.

Nicolò stared at it. “What?”

“For you. I am sorry it is in Greek, he does not have Latin.”

With tentative hand, Nicolò took it. He opened it with immense care, as if it was old and delicate, and swallowed. “It is beautiful.” He spoke with reverence, and when his eyes met Yusuf’s again, full of awe and gratitude, Yusuf felt as if he might soar to the sky, too light to remain anchored to the ground.

“A Book of Colours should be,” Yusuf said, waving a hand. “Come, I am hungry.”

Nicolò had never had a book before. Well, he had, but they had been holy books, books of sermons and prayer, the Bible, and a small compendium of Greek, and in any case they were not truly his own, more of the Church. This was different. This was his, and it was a gift from Yusuf. He pored over it, memorising the words, learning what they matched. Blue of the sky, blue of the sea, green of the leaves and grass, yellow of the dusty ground. Brown, he learnt, was the colour of Yusuf’s eyes, but that did not seem entirely right. They were too bright, too vivid and beautiful and full of depth to be merely the same as wood and wet earth. The brilliance of the stone pendant came back to his mind. Aqiq, the woman had called it. Achates was all that could come to mind – agate.

That was a fine word for Yusuf’s eyes, for they caught the light and shone much the same.

All his other woes continued and multiplied, however.

He had seen Yusuf gaunt and weary from the wilderness, threadbare from hunger, thirst and the filth of the road, and still thought him beguiling beyond compare. Now… Now, replete and relaxed, he was resplendent. Nicolò’s longing could only grow like a wildfire, enflamed by his presence and the new softness of life in the city.

Furthermore it appeared Yusuf had decided that he felt little shame within the four walls of their home. There he was shirtless, his glorious hair-dusted chest on display for all and sundry (only Nicolò). He kept his hair loose indoors, showing off his flowing, magnificent curls, black as ink and surely soft as silk. He kept his beard neatly trimmed and indulged in sweet-smelling oils, and all of it only seemed to drive Nicolò wild, set in him a flame of imperishable hunger.

Nicolò had been taught all his life that wanting was a sin, both within and without marriage, both with and without Colour, and here he was, wanting more potently, more ardently, than he ever had before.

Was this some manner of seduction? Impossible, for how could Yusuf possibly want him in the way he wanted Yusuf? Firstly, what could Nicolò possibly offer? Secondly, surely Yusuf would find him repulsive for these desires. But had Yusuf not been the one to tell him of how Soulmates were in this land, how man and man and woman and woman could live together as though wed? It was all far too confusing. Ultimately, Nicolò thought, he could want, but he could not have.

There were moments when he thought he could. Instances where, if he reached out, he would have been able to take. But he did not. He kept his hands to himself, looked down or away, and suffered. Bewildering, how, out of all the great sufferings he had known, which included death itself, this was by far the worst. It was burning torment.

And it was not mere lust, either. If anything, the lust was a mere culmination of everything that had been growing inside him: devotion, affection, protectiveness. A desire to remain by Yusuf’s side, whatever may happen. He would be content with that.

He had to be content with that.

And he was content, in other ways. Alexandria was much like every city, both cutthroat and kind in equal measure. Souad their landlady would bring them food. Nicolò’s fellow dockworkers were friendly, and taught him things even as they laughed at his Greek and faltering Arabic.

He prayed to the Virgin more often, now. The gentleness of her soothed his turmoil, and he wondered if she had ever had a Soulmate. Had she seen Colour? Had she met the eyes of Saint Joseph and known the world anew?

But that was plainly heresy, so he kept it to himself. He prayed at the small shrine he had set up in the corner, unobtrusive, almost hidden, and tried not to feel Yusuf’s eyes on him. Yusuf prayed at home as well, now, and Nicolò was learning more about his strange ways, the carpet he unfurled, the washing of hands, feet and face, and the way he faced east as he recited. It created a sense of commonality in two acts that Nicolò might have once have viewed as oppositional, as some idolatry or pagan worship. It was not so now he knew better. In fact, he even looked once or twice at the small figure of the Virgin and the little wooden cross he had set on the shelf, and thought, with a huff, that perhaps he was the idolater.

Well, he was fast becoming a heretic, in any case.

Day by day they drew closer to their goal, money squirrelled away about the house, slowly accumulating. Nicolò could make do with very little, and did, and although Yusuf did long for frivolous things (and, despite their frivolity, Nicolò wished he could buy them for him, every bauble and trinket and fine thing he saw) he remained steadfast. Soon they would be able to board a ship and head west.

Nicolò could not deny there was an anxiousness within him at the thought. Things would change. They could not stay the same, not when Yusuf’s family was there. Would Nicolò still be welcome, or at least free to stay by Yusuf’s side? Would his family hate him? Would Yusuf slowly grow distant, conforming back to his old life until their shared tribulations and commonalities were forgotten, and Nicolò cast out, left to drift, wondering where his place in life was to be?

He did not think Yusuf would be so callous. Yusuf was kind, Yusuf was generous, Yusuf had all along treated him with far more fairness than Nicolò had actually deserved. And Nicolò thought he had taken the undermining of his entire existence with more grace than many others would. It was hard to continue living at war when the reality was so much more peaceful. He wondered if he might convince Yusuf to take him to Corduba, and seek the truth of the tales of the saintly martyrs he had once heard.

He awoke, leaving Yusuf to sleep the sleep of the dead (impossible though it was for them), for it seemed not even the haunting call to prayer could wake him, in the morning. He washed at the basin, made breakfast, setting out Yusuf’s share as he always did, and sat at the window, scattering the evening and morning’s crumbs upon it, for the birds. The birds, Nicolò thought wistfully, were the same here as at home, little masked sparrows, small in size but mighty in spirit, cat-teasers and lusty singers. He would watch them, very still, as he waited for Yusuf to rise.

Rise Yusuf eventually did, groaning and rolling from the bed with his hair a riotous mess, rubbing his eyes and yawning. It made Nicolò’s heart ache, the familiarity of it, so sure his longing shone from his breast like the beacon atop the Pharos.

“Good morning,” Nicolò said. Yusuf hummed and made his own way to the basin, and Nicolò averted his gaze, although the sight was seared into his memory, wondrous thing that it was. Yusuf’s body was a thing of beauty, and Nicolò had to twist his fingers together to ignore it.

Yusuf sat, chin propped on his hand, and watched Nicolò through half-lidded eyes still heavy with slumber. He sipped last night’s cold tisane, though Nicolò was not sure how he could manage; to him it tasted foul.

“I am only working half a day, today,” he mumbled. “I believe Abu Omar’s family is up to some nonsense we are not invited to. I am glad of it, I cannot stand the man.”

Nicolò did chuckle at that, always ready to hear Yusuf’s latest complaints about his vexing employer. It made Nicolò feel trusted, like he was worthy of keeping Yusuf’s secrets.

“Shall I not wait for you at the docks, then?” Nicolò asked. Yusuf shook his head.

“No, come straight home.” He swallowed. “Do not bother buying food, I will see to it.”

“Very well, then.”

Nicolò dressed, fresh shirt beneath the same clothes as every day, and lingered at the door. What he would not give to embrace Yusuf as other men embraced. They made brotherhood look so easy, with kisses and held hands, and yet Nicolò knew that he could not even give in to that brotherly affection for fear that it would deepen. He could not touch even once, for he knew once he did, he would not be able to let go.

Yusuf sat at the window, hoping to catch the merest hint of evening breeze as the sun set, his face slightly warm from the wine he had indulged in in a vague and futile attempt to calm his nerves. The sounds of the city, voices and the sons of the sharp little sparrows, drifted over him. Perhaps he would spy Nicolò as he returned home.

He had a plan, this night.

He never could have imagined, those months ago, that would consider Nicolò’s homecoming as a sought-after sight, but it was. How things had changed! How easily they had settled into a warped form of domesticity, and so many more new facets of Nicolò had been revealed to him. How he gathered the crumbs from the table and set them on the windowsill for those same little sparrows. How he always gave Yusuf the larger portion of whatever they ate. How he learnt to make mint tea, and search high and low for pine nuts. How he mended things, and worked long hours at the port, and bought dates for the neighbourhood children, but always saved some for Yusuf. Small kindnesses that chipped away at Yusuf’s defences, because Nicolò lacked guile, and therefore these gestures were painfully sincere.

Yusuf had come to terms with it, his desire and longing and deep, bewildering affection. It had settled within his ribs as if it belonged there, as if every ode Yusuf had ever memorised had actually been for Nicolò, he had simply never known it. How fast the tides had turned, how easily. It no longer shamed him to realise his One was, indeed, his One.

He often wondered whether Nicolò understood how deep this affection ran. After careful observation and experimentation, Yusuf had come to the conclusion that Nicolò did not. There was, of course, the chance that Nicolò simply did not see Yusuf as Yusuf saw him, but at this point he was prepared to take a gamble, haram though gambling was. If he made a fool of himself, so be it, it was better to know than to live in uncertainty, dancing around each other.

He would know this night, at any rate.

He had counted their savings, kept well-hidden, and there was no denying it: they were so very close to their goal. Perhaps in two weeks, three if they were unlucky, there would be enough money for passage for two to Mahdia. It was exciting news!

In reality, they would have had the money now, if Yusuf had not stopped on the way home, at a specific stall. His purchase was in his lap, wrapped in a scrap of linen and tied with string, and it seemed to weigh a thousand artal. Entirely his imagination, of course, in reality it weighed very little, but he had made himself nervous. He had never been a very patient man.

Eventually Nicolò returned, but he was not alone. A small gaggle of urchins swarmed him, clamouring and laughing. A little girl sat upon his shoulders, two more children dangled from his raised arms, and Yusuf could not help but laugh at the ridiculous sight.

“Nico! Nico!” they called, tugging at him, giggling and singing silly rhymes, and Yusuf wondered if he would ever be able to called Nicolò such a thing.

At the door to their own tenement, Nicolò lowered his arms, and his decorations reluctantly let him go. He hoisted the tiny girl from his shoulders and set her on the ground. They all remained, hovering expectantly. They knew what was coming.

Nicolò pulled a small parcel from his bag, and opened it. Dates, as ever, and the children each took one (more politely than most children would, greedy little things, and Yusuf put that down to Nicolò’s surprisingly good influence).

“Thank you!” they chorused. He nodded, and waved after them as they dashed away. The image put Yusuf in mind of his nephews and nieces, and how easily they would take to Nicolò as another uncle. He had to draw in a shuddering breath to calm his pounding heart.

Nicolò headed inside. His foot would soon be on the stair, and in truth Yusuf did not know what to do with himself. He set the parcel aside, and then picked it up again. He scanned the table, laden with good food he had spent the afternoon preparing (mostly buying, in truth), even wine, making certain it was perfect. Was it? It looked it. He moved a cup slightly to the left, and then moved it back. He once again put down the parcel, and then moved it, and then picked it up once more.

The door opened. He almost dropped the parcel.

Nicolò stopped in the doorway, his eyes widening when he took in the laden table.

“Are we celebrating?” he asked, half-joking. Yusuf swallowed.

“Perhaps so,” he said, gesturing for Nicolò to sit. “I have good news.”

“Oh?”

Nicolò waited for Yusuf to serve himself, and was surprised when Yusuf served him first. Nicolò ate almost everything and never complained, and so it had been difficult to intuit what it was he truly liked, but Yusuf thought he had managed. He filled Nicolò’s plate with some of everything and handed it to him, which Nicolò accepted with a murmured word of thanks. He looked slightly lost.

“Yes!” Yusuf said, sitting back down after pouring them both wine and watering it down. They both prayed, separate things yet harmonious things, before Yusuf continued. “We are close to our goal!”

“How close?” Nicolò asked.

“Two weeks, I believe, if we continue to be frugal!” He raised his cup in a toast, which Nicolò mirrored, and then he glanced at the food, lips twitching.

“Well, perhaps it would have been better to wait until we had reached the goal. It could have waited two more weeks.”

Yusuf reached to the side, drawing the parcel closer to him with one hand and he sipped his wine for fortitude with the other. “I do not think it could have,” he said. “I have something for you.”

Nicolò seemed even more surprised at that, and he stared at the parcel when Yusuf held it out to him. He brushed food from his fingers and, with great hesitance, took it.

“What is it?”

It was a struggle to reply, the words catching on Yusuf’s throat. Another drink. “You will know if you open it.”

He watched Nicolò like a hawk as he did, untying the string and parting the folds of linen. Yusuf heard his gasp, and the smallest noise that followed, something full of longing.

“Yusuf, I cannot… you should not have.”

He held up the agate pendant from the stall, staring at it as if captivated. It spun lazily on its cord, catching the dying light from the window and the oil lamp on the table, and Nicolò swallowed. He looked past it, right into Yusuf’s eyes, and his own were a storm that Yusuf could not fully interpret.

“I wanted to,” Yusuf replied. “You admired it, and therefore I bought it.”

Nicolò now held it in his palm, but his gaze never left Yusuf’s. It was Yusuf that had to lower his head, focusing on his plate, for Nicolò’s eyes were burning into his soul.

“In truth I do not see why you admire it so much,” he muttered. “The colour is plain.”

He could have cast himself from the rooftop. Such idiocy! Such dismissal! For one so supposedly well-versed in poetry, he did enjoy saying the most asinine things possible and ruining the moment.

Nicolò was caressing the polished stone with his thumb. “It is not plain,” he murmured. “It… it is the colour of your eyes.”

Yusuf’s heart almost ceased to beat. Could one die from words alone? All he could do then was stare, the flickering lamplight making shadows dance on the walls, and Nicolò’s eyes were aflame, like the setting sun on the sea.

Yusuf could contain himself no longer.

He rounded the table, kneeling beside Nicolò, but then he hesitated. Fear and desire warred within him, and neither, it seemed, were gaining the upper hand. The wine had helped none. Nicolò eyed Yusuf’s outstretched hands, his lips slightly parted, and he had far more bravery than Yusuf, because he took them. He cradled them in his own, and pressed his forehead to them.

“I have never begged you for forgiveness as I should have,” he said, voice shaking. “But I would follow you unto the ends of the Earth, Yusuf, if you but asked.”

Yusuf heard himself gasp, and desire won out. He took his hands away, and raised Nicolò’s head with them, locking their gazes. He closed the distance between them, the last isba left, and kissed him.

Nicolò stiffened, and then melted into him, letting out a sound of such agonised longing that Yusuf thought his heart might break with it. His hands hovered, unsure of themselves, and so Yusuf pulled back, and took them, and pressed them to his breast.

Nicolò’s eyes were half-lidded, his lips wet, his face flushed. He glowed in the lamplight, and Yusuf was not strong enough to resist. He kissed him again, tilting his head to deepen it, and Nicolò tentatively imitated him, moaning when Yusuf made the kiss deeper still.

Yusuf had kissed before, yes, but not enough to develop any great technique. Nicolò most definitely had not. He was clumsy, uncertain, and yet immensely hungry for it, and Yusuf revelled in the thought that they would learn together. Yusuf threaded his fingers into Nicolò’s soft hair, pressed himself closer, and Nicolò responded, his hands leaving Yusuf’s chest to wind around him, holding them against each other.

The heat of him, even through layers of clothing, the closeness of him, the scent of him, the feel of him beneath Yusuf’s palms… It was everything he had longed for, everything he had never suspected he might want, but did. A balm on a burn, a poultice on a wound, soothing to the soul. He had tasted what he had longed for, and found it sweet indeed.

Nicolò was the first to pull back, drawing in a deep, shuddering breath, his chest heaving, and Yusuf was breathless too. Yusuf could feel the evidence of their wanting between them, and it sent a thrill of mad desire through him, anticipation mounting. They stared at each other, wordless, lost in it, until Nicolò spoke.

“I have never…” He faltered, the heat of his cheeks evident even in the lamplight.

“Nor have I,” Yusuf confessed. He faked worldliness, in truth. He might have seen some of it, but there parts he had never been able, or not wanted to venture to. He had lusted after others, of course – what man didn’t? – but he had never…. “I was waiting for my Soulmate.”

Nicolò grew still then, made a noise in the back of his throat, and set his hands, almost reverently, on the side of Yusuf’s head. He tilted their foreheads together, his eyes slipping closed.

“Again,” he murmured. Yusuf could not help the smile that spread across his face.

“My Soulmate,” he said. “Ya rouhi. Given to me.”

He felt Nicolò tremble, and set his hands on his arms, steadying him.

“I am free to be by your side, then?” he asked, quiet, full of hope.

“I would not have you anywhere else,” Yusuf replied fiercely. Nicolò sighed, and his head dropped into Yusuf’s neck, his arms around him now. Yusuf could do nothing but hold him, and would not have wished anything else anyway.

He heard Nicolò murmur something in the tongue of Genoa, and with a thrill he felt lips on the skin of his neck, a trail of kisses rising until they found his mouth more. Yusuf sank into it again, moaning, revelling in the softness of Nicolò’s lips and tongue, the strength of his body.

They parted for breath again – how inconvenient, how disruptive, that the body still required air while kissing – but not very far. When Nicolò spoke, Yusuf could feel the movement of his lips.

“You need not wait any longer, then,” he said. “For I am here, now.” There was a smile in his words, Yusuf could hear it, something bright and lovely and never heard before.

Yusuf rose, taking Nicolò’s hands. It was, of course, not great distance to where they slept, given how small their room was, but it felt like another world. The anticipation of it, the knowing where it was to lead as they disrobed, made Yusuf feel as though he were in a dream.

The lamplight softened the edges of Nicolò’s body, turning its pallor warm and mellow, highlighting the junctures where sun-kissed skin met hidden. Yusuf reached out, fingertips trailing from the base of his throat, over his breast, and Nicolò caught his hand, pressed it and held it there, in the centre of his chest. Yusuf could feel the heady thundering of his heart beneath his palm. There was a simmering, consuming heat in Nicolò’s eyes that drew Yusuf deeper into them, and Yusuf longed to have this vision during the day, in the light of the sun, no shadows to obscure all the most coveted parts before him. Nicolò was beautiful in the lamplight, he would be divine under the sun.

And then Nicolò was upon him, and all Yusuf could do was willingly surrender.

The desire surging through Nicolò would have been enough to drive a lesser man to lunacy. He may have been innocent of the physical act itself, but he had knowledge of the theory – it was hard to share the road and camp with so many men and not see them sin with the varied strumpets that followed (for a holy pilgrimage, there really had been an inordinate amount of sinning). And Nicolò would now join their ranks after decades of purity.

He was surprised to discover it did not affect him overmuch.

He fell on Yusuf like an animal starved. His hands required skin, his lips yearned for Yusuf’s. There was no finesse, only hunger.

Yusuf did not seem to mind. He accepted it, even welcomed it, with noises of pleasure that drove themselves through Nicolò like his sword once had. Nicolò gasped when Yusuf’s hand alighted on him, so longed-for and yet almost too much. And then, Yusuf’s soft lips and tongue on his skin, contrasted with the scratch of his beard… Nicolò faltered, his knees weak.

How they made it to the pallet, Nicolò was not entirely sure. He was at once both within and without his body, feeling everything a thousandfold and drifting, scarcely able to comprehend this miraculous reality. He was glad of the deep shadows, for this meant he was not overwhelmed with the sight of Yusuf’s loveliness. Had he seen it before? Of course, it tormented his dreams when they were not full of those two strange women and their adventures, but this was different.

His hands wandered, spread over the warm planes of Yusuf’s back, tracing the strength and coarse hair of his arms. He could plunge his fingers into those thick, glorious curls and guide Yusuf’s lips back to his own to drink his fill.

And he wanted more. He wanted more, his stiff cock insistent between himself and Yusuf, and he was equal parts wanton and ashamed. His hips rolled as they did when he allowed himself the sin of touching himself, and he gasped. His cock slid across Yusuf’s flesh, his own hardness, and Nicolò dug his fingers into the meat of Yusuf’s back and sought that pleasure again.

Yusuf moaned into his skin, and his hand reached between them, almost fumbling in his need, and seized Nicolò’s length. Nicolò arched into the touch with a choked moan, wondering, distantly, if their voices would carry on the night air, through the open window. Would anyone hear? Would anyone care?

Yusuf drove out all thoughts of anything but him when his hand moved, slow, almost agonising at first. Nicolò dripped with it, bliss rising fast within him. Since when had he last touched himself? He could not remember, and now that most sinfully wonderful of sensations was multiplied, simply through it being Yusuf. Yusuf’s hand moving on him, caressing him, his touch eased by Nicolò’s wetness, his thumb stroking the head. Nicolò watched, for a moment, and then found he could not – it was too much, too overwhelming. Instead he reached up, fingers delving into Yusuf’s thick hair, and kept Yusuf’s eyes upon his.

Yusuf kissed him again, graceless and with clashing teeth. His hand was hot around Nicolò, and Nicolò thought of the visions of saints, of holy ecstasies and the piercing of the Holy Spirit as he canted his hips up and stilled, spending himself with a broken cry of Yusuf’s name.

His head fell back against the pillow as he panted, limbs turning liquid as Yusuf gently let him go with a soft hum.

“Ah… fast,” he remarked, and Nicolò burnt with shame.

“Forgive me, I—”

Yusuf shook his head and lowered himself to Nicolò’s soiled belly. Eyes burning, he licked away Nicolò’s seed, humming as if it were some manna from Heaven, some sweet honey, and Nicolò quaked beneath his tongue. To be wanted in every part like that, desired with no bounds or limits… Nicolò did not know what to do with himself.

“I was chaste, until you,” Nicolò gasped. “And yet this sin is the closest to God I have ever felt.”

Yusuf looked at him, blinked bright eyes, lips slightly parted, wet and decadent. The colour of it all overwhelmed him: the night-dark cascade around his lovely face, the shining agate of his eyes, the duskiness of his warm skin. Yusuf was the Earth, the Night, the Sun, the Stars. Nicolò had never seen such a vision before.

“Oh, if I could give you all the poetry I have,” Yusuf murmured, “I would pour it over you like wine.” He surged up and kissed Nicolò, deep, ravening, a contrast with the gentle cradle of his arms. Nicolò could taste himself on Yusuf’s tongue, and it was not as powerful or sublime as the way their hearts beat in unison.

Their bodies moved sinuously against each other, and Yusuf was, of course, still hard with desire. Nicolò’s hand wandered, knowing before he did what he wanted, and found Yusuf’s cock as Yusuf had found his. Yusuf gasped into their kiss, falling into a moan Nicolò eagerly devoured as his hand moved, almost tentative, at first. Yusuf’s hips bucked into the hold, settling into a steady rhythm of give and take. And through it Nicolò held him close, whispered endearments in Zeneize, Latin, clumsy Greek and wishing he knew any in Yusuf’s own language.

He endured longer than Nicolò did, and Nicolò vaguely made a note to work on that – if this could last longer, it would be a joy beyond comprehension. After long minutes of Yusuf’s beautiful moans, he stilled and came, hot and slick over Nicolò’s hand and belly. It mingled with what little was left of Nicolò’s own seed, and that was its own thrill. Yusuf slumped against him, nuzzling at his throat, and Nicolò kissed every part of his face and head he could reach.

Experimentally he raised his soiled hand and, as Yusuf had done, licked it. He made a face.

“Unpleasant?” Yusuf asked, laughing softly.

“Deeply,” Nicolò said. Nevertheless, he tried again. “Perhaps an acquired taste. Or I taste different to you, who knows.”

Much to be learnt. This was a new world unexplored, and Nicolò had every intention of charting its every path.

“I will have to go to confession,” he muttered.

“You Nasara and your bitter joylessness,” Yusuf mumbled, but it was without heat, merely a jest. They lay pressed together, bodies cooling despite the heat of their closeness, legs entwined, and Nicolò allowed his fingers to trace circles on Yusuf’s back. There was, probably, some discomfort to be found if they slept unwashed like this, but he found he had little inclination to move.

“Do you look forward to returning home?” Nicolò asked eventually. Yusuf was quiet, but Nicolò knew the tone of his breathing in sleep, and knew he was still awake.

Yusuf moved slightly, brushing Nicolò’s skin with the tip of his nose. “Yes, but I also fear it.”

“From the stories you tell, your family loves you deeply. I am certain they would embrace you with joy whatever the circumstances of your return.” Nicolò took a deep breath. He did not want to speak the words he was about to, but he also knew they were the right ones to say. “If it is me that makes you worry, then perhaps–”

Yusuf raised his head then, and his look was stern enough that Nicolò shut his mouth with a snap.

“I will not go without you, Nicolò,” he said, as if nothing could ever dissuade him, and Nicolò could not deny the leap of his heart at that. “No, it is our… other gift, our secret gift, that vexes me. Our curse, if you will.” He sighed. “We do not know how it has changed us beyond our constant return from death. What if… what if we have gained long life? What if we remain in the world unchanged for decades and my family age, wither and die? Can I share this with them, or am I fated to lose them?”

Nicolò was quiet. He thought of his own family, at least of Little Caterina, and his old friends at the pieve. He thought of his parishioners. Death came for them all, but what if death had abandoned them for good? What if they were fated to wander the Earth, merely the two of them, forevermore?

“I have been beset with queer dreams,” he said.

Yusuf frowned at him, but did not speak.

“Since Jerusalem,” he continued. “Two women. More female demons, than anything. They fight like furies and lay together as man and wife— as Soulmates.”

There was a long moment of quiet.

“I dream of them also,” Yusuf murmured.

Nicolò’s eyes widened, his hand stilling on Yusuf’s skin. “A woman with a strange axe?”

“And an archer in red.”

Yusuf sat up then, and Nicolò almost whimpered at the loss of his warmth and his weight. But he did not go far, instead merely taking Nicolò’s hand as he thought.

“Perhaps they are not simply dreams,” he said. “Perhaps we seeing them as they are, in the world. Perhaps we are not alone after all.”

Nicolò rose on his elbow. “Mayhap there is a reason for this. For our undying. God saw fit to give us each other as Soulmates, yes, but why then would He take death from us? Perhaps the women hold answers. We should seek them out.”

Yusuf nodded slowly, but then frowned. “The world is vast.”

“I believe we will have the time to search,” Nicolò replied. Yusuf looked at him, his eyes warm in the lamplight.

“I would still like to see my family. At least for a while.” He reached out, a hand pressed to Nicolò’s cheek. “I would like them to know you.”

Nicolò turned his head, pressing a kiss to Yusuf’s warm palm. “Of course. Mahdia, and then… wherever.” He had a feeling they would find the women somehow, whether they actively looked or not.

Yusuf smiled at him, and Nicolò was certain he would never tire of such a sight. He bent down and kissed Nicolò, and Nicolò drew him closer, into his arms. They lay like that, entwined, until sleep found them, and after that the dawn.

In the East, one woman awoke, stretching the aches of the hard ground from her back. The other stirred, slower to wake, and so the first waited easily, enjoying the freshness of the morning air and the birdsong in the trees around them. One of their horses whinnied softly.

“They have figured it out,” the second woman said, her voice still thick with sleep, and she yawned.

“Figured out what?” the first said, smirking.

“Many things, it seems,” the second said with cheer. “I look forward to having little brothers again.”

“As annoying as they are?” the first said with false nonchalance.

“You will whip them into shape soon enough!” the second said, and got to her feet with a brisk hop. “Come, I wish to make it to Samarkand today! We can buy them gifts!”

“We should head to Constantinople,” the first woman said, also rising, but with a leopard’s grace. “Everyone always ends up in Constantinople.”

“You despise Constantinople.”

“Constantinople is the urban equivalent of a useful idiot,” the first woman said, pragmatically. She was enjoying her companion’s merriment, and watched her almost dance to the river they had camped on the bank of.

“In any case,” she said, “they should prepare, for Andromache and Quynh are coming to find them!”

Chapter Text

Thank you, everyone, for reading and enjoying this! I know it’s been a whirlwind upload schedule, but I wanted to get this finished and posted before the sequel comes out and I lose all my will to live. Who knows whether I will write more for this fandom, time will tell. I was stuck on this for a very long time, hovering in the rock hyrax village for ages and ages without knowing how to go forward, and a lot of people helped me make this fic what it is. I’ve thanked them in the first author’s note. Muah, love you all!

As usual with a fic like this, there is a lot to summarise. I was in a rush, so my research could have been better, I admit, but I did my utmost best to get things as right as I could. Shoutout to literally everyone who helped me with access to papers and articles that otherwise would have been behind ludicrous paywalls.

I have already spoken about the language in the first author’s note, and I wouldn’t change it anyway. It was simply how they spoke, and words such as ‘Saracen’ did not carry the same connotation they do today. I am not Nicolò di Genova or a medieval European Christian in general, and so use of certain words does not reflect my opinions. That should go without saying. To write is to inhabit the mindset of the characters. These are not modern men in the modern world, and they do not comprehend the world as we do.

Attempting to figure out the theology of a world where soulmates are a real, tangible thing was a headache, but I live to overthink. There was no way I could simply slap a superficial aesthetic on the thing and call it a day, not with how obsessive my mind gets. How did it impact people’s lives? How would theologians and scholars and ulama consider it and discuss it? In the end I probably made a huge mess, but I did my best to research everything and make sure it made sense. I wanted there to be a stark contrast between how Catholics view the concept and how Muslims view the concept, but also for there to be enough opinions between different people that it felt like a three-dimensional concept. I am neither Catholic nor Muslim, so of course there will always be something I trip over, but rest assured it was most definitely not done out of malice. If there are any holes in my research, it was purely accidental.

It remains difficult to parse why the fuck Yusuf al-Kaysani, a man from Ifriqiya, was in Jerusalem in 1099. In that time the Berber Zirid dynasty, vassals to the Fatimids, had broken with the Fatimid Caliphate and was ruling Ifriqiya independently, and the Fatimids had withdrawn to Egypt. Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine was under Fatimid control, having been taken back from the ever-splintering Seljuk Turks (who were threatening the constantly shrinking Byzantium and were the reason Constantinople called the Pope for aid). The Fatimids attempted to broker peace with the advancing Prince’s Crusade, but that didn’t go to plan, because the Crusaders wanted Jerusalem or nothing. Why the fuck would Yusuf be there? Who knows! Either take this fic as happening in an alternate universe where the Zirids never split from the Fatimids and therefore Yusuf joined the army, or view Yusuf as a hot-headed fool who ran off to war. I have seen other versions where he is a spy, or simply there by chance on a trade journey. All we can do is speculate. The history is far more complicated than I think Greg Rucka even bothered considering.

As for Nicolò, everyone knows, at this point, about the ships of Guglielmo Embriaco which landed at Jaffa and provided the wood for the siege engines that took down Jerusalem (because the defenders had cut down every tree in the vicinity). That seems too late for Nicolò to arrive, so I have placed him on the Genoese fleet that arrived at the port of Saint Symeon in 1097, just in time for the Siege of Antioch. It gives him enough time to have participated, but does not require him to have travelled over land. There is also the prickly subject of his backstory: much like Yusuf’s, it makes next to no sense. Why would a priest leave his parish and head to war overseas, especially as a warrior? Who knows! Who sponsored him, since maille and a sword cost money? Who knows! I made the executive decision to have his (godawful) father be his sponsor. I also do not believe Nicolò participated in massacring any innocents in Jerusalem itself, I feel that that would simply have been against who he is as a person, and also too far a line to cross for there to be any possibility of reconciliation between him and Yusuf. Nicolò was there to kill soldiers, not women and children, and he stuck to it.

I have mentioned the Battle of Ascalon in the end note of chapter three, but it really was a parade of idiocy on behalf of the Fatimids. They didn’t set up enough guards around the camp or send out scouts, and the Crusaders took them by surprise. I contemplated having them meet the army marching up from Egypt, but I decided against it simply because it would have been a headache, and compromised with the ships. I tried very hard to find out how exactly the Fatimid army got there from Egypt, but the best answer I could find out was that the commanders would likely have gone by ship, and the bulk of the army on foot. It was also true that the area was positively heaving with people: refugees, Fatimid escapees, random Crusader patrols, bandits. It is entirely likely Nicoló and Yusuf would have had multiple run-ins that resulted in their deaths before they reached Gaza, and would not have had such an easy time of it. Shoutout to Luke from the We’re Not So Different podcast for a lot of this info, lol.

This does lead me into distances in Palestine: it takes a day of marching for an army to get from Jerusalem to the coast. That’s no time at all, honestly, Palestine is small. I’ve attempted to figure out the miles and how long it would have taken from Gaza to Egypt, but it is very, very hard to research anything on Gazan geography right now. From the River to the Sea.

Alexandria itself was on the decline during this period, but it was still an important and lively cosmopolitan city, which is why I made it their end goal. Enough different people lived together without too much worry that it would be good for Nicolò to be immersed in that culture (al-Andalus is gonna rock his world). All in all he unlearns things rather quickly, but that is a shortcoming on my part as a writer. Someone with more time and patience than me can, has or might do it better. I attempted to search for street and district names for Gaza, Damietta and Alexandria, but it was impossible to find, so I made shit up. Even I am not immune to that.

For those wondering why Nicolò speaks Genoese and not Italian… well, he wouldn’t know Italian, mainly because Italian didn’t exist (because Italy itself didn’t exist as a political entity) and Dante hadn’t been born yet: no Divine Comedy, no Florentine to become Standard Italian! Yusuf, conversely, speaks Modern Standard Arabic because it is agony trying to find a Derja dictionary. Simplification to make my life easier.

The Via Maris leads to Tennis and then down to Cairo, not directly to Damietta, but I suppose there were still smaller roads. There probably would also have been more towns and numerous caravanserai, smaller or larger, along the way, but the danger of Bedouin attacks was a real thing. The various local governors should have been dealing with that, but we can put the lack of oversight down to the turmoil brought on by the European invasion. The razzia in the fic is particularly bloody, and I can only presume it’s because it’s a raid on a random caravan rather than an organised raid on a settlement.

Saint Bago of Cologne…

Sorry guys, he’s fake. And tbh his story is probably apocryphal anyway, meaning he is one of hundreds of saints who didn’t really exist. Which means he’s a double fake. What an idiot, though.

Re: agate… hm. I do believe it’s more likely to be chalcedony, but geology was not an exact science back in the day, and “chalcedony” didn’t flow as nicely as a title. We’re stumbling ever further into who give a shit territory, friends!

Finally, no use of the word “crusade” because THEY DIDN’T USE IT. It is a much later invention from after they were already over and done with. During the First Crusade they called themselves “pilgrims” on “pilgrimage”.

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