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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.