Denial

The One Reigns above me. The rest dissolves within.

“The dye dissolves well. Thank you.”

Adina submerges more of her clothes when I am near the silk market. The last to be washed is a headcap, and Adina’s eyes become misty. She pulls a torn vellum map from her old headcap.

“Must have been ripped when the Reis found it,” she comments.

There is a cry that precedes tears falling. Adina throws the vellum, and I churn the calfskin. The iron ink does not impede me. The remaining pieces are elsewhere. The other map, which Adina paints with gum, reaches Liguria.

“Why!?”

The man they call Lord Spinola trembles. He is holding a rope tightly with one hand. The other, Adina’s map. Just like me, Spinola fails to scrape off the lead dye.

“The rhumb line leads nowhere!” He chokes. I embrace Spinola’s companion coldly. “Curse that Tisseyre woman!”

One mizzenmast. Two decks. Then the entire ship. The flotsam weighs me not. The undercurrent muffles their curses. Their flesh clogs one of the shark's gills. Their blood nourishes the seaweed.

“Free seaweed!” The Fieschi yelps. A companion pelts him. “That hurt! Is that the map?”

“A fig, moron!” The other Fieschi kicks a crate. “Who in his right mind thinks a map will be hidden in a waste dump!?”

“The Spinolas did, when they found those charred remains near the fondaco.”

The second one pours vinegar onto the shore. “No maps. Only quarrels between families. Those landlubber Spinolas… I hope they drown well.”

The Spinolas do not drown well. Their blood clots.

The Nasrid require no ritual bath to wash the clots on their martyrs, but their sound blows the drying basins.

“We need to have funds!” One of the officers breaks down. His tears lack salt because of starvation. “What is King Muhammad doing?”

“He is sick. Granada needs water.” The subordinate has no tears to shed. “Castile finds this a perfect chance.”

“Sick again,” the officer mutters. “The king deprives us of drink, while he builds those stupid fountains.”

“The current king is a usurper.”

“Yusuf will ask for more war!” The officer slaps the empty basin. “He must be composing poetry now, safely coddled in Salobrena!”

Though the Salobrena cistern contains plenty of water, it reflects Yusuf’s scowl.

“Share the water with the people,” he announces. “You are quenching one man’s throat with the whole town’s thirst.”

The wardens comply; their footsteps trouble the cistern. One remains, shivering against my cold.

“A hearing will commence here next week, my prince,” the warden says. “Three charges on the same man. They need you.”

Yusuf dismisses him with a hand. “Have the jurists assess it. Did they starve?”

“Soon,” the warden says, head low. “The charges are brought upon a corsair named Kashif.”

The water goes from stillness to agitation with Yusuf’s laughter.

“He was captured?” Yusuf wipes a joyful tear. “On what charges?”

“The severest charge has your complicity in it. They suspect that you will usurp King Muhammad using him.”

“If sharing a wet nurse with his sister is a complicity, then do arrest him! Along with the rest of my milk-siblings!”

Yusuf outpaces the warden to the balustrade by the cliff. The eastward wind brings briny air to us. He unfurls a poem, scratches out the words, then throws the whole poem below. Saltiness precedes me in corroding the letters.

“Take this seriously.” The warden catches up with Yusuf, panting. “Depending on your testimony, my prince, the whole Al-Surad crew will be killed!”

Yusuf purses his lips.

“A shrike is unkillable.”

One shrike misjudges a water surface; it drowns. The vessel it dies in shudders from a chaplain’s anger.

“Another request for absolution!” the Chaplain snaps at the sweating clerk. “Which sin is it now, again? I swear…”

“From a Tisseyre, Capellan.” The shrike’s corpse distracts the clerk. His mouth waters. “Lost her property, gained the Crown’s remission, sponsored by Genoa, but lacked faith.”

The Chaplain snorts. “She worships money. What does she bring?”

“Compensation money, Capellan. From a murdered Mercedarian.”

“In return?”

“One letter.”

Kashif throws the letter. The wave devours it before it reaches the surface.

“Fetters!”

Al-Surad shakes as the Reis crashes her deck. Rust eats the iron fetters as they close on Kashif’s legs. The guards pull him up.

“What amuses you?”

Sandrina squints. She cannot see past Kashif's smile. She only sees Kashif peering down, at ease, finding Sandrina’s letters are now shreds.

“No one will implicate you now.”

The Nasrid officer scoffs. “We made her read her own letter.”

“Yes, yes,” Kashif says, inhaling sharply, “she achieved greatness by telling you I am holding back the spoils. That’s what you see.”

The water dissolves different records than what Sandrina divulges. I care not for the mismatch.

“Salobrena will be your trial ground.” The officer spits. “You compromise your king.”

The chain’s screech drowns out the rest as they drag Kashif past Sandrina.

“I will make sure people remember the Reis,” Sandrina interrupts.

“Qudamah?”

“Not your successor!” Sandrina taps the deck. “You, Kashif. Your name will resound across the ocean.”

A stillness precedes the water’s remembrance.

“The King is Worthier to be remembered. I am a slave, obeying His Command.”

For that, I care. Sandrina cares about whose name survives the ocean. I care not; all dissolve. She sounds triumphant for asking Kashif to be remembered. It matters not. Kashif throws; Sandrina writes. She has forgotten the ripples her letter makes. For that, she will pay. Kashif asks to be dissolved, and so shall he be. Sandrina wants her name, and so shall her ripples return, as Sandrina has written.

As was writ in Water.