Chapter 8 · Chapter 8

The hour came without anyone in that house announcing it: the gate, the attendant's steps on the courtyard stones, then both leaves of the majlis door swung the whole way back. He had asked for the doors to stand as they had stood the night before, and they did, so that anything spoken in that room could be heard from the arcade.

Saad was already in the head seat. The long table in front of him was empty. No file, no envelope, nothing squared and waiting the way it had been when he asked me for proof. He had cleared it himself, or ordered it cleared, and the bare wood was the first thing he said to me.

I set nothing down either. My hands were empty because I had come with nothing to put in them.

The attendant brought the tray and placed it on the side table instead of on the one between us, pouring high and thin so the finjan took less than half.