Chapter 24 · Untitled Chapter

The silence in the wing was not an absence of sound, but an accumulation of weight. Across the low table, the brass burner held only cooling ash, though the dry trace of Cambodian oud still clung to the silk cushions and the dark hem of my abaya.

Bandar did not return to his seat at once. He stood beside the heavy carved console where his phone lay face-down on the wool runner, his posture upright and unbroken beneath the immaculate white thobe. In the majlis beyond the double doors, my uncle would still be calculating the cost of this standstill; here, within the locked perimeter of the wing, there was only the cold clarity of survival.

"They will not wait until the morning clearing without testing the perimeter again," I said, my voice steady in the quiet room. "My uncle’s clerk did not construct that recording from thin air. He pulled the cadence from archived calls."

Bandar turned his head slowly, his dark eyes fixing upon me. "Your uncle’s desk holds four years of incoming dispatches. Which ones did they splice?"

"The autumn ledgers," I answered, stepping toward the low table where he had laid the printed transcription sheets.