Chapter 10 · Chapter 10

The room behind the lamp was smaller than the hall had built it to be. A sedir against the far wall with its cushions squared by a hand that liked corners. A brass-bound cabinet, older than the house, its key not in the lock but on the ring at his belt. One window, shuttered. The air held Oud that had been left too long in a closed place, and under it something drier, like paper kept in the dark.

"They told me you buried it," I said.

"They told you a great deal." He turned the key and set the cabinet's door back. Inside, on a folded cloth, one page, and the page was not a confession and not a deed. It was a list. Names in a column, in an old clerk's hand, and eleven lines down, mine, written before I was born into it.

"So the trace is a name," I said.

"The trace is whose name it is." He closed the cabinet without locking it, which was the first thing all evening he had done carelessly. "Now you know what the hall was buying with your reputation. You may take that to them at dawn.