Chapter 9 · Chapter 9

The corridor was longer than the majlis had taught me it was.

Twelve paces of runner lay between the hall's door and the door he held open, and I had written myself along every one of them. The pile of the carpet kept the mark of my heels and then the flat of my feet, where I had stepped out of my shoes at the majlis threshold.

Any woman in that hall could have read my whole evening off the floor without lifting her eyes. I did not mind the floor. I minded that I had put the shoes there myself. The oud had followed me the first six paces and then given up, the way a house's perfume gives up at the edge of the part it keeps for itself.

"Dalal."

My uncle had not come past the arch. He stood where the majlis light thinned and the corridor's own lamp took over, which is the exact point at which a man may be heard inside the private wing and still swear he never entered it. He had found that line quickly. Men of his sort always do.

"Come back and sit," he said.