Chapter 7 · Untitled Chapter

The corridor outside the majlis still smelled of the oud that had been burning in it, or perhaps my own collar had held it, and I stood a moment with my wrist turned up and the paper flat along the inside of it, warm from my skin now and no more dangerous than a folded hand.

The steward came after me with the ledger under his arm and stopped three paces off. I said, Ya'teek al-afiyah, and he said the Sheikh had come into the house.

I did not ask which sheikh. There is one whose arrival changes the temperature of a room, and every servant in that passage was already walking differently.

The doors opened for me before I reached them, and I understood that I had not been released. I had been returned.

The hall had not emptied. The pots had been taken away and the trays set down again with the dates at the rim of every cup, and the men had rearranged themselves the way a room rearranges when someone has come in and said nothing at all.