Chapter 28 · Chapter 28

The bolts were drawn across the heavy cedar of our inner chamber before the third hour of night had spent its chill against the mountain.

Outside, beyond the whitewashed walls of the Albaicín, the patrol horses struck iron shoes to cobblestone at measured intervals, their passage a dry, ringing menace that never crossed the sill of Abu Jaafar’s courtyard.

Inside, behind the double-mortised beam Saad had lowered with his own hands, the room held only the warmth of a clay brazier and the pungent sharpness of crushed chamomile and dried rue.

The pain had deepened after dusk, tightening across my lower back like an iron cord, but no sound escaped into the passage. In this house, breath was measured with the care of salt.

One learns early that walls in Granada had grown ears since the grandfather’s ledgers were buried beneath the flagstones; the cries of women could draw inquisitive glances as swiftly as the scent of forbidden ink.

I gripped the edge of the low wooden divan, my knuckles whitening against the wool coverlet, exhaling slowly through parted lips until the knot yielded.

Saad did not leave the room.