Chapter 38 · Chapter 38

The heavy cedar of our outer door struck the stone lintel with the dull, hollow finality of an iron weight. Behind me, Maryama dropped the horizontal crossbeam into its grooved iron cradles, her palms scraping the splintered wood without a sound. She did not weep. In the dim threshold of the Albaicín house, grief was an indulgence that neither our dead nor our imprisoned could afford.

"The street is clearing," Ali said from the narrow upper embrasure, his voice steady beneath the forced quiet. "The bailiffs turned south toward the river with the carts. They have posted two pikemen at the corner of the bathhouse, but they will not climb the slope until dusk."

"Then dusk is our limit," I said. I pulled my outer mantle tighter over my shoulders, knotting the coarse wool at the breast. The scent of trampled dust and bitter oil from the square still clung to the fabric, but beneath it lay the familiar, dry fragrance of the courtyard: crushed rue, dried mallow, and the cool plaster of walls that had stood through three generations of siege.

Saad’s blood had dried upon the stones of the plaza, but the silence he had purchased remained ours