Chapter 11 · Chapter 11

The tray did not move.

Three men had looked at it, and three men had decided, in the same small silence, that the first hand to reach for it would be the first hand to lose something. So it stayed where the brass had put it, face up, four digits and a gap and the rest of them, patient as a debt.

I remained standing. My abaya was closed to the collar and my shaila had not slipped, and I made certain of both without seeming to, the way a woman checks a thing that has already been taken from her once and handed back with a new weight on it.

Then Marzouq set his finjan down. Not on the tray. Beside it, at the edge of the saucer, and the gahwa in it had gone so long untouched that a skin had formed across the surface.

"Kalas," he said, and the word went through the majlis like a door shutting in another part of the house.

He crossed the carpet without hurry. He did not take my wrist. He did not take my hand.