Chapter 14 · Chapter 14

The order went out of the room before he did.

He did not raise his voice for it. He said it once, to the scribe, at the threshold of the anteroom—close the volume, seal it, and the key comes to me and to no one else—and then he said the second thing past the scribe's shoulder, into the hall, which was that the majlis was finished and the household would retire to its own quarters.

Then he stood aside and let the hall clear.

It happened in layers. First the clerks, because paper leaves before people; they came through with their folders held against their chests and their pens already capped, and one of them looked at me the way a man looks at a name he has recorded and wishes he had never set down.

Then the second row, cousins I have known since they were boys who could not keep their hands off a doorframe. Then the older men, who take longer, because an elder departing a majlis must greet four others on his way to the threshold and no one is permitted to hurry him.

The mabkhara went last.