Chapter 8 · Chapter 8

The chair by the north door creaked, and the clerk's pen stopped.

The elder of the house rose in stages, the way old men rise — hands on the arms first, then the back, then the whole of him — and when he was up he did not cross the carpet.

He walked the perimeter instead, behind the men seated along the left wall, letting them lean back to let him pass, and stopped where the light of the three lamps made an honest circle on the rug. Nobody had offered him the floor. He took it anyway, and the room gave it to him, because he was older than the room.

"We have a car," he said. His voice was dry and it carried. "We have a lady with no face. We have a wall, a road, and an hour." He looked down at the clerk and not at the sadr. "What we do not have is the house. Every woman who was under this roof tonight has a name, and a name that is not read is a name that is being kept for later. I will not have it kept. We go down the roster —