Chapter 13 · Chapter 13

The bolt went over with the sound of a sentence being finished by somebody else.

I stayed facing the shutter. The wood was warm under my palm, and out beyond it the street was going about its Thursday, and behind me a lock had just been thrown from the corridor and the corridor had carried the footsteps away and left the rest of the house standing on the other side of a door, deciding.

“Now,” he said.

I turned around.

“Now what.”

“Now there is no hall.” Nawaf had not moved from the low table. He had not gone to the door to test it, had not put his palm flat on the panel so I could watch him being calm. “What is decided about me is decided in this room. They have made the room the majlis.”

“Then they have done you a kindness.” I came away from the shutter. “A hall is a great many mouths. A room is only one.”

“One,” he said. “Yours.”

The dallah was still on the tray, and one of the two finjan was full and going cold.