Chapter 8 · Chapter 8

The majlis emptied the way a room empties when the matter has been decided and no one wants to be the last man seen standing near it.

My uncle rose first. Everyone rose with him — the cousins, the two men from the family office, the old one who had been asleep against the wall since the second pour and woke up sharp the moment the word wing was said out loud.

None of them looked at me on the way out. That is how I knew the arithmetic had come out the way I had worked it, and not the way they had hoped.

The steward held the door. My uncle stopped in it and turned his hand over, the way he does when he wants a room to wait.

"It will not be done in the hall," he said. Not to me. To the room, which was already most of the way gone. "Whatever is opened tonight is opened in the wing, and it is opened by her hand, not by mine.