Chapter 28 · Untitled Chapter

The silence that settled over the private wing was neither peaceful nor hollow; it was the dense, expectant weight of a house that had just severed an arm to preserve the spine. Mansour did not turn immediately from the tall, shuttered casement.

His silhouette remained framed against the subdued gold of the sconces, the crisp linen of his white thobe immaculate, his hands resting lightly behind his back where the dark amber beads of his misbaha hung motionless.

I stepped toward the low console of smoked glass and carved walnut where the dispatch folio lay beside a silver tray of cold water.

From the gallery, during all those twilight hours when I had assigned idle identities to the men who crossed beneath my archway, I had not merely watched gestures.

I had tracked the measured unfolding of surveyor maps on the long majlis table, the parchment weighted down at the corners by heavy brass paperweights, the ink notations whispered under the breath of assessors whose voices traveled upward through the decorative stone lattice.

Abu Fahad had assumed the dispute was over an inherited grazing parcel in the northern plain—