Chapter 7 #2
"Men who ask me for something I do not have." Her jaw set. "They have asked twice now. They will ask a third time."
"Then let me walk with you."
"La." It came immediately, and it was final. No.
Then she seemed to hear how it had sounded. She looked at him again, properly this time, and for a moment the wariness left her expression altogether.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"Yours," he replied.
The silence stretched between them.
Samira frowned slightly, confused at his answer.
Torstein realized what he'd said and cleared his throat. "My name is Torstein."
"Shukran, Torstein." She thanked him. "I will not forget what you did."
She had only offered her thanks but not her name.
Then she stepped back, recovered her face, slid her blade back into the sheath in her forearm, shortened her telek then placed it beneath the fold of her tunic where it vanished as though it had never been drawn.
She nodded once then sprinted away and did not look back.
At the far end she turned into the crowd of the wider street, and the crowd closed behind.
"Wait!" Torstein chased after her. Panic rose within him; he needed more time with her. But she was already gone.
He lost her within twenty paces in the press of the souk and spotted her again in the distance only by chance, a dark braid disappearing up a narrow stairway wedged between two houses. By the time he reached the open ground below the terraces, she was already on the rooftops.
Somewhere above, the call to prayer began, unhurried, indifferent, as though nothing earth-shattering had happened here at all.
Torstein stopped and stood and watched.
The woman ran along the roofs of Fez the way other people walked a level road, crossing gaps between terraces, her stride never once breaking for any of them. She cleared a low parapet without putting a hand to it. Then a taller wall took her from sight, and she disappeared.
Torstein was attempting to follow when he was stopped by a strong arm on his shoulder.
"There ye are." Njal's voice, behind him.
Mathias came around the corner a moment later, still clutching some length of leather he had clearly been swindled into buying.
"Ye walked off," Njal said. "In a city we dinnae ken, down streets that all look the same, without a word to any of us. Another turn or two and we'd have been asking strangers to help find your huge arse."
"There was trouble. Three men set upon a woman in an alley."
"And is she well?" Mathias asked.
"She is." Torstein was still watching the empty terraces. "But I need to find her."
Njal followed his gaze up to the rooftops, then brought it back to Torstein's face. "Torstein."
"Aye."
"We've yet to locate where the merchant lives. Ye cannae go chasing a woman across the roofs of Fez. We'd never find ye again. Remember we are here with a task to complete."
Torstein made himself look away from the terraces. He measured Njal's words and knew them to be true. Meeting the merchant was his highest priority. If the woman truly was his destiny, then he would find her again but not this night.
"Aye," he said, reluctantly. "Ye're right."
"I am often right. But ye rarely listen," Njal replied.
They turned back toward the souk together, Mathias already talking about the price of leather and the hard bargain of the man who had sold it to him. Njal just grunted but now and then he would glance at Torstein with a knowing smile.
Torstein glanced back once more at the rooftops before the lane curved and took them from sight.
***
SAMIRA DID NOT RUN the whole way home, though every part of her wanted to.
Running through the souk at that hour would draw eyes, and eyes were the last thing she needed tonight.
So she walked, fast and controlled, her pulse still hammering long after her breathing had steadied, the ghost-weight of the koummya's grip still printed into her palm.
She had lost the crowd behind her within a hundred paces of the alley, doubling back twice through the cloth merchants' row the way Zohra had drilled into her.
Never a straight line, habibti. A straight line is a gift you give to anyone following you.
Somewhere in the doubling back she had lost Torstein too, though she had not meant to look for him in the first place.
She told herself that twice, walking home, and did not entirely believe it either time.
The house was the same as it always was, the fountain's low murmur and jasmine thick on the evening air. But something was wrong with the ordinary sounds tonight. Too many voices. Too much movement in the courtyard for this hour.
Zohra was the first to see her, and the relief that broke across the woman's face lasted only as long as it took her to cross the courtyard, at which point it curdled into anger.
"Where in the name of every merciful thing have you been?
" It was not a question. Zohra's hand closed hard around Samira's wrist, checking it the way she always checked, pulse first, then the rest of her, eyes moving fast and clinical over every visible inch.
"You vanished from the compound without a word to anyone.
No guard, no maid, not even Tiziri, who would have gone with you had you only asked.
I have had the household searching every lane between here and the tanners' quarter for the better part of an hour. "
"I did not vanish, I was—"
"Your father was a breath away from sending armed men into the souk after dark to find you." Dawud had come out onto the gallery above, and even from that distance Samira could see the fear and worry behind the mask of composure. He came down the stairs quickly for a man his age. "Samira?"
"I was attacked." She said it plainly. "Three men, in the lane behind the dyers' street. Cloaked. Faces wrapped. I was alone, and it was over before I understood what was happening, and once I was clear of them my only thought was to get home."
The courtyard went very quiet.
Zohra's grip on her wrist tightened once, then let go entirely, and something moved behind the woman's eyes.
"Attacked how," Zohra said. Careful. Level.