Nura al-Banya locked the hammam doors from inside and told the two servant girls to keep away from the western wall.
"If anyone asks, the prisoner is screaming," she said.
One of the girls went pale.
Nura added more loudly:
"Let them think we are kind women who cannot bear the sound of men screaming."
The hammam was warm but not luxurious. Even for the nobility, the palace baths were conserving water. The low steam smelt of copper, wet stone and bitter orange peel. Women were talking quietly beyond the wall, and by evening any whisper could become a rumour throughout the city.
Zulaykha set a bowl of water beside Íñigo. Next to it lay a clean cloth and a small knife.
Íñigo looked at the knife.
"For me?"
"For lies."
"You cut lies out with a knife?"
"No. But sometimes there is no other way to reach them."
Íñigo smiled almost imperceptibly, then at once winced in pain. Nura cut away the old bandage. Beneath it was a narrow wound, poorly washed, its edges already darkening. Beside the wrist the chain had chafed raw, Zulaykha saw an old burn.
She did not touch it.
The burn resembled an uneven circle with a short line at one side. A physician would have seen only an old scar, but Zulaykha recognised the mark for a turn in the water.
Such marks were not put on people.
They were cut into stone or wood so that even in darkness a master could find a hidden sluice and avoid turning into a false course.
"Where did you get that?" Zulaykha asked.
Íñigo lowered his eyes to his arm. He had plainly not expected Zulaykha to recognise the mark.
"From my father."
"Your father brands his sons with water marks?"
"My father brands everything he considers his."
Nura swore under her breath, then shouted for the benefit of anyone listening beyond the door:
"Hold him tighter! Castilians are always thrashing about."
Zulaykha took up the cloth.
Íñigo jerked his shoulder away.
"Not with that water."
The knife rang against the bowl. Zulaykha did not pick it up.
"Why?"
"There is salt in it."
"All the water in the city tastes of salt now."
"Not like this. This came from the palace aljibe. But the aljibe is no longer being filled from the upper course."
Zulaykha went still.
Nura stopped pretending to sort the bandages.
"Did you taste the water?"
"I heard it being carried. Jugs from that aljibe ring more dully: the water is heavier. It contains lime from the new ditch."
Zulaykha raised the bowl to her lips and merely touched the water with her tongue.
First she felt the cold, then the faint taste of stone and the barely perceptible bitterness of lime. Anyone else would have mistaken it for the bitterness of fear.
But Zulaykha knew water.
This water should not have been here.
"Who told you to say that?" she asked.
Íñigo looked at her wearily.
"If I had been told, I would have said it in the courtyard. Before everyone."
"To buy your life?"
"To buy myself a better death."
Nura brought another, smaller bowl from the women's reserve in the hammam. Its water smelt of copper and hot stone, but there was no lime in it. Zulaykha washed the wound. Íñigo clenched his teeth and made no sound.
His stubborn silence irritated Zulaykha more than a scream would have done.
"Are you afraid of water?" she asked.
"No."
"Then why did you flinch?"
He was silent for a long time.
Someone passed outside the door. Sandals slid over the tiles, stopped, then moved on. To be safe, Nura began loudly berating an absent servant.
Íñigo spoke more quietly:
"In the camp they pour water over a wound when they want to learn where a man has hidden a secret passage. They torture with clean water those they intend to leave alive. With salt water, those they need only until the first answer."
Zulaykha bound his ribs. Then she laid her hand beside his wrist without touching the burn.
"I will not torture you for answers."
He looked at her hand.
"Then you will lose to those who will."
"Perhaps."
"Your Yusuf does not lose."
"He is not mine."
"But he has the keys."
"Keys are useless if you do not know where the water runs."
This time Íñigo truly smiled.
Zulaykha tightened the bandage.
"You said in the courtyard that the northern water stood seven handspans lower. Where is it?"
He closed his eyes.
"If I tell you, will you hand me over to Yusuf?"
"If you lie."
"And if the truth is worse than a lie?"
Zulaykha took the knife from the bowl and laid it on the stone between them.
"Then we shall decide what to do with that truth. I still will not torture you."
Íñigo opened his eyes.
Footsteps passed outside again. Someone stopped at the door.
Íñigo said almost in a whisper:
"Your water has already been diverted. Not by the kings. By someone among your own people."
Nura dropped a clean cloth.
The footsteps beyond the door receded.
This truth set no one free. It still had to be proved, by the two of them.
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