Zulaykha found old Abu Salim neither in the workshops nor at the water court.
He was sitting behind the dovecote above the small garden, where the pomegranate branches had borne no fruit for two years. The pigeons belonged to Marwan the Pigeon Keeper, a quiet man with white lime beneath his nails, but he was nowhere to be seen. Only one bird beat against the bars, a waxed thread tied to its leg.
Abu Salim's hands were covered in stone dust, though no one had seen the old man with a chisel since he signed the testimony against Khalid.
Zulaykha had come alone.
Coming alone was foolish.
Before the guards, Abu Salim would merely repeat what he had already confirmed with his seal: Khalid had opened the northern acequia to the enemy. In Nura's presence, the old man would hide behind pity for a woman. And if Zulaykha brought Íñigo, the whole court would hear of the conversation. First she had to understand for herself what had happened.
"Abu Salim."
The old man started, and the pigeons took off noisily above the roof.
"I do not teach the daughters of traitors," he said.
"I did not come to learn."
"So much the worse. Knowledge without a teacher maims the hand."
Zulaykha crouched beside the dry gutter. An old tile remained there from her grandfather's time. One corner had broken away, and a fine scratch showed against the blue pattern. A scribe would have taken it for an accident, but a water-master recognised the mark at once.
Two short lines, one long. A turn. A false course below.
She ran a finger over the scratch.
"Do not touch it," Abu Salim said too quickly.
Zulaykha looked up.
"Why?"
"Because the dead should not be disturbed."
"My father is given no peace. His name is spoken before the whole court every day when our house is accused of making the water disappear."
The old man covered his face with his hands. White dust lay between his fingers.
"Khalid was proud."
"That is not treason."
"He believed water stood above the emir."
"Sometimes water stands above us all."
Abu Salim laughed. The laugh came out dry, bitter and brief.
"There is Khalid's voice. You speak in his words."
Zulaykha did not answer. She lifted the broken corner of the tile. Beneath it was a small hiding place, and inside lay a length of scorched rope.
Khalid used knots like these to mark a working water course when he could not leave a letter. The patterns held no words or names, only the number of fingers and turns. Someone had tried to burn the rope, but the fire had merely hardened the knots.
Zulaykha took out the rope and counted seven knots. So the water truly stood seven handspans lower. Íñigo had told the truth.
"Did you see this then?" she asked.
Abu Salim slowly lowered his hands.
"I saw too much."
"Who forced you to sign?"
"He did not force me. He asked."
"Who?"
The old man looked towards the palace.
"When a man controls the water for your children, he need not force you. He need only ask."
Zulaykha felt the blood rush to her face.
"Yusuf?"
Abu Salim did not speak the name.
For Zulaykha, that silence served as a signature.
"Did Khalid open the northern acequia?" she asked.
The old man closed his eyes.
"Yes."
A rushing filled Zulaykha's ears, and the cries of the pigeons seemed to come from far away.
"For the enemy?"
"No."
"For whom?"
"For the water."
Zulaykha waited.
Abu Salim bent down and touched the same tile, but lower, where the pattern disappeared beneath a crack.
"Your father said, 'If the city begins deciding who is to be left without water, the water will find its own judge.' I did not listen to him. Then Yusuf's men came, Khalid disappeared, and we signed the accusation."
"What is written here?"
The old man rose with difficulty and used his thumbnail to scrape a thin layer of lime from the wall behind the dovecote. Beneath it were three words, carved so finely they could have been mistaken for cracks.
"Water cannot be judged by the sword."
Zulaykha knew those words.
Khalid had said them when Zulaykha was little and angry with the neighbour boys, wanting to dam their clay stream. He repeated them when his daughter demanded that water be withheld from a man who had wronged Nura. With those same words he began her first lesson in dividing a single bowl between someone you loved and someone you feared.
Below, at the garden arch, a small, thin boy appeared. Covered in dust, he held two empty jugs and looked up at them.
"Rafiq," Abu Salim called hoarsely. "Go away."
The boy did not leave.
Zulaykha knew his name. Rafiq's father had died in a water ditch, and at the hearing he had been declared a thief who had climbed in after someone else's water. Since then Rafiq had gone to the sabil himself with the empty jugs: children were sometimes believed there more readily than widows.
Rafiq eyed Zulaykha's clean clothes mistrustfully.
"No water came to the sabil," Rafiq said. "The children are drinking from the drain, and a cat died in it yesterday."
"Keep out of it," Abu Salim whispered.
Zulaykha hid the scorched rope in her sleeve.
"Where is the drain?"
Rafiq nodded downhill, towards the poor quarter.
The old man seized the edge of her sleeve.
"If you open someone else's course, Yusuf will call it theft."
Zulaykha pulled the cloth free.
"If I leave children to drink dead water, my father himself will call me a thief."
For the first time in a year, Zulaykha spoke of her father without shame.
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