The sabil in the poor quarter stood between a tanner's shop and a wall on which someone had painted a blue bird before the siege.
Now the bird had almost worn away. A crowd had stood before the sabil since morning. By midday only the most stubborn remained, along with old people and children who had nowhere else to go.
The water had not come.
The stone mouth of the sabil showed dark in the wall. Beneath it lay the shards of a broken jug.
Rafiq led Zulaykha to a narrow opening behind the shop. Nura followed. She cursed loudly so that any of Yusuf's watchers would take them for bath attendants collecting dirty cloths from the poor to be washed.
Two guards brought Íñigo.
He walked slowly, holding his wound with every breath. At the sight of the dry sabil, Íñigo forgot his pain at once and began examining the wall.
"There should be a slight fall here," he said.
One guard spat.
"A Castilian teaching us about our own walls."
Zulaykha crouched beside the drain. The stench of rotting water, leather, urine and old ash struck her. Rafiq was right: no one could give even a goat water from that pool, let alone a child.
Íñigo lowered himself to one knee beside her and immediately went pale.
"Not here," he said.
"You did not even look."
"I heard it."
Zulaykha fell silent and listened. An empty course answered differently from a blocked one. And the stone remained cold and damp. That meant another channel ran beneath the wall and passed below the sabil.
"A garden sluice," she said.
Nura stopped cursing.
"That water is for the small orange courtyard."
"The oranges can wait."
"Yusuf's men will not."
Zulaykha looked at the guards. One was watching the crowd. The other kept his eyes fixed on Íñigo, as though choosing where to strike him.
"If you open it too quickly, the water will break through the wall," Íñigo said.
"If we do not open it, the children will drink from the drain."
"It must not be opened. It must be woken."
Zulaykha smiled despite herself: that was how Khalid spoke. Water was not forced. It was woken, called and guided away. If they broke the water course, the water would not return tomorrow.
She told Rafiq to bring a slender stick, asked Nura to move the people farther back and ordered Íñigo not to stand.
He stood anyway.
Beneath the lime, Zulaykha found the small ring of the sluice, clogged with sand. It could not be moved by hand, and a blow might break the mechanism. She inserted the stick into the gap, turned it a finger's width, then another half.
The mechanism grated dully inside the wall, followed by a splash of water.
The crowd heard it.
A whisper swept through the crowd at once, and Nura could no longer stop it.
"Water."
"Quiet," Zulaykha said.
No one listened.
She turned it a little farther. Suddenly Íñigo caught her wrist.
"Enough."
Zulaykha recoiled.
"Let go."
"Enough, or the filth will come pouring out."
She meant to object, but then she heard it too: what moved beneath the wall was not a clear stream, but water thick with sand. If she opened the sluice at once, murky water would pour from the sabil and the people would think they had been deceived.
She held her breath, turned the sluice back a fraction and waited. After three heartbeats the first trickle slipped from the mouth of the sabil, murky at first, then steadily clearer, until at last it ran almost clean.
Rafiq was the first to cup his hands beneath it, but he did not drink. He carried the water to a little girl by the wall. She held the bowl in both hands and wept without a sound.
The crowd surged forwards.
Nura struck a jug against the stone so loudly that everyone stopped.
"One at a time! Children first, then the old and the sick. Anyone who pushes drinks last."
And they all obeyed her.
Nura knew how to stop a crush. Many years before, at another aljibe, she had not managed to shout in time, and two children had been carried out already dead. After that, her voice controlled a crowd better than an order from the guard.
Zulaykha stood by the wall with wet hands. There was little water, not enough for the whole city. But the people had seen with their own eyes that the sabil could be opened.
Someone said, "Khalid's daughter." This time the voice held no accusation, but respect for her father.
Íñigo released her wrist. His finger marks remained on her skin. Zulaykha was about to remind him that he was not permitted to seize her hand, but she had no time to finish.
Yusuf ibn Sahr entered the quarter without guards preceding him, and the people parted of their own accord. Everyone knew that whether there would be water tomorrow depended on this man.
He looked at the sabil, the wet wall, the bowl in the girl's hands and finally at Zulaykha.
"You opened the garden water."
"I opened the water for the people."
"The garden water was allotted to the wounded in the palace."
Nura snorted, but Zulaykha raised a hand to stop her.
Yusuf spoke softly, and the crowd listened all the more closely.
"During a siege, every bowl is meant for one person alone. You took water that was not given to you. If a wounded man dies tonight, his blood will be on your wet hands."
The crowd drew half a pace back from the sabil.
Zulaykha understood his trick. Yusuf did not need to close the water: he need only convince the people that every bowl they drank would cost a wounded man his life.
Íñigo spoke behind her:
"It is not the same water."
Yusuf's gaze changed: Íñigo was no longer a useful prisoner to him.
"The prisoner speaks of our gardens?"
"The prisoner speaks of where you diverted the water."
Everyone fell silent. By opposing Yusuf before the crowd, Íñigo risked losing the only reason they had left him alive thus far.
Yusuf gave a thin smile.
"Then tomorrow you will repeat that at the lesser hearing, before the bowl and the witnesses."
Íñigo did not answer.
Zulaykha looked at the water. The stream was already running evenly.
But after Yusuf's threat, the restored water no longer felt like a victory.
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