Íñigo sat down on the stone bench. The iron on his right wrist had already bitten into the skin. After the brief hearing, Yusuf had allowed the chain to be removed from his ankles, but left the iron band on his wrist. Íñigo could walk, but the iron constantly reminded him that he was a prisoner.
Zulaykha set a bowl and a clean cloth beside him.
"If you flinch, the wound will open."
"If I do not, you will decide it does not hurt."
"I am not that foolish."
"I have heard that before from people holding knives."
She raised her eyes.
"I am not holding a knife."
This time there was no knife beside the bowl. Íñigo looked at the bowl, then at Zulaykha. They fell silent.
Nura brought a small bronze key, thin and almost flat, with a handle shaped like a fishbone. It looked nothing like Yusuf's keys.
"Here," she said to Zulaykha.
"What is it?"
"The women's key to the hammam."
"Which door does it open?"
"The one men do not draw on their maps."
Íñigo looked up.
Nura showed him the key, then immediately hid it in her sleeve.
"Do not look so pleased. Enemies are not allowed through."
"What about prisoners under a water contract?"
"First we take off their iron and see whether they will tell the truth without the threat of chains."
Zulaykha took hold of the lock on Íñigo's wrist. The guard had the key, but Nura had brought a slender hairpin and a strip of tin. Hammam attendants knew how to pick locks: women often came to the baths bearing the marks of beatings and of bracelets their husbands had fastened too tightly.
The metal did not yield at once. Íñigo clenched his teeth. When the band finally sprang open, it revealed skin chafed raw beneath it. The old burn had reddened again.
Zulaykha washed the wound.
Íñigo endured it.
But when her hand accidentally slipped higher, towards his left collarbone, he recoiled sharply.
The bandage around his ribs pulled tight. He went pale.
"Not there," he said.
Zulaykha drew back her hand.
"I am not touching it."
"I know."
"Then why are you afraid?"
He closed his eyes.
Beneath his left collarbone, almost at the edge of his shirt, a thin old scar was visible. Not a battle scar: it was too even, as though made by a narrow piece of heated iron.
Íñigo remained silent for so long that Nura stopped rustling the cloths.
Then, quietly and almost without a voice, he began to sing a children's counting rhyme:
"Snow water does not favour a proud hand. The low stone listens first. Hold for three breaths, release on the fourth."
Nura went still.
Though steam billowed around them, Zulaykha shivered.
"Where did you learn that?" Nura asked.
Íñigo opened his eyes.
"My mother sang it."
"Your mother's name."
"Amina."
Nura's legs gave way, and she sat down on the edge of the stone bench.
"Amina of the water-masters' line? Little Amina, who was taken hostage after the old peace at the western gates?"
Íñigo stared at her, unable to understand how Nura knew his mother.
Zulaykha understood.
The children of water-masters were not sung casual songs about water. Such verses preserved sequences of actions, prohibitions and the positions of secret sluices. An enemy might carry off a child without ever guessing that the child knew half the way to the spring.
"Repeat it," Zulaykha said.
Íñigo looked at her.
"Why?"
"Because it is not a lullaby."
He repeated it.
At the second line, Nura covered her mouth with her hand.
"The low stone listens first," she whispered. "That was what they said about the outer brace. It could not be opened from above."
Íñigo rose too quickly and winced at the pain in his ribs.
"What is the outer brace?"
Zulaykha did not answer at once.
If Amina had known the water-masters' song, Gonzalo might have spent years searching for the secret she had passed on to her son as an ordinary lullaby. And if he had now grasped the song's meaning, he wanted Íñigo returned not for the sake of a father's honour, but for the key to the water course.
Nura placed the women's key to the hammam in Zulaykha's palm.
"Keep it safe. It is no longer meant for a door."
"What is it for?"
"To stop the men finding us before we find the water."
Before the guards returned, Nura snapped the iron band shut around Íñigo's wrist again. She had already removed a tooth from the lock, but no one could tell from the outside.
Beyond the door, a guard struck it with the butt of his spear.
"Time is up."
Íñigo looked at the closed door, then at Zulaykha.
"If my mother knew your water course, my father may have known part of it too."
"The maps," Zulaykha said.
"No," he replied. "My father has no use for halves. If he already has the maps, then he is looking for the song."
For the first time since the water contract began, Zulaykha feared not a lie from Íñigo, but a truth whose meaning he had only just understood himself.
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