Rafiq heard it first.
He was sleeping by the hammam wall with his arms around an empty jug: after he had shouted in front of the envoys, Nura had forbidden him to return to the quarter. During the night the boy was woken by a sound an adult would have mistaken for mice scurrying.
Water rustled almost inaudibly beneath the stone. It was the sound of a stream escaping not into a broad channel but through a narrow fissure.
Rafiq woke Nura. Nura woke Zulaykha not with a word but with a hand on her shoulder. A moment later they were already running to the lower aljibe, the women's key wrapped in cloth so that it struck soundlessly against Nura's sleeve.
Two of Yusuf's guards stood at the entrance.
One held a lantern. The other held his spear as though he feared not people but the darkness beyond the door.
"The seal," said the first.
Zulaykha showed him the copper plate.
He let her through without the usual questions, as though he had been expecting her.
The aljibe was cold. The air smelt of wet stone and empty depths. The water stood two handspans below the night mark.
No one could drink that much in one night: the water had been diverted.
Zulaykha knelt at the edge and touched the wall. A damp line ran off to the right, towards the garden channel. Too narrow for a large course, too even for a chance crack.
"Who opened the sluice?" she asked.
The guards said nothing.
Yusuf arrived quickly. From his clothes and his face, he had not been to bed that night.
"You had the lesser seal," he said.
"And you have the keys."
"The seal gives the right to open the course. A key is only iron."
"But without a key the water could not have left this place."
He looked at her, and for the first time there was no gentleness in his gaze.
"Then find the water without the keys."
Elias came down after him, fastening his robe as he walked. Íñigo arrived without a guard, though only the day before they had not left him alone even before the bowl. So Yusuf had deliberately allowed him to move almost freely.
"Let him watch," said Yusuf. "If Khalid's daughter is hiding water for the prisoner's sake, he will lead us to the evidence himself."
Zulaykha understood the trap: if Íñigo escaped, she would be accused. If he followed the water's trail, Yusuf would learn what she had found.
She did not object.
The trail led them not to an exit but to the old dovecote above the small garden.
Abu Salim was sitting where he had sat the day before. But now a closed cage stood on the stone beside him. The pigeons inside were not cooing. They huddled in a corner, frightened by the light.
When he saw Zulaykha, the old man's shoulders sagged.
"I did not open the aljibe," he said.
"I did not ask."
"You will."
"Then tell me before I do."
Abu Salim ran a hand over his face. His fingers were trembling.
"A year ago I signed a false finding. Not many years ago, only one. I remember the day, the bowl, and the way Khalid was accused of selling the northern acequia."
Zulaykha did not interrupt.
"They told me: sign, and water will come to my children. Refuse, and your children will stand at a dry sabil and listen to others drink."
"Who told you?"
Abu Salim raised his eyes.
He did not look at Yusuf, but everyone understood the answer.
"The keeper of the water."
The dovecote fell silent.
Yusuf did not turn pale. He did not flare up. He merely looked at the old man with weary pity.
"Old age likes to lay its guilt on those who are still standing."
"I have been laying off my guilt for a whole year," said Abu Salim. "Enough."
He sank to his knees and pulled a flat tile from beneath the stone feeding trough. It bore half a mark: not the one Zulaykha had seen by the fountain, but something deeper, older. Three lines, a bowl, and a sign like a closed eye.
Íñigo took a step forwards.
"I have seen that."
"Where?" Zulaykha asked.
"On timber in the northern ditch. Only without the eye."
Abu Salim held the tile out to Zulaykha.
At that moment one of the birds thrashed so violently that the cage fell. The lid sprang open. A white-and-grey pigeon shot upwards, struck the lantern with its wing and escaped into the darkness.
A waxed thread flashed on its leg.
Nura swore and rushed for the stairs, but it was too late.
Yusuf looked at the empty cage.
"Pigeons often go mad during a siege."
Marwan the Pigeon Keeper appeared soundlessly at the lower door. Lime whitened his fingers. When he saw Zulaykha looking at his hands, fear crossed his face.
He bowed.
"Did my lady ask for a fresh bird to carry a message?"
Abu Salim suddenly stepped between him and Zulaykha.
"Run," he told her.
He said it quietly, almost as though it were an ordinary matter, but Zulaykha heard mortal fear in his voice.
Zulaykha had no time to ask.
The lantern went out.
A dull blow sounded in the darkness, as though a stone had been brought down on a human skull.
When Elias rekindled the flame, Abu Salim lay beside the dry channel. The tile was no longer in his hand.
Zulaykha saw the lime on Marwan's fingers and noticed that Nura was looking at it too. But the tile had vanished, and lime alone was not enough for an accusation. If she named Marwan as the killer now, Yusuf would say that Khalid's daughter was taking revenge on a witness for Abu Salim's words.
Zulaykha said nothing.
Yusuf stood beside her and looked at the dead old man so calmly that he might already have been deciding how to turn the death against Zulaykha.
"You had the lesser seal," he said.
Íñigo raised his head towards the empty opening beneath the roof.
The pigeon had already flown into the night.
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