By dawn Yusuf had given the city the palace version of the truth.
Abu Salim, the old master of stone, had fallen in the darkness when frightened pigeons knocked over a lantern. No tile had been found on him, which meant there had never been a tile. The old man's last words were put down to confusion and a long-held sense of guilt.
The account sounded plausible. Even so, the old man's death was an inconvenience to the holder of the keys: Abu Salim could no longer be made to retract his words. All that remained was to convince the city there had been no words.
The water court was convened by the lower aljibe, not the Lion Fountain. Boabdil came without music or poets. With him were the senior masters, the heads of the quarters, scribes, two of Yusuf's men, Elias with his physician's bag, Nura with wet sleeves and Rafiq, who for the first time stood before the adults not as a boy with an empty jug, but as a witness.
Íñigo kept close to the wall. Without the iron on his wrist he looked more dangerous still: the court saw it not as mercy, but as negligence.
Fatima al-Harrasa came with two servants and her face covered. She looked at Zulaykha not as a kinswoman, but as a mother with children at home and little water.
Yusuf spoke first.
"Khalid's daughter was given the lesser seal until sunset. In that time a master died, a tile disappeared, water left the aljibe and an enemy prisoner was found without a guard. I ask the emir to bring this inquiry to an end."
The crowd around the aljibe began to murmur.
Zulaykha stepped to the stone rim.
"I too ask that the inquiry be brought to an end."
Yusuf turned his head slightly.
She pointed neither to the door, nor to Íñigo, nor to her own hands.
She pointed to the wall.
"The water has fallen by two handspans, but the stone here is not dry. It was neither carried away in jugs nor drunk. It was diverted through the small course."
One of the senior masters said, "The small course can be opened only with a key."
"Or with a sluice everyone mistakes for a crack."
Yusuf looked at her calmly. Too calmly.
"Khalid's daughter is fond of speaking about gardens. But the garden sluices are closed."
"Then the water in them should not smell of lime from the ditch."
She nodded to Elias. The physician took two small bowls from his bag. One held water from the lower aljibe. The other held water Nura had taken during the night from the hammam's service channel. The bowls passed from hand to hand among the masters. Some tasted the water; others merely smelt it.
Fatima did not pretend to be above it. She took the bowl and sipped the water.
Her face changed.
"Bitter."
"Lime," said Elias. "Not from the wall of the aljibe, but from a freshly dug ditch. I treated men who dug such trenches. It does not taste like old whitewash."
Yusuf asked mildly, "Has the physician become a water-master now?"
"No," Zulaykha replied. "That is why I called a witness you do not consider a master."
Rafiq stepped forward. His face was grey, but he was not clutching a jug. For the first time his hands were free.
"My father, Samir, died in the ditch by the small garden," the boy said. "They said he had stolen water and fallen while he was running away."
Someone in the crowd whispered, "Thief."
Rafiq flinched, but did not fall silent.
"He was not wet."
The last voices in the crowd died away.
Elias confirmed it:
"I saw Samir's body. There was dry lime and garden clay on his clothes, but no water from the ditch. I was ordered to record that he had fallen. I did so because I had patients without medicine and children waiting at my door."
Yusuf said, "Do all the dead speak against me now?"
"No," Zulaykha replied. "The water speaks, the water you forced to flow past them."
She knelt and ran her fingers over the lower stone. Where everyone else saw a dark crack, her nail found a narrow rim of copper. Nura handed her a woman's hairpin. The masters began to murmur as Zulaykha prised up the rim and drew out a thin sluice, almost black with age.
No torrent burst from the wall. Only a thin trickle seeped out and vanished at once into the cracks.
Rafiq said:
"It runs towards the garden."
A senior master bent closer.
"That is an old diversion. It should not be included in the calculations."
"But the water is still escaping through it," said Zulaykha.
Boabdil rose.
He looked neither at Yusuf nor at Zulaykha. The emir's gaze remained fixed on the thin trickle disappearing into the crack.
"What are you asking for?"
Zulaykha knew what she was asking. The lesser seal gave her the right to seek out deceit. The full seal allowed her to distribute water. In a besieged city, that meant deciding who would receive water and who would go without.
"The full seal until dawn on the day of the surrender negotiations," she said. "And the right to open the garden diversion before witnesses."
Yusuf smiled for the first time.
Boabdil slowly removed a heavy copper plate from his belt. It bore the same bowl, but the lines spread more widely, like four roads from a single spring.
"Until dawn on the day of the negotiations," he said. "You will answer for every queue and every bowl issued."
Zulaykha felt the weight of the copper plate in her palm.
Yusuf spoke quietly, so that only those nearest could hear:
"Now everyone who dies of thirst will know your name."
Íñigo approached Zulaykha as the court began to disperse.
"I need to send a signal to the northern ditch."
She raised her eyes.
"No."
"If Gonzalo touches the outer stop, your full seal will no longer save anyone."
"Any signal to his camp will pass through Yusuf's or Marwan's hands."
"Then it must be sent so that he reads only the first line."
After speaking with Khalid, Zulaykha knew that sometimes an enemy had to be warned. That made Íñigo's proposal no less dangerous.
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