Íñigo did not ask to be believed.
He asked for a thin wooden tablet, charcoal and a captive boy from the Castilian supply train whom Elias had treated after a fever. The boy knew the way to the outer ditch because he had carried water to the diggers. He was neither a soldier nor an envoy, while an adult messenger would be detained and questioned as soon as he reached the gates.
Zulaykha refused.
They stood in an empty corner of the hammam, where the steam had gone but the stone still held its warmth. On the rim of a bowl lay the same knife with which Zulaykha had once threatened the prisoner.
"No," she said. "Not through a child."
"An adult's message would be read before he was through the gates."
"And a child would be killed without witnesses."
Íñigo clenched his fingers.
"If I remain silent, Gonzalo will start searching for the outer stop using my old measurements. He already knows about the seven handspans and the middle stake. All he lacks is the prohibition."
Rafiq, who until then had pretended not to be there, raised his head.
"I can get through. The guards never notice me."
Nura turned towards him so sharply that the water in the bowl trembled.
"Which is precisely why you are not going."
Rafiq flushed.
"I am a witness."
"A witness is not someone to be sent to his death," said Zulaykha.
Íñigo lowered his gaze.
"Then speak the prohibition aloud before the court."
"And show Yusuf the way to it?"
Zulaykha said nothing. She still believed Íñigo, but she could no longer separate his truth from Gonzalo's traps.
Íñigo picked up the charcoal.
"I will write no words, only the water-measurers' sign: do not touch the low stone, three dots below a line. The man standing by the ditch will understand. Gonzalo will understand too, but he will not be able to pretend he did not know."
"What if that is precisely what he is waiting for?"
"I am still his son, and I know how he reads prohibitions. If Gonzalo wants to remain a master after Granada is taken, he will not break this one before witnesses."
Zulaykha looked at the burn on his hand, then at the place below his left collarbone that he would not let anyone touch. She remembered Khalid's words: the fourth line was not sung over a cradle.
"You speak of witnesses," she said. "But you want to send the signal in secret."
He closed his eyes for a moment.
"Because we have no other way."
Rafiq appeared in the doorway.
"My lady. Fatima al-Harrasa is waiting outside. She says this is not for an outsider's ears."
Fatima entered without greeting them. In her hand was a thin wooden tablet bound with thread.
Íñigo went pale when he saw it.
Fatima threw the tablet onto the rim of the bowl.
"Your prisoner has already found a dangerous road."
Charcoal marks showed on the wood: three dots below a line, one to the side. Íñigo's sign.
Below it was a second line, written in another hand. The letters were too even. It was the hand of a palace scribe:
"The northern passage is listening. Come before dawn."
Nura, who had entered behind Fatima, said quietly:
"Who was carrying it?"
"The boy from the physician's room," Fatima replied. "My people stopped him by the garden door. If I had not taken the tablet, Yusuf's men would have. Or they would have pretended not to notice it."
Íñigo raised his hands.
"That line is not mine."
"I asked you not to send a child," said Zulaykha.
Íñigo lowered his hands.
"I did not send Rafiq. I sent someone who had already been among the ditch diggers and might return alive. That is an explanation. Not an excuse."
Zulaykha said:
"I know."
He went still.
Fatima turned sharply to Zulaykha.
"You know? Then why is he still standing here?"
"Because the first line is his. The second is not."
"Will half a betrayal not destroy the city?"
Rafiq stared at Íñigo in horror. Nura waited for Zulaykha's decision.
Zulaykha picked up the knife from the rim of the bowl.
Once, the knife beside the bowl had served as a reminder that answers were not obtained here through pain. Now she removed it and put it away in Nura's drawer.
The hammam fell silent.
"I believe you did not write the second line," Zulaykha said.
Íñigo did not move.
"But the city cannot trust your first line while a second follows it by the same road."
Fatima gave a scornful laugh.
"At last Khalid's house remembers where it stands."
Zulaykha did not look at her.
"Rafiq, take the boy from the physician's room back to Elias. Nura, close the women's passage. Íñigo is not to go out alone, write anything or speak to envoys without three witnesses."
"So I am a prisoner again," said Íñigo.
"You never ceased to be one."
His face changed, but he did not ask for leniency.
"If they begin digging by the northern passage, we will not live to see midday."
Zulaykha looked at the tablet. "Then we will reach the sluice before they do."
That night, rapid blows of iron against stone sounded from beneath the ground.
The Castilian diggers beyond the northern wall had found the place named in someone else's second line.
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