The Lion Fountain began to flow before Yusuf could pronounce anyone guilty.
At first a thin trickle ran from one lion's mouth, so faint that the nearest guard thought he had imagined it. Then water appeared in the second and the third. It was still far from its old full-throated rush, but the fountain could no longer be called dry.
Everyone involved in the water hearing had gathered in the courtyard.
Boabdil stood beneath the arch, grey with lack of sleep. Beside him were the senior masters, the ward elders, Yusuf's men, the envoys of the kings, Elias, Nura, Fatima, Rafiq at the very edge of the crowd, and the blind Khalid. Gonzalo's men entered from the north. They had been admitted under the white truce ribbon: witnesses were still required for the surrender negotiations. Gonzalo de Mena himself walked behind his son, still regarding him as his instrument.
This time there were more witnesses than Yusuf wanted. The women from the hammam stood by the wall, their sleeves wet. Behind them, boys from the queues held empty bowls. At the gate shifted the Castilian ditch diggers whom Gonzalo had brought to testify about the cleared ditch.
Yusuf saw them and narrowed his eyes. He liked hearings where the witnesses could be arranged in a convenient order. This hearing had assembled itself.
Íñigo was alive.
Blood darkened his cheek, but he walked unaided.
Marwan the Pigeon-Keeper appeared last. In his hands he carried the stolen tile, wrapped in clean cloth.
Yusuf raised the tablet bearing Íñigo's mark.
"The house of al-Mairi took the prisoner under the water contract. The prisoner sent a signal to the enemy. Khalid's daughter refused to release the water to save the city and secretly sent it through her own passages. Today the water will judge."
He spoke calmly and with confidence. Many in the courtyard would willingly have believed that one woman, one prisoner and one disgraced house were to blame for everything.
"Yes," Zulaykha said from the crowd.
The guards turned. Zulaykha stepped out of the crowd with empty hands.
"Let the water judge."
Gonzalo smirked.
"She speaks like a master, though she stands without a mark."
Íñigo answered before she could:
"A mark does not make a master. Sometimes a father burns one into his son and still understands nothing about water."
The crowd stirred.
Gonzalo glared at him.
"Granada has poisoned my son with lies."
Zulaykha said:
"Your son moved the middle stake so the water would not flood the ditch. And you brought that stake to the city as evidence against him."
The envoys exchanged glances. One of the ditch diggers standing by the gate beside that same cracked stake lowered his eyes.
Gonzalo did not blink.
"Evidence is evidence."
"Then let us look at the other evidence."
Marwan stepped forward, unfolding the cloth.
"A tile found in the possession of Zulaykha's people," he said in rehearsed words. "It bears the mark of the Spring and lime from the sealed passage."
He held the tile too carefully, as though he had been ordered to deliver it clean. There was neither garden dust nor Abu Salim's blood on the cloth.
Zulaykha understood: the tile had been stolen for Gonzalo, but Yusuf had intercepted it and decided to use it as evidence against the house of al-Mairi.
Rafiq suddenly said:
"Show us your fingers."
The courtyard fell silent.
Marwan looked with hatred at the boy who had reminded everyone of the lime on his fingers.
Rafiq repeated:
"Your fingers. My father Samir's clothes were dry, but there was lime on the fingers of the men who carried him. Abu Salim's tile disappeared, and there was lime on your fingers. Show us."
Marwan did not raise his hands.
Nura stepped closer.
"A witness before the water is not to be killed," she said. "That is the old law you have all remembered today."
Boabdil nodded to the guards.
They seized Marwan by the wrists. Lime whitened his fingers, but it was not all the same. Beneath his nails lay fine garden dust, while his thumb bore a grey residue that smelt of the ditch.
Elias held out a bowl.
"Old city lime no longer burns. Fresh lime from the ditch eats into the skin."
Khalid raised his blind face.
"Marwan, who gave the first order?"
Marwan said nothing.
Water began to flow from the fourth lion's mouth.
Yusuf said:
"He is Gonzalo's man."
Gonzalo said:
"He is Yusuf's man."
Both masters disowned Marwan at once.
He collapsed to his knees.
"Yusuf ordered me to put lime in the bowl and in Khalid's well," he said quickly. "They needed the blind master alive. Gonzalo gave me pigeons, wax, silver and the order to take the tile. I carried messages. I did not strike Abu Salim. I only put out the lamp."
"Only," Nura repeated with disgust.
Elias asked:
"Who struck him?"
Marwan looked not at Yusuf, but at the man by the lower arch.
"The guard at the door. The one who held the spear by the aljibe that night. I put out the lamp so I could carry away the tile. He struck when the old man cried out."
The guard by the lower arch stepped back. Boabdil noticed and ordered two of his men to seize him before Yusuf could intervene.
The tile was placed beside the fountain. Zulaykha did not pick it up, but held one edge beneath the new stream. White city dust and grey lime from the ditch ran off it.
Marwan had served both masters.
Yusuf looked at the water and found no answer.
Boabdil slowly sat on the stone rim. For a whole year he had made decisions according to Yusuf's calculations, and this belated understanding could neither bring back the dead nor give the city drink.
Khalid said:
"Now ask why the water reached the fountain through several channels."
Zulaykha listed the places the water had reached: Rafiq's sabil, Nura's hammam, Elias's aljibe and Khalid's northern acequia. All these small flows confirmed that the Spring had not been opened towards the ditch.
Gonzalo took a step towards Íñigo.
"Do you see, son? They are using you against your father."
Íñigo looked at the Lion Fountain.
"No. My father used me against the water."
Khalid turned his blind face towards Gonzalo.
"You trained under the water-masters of Granada," he said. "You knew that the Spring could not be given to one master."
At last Gonzalo looked not at his son, but at the old master.
"I learnt something else. The man who builds the channel decides where the flow will go."
"No," Khalid said. "You fear what you cannot hold, and you call that fear mastery."
A fifth stream struck the basin. Water was now flowing from five lions' mouths, and its return could no longer be denied.
Nura looked at the ring of palace keys at Yusuf's belt.
"Keys alone cannot hold water."
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