Seif hadn’t given her a dinar, and they both knew it.
The lie made it easier, somehow. Or perhaps it was her hunger. Zafira took them without meeting Kifah’s eyes and ducked into the thick of the sooq. The prospect of food made her stomach yawn anew, the gaping emptiness stretching up her throat and making her light-headed. Coin did this. Penniless, she could ignore the hunger, stave it away. Such was the oddity of a conscience.
She stopped at the first stall she found, where a safi stoked a fire, slowly turning a spit with her other hand. She was far less elegant than the safin Zafira was acquainted with.
“Two dinars fifty,” the safi said before Zafira could speak, eyeing her like an urchin come for scraps.
Zafira straightened her shoulders and clinked her coins softly, like a fool. Two and a half dinars was far too much. She should have bargained, should have thrown together a ploy as customers were wont to do, but it was Deen who had done all their marketing.
“What about the flatbread alone?”
“One dinar.”
For a single flatbread? A line began to form behind her.
“I—I’ll take the flatbread.”
The safi grunted and snatched a fold from the stack keeping warm beside the spit. Zafira carefully set one coin on her worn cart, feeling a childish lick of power as she pocketed the other two dinars. They were a comforting weight. A promise sewn into her clothes, a guarantee of sustenance. The safi saw, and after a beat of hesitation, lathered a spoonful of the warm fat that had collected beneath the spit across the bread, folding the neat round in half before handing it to Zafira.
She was already looking to her next customer, and Zafira was too hungry and too grateful to be proud.
Kifah was waiting for her, gaze hunting the crowds. Her foot tapped a beat. “What’s in it?”
“Nothing,” Zafira said, tearing off a piece.
Kifah’s brow furrowed. “You bought … plain flatbread.”
Zafira shrugged, but it wasn’t careless enough. Skies, why couldn’t she be more aloof? Why did she suddenly wish her cloak shielded the stiff set of her shoulders?
She dropped her gaze when Kifah’s softened. It felt vile to even think of spending three dinars on a single meal, but it was clear she and Kifah saw a coin differently.
The flatbread filled her, and that was enough. The coins clinked in her pocket. It was more than enough.
“There,” Zafira said as she regained some semblance of strength, some scrap of dignity. She pointed to the narrow alleys between some of the shops, her vision clear again. “If Bait ul-Ahlaam is bound to be anywhere, it’ll be down one of those. You take the left, I’ll take the right.”
“I want the right,” Kifah said.
“Be my guest, sayyida. Don’t get lost.”
“Hold my hand, mother,” Kifah called, and disappeared into the crowd.
CHAPTER 30
It would be days before the dignitaries arrived, ample time to do away with the medallion and then scour the palace for any indication of the Lion’s and Altair’s whereabouts. Letters from Ghameq’s hand. Men with strange orders. Anything. As the guards unnecessarily led Nasir to his chambers, he turned to Lana. “Do you trust me?”
He appreciated the way she paused to consider his question.
“Yes,” she said.
Nasir spoke to the guards. “The room adjoining mine—is it clean?”
One of the fools had the audacity to grin mischievously as he nodded, but it was the other who spoke. “Shall we procure you a woman?”
Nasir pressed his lips thin until the guard shifted uneasily. His sheathed sword caught in the other’s robes and nearly toppled them both.
“And their rooms?” Nasir asked, gesturing to Aya and Lana.
“We—we will escort—”