He knew he must have looked like a fool, grinning and nodding at her, but he didn’t care. He ran up the stairs two at a time, already chewing. His room was cool and blue with its open shutters. A breeze was blowing in from the strait, and he could see the lights from ships, port and starboard stars in the darkness. On a rooftop somewhere near by, a man and a woman were talking softly. Sam smiled to himself and lay back on the narrow bed. In that moment, all of Tangier was the taste of warm flatbread and cumin and sweet mint and smoke, the musk of old leather and the worn, fine presence of the past.

The first thing he saw when he awoke the next morning was the writing case.

He groaned, remembering what it had cost him, on top of a supply of kif. How had he spent almost a week’s rent on a piece of junk? His parents were right, he didn’t deserve money. But at the time it had seemed so … right. He’d believed that the writing case had been waiting for him. He sighed and pushed himself upright. Perhaps Abdelhamid would take it back.

It was good leather, must have been expensive, once. How had it washed up here? It looked tattier than he remembered, the leather gouged on one side, peeling on the other, the initials A. L. almost bare of gilt. The calendar inside was English, he remembered. Did that make A. L. British, or American?

When he turned it over, it rattled, something tumbling inside. Perhaps he hadn’t replaced the pen properly. He swore and balanced it on his knee. Abdelhamid would never take it back if something was damaged. He worked at the rusty catch, and eased it open.

The smell came first; fusty paper and brittle leather. He opened it wider. The paper was there, yellowed but clean, the pen and pencil and ink snug in their holders. What made the noise, then?

He shook it. There was something loose, sliding and rattling about. He looked more closely. The blotter wasn’t set all the way into the case; there was an inch of space beneath.

He tried to work his fingers under the edge. It was difficult, the thing fit perfectly, and he almost gave up, thinking it was too much work for what was probably a nub of pencil.

What else do you have to do? Stare at the space where the Hermes used to be?

Finally, by holding the case upside down and poking one edge of the blotter, he was able to work it free. Gravity did the rest, sending two small objects tumbling out on to the sheet. One of them glinted silver, like sunlight on water.