“A queenly gift,” he said at last, voice harsh. I knew him well enough that I could hear what was not said. Knew myself well enough that the sound of the pearls skating down my chest and into my lap echoed in my ears.

“As you say,” I agreed. “Are there none among you who would defend their house’s honor, then?”

“I will.” Buchra had left unmarked by anyone and returned, a loutar in hand. “Unless my sister would prevent me?”

“No,” Rabi’a said, on the edge of laughter. “By all means. Defend us.”

In the time she’d spent at the estate, I’d come to like Buchra. To be sure, I loved them both—Buchra was quieter and more reserved, and she approached me with a great deal of suspicion. But she was lively and clever, and when comfortable, unafraid of making pronouncements or taking risks. She sat elegantly, her feet tucked beneath her, the loutar balanced carefully in her lap.

The first note hummed through the air and I felt my heart clench in memory. The notes of this poem had been seared into my mind, and I was loath to interrupt her and tell her that her poem needed to be an original. I’d had none of her bravery the first time I’d sung the poem. She looked not at me or her sister or even her lap, but at Tariq. And he looked back at her as one possessed.

I’d heard the song many times, but my clearest, sharpest memory was when Idris played the song on his loutar. It felt as if I’d been called from a dream, wandering through Ouzdad, hunting down the sound of the loutar. And there he’d been, still a stranger in some ways, sitting beneath a fig tree, his hair unbound.

Lamma bada yatathana …

When he began to sway …

Hubi jamalah fatannah …

His beauty seduced my heart …

I have the voice of a village girl, I’d told him, and he’d laughed. It was this moment I remembered, even more than when I’d sung it to him a second time after Maram’s coronation. Because it seemed to me, in my loneliest moments, that this was what happened between us. That I’d drifted through a garden and found him, and his beauty had seduced me.

I was foolish and chanced a look at Idris, only to find him already staring at me. The grief I’d sworn to disavow this morning rose up in me again, sharp as a knife, twisting in my heart. We had both made our choices, and they had separated us irrevocably. And yet and still I wanted to get up and go to him, to tell him that I would give it up.

I could not.

Aman, aman, aman …

Mercy, mercy, mercy …