The last notes of the poem echoed in the quiet of the room, and Buchra’s hands flattened against the strings of the loutar. Tariq, for his part, still watched her, his eyes wide and dazed, as if he’d been taken by a thunderstorm.

“Well?” Buchra said at last, grinning brilliantly at me.

The sound of her voice broke whatever spell she’d managed to weave, and Idris and I looked away from each other.

“I think,” I said thickly, “your peers will be hard pressed to beat your performance, Buchra.”

“Indeed, I think it is unfair to ask the others to do so,” Rabi’a drawled, eyeing her sister.

“Unfair,” I’timad cried out. “We must all be given a chance for the pearls.”

I had not expected a simple contest to have elicited so much feeling in me, and I wanted more than anything to be allowed to retire. But I had suggested it, and so it must continue.

“By all means,” I said. “Shall you go next, I’timad?”

It was late in the evening when I returned to the royal quarters. In the end, I’timad, not Buchra, won the competition. Though Buchra was the better performer, I’timad’s translation had passed not only my bar, but everyone else’s expectations in the room.

The lanterns in the courtyard and connecting chambers burned low. The usual sounds of the household winding down for sleep were absent. I had not been out so long that they should have finished, but then I supposed it didn’t matter.

I paused in the parlor that connected Idris and my bath chambers. A single lamp burned in the hallway, but there wasn’t a soul to be found.

“Hello?”

Idris. In his bath chamber. The sound of wet footsteps followed, and a second later he was filling up the doorway, sopping wet. He wore a pair of soaking black trousers that hung too low on his hips and nothing else. His valet had yet to shave him, and his hair stuck to the sides of his face and neck. The khitaam on his arm seemed to glisten, covered in droplets of water. And there was, ridiculously, a rose petal stuck to his right shoulder.

I stepped back, struggling against the urge to giggle like a schoolgirl.

“Wh-what happened?”

“They ran a bath and then absconded without leaving me clothes or towels.”

“And you tried to wash your pants in the interim?” I said. He did not find my amusement gratifying.

“I misjudged and they fell into the bathwater.”