Khalila stood up, color high in her own cheeks now, and yanked her silken Scholar’s robe on over her long dress. “I’m thinking that you have put an innocent old woman at risk. I’ll be late for prayers. And I’d better say a prayer for all of us.” She walked away quickly in the direction of the neighborhood’s mosque, and though Dario leaned back in his chair and watched her, he didn’t rise to escort her.

Jess started to get up, and Dario said, “Let her go.” His face was set and unreadable. “She’ll feel better after she prays.”

“Well, wouldn’t we all?” Glain said. “So there’s no point in protesting—you’ve already done this without us. Right?”

“Right,” Dario said. A muscle jumped in his jaw. He was still watching Khalila as she moved down the street, and Jess could sense the desire in him to follow. “Scholar Prakesh is careful and she’s good. She’s willing to help. There’s no reason not to accept that. We’ve done our best and gotten as far as we can on our own, haven’t we? Sooner or later, we have to admit we need assistance. You idiots weren’t going to do it. Someone had to.”

He isn’t wrong, Jess thought, but he still had a terrible, sick feeling. This was moving beyond their control, quickly. Too many people, too many emotions. But if it gets Thomas back . . .

“Next time you want to run off on your own, count to ten and come talk to me,” Glain said. “You’re a hothead, Dario. At least let someone else give you a chance to convince you it’s not a good idea.”

“I did,” he said, still staring after Khalila. “She didn’t.” When Jess checked over his shoulder, he saw that the girl had disappeared around the corner.

Glain drank her coffee without another word, threw money on the table, and nodded to Jess. He stood up with her. “We’d best get back,” he told Dario. “You’ll be all right?”

Dario gave them a bright, entirely shallow smile. “Aren’t I always?”

When Jess looked back at the end of the street, he saw Dario still sitting at the table, toying with his coffee cup, staring off toward the corner where Khalila had disappeared.

Just one day later, Jess read the terrible news in the Alexandrian Times. He always kept a copy of the thin sheet in his quarters and checked it twice a day for the updated news as the articles changed and were written in fresh. It was the evening edition that carried the bold headline PROMINENT SCHOLAR DEAD IN CARRIAGE ACCIDENT. The hand-drawn illustration showed an old woman in Scholar’s robes stepping off the curb in front of a steam carriage, utterly unaware of the death hurtling toward her.

Scholar Prakesh was dead. He read the news over twice, letting the details sink in slowly; she had been walking to the Lighthouse late in the evening and evidently had not seen the carriage approaching before she stepped out into its path. She couldn’t have heard it coming, Jess realized, since she was deaf. But she’s walked this city all her life, he thought. She’d know by instinct to constantly check around her. He felt a horrible, sinking sense of guilt and anger. This hadn’t been a random street accident; Scholar Prakesh had been out asking questions, trying to help them.