“Let me put your hair up, Mistress,” said Sheyshi.

Sheyshi braided Mai’s thick black hair into the loose arrangement which she then twisted and bound up on Mai’s head with combs and hair sticks, while Mai and Miravia discussed the shopping expedition and the scrolls.

“Don’t mention that they are holy scrolls,” said Miravia, with a look of alarm as if she thought invisible spirits might be eavesdropping. “They might make you get rid of them.”

“Even if we just keep them here in the guest house with our other belongings?”

“It would be better if you did not mention it. Might you teach me the reading of the script, Priya?”

“Certainly,” said Priya. “Must you ask permission from your elders?”

“I won’t, for they would forbid it.”

“Then not in this house. It would not be fair recompense for their hospitality.”

Miravia sighed, and made no reply. She took Mai’s hand. “Come, Mai.”

They slipped on sandals and walked to the inner gate. “My mother is particularly keen to talk to you. She wants to know what you thought of our markets.”

“I don’t think it’s right you’re not allowed out to shop! Yet you visit the prison!”

“To bring food to indigent prisoners. That they cannot forbid me to do because of our obligation to act for justice and mercy where we can. But only adult women are allowed to go out into the marketplace.”

“And even then, with a veil covering your face!”

“Mai, let it go, I beg you.”

They had reached the gate. Mai embraced her friend as they waited for the mechanism to be drawn back from the other side. “I’ll say nothing more. But I have my own plans. You’ll see.”

AFTER SUPPER, MAI accompanied Miravia on her lamp-lighting rounds.

“Do you miss him?” Miravia asked as she stood on tiptoe, pressing a lit taper to a wick. With a hiss, flame brightened.

Mai closed and latched the glass door. “Yes. But I don’t like to think about him. What if he is killed? That would be too painful to bear, wouldn’t it?”

“If you cared for someone, it would. Otherwise maybe it would be a relief, wouldn’t it?”

Her voice had such a finely grained dark tone that Mai touched her hand, to let her know she was not alone. “When my uncle Girish died, I think everyone wept only because they were ashamed that they were glad he was gone. But people will feel relief, if a death lightens their burden.”

Miravia wiped her cheek with the back of a hand, but she did not reply. She walked on to the next lamp in the vast rectangular courtyard of the women’s side of the Ri Amarah compound. Older children not yet sent to bed played in the open space, shrieking and giggling as they dodged around benches and the twisting forms of pruned trees. A hearth glowed in the kitchens, and beside it a pair of old women prepared pots of steaming herbs. At a raised trough, chatting girls scoured dishes. Most of the married women had gone to the innermost apartments, leaving the supervision of the courtyard to the unmarried women and elderly widows.