“Buy some flatbread or a pot of yogurt.” She pressed the purple bills into the boy’s palm. “Don’t waste it on sweets. They’ll rot your teeth.”

The child raised his enormous eyes, and for a moment, Huda felt as if she were peering into a deep green well.

“Listen to me,” he whispered. “Those you seek are waiting in the Khan Murjan.”

“The old inn? It’s been boarded up for decades.”

Rania leaned in. “What’s going on?”

“You’ve got five minutes.” The boy kept his eyes on Huda’s. “Otherwise the door will be closed. They said there’s no second chance.”

“But the Khan Murjan is on the other side of the souk.”

“I know a shortcut.” The boy pulled her toward the farthest alleyway. “Trust me.”

Huda held back, swamped by a sudden sense of déjà vu. She’d asked the same thing of Ally. Trust me, she said time and time again, to keep the girl close and the mukhabarat satisfied. The skin at the back of Huda’s neck prickled. Was the emerald-eyed boy a liar, just like her?

“Let’s go.” Rania pushed Huda toward the thronging alley. “I want this over and done with.”

The boy wove through the crowd. Huda and Rania struggled after him, dodging a man with a trolley full of clucking chickens. Two women blocked the path. As wide as they were tall, they haggled noisily over a consignment of nightshirts like they were negotiating the sale of their firstborn. Huda elbowed past them as the boy zigged and zagged through the houseware stalls. A boy sprawled motionless atop a huge mound of cheap dish towels, and Huda wondered, Could he really be sleeping amid this din, or was he dead?

A small hand shot out from a gap in the wall. The boy pulled Huda into the shadows and thrust his finger to his lips. Rania was already there, back flattened against the rough bricks. Huda froze. Two beefy men in leather jackets bulldozed through the crowd. They were mukhabarat dispatched to monitor the souk, and to sniff out malcontents.

Huda waited until they passed, counted slowly to ten, then poked her head into the alley. The urchin leaped past her. The two women staggered after him. In the grain bazaar, a donkey blocked the way, its cargo of bulging burlap sacks too wide for the narrow space. The crowd erupted into curses.

“Get your mule out of here, you fool.” A shopper waved his fist in the air.

The grain merchant dragged at his donkey’s reins. Huda hopped from foot to foot as the snarl of impatient marketgoers slowly cleared. She craned her neck and tried desperately to spot the boy’s matted hair. She guessed her heart must have done a thousand beats already. Surely that meant five minutes had passed.

Rania pushed past and stood on her tiptoes.