CHAPTER TWELVE

FARID

Farid sat against the wall, watching the floor in the flickering candlelight. It had taken him a few days—he thought it was days—to realise the stains were blood, then another to begin to see shapes in the light and dark of them. He watched the stains as a child watches clouds. That one looked like a mango; that one, a monkey. And beneath them, the whorls and eyes of the wood itself, drawing him in.

It kept him from looking at the unfinished pattern scratched into the wall. That pattern left him wanting more, like a song with no ending or the touch of an apple’s skin against his teeth. He had traced its shapes for many hours, followed its lines to their abrupt ends, and yet he had no sense of what it was supposed to contain. He had decided to ignore it. Adam had left him that puzzle, and to finish it would only please the austere. He was a Cerani fruit-seller. His father would have come up the river already, his boat full of mangoes and lemons. He would already have heard of what happened in the marketplace. He probably thought Farid dead.

There was a shuffling outside the door, and then a burst of sunlight that made him squint. So it was day; he had guessed night because the baby next door had gone quiet.

Adam squatted at the threshold, watching him, and it struck Farid that the man was always near to the ground, like a cat preparing to strike. Adam balanced his elbows on his knees and laced his fingers together. Farid noticed dark shadows under his eyes. “You have been calling water to yourself,” he said.

“I had to. If I didn’t, I would die.”

“How did it feel?”

Farid did not reply. He did not want Adam to know how good it felt. He listened, trying to gauge how many men might be guarding the hallway.

“I showed you the pattern only once, but you built it again, with nothing but your fingers.” Adam looked at the scratches on the wall. “Most of my students take weeks to memorise that pattern, and they are all chosen for their excellent recall.”

“I’m not your student.”

“No, no you are not.” Adam sighed and looked at someone in the hallway, who handed him a platter of bread and cheese. “I think you must be hungry.” He put the food down on the floor. “Though the end is near, we must take care of ourselves.”

“The end?”

“Mogyrk comes to claim all of us, Farid. I have come nearer to the place where He died so that I may guide souls to His paradise.” “You mean to kill people.”

“You do not understand. Here, eat.” As Farid took a reluctant bite Adam said, “Everyone here will die no matter what I do. The Scar waits to the east and the Storm is coming. But it is foretold: Mogyrk will first shed light upon Nooria.” He watched Farid eat. “You do not understand that, nor, does it appear, do my superiors.”

Farid pushed his plate aside. “Why do you hold me prisoner here?”

“You can leave any time you wish. I want only for you to use what you have learned.”

“By doing what? What will you make me do before I can leave?”

“You don’t understand.” Adam unfolded himself, standing to cast a shadow over the stains on the floor and the dirty pallet, and the shadows around his eyes deepened. “You will help me, but first you need to escape.”