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By Root 326 0

out my hand, groped for his, came back with an unstoppered phial, and held it up to my lips. It was the same mixture, tasting of herbs and honey and drugs, that Rahel had given me back at the inn, and it worked as well as it had before. My head slowly cleared. I gradually became aware of the three men moving purposefully around the horses. Their dark robes rendered them nearly invisible in the last light of the fading moon, and I was startled when one of them—the stranger—appeared beside me and bent to pick up my horse’s hoof. The abrupt change of the animal’s stance would have had me off, had my fingers not already been entwined in the animal’s mane. I clung on, my brain struggling to work out what they were doing, until it came to me: The horses’ hoofs were to be muffled. We must be near our goal. Near Holmes.

The moon went in soon after that, and the breeze died away. We rode slowly down what seemed a remarkably flat and uneventful track for a mile or two, after which we dismounted and walked another mile. It was black as a cave, and utterly silent. Even the jackals were asleep.

My horse stopped before I did, and then I felt hands on the reins, pulling them from my grasp. I followed the sound of the animals moving off, and the rattle of a bush being dragged, and then Mahmoud was whispering in my ear.

“Can you see?”

“Very little,” I whispered back, slightly ashamed. My night vision has never been good.

“Nor I,” Mahmoud admitted, to my astonishment. “Ali will lead.”

We followed the younger man up a hill, through an orchard, beneath a wall, and I realised that I could see the shape of the stones against the sky. Dawn was not far off. An owl swooped over; the night was so still, I could hear the bird’s feathers parting the air.

“There is an inner room,” Ali breathed at us. “It will be guarded. Does… she… understand?” His deliberate use of the correct pronoun echoed his earlier disdain and doubt. Mahmoud answered before I could.

“Amir understands that hesitation may mean disaster. He will do what needs to be done.”

I wished I shared his confidence. I began to sweat, despite the cold air, and my stomach turned to rock.

There was a locked gate; Ali opened it. Beyond it lay a garden, and a stout wooden door. Ali unlocked that. Inside, the building smelt of stone and woodworm and something as heavy as incense but not incense; I decided later it had to be hashish. The corridor was long and bare, and the whisper of our clothing was a harsh susurration against the hard rock walls. Ali’s feet were bare and damp, and came up from the stones with minute sucking noises. Mahmoud’s stomach growled once. The corridor seemed endless.

Once we heard voices, unintelligible echoes a long way off, fading as soon as they had begun. A minute later we passed a door from which came the sound of a man snoring. When we had eased past it, Ali picked up our pace, past doors, a window, three more corners, down a flight of stairs, and then he stopped.

“Stay here.” I heard his feet pad away damply down the stones. After a minute they came back. “Clear,” he breathed. ”But we must bring the guard out.”

“Amir,” whispered Mahmoud, “take off your turban. Quickly. Your hair—loose it. Put away your spectacles. And give me your abayya. Now, you must call the guard out.”

“Me? How on earth—”

“Hurry! We must have the door open. The guard will not open it for Ali or me, and if we try to force the lock he will raise an alarm. You must bring him out, Amir. Your Holmes is in there,” he added.

As he had known it must, that knowledge steadied me. I straightened my shoulders and arranged my thoughts, then paused with my knuckles above the wood.

“What would he call his superior? The leader?”

“Try ‘commandant,’ ” suggested Ali. I had hoped for more surety than that, but it would have to do. I started to bring my knuckles down on the door, paused again to unbutton a few of the fastenings on the neck of my shiftlike robe. I was very uncertain as to technique, to say nothing of ability to carry it off: one thing my training with Holmes had not included was the