The Terrorists of Irustan (18 page)

twenty

*   *   *

The Maker has assigned us differing tasks according to our abilities. On men it is laid to worship, to labor in the mines, and to discipline their households. Women are required to bear sons and raise them, and to be obedient in all things. This is the perfect order of the One. Order erases conflict.

—Twelfth Homily,
The Book of the Second Prophet

Z
ahra heard
it from Qadir. She was still dressing when he knocked on her door and burst in without waiting for an answer. “Zahra!” Perspiration dotted his brown scalp.

Zahra touched Ishi’s shoulder. “I’ll see you at breakfast,” she murmured, and Ishi slipped out. Qadir appeared not to notice her.

“Zahra!” he said again. “Leman—dead, he’s dead! I’ve had a call from City Power!” Qadir dropped into the chair opposite the unmade bed. “By the Prophet, Zahra, that’s two of them!”

Zahra stared, uncomprehending. “What do you mean, two? And why didn’t I get a call if Leman was ill? What’s happened?”

The lines in Qadir’s face deepened. “He was already dead when his houseboy found him yesterday. The leptokis disease!”

Zahra went cold. She collapsed onto the stool beside her dressing table. “How do you know, Qadir? Who said that?”

Qadir rubbed his eyes and swallowed, fighting the old revulsion. A vein throbbed in his forehead. Zahra reached for his wrist and circled it with her fingers. “Slowly, now,” she commanded. “Tell me only what you need to.” Qadir leaned back in the chair and breathed deeply. “Right. Sorry.” He turned his hand over to take hers, his fingers slippery with perspiration. “They tell me that Leman didn’t get up yesterday, but it wasn’t until his secretary called from the City Power offices that his houseboy went to his room. He was still there, and he was—was in a mess. It was like—” Qadir swallowed, and blurted, “It was just like it was with Gadil!”

Zahra knew what they must have told him—the fouled bedsheets, the ghastly rictus, the smell. She withdrew her hand and jumped up to stride to her closet. “Qadir, why wasn’t the body brought here? Leman was on my list! I’ll want to do a postmortem, see for certain. This isn’t . . .” She paused, one hand on the closet door, trying to remember why she was there. She said, half to herself, “1 don’t see how this is possible.”

She pulled a dress and a fresh coat from her closet, and stripped off her nightdress. Behind her, Qadir stood slowly.

“Zahra—what do you think is happening? Port Force will want to see us again, will want to investigate. I’m out of my depth here, and there will be questions, a lot of questions.”

“I won’t know until I do the postmortem. Will you have Diya call, see where the body is? And send Asa to the surgery—but not Ishi, not yet. And tell Diya we’ll need a car. Unless you want to drive me yourself?”

Qadir stood shaking his head, staring at the floor. Zahra repeated her instructions, and he frowned. He nodded, but his eyes were glassy, and he left the bedroom with an uncertain step. Zahra dashed water over her face and brushed her hair hurriedly. Pulling on her coat as she went, she almost ran to the clinic. Her unfastened veil flew about her, and her feet caught in her long skirt. Her heart beat so heavily it was a wonder Qadir had not heard it. Her mind raced ahead of her, fearful, shocked.

She went straight to the CA cabinet in the large surgery and threw the door open. She leaned in, rummaging on the lowest shelf, far in the back. A moment later, she sat back on her heels, staring into the crowded cabinet. It was still there. A brown plastic vial, middle-sized, innocuous-looking. Lethal. A dragging footstep sounded in the hall. She didn’t move.

Asa hobbled in, leaning on his cane. “It’s there, isn’t it?” he asked, breathless.

Her own voice was flat. “It’s there.”

“Then she got it somewhere else. It’s not your fault.”

“It is my fault.” Zahra shoved the door of the CA cabinet closed with unnecessary force. “I started this. However she managed this, it’s my doing and my responsibility.”

“She did it for Alekos.”

“I know.”

The buzzer from the street door made them both jump. They heard Lili open and then close the door.

“By the Prophet, Asa,” Zahra murmured. “What now?” She stood up too fast on trembling legs. The room swirled in a heady blur of silver and gray and black. She tried to take a step, but her muscles betrayed her and she swayed on her feet. Her legs rebelled, her knees folded, ignoring the commands of her mind.

Asa cried out, trying to get to her, but his cane slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor.

Blindly, she reached out for something, anything, to hold onto. There was nothing. There was only the silver-gray blur, and she fell into it, slowly, slowly, knowing there were only the hard tiles to catch her.

They came sooner than she expected, but they surprised her. They weren’t hard, but resilient, and surprisingly warm. She felt herself caught by them, turned and lifted up, comforted. She sighed, and gave in.

*   *   *

When Zahra opened her eyes and saw the face of the Port Forceman bending over her, strange and yet familiar at one and the same time, she gasped. Her hands groped for her veil, and she looked frantically around to see where she was, who had observed her.

“It’s all right, Medicant.” Asa’s voice, from behind her, was calm, soothing. “It’s Kir Chung. It’s Jin-Li.”

Jin-Li Chung smiled down at Zahra, and helped her to sit. Strong brown fingers assisted her with the panel of her verge, smoothing it over her nose and mouth, fitting the tiny button into its buttonhole. “There now,” Jin-Li said. “That’s better.”

Zahra stared at the sleepy dark eyes, the short gleaming brush of black hair. In the wake of her reaction, she remembered that she had nothing at all to fear from this person. Unless—she looked around again. “Qadir?” she breathed. She was surprised at the weakness of her voice. She had passed out. Fainted! Something she had never once done in all her life.

“The chief director is in the dayroom,” Asa murmured. “Kir Chung came with a manifest and Lili let him in just before you lost your footing in the surgery. A lucky thing. I’m too slow.”

“Lili? Is she—”

“No, Medicant,” Asa said. “I’m your escort.”

Zahra passed trembling fingers over her eyes, her brow. She needed time, time to think, to understand. To decide.

But Jin-Li Chung decided for her.

“Medicant, I’ve come because General Administrator Onani has been asking questions.” Chung’s voice, always light in timbre, was low-pitched and confiding.

“About me?” Zahra managed to ask, her voice a mere breath. “Questions about me?”

“The deceased man was on your clinic list.”

Zahra felt the faintness threaten again, but she took a sharp breath and fought it back. She forced herself to speak firmly. “Surely Mr. Onani is aware Leman Bezay hasn’t been to my clinic except when he came with his son.” “He is.” Jin-Li smiled, long eyes crinkling. “Matter of record. But Mr. Onani has a very curious mind.”

Zahra slid from the bed and stood up. Her legs wavered and she willed them to hold. “Come into my office. Asa, you too.”

Zahra waved Jin-Li into a chair and pushed hers around to the side of the desk for Asa. She herself stood, not giving in to her shaky legs. She leaned against the wall, looking out the little window into the sun-baked garden. For a moment the only sound was the monotone hum of the cooler.

Zahra turned abruptly. “You know, Kir Chung ...”

“Medicant, I’d like you to call me Jin-Li.”

Zahra felt stronger suddenly, more in control of the situation. Her fear drained away, and she felt her accustomed energy, her determination, take its place. Leman Bezay had been a foolish and selfish old man. Who was there to mourn him? There was only Port Force to worry about, and they could deal with that. With Jin-Li’s help. If Jin-Li meant to help.

“Yes, of course. Jin-Li.” Zahra regarded both Asa and the longshoreman, in control once again. “You know, I haven’t even had coffee yet. Asa, would you mind calling for some? Coffee, perhaps some fruit and bread? It’s going to be a long morning.”

“Of course, Medicant.” Asa levered himself to his feet with his cane. “What about Ishi?”

“Say that she should have breakfast with Qadir.”

“Very well.” Asa hobbled from the little office.

Zahra met the longshoreman’s eyes. “You know, Jin-Li, there’s nothing I can tell Administrator Onani. Who knows why the leptokis disease strikes where it does? I can only be held responsible for those who come to my clinic. 1 believe you understand that many Irustani men avoid that when they can.”“Just as I told Onani,” Jin-Li responded, and smiled again. It was a beautiful smile, Zahra thought. A beautiful face.

Jin-Li began, “You should know, Medicant—”

“Zahra,” she said, without thinking. She added hastily, “At least in private.”

Jin-Li nodded. “Thank you. Zahra.” The name sounded sweet in Jin-Li’s mouth.

Zahra caught herself with one hand on her breast, her heart pounding again. It was the unaccustomed familiarity, she told herself, the breach of a lifetimes rules, that made her heart beat so fast. It couldn’t be the longshoreman’s long, heavy-lidded eyes, the way they lifted when she looked into them, as if in invitation—an invitation to know, to reveal, to share.

The inner door of the surgery opened and closed, and they heard voices. “Our coffee,” Zahra said.

Jin-Li stood, leaned forward with both hands on the desk. “Listen, you should understand that Onani intended this inquiry to be confidential. Not direct.”

“Naturally,” Zahra answered. “But you . . . ?”

Jin-Li flashed white teeth and laughed. “It’s clear to me that there’s nothing here that will answer his questions.” Jin-Li’s brown eyes narrowed, lids dropping. “In any case, Medi—Zahra—I didn’t come to Irustan to be a spy for Port Force.”

“Why did you come, Jin-Li?” Zahra asked softly. The sounds of Asa’s slow progress down the hall came closer.

Jin-Li’s smile faded. An ineffable sadness clouded the sleepy eyes. Zahra was moved to put her hand on the longshoreman’s where it rested on her desk. Her fingers lifted, poised to do it. But Asa appeared in the doorway.

“Would you like your coffee in here, Medicant?”

“Yes.” Zahra flushed, hastened to move several discs to make way for the tray Asa carried. Without his cane, Asa’s progress was painfully slow, and Jin-Li jumped up to help. Zahra watched the two of them. “Did you see Qadir?” she asked Asa.

“He’s at breakfast with Ishi.”

“And Lili?”

“Lili too.”

“Did they ask ...”

Asa sat on Zahra’s chair. “I told the chief director that you had a delivery, and you were putting it away. The chief director seems a bit distracted this morning.”

“Indeed.”

Cook had provided coffee and fresh bread with a tiny saucer of oil. Black olives and green grapes, still on their stems, were tossed together in a bowl. There were only two cups, but Asa grinned and produced another one from a deep pocket.

Jin-Li brought another chair from the dispensary. They all sat, and Asa poured out coffee. Zahra reached for a sprig of olives and lifted her verge to take one to her mouth. Then, exasperated, she unbuttoned it.

Asa lifted one eyebrow. “Just tell me if you hear someone coming,” she said to him. Her eyes met Jin-Li’s and she smiled. She held out the dish of fruit to their guest. “Tell us about your home, Jin-Li. About Earth.”

*   *   *

Fifteen minutes elapsed before they heard Lili come through the inner door of the clinic. When she appeared in the doorway to Zahra’s office, Zahra’s veil was properly fastened and Jin-Li Chung was handing a paper manifest to Asa, who transferred it to Zahra. The extra coffee cup had disappeared. Moments later, Asa escorted the longshoreman out through the dispensary.

“I didn’t know you were expecting another delivery,” Lili said to Zahra. “Kir Chung forgot something,” Zahra said offhandedly. “He found it in his cart. Has Diya called for a car?”

Lili said, “The chief director will drive you to the Doma himself. He’s not going to the office, not until after you’re finished with . . . finished doing the ...” Her voice trailed away.

Zahra snapped, “By the Maker, Lili, you’re as bad as Qadir!”

Primly, Lili smoothed her drape over her meager bosom. “I prefer not to be diverted when I can avoid it, Medicant.”

“I see,” Zahra said. “But I don’t have that choice, do I?”

The outer door of the dispensary closed, and Asa limped back into the office. “Shall I go with you to the Doma, Medicant?”

“Thank you, Asa, that would be best. I’ll assemble the things I need. We’ll leave Ishi here.”

“I’ll go and get ready.”

“Medicant,” Lili said. “What do you want Ishi to do today?”

Zahra considered the manifest in her hand for a long moment. “We have very few patients today, Lili, and they’re all routine. Let Ishi handle the clinic.

If anything difficult comes up, she can postpone it until the afternoon. I should be back by then.”

“I’ll get Diya,” Lili said.

“Yes,” Zahra said. “And send Ishi to me. I’ll go over the schedule with her before I go.”

Lili followed Asa through the inner door to the house, and Zahra returned to her desk with the manifest Jin-Li had left. It was an old one, its ink faded from exposure. Every delivery on it had been long since checked off. In the bottom margin, in small, delicate script, was written a wavephone number. Jin-Li Chung’s number. Zahra smoothed it with one long finger, wondering if Jin-Li understood. She could never use it. For a woman to use a wavephone was punishable, like almost every other criminal act, by being sent to the cells.

twenty-one

*   *   *

The man who lives a righteous life has nothing to fear when his life is over.

—Seventeenth Homily,
The Book of the Second Prophet

T
he Simah
of the Doma was an old man, fervent in his beliefs, rigid in his observance of the Second Prophet’s rulings. He met Qadir, Asa, and Zahra on the steps of the Doma. At first it seemed he would not even allow Zahra to enter.

“This is outrageous,” he proclaimed. White hair flew about his heavily wrinkled face. He was a heavy man, ponderous in body and speech. His eyes disdained Zahra, and after one glance at Asa’s foot, Asa as well.

“The medicant should not even be here,” the Simah declared. “Women’s practices taint the very air of this sacred place! My own wife never sets foot in the Doma except for funerals and cessions, and yours should have the same respect!”

Zahra clenched her jaw beneath her verge.

“Simah,” Qadir answered, “the directorate is facing a crisis. Nothing in the Second Prophet’s teaching addresses this. The epidemic didn’t start until he was safely on his sacred journey. But we must satisfy the ESC in this matter! Not even the Doma will survive without their patronage.”

“Heresy!” the Simah protested in a tone too shrill for so large a man. “Irustan was carried here by the will of the One, and is kept safe by the same! So the Second Prophet assures us!”

“Simah, I mean no disrespect,” Qadir said. “But we have little choice in this matter.” He took a step closer to the Simah, using his imposing height, every inch the chief director. He quoted,
“
The One sends disease
as
a warning to follow His laws; and He sends the remedy
as a
reward for obedience.
It falls to us to find the remedy for this warning.”

The Simah scowled at Qadir, and at Zahra’s veiled figure. “Not in the mortuarium,” he repeated.

“Where, then?” Qadir asked. He took a brisk step forward, assuming victory. The Simah was no match for Qadir.

The Simah led the way, with heavy tread, to a basement room. Zahra followed slowly, waiting for Asa, who had to drag his foot from stair to stair. Qadir stayed on the main floor, making arrangements with the undertakers to transfer Leman’s body. It had been brought to the Doma by the houseboy and an aide from City Power. The undertakers had accepted the body before they knew what it was. Now Qadir had to bribe them to move it again, with many assurances that they couldn’t contract the disease.

The little basement room was rarely used except as a storage space, and it was chilly and dim. Zahra and Asa spread sterile sheets over every surface, and laid out their equipment on the floor and on top of old boxes and stacks of unused furniture.

Zahra hurried her exam, knowing exactly what she was looking for and where. Asa handed her equipment as she called for it, and she took remote samples and did visual assessments as best she could in the dim light. She avoided looking at Leman’s face, keeping it covered. When she did pull back the sheet, the face was unrecognizable, a mask the color of unbaked bread. The skin had pulled tight against the bones, smoothing the lines, lightening the deep furrows around his mouth. Zahra spread the sheet back over it as soon as possible.

Theirs was a foul task. The undertakers had been afraid to clean the body. They had hastily covered it, put it on a gurney, and retreated as far away as they were allowed. Zahra had no sympathy for them. They, at least, could converse with their Simah. Poor Asa, laboring without complaint at her side, might have been utterly invisible to every member of the Doma staff.

Zahra and Asa washed the body and laid it out, wrapped and covered, when their work was done. They scrubbed the room thoroughly, then washed and washed again with disinfectant. They put their used clothes into a sealed bag, and put on fresh ones they had brought with them, then wearily climbed the stairs.

Emerging into the light of the main floor, Zahra was too exhausted to be angry anymore. The undertakers were hesitating on the steps leading down to the basement as Zahra, Qadir, and Asa left the building. The Simah was nowhere to be seen.

“They were right, Qadir,” she murmured as they walked to his car. “Leman had the leptokis disease.” She noticed Qadir kept a cautious distance from her. They were all the same, the men of Irustan. Their fear was their weakness.

“I’ve already had a call from Onani,” Qadir said. He was pale, but his voice was level, his eyes steady. He was in charge. “It was put through from my office to the Simah’s. He hasn’t asked to see you this time, but his Dr. Sullivan has requested the postmortem report.”

“I’ll have it ready in a few hours,” Zahra said. Qadir held the car door for her. As she stepped in to the passenger compartment, her fingers brushed his hand. He flinched away as if her touch could burn. Asa was reaching for the door into the front of the car, but he saw Qadir’s movement. He pulled back his hand, and got into the back opposite Zahra.

Through her fatigue, Zahra’s temper rose again. “Qadir,” she said tightly. “Asa and I are washed, our clothes discarded—gloves, masks, everything. You have nothing to fear from us.”

He closed her door, and got into the drivers seat. “I’m going to take you home,” he said without apology. “And then I’m going to my office. Diya can call me when your report is ready.”

Zahra drawled, “Yes. Good. That should be safe.”

She was veiled, but Asa was not. His stricken eyes slid toward her, toward Qadir’s suddenly rigid neck, and away again. An angry flush crept over Qadir’s scalp, and he drove slightly too fast, braking hard when they reached their curving drive.

Zahra and Asa went around the house and into the clinic through the street door. They found Lili presiding over an empty dispensary. “Ishi’s in the small surgery, Medicant.” Lili’s veiled countenance was blank as a wall. “With a patient?” Zahra asked.

“No. Cleaning.”

“Thank you, Lili.” Zahra went through the dispensary, turning left to her office, signaling to Asa to follow. When they were inside, she closed the door. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “1 shouldn’t have goaded Qadir like that.”

“Probably not, Medicant,” Asa said. His tone was equable, but his face was grim.

“I need to thank you,” Zahra said. She sat down behind her desk. “It was an awful morning. You were a great help.”“You know, Medicant, I like the work,” Asa told her. “I’m a man, but, well, I suppose you could say that this”—he gestured to his ruined foot—“has already diverted me. Whatever the reason, I like working in the clinic, and in the surgery.”

Zahra unbuttoned her veil and pulled it away from her face. She smiled at Asa with affection and a weary gratitude. “I hardly know how to thank you for that. For saying that.” She put a hand to her neck, rubbing the tight muscles. “We’re in a strange spot, my friend. I’ve lifted the lid off a boiling pot, and I’m not sure I can put it back.”

“Camilla took matters into her own hands, Medicant. You can’t take responsibility for that.”

“I can and I must, Asa.” Zahra leaned her head against the high back of her chair. “She undoubtedly got some of the serum from Kalen. And I made the serum.”

“I had a hand in that, too,” Asa said quietly.

“It’s true. I couldn’t have accomplished it without you. Where does that leave us now?”

Asa sat down on the small chair across from Zahra’s. “It leaves us with secrets. Necessary secrets.”

She closed her eyes. “You’re very sensitive, Asa.”

“You mean, for a man?”

Her eyes opened and she laughed a little, looking at him. “Of course! All we women are sensitive, aren’t we?”

Asa chuckled. “So says the Second Prophet.”

“You must have suffered terribly when you were young, Asa.”

“Yes,” he said. “I suffered. But I learned.”

Zahra’s eyes closed again. “Asa,” she said. “Whatever happens—wherever this all leads—you are not to be implicated. You work for me, you assist me. You have fewer choices than most. None of this was your doing.”

“I know, Medicant.”

They sat in companionable silence for a time, and then Zahra stirred. “I’d better see Ishi now,” she said. “Find out how things went this morning.”

“It won’t be long until Ishi’s a fully qualified medicant herself,” Asa said. “With her own clinic to run.”

Zahra nodded. “All too soon, Asa. All too soon.”

Asa rose, leaning heavily on his cane, and hobbled out of the office in search of Ishi. Zahra shuffled through some papers, tidying her desk. Next to her reader lay the fading manifest with the wavephone number written in the bottom margin.

Zahra folded the manifest and slipped it into her pocket. Odd, how it made her feel. She had acquired an offworld friend—a friend outside her circle. It made her world seem infinitely wider than it had been. And if Jin-Li knew the truth about her, about what she had done? She didn’t want to think about that.

*   *   *

Kalen, Camilla, and Zahra knelt with shoulders touching among the ranks of ululating, scarlet-veiled women. Idora and Laila knelt behind them. Leman Bezay’s coffin rested on the dais in the center of the Doma, with hundreds of Irustani crowding the tiled floor around it. The men of Leman’s office and of Delta Team, dressed in white shirts and trousers and the scarlet rosettes of mourning, stood stiffly, faces immobile, as if they couldn’t hear the shrill surge of women’s voices. The six strong miners who had carried the coffin in and would carry it out again to its resting place were white-faced with fear, but they stood their ground. Zahra pitied them. They were more afraid of the scorn of their fellows than of the leptokis disease; but they were deathly afraid of the leptokis disease.

Qadir’s tall figure wended its way toward the dais through the crowd. Camilla seized Zahra’s hand beneath her drape and squeezed it. “I’m sorry,” she hissed, her voice almost inaudible through the rise and fall of voices. “But I had to do it.”

Kalen leaned close on the other side, the sharp bones of her shoulder digging into Zahra’s arm. She kept her head bowed as she spoke. “I gave her what was left. It was right there, on my dressing table—and I couldn’t bear to see Alekos suffer.”

Zahra, her own head bent, cast a sidelong glance from one veiled friend to the other. It fell to her once again. Absolution, forgiveness . . . who was she to mete out those graces? The weight of responsibility lay on her, heavy as the whitewood coffin displaying Leman Bezay’s pallid-faced corpse.

“I want you to know,” Camilla whispered, “I asked him one more time, begged him to allow Alekos to go offworld. I pleaded with him on my knees! He wouldn’t even answer me. Zahra, he had his houseman remove me from the room, drag me out by the arm as if I were a servant being punished!”

Alekos, narrow-shouldered in his formal whites, stood at the head of the coffin, the bereaved son saying farewell to his father. His lips trembled and his face reddened and then paled, over and over. He hardly looked strong enough to stand throughout the funeral.

Someone initiated a fresh wail of simulated grief, and the lines of women swayed. Zahra lifted her head to scan the scarlet-shrouded figures. For these women, this was their moment, and it was little enough. Weeks on end, they might see no one but the members of their own households. Day after day, they could relax only when they were alone, when they were just women together, and then not completely. Someone might come upon them doing or saying something forbidden, carry the tale to their husbands, to their Simahs. Only at these cathartic ceremonies could they let themselves go. They filled the Doma with their high-pitched laments, pent-up emotions pouring out to swirl over the heads of their husbands and brothers, to fill the Doma right to its arching roof. Even Ishi and Rabi, swaying side by side, gave themselves up to the general hysteria. And none of it, not one single mournful cry, was inspired by Leman Bezay.

Kalen’s fierce grin was visible even through her verge. “We’ve saved two children, Zahra! What else matters? We’ve saved our children!”

Qadir climbed the steps of the podium and began to speak, looking over the heads of the women, seeking the eyes of the men. Zahra’s chest burned with a strong emotion she hadn’t yet named. She returned the pressure of Camilla’s hand, and Kalen’s. “I know,” she murmured. “I know.”

When the ceremony was over, the women followed the coffin out, wailing, moving as one body that swayed with their steps, right, left, right, drifting shades of scarlet. The men came behind in stiff rows. Beyond the doors, once the bearers had placed the coffin in a cart for the trip to the cemetery, the veiled women fell silent. They dropped out of line, going to the sides of the wide steps, silk skirts trailing on stone. Except for Camilla, who would follow the coffin to the cemetery, each waited now in silence, her eyes cast down and her hands folded. Husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles found their women and herded them into cars, onto cycles, or on foot toward the Medah.

The circle of friends stood close together on the steps. There would be a farewell after the interment, the families joining one last time at the Bezay house. Zahra, Laila, Kalen, and Idora waited in silence to be collected by their escorts.

Rabi and Ishi joined them on the steps, and they all watched the funeral cortege wind away from the Doma, Alekos at its head. He was seventeen, considered a man. A frightened, weak man, Zahra knew. Would Camilla win?

Would Alekos be allowed to study offworld? She was not sure who was responsible for Camilla now, although she thought there might be an uncle. Perhaps Alekos himself, at seventeen, could have his mother under his protection—but he was supposed to go to Delta Team.

Qadir emerged from the Doma with the Simah. The Simah stopped, folding his hands, watching his flock disperse. One or two men approached him, touching their hearts, murmuring to him. He bent his head to answer their questions.

Asa stepped forward from the shadows and followed Qadir along one wide step to where Zahra and Ishi waited with Kalen. Knots of men lingered on the stairs and on the sidewalk, talking in subdued tones, relieved the ordeal was over. They pulled back when Asa passed, stepped out of his way, turned their heads. Asa kept his eyes forward, giving no sign that he noticed.