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We were in quite a large house, in a neighbourhood I didn’t recognize; not one of those I had seen from time to time wandering on my horse, Shahrazad, or visiting someone I knew. The whole city – ruins piled on ruins and mire mixed with mire – seemed plunged in misery. There was no longer any obvious difference between the elegant Kaheer district, the red light district, and the slums of Kawthar, where incomers from around Sur settled. Yet I still had an ability to discern luxury, even when it had been razed to the ground. I could sniff out the elegance in once elegant places, and the scent of pain in places that had been and still were in pain. I took a quick sniff of the neighbourhood, which we had entered in a wooden donkey cart shrouded in black cloth. The smell was unfamiliar.
