The girl's name was Leila. She was nine, with dark honey-colored eyes and a spine warped by a congenital defect that had bent her body into a painful question mark. She could not run. She could barely walk without a cane. Her world was the dusty ground three feet ahead of her.
Sarah stood in the doorway of Dawud's clinic, arms crossed, a silent witness. She had brought Leila to him herself, the nurse's instinct overwhelming her mounting fear. How could she not? It was a physical pain to watch the child suffer.
Dawud looked worse than ever before. The consolidation of his power had not steadied him. His face was a landscape of fatigue, skin stretched taut over prominent cheekbones, eyes darkened by deep, bruise-like hollows. He walked with the slow, careful intentness of a man for whom ev
