‘The story you used to tell me, master, from The Thousand Nights and a Night, about the fisherman who let the evil jinni out?’
‘That’s the one. With the difference that I don’t think this evil will ever be tricked back into its bottle.’
On they went through the sombre noonday hush, both thinking of the night, the winter to come.
It was only when they turned at last on to the track that led to the Spring of Tears and the Grand Vizier’s palace that their melancholy was dispelled – and replaced with another sort of sadness, a darkness struck with light, as the two men’s thoughts both turned to Lubna.
‘Go on. You give her the news,’ Abu Abdallah said to Sinan when at last he handed the reins to a boy at the Grand Vizier’s gate. ‘After all, her freedom is your gift to her.’
‘And the other
