Confusion roiled him. Was this . . . discovery? If so, it felt nothing like the terror and anger that his master had expected.
The woman lifted a hand—
—and moved the burlap aside.
He was enormous: far taller than herself and twice as wide, with a barrel chest and shoulders that stretched half the width of the alcove. His face was roughly carved, with a slab for a forehead, a jagged nose, and uneven lips. His eyes were globes of blue glass, one clear and the other clouded. The imprints of fingertips decorated the hollows of his cheeks.
His urgency had turned to confusion. He was watching her, studying her; she could see her face in his thoughts. She felt no violence, not yet; no true intelligence, either. Only instinct and obedience, devotion to his master—and now, dimly, she sensed the echoes of a human mind, one of the sleepers above them, dreaming of a classroom and a test unstudied for.
His master was a child. An Asylum child!
There was something strange about the woman’s face.
He peered at her as though compelled, not knowing why—
Some hidden instinct made his marble eyes shift their focus past her appearance, into her essence. The perfectly molded face. The unblinking eyes, the unmoving chest. She was—
golem
—the same as him.
She saw herself, in his thoughts. Felt him realize her nature—
the same
—and recoiled. No.
She let go of the burlap, stood, stepped backward. He didn’t move, only watched, his glass eyes in shadow.
She backed into the corridor, then turned and stumbled through the maze, past the hat-stand, the cot-frames, the boxes that scraped at her shins, and emerged at last at the threshold. She wrenched the door open, shut it behind herself—just as the rising bell sounded through the Asylum, announcing the start of a new day.
* * *
Maryam Faddoul swept through her coffee-shop, smiling, listening, uprooting whispers, knowing in her heart that it wouldn’t be enough.
The neighborhood was in a black and anxious mood. The situation in Lebanon was worsening; the news that made it past the censors spoke of scarce food, black market thievery, warehouses full of rotting silk. Worse, the money they sent home to their families was failing to reach them more often than not. Why doesn’t the U.S. enter the war? people had begun to ask. Can’t Wilson see what’s happening? Don’t Syrian children matter, in American eyes? All would shake their heads, and cast about for something to distract them—while Maryam swept from table to table, pouring rounds of coffee, searching desperately for a new bit of gossip, some alchemy she might perform—
The bell jingled. All heads turned as Sam Hosseini stepped through the door.
Maryam wanted to cry with relief. Sam was a friendly, boisterous man, and a natural storyteller; when he entered a room, ears bent and heads tilted. Moreover, his general store had long been a destination for eccentric Manhattanites who liked to go about in fanciful “Oriental” dress and who were willing to buy the most outlandish items at the most outrageous prices. Sam would have tales of his customers enough to last the morning, and no one would talk of anything else for a week.
Maryam ushered him to a table, its occupants eagerly moving aside to make room. Sayeed, too, came out of the kitchen, and greeted his friend, the two embracing like brothers. Maryam poured his coffee, and asked after his children’s health. “Oh, well enough, well enough,” he said, and spoke briefly of the calamities his sons and daughter liked to visit upon him: pranks and truancy, afternoons spent at the pictures instead of helping at the store. All smiled and nodded: yes, their own children did this too, and if Sam found it maddening, then they might be excused for feeling the same. And dear Lulu, his wife?
Sam’s face clouded. “She’s well, but—worried.” In a moment the mood had lowered. All nodded, thinking of Lulu Hosseini, a sweet and gentle soul. Of course the war would weigh especially heavily upon her. Maryam resolved to visit her as soon as possible, and chided herself for not thinking of it before. Her attention had been elsewhere for far too long.
She was about to ask Sam if he’d been blessed with any interesting customers lately when the man brightened and said, “But now, here is a bit of news, a thing I saw with my own eyes, if you can believe it.”
All drew in to hear him.
“I was at Ramzi’s yesterday, for some digestive tablets—”
Lucas Ramzi owned the chemist’s shop that sat opposite the Amherst. An alarm sounded deep in Maryam’s bones.
“—and as I was leaving, whom should I see but the Bedouin himself! He was towering over a messenger-boy who’d had the misfortune to knock upon his door. I thought I might have to intervene and protect the poor lad—”
An astonished murmur began among the assembly.
“—but then he retreated back into his cave and slammed the door in the boy’s face. Oh, and here is the most astounding part! What do you suppose our friend was wearing?”
No one could even begin to guess.
“A leather apron around his neck, a pair of trousers fit for the rag-bin—and that was all! In full view of the entire neighborhood, no less. What do you think of that?”
At once the entire shop was exclaiming upon it. This went too far, certainly! Wasn’t it time that something was done about the man? As a matter of public decency, if nothing else?
“What do you think, Maryam?” asked one of the men at Sam’s table. “Something strange must be going on in that building.”
The shop quieted, waiting for Maryam to give the blessing that would unleash them. And give it she must—for to protect the Jinni now would be to drag herself down, to risk her credibility, even her good name. And to what end? Even if she sacrificed everything she had, it wouldn’t stop them from breaking down the Amherst door and dragging
