Part Three: The Hours Between
The afternoon passed in the complex way that afternoons do when something significant has been set in motion.
Safiya returned to her work. This was partly because she was a professional and there was work to be done, and partly because there was nothing to be gained by stopping — the decision had been made, and standing still would not improve it. She moved through the palace in the hours that followed with the same efficiency as always, overseeing the table settings, coordinating with the kitchen, ensuring that the flower arrangements had been positioned correctly in the main hall and that the extra chairs for the overflow seating in the adjacent room had been properly arranged.
Other staff members watched her when they thought she wasn’t looking. She could feel the quality of the silence around her — not the ordinary silence of people focused on their tasks, but the particular silence of people who have witnessed something and don’t know what to say.
At four-thirty, Layla Al-Mansouri found her in the linen room.
Layla was the youngest of Rashid’s siblings, thirty-four years old, with a degree in architecture from a university in London and a practice that she ran from an office in the new part of the city. She came to the palace for family occasions and for events, and she watched her brother the way younger siblings often watch their older ones — with a complicated combination of affection and clear-eyed assessment that only years of close observation can produce.
She closed the door of the linen room behind her.
“The dress fits you,” she said.
Safiya looked up from the inventory she was checking. “I don’t think—”
“I know the dress,” Layla said. “I was there when he bought it. I know the measurements.” She looked at Safiya steadily. “It will fit you.”
There was a silence.
“He will say it was a joke,” Safiya said. “If I appear in it, he will say it was a joke and find another way to make it worse.”
“Yes,” Layla said. “He will try.” She set something down on the shelf beside her: a small name badge, Safiya’s own, which Layla must have taken from the staff board near the entrance. “But tonight, I think it is time that my brother is reminded of something.”
She picked up the dress, which she had carried in under her arm — she must have taken it from the mannequin in the hall, which would by now be bare. She laid it carefully over the shelf.
“I am not asking you to fight him,” Layla said. “I am asking you to walk down a staircase.”
