There was no escape. Even on the high balcony, the smothering heat and dry, stale air sapped energy and sense. Jeniche rested a moment against the parapet to gather herself and looked out over the city of Alboran with a half-seeing eye. Beside her, a cat waited out the heat with the patience natural to any predator, head down and paws tucked in. Little had changed since she had last stood there. The sun had moved a fraction further west, hanging like a polished bronze plaque in a smoky room, but there were still no shadows anywhere in the city, just an umber gloom, a perpetual twilight that waxed and waned.
It was three days since the dust storm out of the south had passed. The heavy stuff had settled straight away, dark like dried blood. It had covered the rooftops, piled into corners, tainted wells, and coated the streets. Women had swept it from their steps; men had shovelled it into carts and taken it away to goodness knows where. The river had become sluggish, exuding a dull, underground stench and the sea had changed colour from translucent blue to a wine darkness that was only now starting to fade. But the fine stuff that got in their noses and mouths and made their eyes water, that stained their clothing and laced the air and their food with a stale flavour of metallic salts, that was still there.
It gave the city, spread out before her, an ancient and otherworldly feel, as if it was a painting made by an artist who only had the colours of earth to work with – ochres, reddy browns, clay yellows, silty greys. The sprawling complex of buildings that she could see from her vantage point dropped away in the south to the landward city walls. To the north, had she been able to see it from the balcony, the view was across rooftops all the way down to the docks and the coast. The wealthy quarter of the city was in the west where they could enjoy evening breezes; the poor lived in their maze of streets and alleys on the eastern slopes where the sun would wake them early.
She was reminded of Makamba, the place she had come nearest to thinking of as home. Mud-brick buildings, hot desert air carrying the blended aromas of ten thousand cooking fires, quiet afternoons and the whole place coming alive in the evening with lamps burning in the souks and alleyways; a roofscape that called out to be explored. Makamba, she added to herself, before the Occassans invaded and tore it apart in their search for her and the treasure she wore. She wondered how the city was faring, unconsciously fingering her pendant through the thin cloth of her tunic.
A faint movement of air made the cat sneeze. It cost a lot that breeze. Not as much as it would have in one of the shady, north-facing rooms up here on the top floor, but expensive enough. Too expensive. She turned and stepped back into the room. The cat jumped down from its perch on the balcony wall and followed her, waiting patiently until it was let out. It went and sat on the landing and had started washing behind one ear as she closed the door.
‘It’s always me, isn’t it,’ she said.
Alltud barely moved. ‘Well, who else is going to do it? I can’t think of any other way round this, and you know what I’m like with heights.’
The feeble, carmine ghost of the hot, dry breeze strayed in from the opening to the balcony. It made it halfway through the small room before it expired, leaving a tiny cloud of ochre dust to sift down to the bare boards. Jeniche watched it before she turned to the washstand and picked up the ewer.
Water splashed and formed complex wave patterns as it filled the wide, shallow bowl. She dipped one corner of her keffiyeh in the tepid liquid and squeezed the cloth lightly, dust washing away from the cinnamon flesh of her scarred fingers. After she had wiped her face and cropped raven hair, she stared at the faint muddy stains on the cloth with a resigned shaking of the head. The stuff got everywhere. She was not vain, but she liked to keep clean. Water, though, cost money. Especially here. Especially now.
‘Could we not, just once, do something that involves me sitting in the shade outside a tavern with my feet up while it’s you risking your neck?’
She turned and paced with silent steps along the narrow space to the other end of their room. It didn’t take long.
Alltud, sitting on his bed, had long since stopped watching her go back and forth. The constant movement of her diminutive form was too wearing, had started to make him feel queasy.
‘That won’t get us out of this predicament,’ he said to his hands where they clutched his knees.
Jeniche shrugged, her back to him.
He saw the twitch of her shoulders from the corner of his eye and his hands tightened their grip. ‘I’m not doing this on purpose, you know.’
‘No?’ she asked, turning.
‘It’s not my fault our money’s gone.’
‘Really? Stay in a cheap tavern, I said. More than once. Down by the harbour. Plenty there to choose from. But, no, you said. If we are looking for well-paid work, we need to keep up a front. Look respectable. But there isn’t any work, is there? Not up here. Not anywhere. Not for strangers, anyway. Not for outsiders. We’ve had that made clear enough on more than one occasion. Too many displaced people drifting in from the south with their families and not enough trade. Not enough goods coming up from wherever it is all those people have abandoned.’ She was back at the open doorway to the balcony long before she had finished.
‘I wasn’t to know that. Any more than you did.’
‘So, instead of having several more weeks to look for work or decide to move on, we’re here. In our fine little room. Putting on a front. But now we’ve nothing left to pay for our time here and virtually nothing left for buying food. And your answer? You want me to climb down a sheer mud wall. In the dark. With all our gear. While you saunter out the front door as if you owned the place. And then we go sneaking off in the night.’
Alltud looked up from his hands and surveyed their lodgings. Given how basic the room was – four square and simple, just big enough for a solid lockable door, two beds, a washstand, a lamp, a balcony, and room to pace up and down – it was difficult to imagine how bad a cheaper lodging could have been. Difficult, but not impossible. They had done cheap. They had done filthy. This was quiet, clean, secure