The woman's smile retreats.
“Iwastalented.” She gives her hands another brisk rub as though warming them. “That was before I injured my hands. And now I work here. Where I'm forced to deal with the likes of Hind Hibachi.”
Shay gulps, anticipation straightening her spine. “So, you do know her?”
“If I did,” the barkeep says, snatching back the cloth and returning it below the counter, “I would have barred her from my establishment for distributing Snow. Not to mention her outstanding tab.”
Nibbling her lip, Shay contemplates the woman's words. “You mean she was selling it?”
The barkeep pauses, her voice laced with warning when she speaks again. “Not selling. She offered it for free to young women. Women who quickly become dependent on the drug and go live in the kasbah for as long as Al-Mukhtar can use them. When they eventually get cast out, they'll spend the rest of their miserable lives in the Bib. And that's if they're among the lucky ones.” She turns back and grabs a bottle from the wall, uncorks the neck, and sniffs it before returning it to its place. “But you didn't hear such treasonous talk from me, eh?”
Shay settles onto a stool with a seat of woven leather, allowing herself a moment for the words to filter through her mind. Her thoughts shift like desert sands. She's heard the rebels’ accusations of touched ones being employed at the kasbah before, but the claim of Al-Mukhtar discarding them after Snow has drained their vitality is a new one.
The barkeep glances over her shoulder and raises her eyebrow as if questioning what Shay is still doing there.
“Did she ever mention having a child?” Shay's voice stretches as thin as pastry dough, but it gets the woman to turn around and fully face her.
She looks Shay up and down the way a market goer might examine goods, searching for some flaw they can leverage for a lower price. “Touched ones say a lot of things when they're blitzed.”
It's all the confirmation Shay needs, and the only person who can tell her more than that is the woman herself. It's unlikely this Hind Hibachi is one of the touched ones who reside at the kasbah—she wouldn't have been patronizing the brewery if she did. If she is, instead, one of the castoffs the barkeep speaks of, that means …
Shay knows where to look for her: the shantytown, colloquially called the Bib. “Thank you, khalti.”
The woman tilts her head as Shay rises to go. Understanding passes over her face, then sharpens to alarm. “I wouldn't go there if I were you.”
Shay hesitates. The Bib is hardly a place anyone would go for enjoyment, but the woman's tone suggests a more sinister meaning. “Why not?”
She huffs. “The Bib isn't just where poor people live anymore. It's a hideout for criminals. A place where rebels are free to take cover because no mukhtar would soil his spotless white robe by venturing in. The Moulays don't even conduct raids there.”
Shay believes this; the midwife herself refuses to enter the slum, its women forced to come to her or deliver their babies alone. As a hizoura, Shay has more reason than most to avoid the rebels, especially when she may have already attracted one's attention. But, instead of the trepidation she should feel, a lightness floats like soap bubbles in her chest. If she had to give name to the feeling, she'd call it hope.
Seeming to sense her words have not had their intended impact, the barkeep continues: “You'll need a guide to get through all the rigged traps, and no one there will trust you unless you know the secret hand signal.”
Shay grips the counter, dizzy with the implications. She strums her fingers over the years’ accumulation of dents and scrapes that have been worn into the wood grain, her leather gloves a barrier that dampens their sensation. “Do you know the secret hand signal?”
“Why would I?” The woman kneads her hands again. She grimaces. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do.”
Shay's shoulders sink. If the barkeep seemed the type to be swayed by dramatics, she'd drop to her knees then and there to beg. One of the men offers her a sympathetic shrug, then returns to his game, which, judging by the fan of cards held in his hand, he's losing.
She whips her face back to the barkeep. “Did you say the touched one owed you coin?”
The woman sighs wearily. “Are you offering to pay it?”
Shay reaches through the slit in the side of her djellaba. She cups the small satchel hidden beneath, worn around her waist. In her gloved palm, she weighsits lightness. Her heart goes as still as the moment before a storm breaks. After her extra payment to the stable master, she has little coin left to her name, but the gloves …
The gloves were a gift, and so much more. A symbol of the care Ghita poured into her training and the midwife's expectations for her future. Shay cherishes them, both for their utility and their sentimental value.
“Does it hurt?” she asks softly. When the barkeep looks confused, she explains, “You told me you injured your hands.”
“A little,” the woman admits, but Shay has spent enough time around women in pain to recognize when one is downplaying the severity. “They tingle sometimes. And feel cold.”
With a strike of regret, Shay peels off her still-new and much-loved gloves. She squeezes the leather between her palms, soaking up its softness. The barkeep's hands look similar in size to her own. She squares her shoulders. “These might provide you comfort. I'll give them to you if you'll help me.”
6
Our Lallat are waiting to be restored.
The keepers of magic, the fairest four.
