Free The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay

said bluntly. “They are killing people out there.”
    “That’s why you have to help me,” Jehane said quickly. “I have a patient in the city to whom I must attend tonight. I don’t think I’m safe outside the Quarter—”
    “You most certainly aren’t!” Bakir interrupted.
    “Fine. I want you to let me bring him in here in a little while. I’ll put him to bed in our house and treat him there.”
    They looked at each other.
    Bakir shrugged. “That’s all?”
    Shimon still looked suspicious. “He’s an Asharite?”
    “No, he’s a horse. Of course he’s an Asharite, you idiot. Why else would I be asking permission of the stupidest men in the Quarter?” The insult, she hoped, would distract them enough to end the questioning. Velaz was blessedly silent behind her.
    “When will you bring him?”
    “I’ll go fetch him immediately. I have to ask my mother’s permission first. Which is why I came ahead.”
    Bakir’s dark eyes narrowed further. “You are being awfully proper about this, aren’t you. That isn’t like you, Jehane.”
    “Don’t be more of a fool than you have to be, Bakir. You think I’m going to play games after what’s happened this afternoon?”
    Again they looked at each other.
    “I suppose not,” Shimon said grudgingly. “Very well, your patient can come in. But you aren’t leaving the Quarter again. Velaz can bring him, although I certainly won’t be the one to order him to do it.”
    “No, that’s fine,” said Velaz quickly. “I’ll go.”
    Jehane had thought that might happen. It was all right. She turned to Velaz. “Go now, then,” she murmured. “If my mother makes a fuss—I’m certain she won’t—we’ll put him in one of the travellers’ inns. Go quickly.”
    She turned back to the two guards and offered her best smile. “Thank you, both of you. I won’t forget this.”
    “I’d rather you did,” said Shimon virtuously. “You know how irregular this is.”
    He was being pompous. It was irregular, but not greatly so. Asharites often came quietly into the Quarter, on business or in pursuit of pleasure. The only trick—and not a hard one—was to make sure the wadjis didn’t know about it outside, or the Kindath high priests inside the gates. Jehane didn’t think it was an appropriate time to get into a dispute with Shimon, however.
    Among other things, the longer they talked the more it was possible that he might inquire as to the identity of her patient. And if he asked and she had to tell, he might know that Husari ibn Musa was one of those who was to have been in the castle that day. If Shimon and Bakir discovered this was a man the Muwardi assassins might be seeking there was no way under the moons that Husari would be allowed into the Kindath Quarter.
    She was putting her own people at risk with this, Jehane knew. She was young enough to have decided the risk was an acceptable one. The last Kindath massacres in Al-Rassan had taken place far to the south, in Tudesca and Elvira years before she was born.
     
    Her mother, as expected, raised no objection. Wife and mother of physicians, Eliane bet Danel was long accustomed to adapting her home to the needs of patients. The fact that this disruption was occurring during the most violent day Fezana had known in a long time was not something that would ruffle her. The more so, because in this case Jehane made a point of telling her mother that the patient was ibn Musa. Eliane would have recognized him when he came. Husari had had Ishak as a dinner guest on several occasions and more than once the silk merchant had discreetly entered the Quarter to grace their own table—defying the wadjis and the high priests, both. Fezana was not a particularly devout city.
    Which had probably done nothing but add to the pleasure of the fiercely pious Muwardis as they killed innocent men, Jehane thought. She was standing on the upstairs landing, one hand poised to knock on a door, a burning candle in her other