sounded outside. Feet pounded in the room – there was someone here! – and the
dim rectangle of the doorway showed a bulk plunging through it. But it was going
out, not in. The Raggah had heard the whistle of the garrison soldiers – half
the city must have heard it – and he was leaving with his fellows.
She turned and bent down and searched under Benna’s tunic and in his loincloth.
She found nothing except slowly cooling lumpy flesh. Within ten seconds, she was
out on the street. Down a block was the advancing light of torches, their
holders not yet visible. In the din of shouts and whistles, she fled hoping that
she wouldn’t run into any laggard Raggah or another body of soldiers.
Later, she found out that she’d been saved because the soldiers were looking for
a prisoner who’d escaped from the dungeon. His name was Badniss, but that’s
another tale.
4
Masha’s two-room apartment was on the third floor of a large adobe building
which, with two others, occupied an entire block. She entered it on the side of
the Street of the Dry Well, but first she had to wake up old Shmurt, the
caretaker, by beating on the thick oaken door. Grumbling at the late hour, he
unshot the bolt and let her in. She gave him a padpool, a tiny copper coin, for
his trouble and to shut him up. He handed her her oil lamp, she lit it, and she
went up the three flights of stone steps.
She had to wake up her mother to get in. Wallu, blinking and yawning in the
light of an oil lamp in the corner, shot the bolt. Masha entered and at once