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went up a flight of stairs. She gave me a brief, modest smile and then turned her head away. She had hair as black and glossy as obsidian, gathered tightly into a chignon. Her hands were very pale, her fingers long and tapered and graceful. I got just a quick impression, yet I knew this woman had style and intelligence; but I felt also that she could be menacing and hard, if she needed.
    "Who was that, Youssef?" I asked.
    He turned to me and frowned. "That is Umm Saad." I knew immediately that he disapproved of her. I trusted Youssefs judgment, so my first intuition about her was most likely correct.
    I took a seat in the outer office and killed time by finding faces in the pattern of cracks in the ceiling. After a while, one of Papa's two huge bodyguards opened the communicating door. I call the big men the Stones That Speak. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. "Come in," said the Stone. Those guys don't waste breath.
    I went into Friedlander Bey's office. The man was about two hundred years old, but he'd had a lot of body modifications and transplants. He was reclining on cushions and drinking strong coffee from a golden cup. He smiled when I came in. "My eyes live again, seeing you O my nephew," he said. I could tell that he was genuinely pleased.
    "My days apart from you have been filled with regret, O Shaykh," I said. He motioned, and I seated myself beside him. He reached forward to tip coffee from the golden pot into my cup. I took a sip and said, "May your table always be prosperous."
    "May Allah grant you health," he said.
    "I pray that you are feeling well, O Shaykh."
    He reached out and grasped my hand. "I am as fit and strong as a sixty-year-old, but there is a weariness that I cannot overcome, my nephew."
    "Then perhaps your physician—"
    "It is a weariness of the soul," he said. "It is my appetite and ambition that are dying. I keep going now only because the idea of suicide is abhorrent."
    "Perhaps in the future, science will restore you."
    "How, my son? By grafting a new zest for living onto my exhausted spirit?"
    "The technique already exists," I told him. "You could have a moddy and daddy implant like mine."
    He shook his head ruefully. "Allah would send me to Hell if I did that." He didn't seem to mind if / went to Hell. He waved aside further speculation. "Tell me of your journey."
    Here it was, but I wasn't ready. I still didn't know how to ask him if he figured in my family tree, so I stalled. "First I must hear all that happened while I was gone, O Shaykh. I saw a woman in the corridor. I've never seen a woman in your house before. May I ask you who she is?"
    Papa's face darkened. He paused a moment, framing his reply. "She is a fraud and an impostor, and she is beginning to cause me great distress."
    "Then you must send her away," I said.
    "Yes," he said. His expression turned stonelike. I saw now not a ruler of a great business empire, not the controller of all vice and illicit activity in the city, but something more terrible. Friedlander Bey might truly have been the son of many kings, because he wore the cloak of power and command as if he'd been born to it. "I must ask you this question, O my nephew: Do you honor me enough to fill your lungs again with fire?"
    I blinked. I thought I knew what he was talking about. "Did I not prove myself just a few months ago, O Shaykh?"
    He waved a hand, just that easily making nothing of the pain and horror I'd suffered. "You were defending yourself from danger then," he said. He turned and put
     one old, clawlike hand on my knee. "I need you now to defend me from danger. I wish you to learn everything you can about this woman, and then I want you to destroy her. And her child also. I must know if I have your absolute loyalty."
    His eyes were burning. I had seen this side of him before. I sat beside a man who was gripped more and more by madness. I took my coffee cup with a trembling hand and drank deeply. Until I finished swallowing, I wouldn't have to