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happened one way, and then later said it happened another, I pointed this out to her.”
    That
was
true, I thought. And those other women, the ones dressing Shahrazad, had seen it.
    The Khatun narrowed her eyes; they nearly disappeared in the folds of puffy flesh. “So, you think Shahrazad wants you for your . . . memory?”
    I shrugged, tried to look perplexed. This was too close to the truth for comfort.
    â€œYou wouldn’t . . . be a storyteller yourself?” the Khatun asked, as if it were an absurd suggestion.
    She knew.
    There were many in the courtyard who had seen me telling that tale to the children. Someone must have told her. And she could put it together herself that I had been summoned to tell stories to Shahrazad.
    I had a sudden inward image of the Khatun sitting in the middle of a spiderweb, a vast web that spanned the whole harem. Any disturbance—anything unusual that happened—would jerk at the web. Make it twitch. And she would know it.
    If I played down my skill as a storyteller, she would know I had something to hide. She would know to look beneath my denial for the truth.
    So I would . . . exaggerate the truth. Make it outrageous. Laughable. Impossible to believe.
    I drew myself up proudly. “I am the greatest storyteller in the city,” I said. “Far greater than Shahrazad. If I were queen, the Sultan would know the difference between a commonplace tale and a great one.”
    The copper-haired girl snickered; she had fallen for my trick. But the Khatun had not. She stared at me, and the silence hung between us even longer than before. At last, she spoke.
    â€œI think,” she said slowly, “that this
cripple
of Shahrazad’s . . . is cleverer than she looks.”

Chapter 5
She Needs You
    L ESSONS FOR L IFE AND S TORYTELLING
    The thing about Shahrazad was, she didn’t give up. When the Sultan was killing a new wife every night, and there were hardly any unmarried girls left in the city, and people were getting madder and madder about what was happening to all of their daughters, and it looked as if there might be a revolt, Shahrazad didn’t just throw up her hands and quit. She
did
something about it.
    I think that’s why I admired her so much. Of course, she was clever and learned and beautiful, and she knew how to tell stories in the night. I admired her for those things, too. But the important thing was, she didn’t give up.
    Unlike my mother, for instance.
    T he Khatun dismissed me with a wave of her hand, and the copper-haired girl showed me out. Without a word, she led me down a colonnaded hallway to a flight of wooden stairs. She had a showy walk, with a lot of hip in it. Her ankle bracelets jingled, and her long, unbound hair swished from side to side.
    I followed her up the stairs and down a narrow hall, past a labyrinth of small rooms—some with curtained doorways, some without. She stopped abruptly, motioned to a faded blue-print curtain. “Your room,” she said. “Your clothes are in the chest.” She spun on her heel and was gone.
    I stood there for a moment, listening to her footfalls as they padded down the wooden stairs and then faded away.
    Quiet. It was so quiet. Probably most people had settled down to nap after noon prayers. I hadn’t felt so completely alone since they took me away, after my mother. . .
    No. I wouldn’t think about
her
now.
    Tucking the curtain into the bracket beside the doorway, I stepped inside. The room was narrow and dim. A thick blue-and-red carpet covered most of the floor, and an oil lamp stood on a low table near a small wooden chest. By one wall, a copper brazier squatted on the tiles. In the shadowed gloom of the far corner, I could make out a stack of damask cushions and a rolled bed mattress. High on the walls, I saw hooks embedded in the plaster near the ceiling, where tapestries must once have hung.
    I knelt beside the chest and lifted the lid. It creaked,