That he'd asked about the fox at all was significant.

"I'm sorry," Raf said. "One problem is I don't always know what I'm going to do or how things are about to work out." He yanked the Bugatti's thin steering wheel and managed to avoid a cartload of goatskins, untreated ones to judge from the smell. "That makes it difficult to warn people in advance."

"It's a children of Lilith thing," Hani added. Although it was obvious from Murad's blank stare that this didn't make it any clearer.

The boy shrugged with all the weight of coming adolescence on his shoulders. "I just was wondering," said Murad. "You know, back there, what exactly happened?"

Raf opened his mouth to answer but Hani got in first.

"What happened," she told Murad, "was that Uncle Ashraf put a curse on the Marquis. Children of Lilith can do that."

Murad's eyes widened and, without even realizing, he made a sign against the evil eye. And then flicked his glance fearfully from the face of his cousin to the dark-suited stranger in the front. The elder brother no one had bothered to tell him he had.

"Do you believe in magic?" Raf asked.

Murad nodded, fiercely.

"You shouldn't," Raf told him, "it doesn't exist. There are no djinn. If you hear something go creep in the night and it's not a burglar then it's a cat . . . Everything can be explained," he added, before Hani had time to protest. "Even those things that can't."

"How do you explain things that can't be explained?" Murad demanded doubtfully.

"By admitting we don't yet have an explanation."

The boy thought about that for as long as it took Raf to drop back a gear and overtake three trucks, leaving soldiers radiating outrage as he roared by in the half dark, lights still off.

"So what happened with the Marquis?" said Murad. He spoke slowly, listening to his own words as he said them. Raf could remember another boy like that. A boy who tasted each word as it was said. Who survived in dark places because his words, wielded viciously, could do more damage than the fists of other boys.

Which left Raf wondering whose fists Murad had been avoiding. Or if he'd learnt to think before he spoke for other reasons.

"I put a gun to his throat," said Raf. "That's usually enough to make anyone afraid."

The boy nodded uncertainly. "But he's St. Cloud," Murad said, obviously unable to think of another way to put it. "Even my brother Kashif Pasha is scared of him."

"Kashif is scared of Uncle Ashraf," Hani pointed out. "Anyone with any sense is. He works for the Sublime Porte."

"No, I don't . . ."

"Then why wear the chelengk?" Hani asked triumphantly.

He thought about what she'd said before that. "Are you?" he asked.

"Afraid of you? Of course I am," Hani said. "Every time you do whatever you did back there."

Raf sighed. "Did you notice a mark left on his neck afterwards from the muzzle of the gun? And my hand on the back of his neck?"

Hani nodded.

"I cut off his blood supply. Oxygen starvation combined with panic. It made an ancient part of St. Cloud's brain kick in, nothing else."

"That was it?" said Murad.

"Sure," Raf said. "Simple oxygen starvation." He avoided mentioning the flames still dancing djinnlike across the inside of his eyes or the rawness that tightened his face like the aftereffects of searing heat.

CHAPTER 36

Thursday 3rd March

"Wait in the car," Raf told them when they finally reached Kairouan. "I'll get some breakfast."

"Crêpe," suggested Murad, "with jam and cream cheese."

"I don't think so," Hani said. "Does it look like that kind of place?" She wound down her window and sniffed, inhaling the cafés, street stalls and rotisseries. "Get some briek," she told Raf. "And Coke, if you can find any."

A dozen signs for local colas swung in the breeze. All variations on a theme of red and blue. None had names Hani recognized. This whole country was less like El Iskandryia than she'd first imagined.

"I'll see what I can do," Raf promised.

Watching her uncle stride away, Hani waited until he was lost in the crowd. His black coat swallowed by the burnous and jellabas of those around him. "Okay," she said, turning to Murad, "I'm going shopping. You wait in the car."

Murad Pasha stared at her.

Hani eased open her door and checked that the road was clear before beginning to slide herself out.

"I'm coming with you."

"No," Hani said hastily. "Someone has to stay with the car," she insisted, "and you're the boy . . ."

"So?"

Wide eyes watched him, apparently shocked. "I'm a girl," said Hani. "Surely you don't expect me to stand guard over the car all by myself in a strange city?"

Murad settled back. His eyes already scanning the shop fronts. "Don't be long," he said.

The first chemist Hani entered was full of old men who stared as if she'd walked in from another planet. So, muttering an apology, she gave an elegant bow, which she hoped would muddle them even further. The second catered to Soviet tourists. Hani knew this because a poster in the window had pack shots of painkillers and cough mixture above simple descriptions written in five languages, three of which Hani could read.

Catering to Soviet tourists was entirely different to there being any. Hani realized this as soon as she pushed her way through the shop's bead curtain and found the place empty, apart, that was, from an old man with what looked like the inward stare of a mystic or kif smoker. Although, it turned out to be neither because when Hani got closer, she realized his eyes were milky with cataracts.

"Saháh de-kháyr," she said politely.

"Saháh de-kháyr," he replied, then added, "Es-salám aláykum."

So Hani had to start all over, replying and to you peace, before rewishing him good day. Formalities complete, she stopped, unsure how to continue. She could see what she thought she needed on a shelf behind the counter, low down and almost out of sight.

The man waited while Hani opened and shut her mouth so often she was in danger of turning into one of Zara's promised carp.

"Telephone?" she muttered finally.

Absolute silence greeted this request.

Pulling a note from her pocket, Hani held it out to the old man. The note was American, a five-dollar bill.

The man called something over his shoulder and a young woman appeared, hastily wrapping her scarf around her head. Only to relax slightly when she discovered her customer was a child.

"Telephone?" Hani repeated.

Taking the bill from the man's hands she held it up to the light and slipped it quickly into her dress pocket. Man and woman had a hasty conversation, so fast and so low that overhearing was impossible. Whatever the content, they seemed to reach a conclusion.

"No telephone," said the woman. "Not here. But I take you . . ." She gestured towards the rear and Hani realized that she was meant to follow. For about fifty paces she fought her way down a busy back alley, then the woman steered her towards a small door set in a crumbling wall.

"Through here," she said, as she pushed Hani ahead of her, shouting "Hamid!" as they came out into a small courtyard.

A second yell produced a head peering from an upstairs window. Another burst of conversation followed in what Hani finally realized was chelha, the original dialect of Kairouan's Berber inhabitants.

"Where do you want to call?" asked the woman, tossing Hani's answer up to the boy, then stopping for his reply.

"El Iskandryia we can do," she agreed, "but it will cost more than five dollars . . ."

Reluctantly Hani peeled another note from the roll in her dress pocket and palmed it into a small square before making a pretence of searching her remaining pockets, muttering crossly all the while.