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Lilith took the chance. The worst it would earn her would be a slap. “I went to school in Paris,” she said softly. “Before my father sent the family home.”

“Your accent,” the girl said. “You sound Saudi.”

“I’m from Kuwait.” There was a wealth of emotion in the final word. “Have you been here long?”

“Three months.”

“You must be homesick.”

The girl started to cry.

“I’m sorry, mistress. Would you like me to leave?”

The girl’s hand clutched at Lilith’s sleeve. “No, tell me about Paris.”

Lilith mingled her actual visits to the city with evocative scenes from movies. She talked of the restaurant boats draped with lights sliding beneath medieval bridges, and setting the reflection of Notre Dame in the water to dancing; of strolling through the outdoor stalls on the left bank of the Seine where old men with hunched shoulders and shabby jackets peddled even older books. To Montmartre, where children fed the pigeons, and aspiring artists painted the famous church. Lilith took her rapt listener past the open doors of bakeries where the smell of bread and pastries hung so rich and heavy in the air that you could practically chew it.

The young wife’s eyes held excitement, but also resentment. Lilith wove a tale of her own frustration with an autocratic father who had been inspired by news of the rise of the new caliphate, and had sent his family home so her brothers could be part of this renaissance of Islam. “While he stayed in Paris,” the young wife said, and a touch of acid laced the words.

Lilith shrugged. “Yes, but he’s a man. So are they all, except for our glorious Caliph, long may he live and reign.”

“Yes, he is a good man,” the girl admitted.

“What is he like? Have you spent much time with him? Is there a chance he will come by? I would love to see him. I’ve only seen him at a distance.” Lilith rushed the questions and statements, giving the girl no opportunity to answer.

The wife laughed. “No, sorry. He won’t come. He always sends for one of us.” The lush lower lip protruded again. “And it won’t be me. Not tonight. He’ll want to talk to Nashwa.”

Nashwa, late forties, first wife of the Caliph, and mother of his son and heir, Abdul-Alim. Daughter of a prominent Yemeni businessman. “I will go and offer her refreshments,” Lilith said. She stood and gathered up her tray.

“She’s in her room,” the youngest wife said, and pointed vaguely down the hall. Lilith started away. “By the way, I’m Ameera. What’s your name?”

“Sura,” Lilith answered, and enjoyed the private joke. It meant to travel at night.

“How dare you? You knock and receive permission before entering.”

Jeweled beads on the edge of the headdress emphasized the black frown that twisted the older woman’s face. Nashwa was far from a beauty. In fact she was plain, and her voice clanged rather than lilted. She had to be the wife of the Caliph’s heart, otherwise he would have divorced this hatchet-faced woman.

Lilith didn’t respond to the rebuke. She crossed the room in four long, fast steps, grabbed the woman’s arm, and forced it up behind Nashwa’s back, immobilizing her. Lilith then pictured the room in the Uffizi Gallery that held the collection of Roman busts, and took them there.

There was that dislocating moment of dizziness and extreme cold. The stone floor beneath her slippers gave way to the softer sag of wood. Nashwa screamed in her ear. Lilith released the woman, wrapped her hand in the folds of her burqa, and gave the frame of a large painting a tug. Alarms began their shrill-throated cry.

Lilith teleported back to Nashwa’s room in the Baghdad palace. The Italian police would hold the woman for hours. By the time they accepted her story and affirmed her identity she would be a widow.

Back in the room Lilith threw off her drab black burqa and donned one of Nashwa’s. It was still black, but the material was of top quality and it was shot through with metallic silver thread. She settled the headdress over her hair and felt the sapphires and pearls jiggling cold and sharp against the skin of her forehead. Over it all she tossed the outer robe that shrouded even her eyes. Lilith sat down to wait.

Three hours passed before she was summoned.