Chapter fifteenThe woman said: “Lord, the baby died.”
Mishuro studied the woman attentively. Her face showed tired lines and her hair draggled and her mouth, pale and weak, drooped in defeat. She stood at the open door of her house, a mud brick dwelling, one of many, between the edge of the cultivations and the desert. Her dress was a simple sack-like garment, once a cheerful yellow and now a washed-out ochre. She wore no jewelry. Her man was in the fields, laboring, and she would have been there but for the recent birth of this baby who had died.
Hargon, brittle, cutting, said: “The woman lies.”
Tuong Mishuro’s face expressed nothing. “Show us the grave.”
She waved her hand over towards the river and the true desert beyond.
“No,” said Hargon. “No, I do not think so. Stand aside.”
Th
