The Hunger Deed

February’s bite was a razor across Zeid’s cheeks. The wind, dry and hollow, whistled through the narrow corridor of the String Alley, carrying the grit of a dying city. He ran, his breath coming in ragged plumes of white vapor that vanished into the oily smoke of distant guard torches. Those flickering lights danced against the crumbling mud-brick walls, casting monstrous, elongated shadows that seemed to snap at his heels with every turn. The leather satchel strapped tight across his chest didn't rattle with the clink of gold or the shimmer of jewels; it held a single sheet of coarse parchment, cold as the frost, bearing the Great Inspector’s seal in thick, dried crimson clay. It was the Wheat Deed—a document worth more than the lives of half of Karkh’s starving wretches in this bitter Abbasid winter. Zeid skidded to a halt, pressing his lungs flat against his ribs to stifle the drumbeat of his own heart. He ducked behind a heap of shattered brick and silted stone, the chill of the wall seeping through his tunic and into the marrow of his spine. A few yards away, the side gate of the Governor’s Palace groaned open. Jasper emerged, his heavy black cloak billowing like the wings of…