And the woman who loved Umballa was among these.

One day she asked to take a journey into the bazaars to visit her sister.

Ordinarily such a request would have been denied.

But the king no longer cared what the women did, and the chief eunuch slept afternoons and nights, being only partly alive in the mornings.
An hour later a palanquin was lowered directly beneath the king's window.

To his eye it looked exactly like the one which had departed.
He went on writing, absorbed.