Teeth of a wolf on a whitened bone,
What do the splinters say?
Scent of a sambur, up and gone,
Where will he stand at bay?
Sparks in the whirl of a hurrying wind.
Who was it laid the light?
Mischief, back of a woman's mind,
Why do the thoughtless fight?
CHAPTER XII
Black smoke still billowed upward from the gutted House-of-the-Eight-
Half-brothers, and although there were few stars visible, a watery
moon looked out from between dark cloudracks and showed up the smoke
above the Delhi roofs. Yasmini picked the right simile as usual. It
looked as if the biggest genie ever dreamed of must be hurrying out
of a fisherman's vase.
"And who is the fisherman?" she laughed, for she is fond of that
sort of question that sets those near her thinking and disguises the
trend of her own thoughts as utterly as if she had not any.
"The genie might be the spirit of war!" ventured a Baluchi,
forgetting the one God of his Koran in a sententious effort to please
Yasmini.
She flashed a glance at him.
"Or it might be the god of the Rekis," she suggested; and everybody
chuckled, because Baluchis do not relish reference to their lax
religious practise any more than they like to be called "desert
people." This man was a Rind Baluch of the Marri Hills, and proud of
it; but pride is not always an asset at Yasmini's.
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