Mistress Manukian is a woman bound up with The Pearl, that establishment of the better sort where the brothel and the massage-parlour keep company. She commands a room without effort, moving through it with authority and an easy confidence; and it was she who gestured across the floor to mark where a certain party sat waiting — a small courtesy that betrayed her hand in the management of the house and in the arranging of its meetings.
It was she, too, who delivered over to Sidra al-Najjar a scroll bearing two castings of the Exorcise Genie spell together with a purse of two hundred gold, so declaring her part in the traffic of bounties and of magical resources.