And finally I understood what was below the bandages.
‘You put metal beneath my skin.’ It would be bronze. Bronze with my name on it. My true name. Including the name of my real father. Like they’d used to control Noorsham. I looked for a bronze ring on his hand like the one Naguib had used to control Noorsham. Something I could wrench off his fingers, breaking his control over me and letting me make a run for it. Instead I spied a small bandage across the Sultan’s forearm. Like mine. He was taking precautions.
‘Bronze.’ The Sultan touched one of the scars. ‘And iron.’
Iron.
My stomach lurched at that. They had cut my skin open, put iron underneath it, and stitched me back up.
I was powerless.
Only … the Sultan had wanted Noorsham so he could use his power as a weapon. If that wasn’t why he wanted me, then what had he just paid my aunt so highly for?
‘You’re wondering why,’ the Sultan said. I wished I wasn’t so easy to read. ‘I made the mistake last time of thinking I could control a Demdji. But there are so many loopholes. So many small gaps in my orders you could squeeze through. As a girl you are largely harmless if you do wriggle through those loopholes. As a Demdji … well, the chance of harnessing your power is not worth the price if you disobeyed and turned it against me. It would be like letting you loose in my palace with a gun.’ He mentioned guns in a cast-off comment, but it still made me nervous. He couldn’t know I was the Blue-Eyed Bandit. If he did, he’d know I was part of the Rebellion and I doubted we’d be having such a pleasant conversation. ‘The iron was Tamid’s idea again. He has been very useful since coming to the palace. He is from the Last County, too, you know – where was it, my boy?’
‘Sazi,’ Tamid said. It was a bare-faced lie. Sazi was near enough Dustwalk, but far enough away that I’d never been there until I went with Jin. It was where Noorsham was from. Where Naguib had been encamped before coming to Dustwalk. Tamid was hiding from the Sultan that we were from the same place. He hated me enough to stick iron under my skin but not to put a noose around my neck, it seemed.
I willed Tamid to look at me. But he kept his eyes firmly on the ground. I was so stupid. I’d seen him and for just a second I’d felt like nothing had changed. But I was wrong. I should’ve known that. Last time I was with Tamid I was a girl who left people behind. And he was a boy who’d never have betrayed me.
‘Your part of the desert remembers things that most of the rest of us have forgotten,’ the Sultan was saying.
‘So what good am I to you as a Demdji with no power?’ I carefully turned my attention back to the Sultan.
The Sultan smiled enigmatically. ‘Follow me and find out.’
And against my will, I felt my feet move. I just had time to glance over my shoulder to see Tamid finally look up at me, his face marked with something that looked a lot like worry, before the door closed between us.
Chapter 14
I had to follow him, but I didn’t have to shut up about it. ‘Where are we going?’ Smooth marble echoed my own words mockingly back at me as we wove our way through the palace. ‘Where are you taking me?’
The Sultan didn’t answer any of the questions I shouted at his back as I trailed him. Finally he stopped in the middle of a hallway. I halted a few paces from him. Behind us an archway twice my height opened into a small garden filled with roaming peacocks. Across from it, so as to be framed in the line of sight from the door, was a mosaic of Princess Hawa. She stood on what I guessed were the walls of Saramotai, hands spread wide as the sun rose behind her. Her eyes stared straight ahead. They were blue in this picture, too. Just like they’d been in Saramotai.
The Sultan pressed a hand to Hawa’s. I heard a click, and then the section of the wall that extended from one of Hawa’s hands to the other shifted, swinging out like a door. Behind it a long staircase plunged downward sinto darkness.
We’d passed the last guard a way back now. And there were none here. Whatever was at the bottom of those stairs was truly meant to stay secret. ‘What’s down there?’ My voice bounced eerily down the stone steps.
‘There are some things that are better to do in places where God is blind.’ The Destroyer of Worlds came from the place where God was blind, they said. Deep inside the earth. ‘After you.’
Pressing a hand to the wall for balance, I counted the steps as we descended. Thirty-three was a holy number. It was the number of Djinn who gathered together to forge the First Mortal in their war against the Destroyer of Worlds.
I stumbled in the dark at the bottom. The Sultan was close behind me. He steadied me with a hand on my waist. For a moment I was back in the camp, Jin’s hand on me. I’ve got you. I pulled away quickly.
This wasn’t like the rest of the palace. Instead of smooth marble, the walls were rough-hewn stone. A low ceiling was supported by squat pillars that went on line after line into the shadows, like ancient soldiers standing to attention. The only light came from a hole in the ceiling, casting a bright circle in the dark vaults. As we got closer to the light, I could see the pillars were carved with patterns that had been worn down, like centuries had run them smooth. Maybe longer than centuries. I wasn’t sure how old the world was. But this seemed like a place that was here at the beginning of it. The years had buried this place, but it had survived.
Standing under the light was like being at the bottom of a well. The circle of light was about as wide as my arms stretched out. But the sky above was only the size of a half-louzi piece. My bare toes brushed something cold. Looking down in the lamplight, I realised that there was iron set into the ground in a perfect circle, patterns woven through it. An identical circle glinted off to my left. And another, just beyond that, covered in dust and dirt.
‘What are these?’ I pulled away from the iron instinctively.
‘You’re from the edge of the desert,’ the Sultan said. ‘You are a descendant of the nomads who carried stories across the sands. You must know all the ones of the old days, in the times that the Djinn walked among us openly. When they still loved mortals. Well.’ He gave me a sly glance. ‘You are walking proof that they do still, occasionally. But there was also a time when my ancestors ruled with the help of the Djinn. That was what the Sultim trials were, thousands of years ago. Tasks set by the Djinn to choose the worthiest among the Sultan’s sons. Not a series of foolish tests designed to turn men on each other.’ A series of foolish tests which Ahmed had won outright. ‘In those days, princes would climb mountains and ride Rocs to bring back a single one of their feathers. They drank water under the sleepless eye of the Wanderer. True feats. But though we cling to those traditions, the days of worthy princes are long gone. As are the days when the Djinn used to come here and surrender their power inside these circles in good faith, while the Sultan surrendered his weapons, and they traded counsel.’
I ran my toe along the edge of the circle. I’d heard of these in stories. Places where the Sultan summoned a Djinni by his true name and then released him again. It was a sign of trust. If I counted the circles, would there be thirty-three of those, too?
‘You are going to summon a Djinni here, Amani,’ the Sultan said.
My head shot up. I’d seen plenty of things that were created before mortals. Buraqi. Nightmares. Skinwalkers. But the Djinn were different. They weren’t just the stuff legends were made of. They were our creators. Nobody saw Djinn any more, though a few folk in Dustwalk claimed to have found one at the bottom of a strong bottle. And, I supposed, my mother had. ‘So desperate for greater counsel in these troubled times, Your Exalted Highness?’ He didn’t take the bait.
‘The stories make it sound easy – you can simply call a First Being so long as you have their true name.’ Like princesses and paupers alike in the stories, calling for help at their hour of need with a true name earned through some virtuous deed at the start of the tale. ‘But you need so much more than that. You also need to be able to call them in the first language.’ The Sultan pulled a
folded piece of paper from his pocket. ‘And you need one more thing. Care to venture a guess?’
I didn’t take the paper. ‘If I were taking a stab in the dark’ – I heard the bile on my own tongue – ‘I’d say it was a Demdji.’
So this was why he was willing to pay a Demdji’s weight in gold. This was why he’d shoved iron under my skin. He didn’t need my powers. He was going to order me to summon a Djinni.
I knew the stories of the wars that the Djinn had fought alongside humanity. Adil the Conqueror who leashed a Djinni in iron and brought cities to their knees before he came face-to-face with the Grey Prince. The Djinni who built the walls of Izman in a single night as a gift to his beloved. A Demdji’s power was nothing compared to what I knew a Djinni could do.
I thought he’d order me to take the paper. But the Sultan just smiled indulgently. ‘A true language.’ A language without lies. ‘A true tongue.’ A Demdji who couldn’t lie. Who could say You will come to me in the first language and make it so. ‘And a true name. In this case, the same one buried under your skin. Part of your true name.’ My eyes shot to the paper without meaning to. ‘Your father’s name.’
My father’s. My real father. The Sultan hadn’t ordered me to take the paper. But still my hand twitched towards it against my judgement. My father was in my reach.
‘Take it,’ the Sultan ordered finally. ‘If you want to.’
My fingers closing around the paper at the order betrayed me. I wanted to let go of the paper. I wanted to fight it. But I wanted to know, too. I raised the paper so I could see it in the light from the well.
And there it was.
Black ink scrawled onto white paper. My father’s name.
Bahadur.
For the first time in my seventeen years I knew my real name. The same one that was etched into bronze and slipped beneath my skin.
I was Amani Al-Bahadur.
‘Read it aloud.’ It was an order. And I couldn’t disobey.
My mouth moved against my will, reciting the ancient language written on the paper. The words almost fell out, so easily for a language I didn’t speak, like they belonged there. Like the Djinni half of me recognised this language better than any other.
I got to the end too quickly, and my father’s name slid across my tongue as easily as fat over a fire. And then I was done. I fell silent.
Nothing happened for a moment.
Then the iron circle burst into flames.
Chapter 15
I staggered back as a huge column of blue fire rose up from the circle in front of me. It was higher than the low-vaulted ceiling, filling the well all the way up to the sky. It burned hot and quick and brighter than any flame I’d ever seen. It fought for a few moments at the edges of the iron circle, at some invisible barrier, before, just as suddenly as it had appeared, pulling itself into the centre of the circle, taking a shape.
I blinked against the light floating in my eyes, like I’d just stared straight at the sun and gone blind for a moment.
Then my vision cleared and I saw my father for the first time.
Bahadur looked like a man who had been made out of fire.
No. That wasn’t right. I might not be so devout as some, but I knew my holy stories. Djinn weren’t humans made out of fire. We were Djinn made out of dirt and water with just a hint of their flame to give us life. A spark from a bonfire. We were a far duller version of them.
Bahadur’s skin shifted and moved with dark blue flames. Flames the same colour as my eyes.
I didn’t feel heat pouring off him. But I could feel something else, something that I couldn’t name but that went past my skin and struck me in the soul. He stood as tall as one of the huge pillars down here in this ancient palace vault. Only he wasn’t just holding up a palace. He was holding up the world. One of God’s First Beings who had made the First Mortal. Who had made all of mankind.
Who’d made me.
I realised that what I was feeling was power. True, raw power, the kind that didn’t come from a title or a crown but from the soul of the world itself.
He kept shifting as I stared at him. And I realised he was shrinking and shifting at the same time, changing his appearance. It reminded me of the way Imin shifted when changing shape. Until he wasn’t blue fire and light any more. He was dark skin and dark hair, as much flesh and blood as any desert dweller. Still, even blunted to look like us, there was no mistaking that he was different. He was too handsome, too carefully carved, too perfect to look like a mortal man. And he hadn’t made his eyes look human. They were made of the same changing fire as the rest of him, except they burned more steadily. They burned white-hot around the edges, and bright blue around a perfect black pupil. And they seemed to scrape me inside out.
‘You called me.’ Three such mundane words that carried so much weight. His attention shifted slowly to the Sultan. ‘Though not, I see, for yourself.’
The Sultan was a powerful man. But he was a man just the same, and standing next to a Djinni he looked like nothing more than a spark hovering around a bonfire.
‘Now.’ Bahadur sounded almost bored as he spoke to the Sultan. ‘What would you ask of me? Is it gold? Power? Love? Eternal life? All four, perhaps?’
‘I’m not foolish enough to ask anything from you.’
Bahadur considered him without blinking. I realised I was watching him closely, searching his features for something familiar, something I might share with him other than our eyes. ‘I have seen more days and met more mortals than there are grains of sand in your desert. I have met paupers and kings and everything in between. I have never met a man who didn’t want something. It does not matter if you are a dirty-kneed child on the street or a man who already has more power and gold than you know what to do with. You always want something.’
‘And you always use our wants against us,’ the Sultan said. ‘You take our needs and our desires and you twist them until our only wish is that we hadn’t asked for your help at all.’ He wasn’t wrong. I’d read those stories, too. The ones of Massil, and of the Djinni who destroyed an entire sea in revenge on one merchant. The tinker who died in the desert looking for gold he was promised by a captured Djinni. ‘And in the end’ – the Sultan swept his foot over the edge of the circle tauntingly – ‘we never get what we want.’
‘So you do want something.’
‘Of course,’ the Sultan said. ‘Everyone wants something. But I am not foolish enough to ask you for it. You are going to give it to me, with no strings attached.’
When Bahadur laughed it echoed all the way down the vaults. ‘And why would I do that?’
‘She is one of yours, you know.’ He meant me, though his eyes never strayed from his Djinni prize.
‘Of course I know.’ Bahadur didn’t take his eyes off the Sultan. Look at me, a part of me wanted to shout at him. Another wanted to shout at myself for wanting him to. I’d done just fine my whole life without a father. I didn’t need one now. ‘Why do you think we mark them?’
The Sultan pulled a knife out of his belt. ‘Little Demdji. Take this and drive it through your stomach.’ My body went cold. It was an order.
‘No.’ I said it out loud, like refusing could make it real. But it was no good – my hands had already started to move.
‘Do it slowly,’ the Sultan ordered, ‘so that it hurts.’
There was nothing I could do. My hand was moving, reaching out for the knife, curling around the handle, turning the blade so it pointed at my centre. I fought it. My arms trembled with effort. But there was no helping it. The knife was slowly driving itself towards my stomach.
‘Your daughter will die here.’ The Sultan addressed Bahadur. ‘Unless I stop that knife.’ Stomach wounds killed you slowly. ‘Give me the names of your fellow Djinn, and I will order her to drop the knife.’
Bahadur still didn’t even glance my way. He watched the Sultan with flat blue eyes as the blade inched towards my body. He was an immortal First Being. Second only to God hims
elf. To him even the Sultan, the ruler of the whole desert, was nothing. I was nothing, and I was his daughter. He sank down in the circle, crossing his legs gracefully as he went.
‘All of you die eventually.’ He smiled in that indulgent way parents do at children. Except it wasn’t at me. ‘It’s what mortals do best.’
The knife was still inching towards my stomach and he didn’t care. He was going to let me die. The knife pressed against the cloth of Shazad’s khalat. I was always getting blood on the clothes she lent me. This time she probably wouldn’t forgive me. She’d never forgive me for dying on her in the middle of the war.
‘Yes,’ the Sultan agreed. ‘Everything dies eventually.’ He turned away from the Djinni, like he was the one who was nothing. If he was disappointed in Bahadur’s refusal, it barely showed. ‘Drop the knife.’ The order was thrown at me.
I wrenched the knife away from my stomach, letting it clatter to the ground. My body was my own again. It had been a bluff. A stupid failed bluff against an immortal being. I was shaking. Hard. But anger chased out fear fast. Anger at my own body. At the Sultan. But most of all, that Bahadur would look on, so indifferent to me, as I died.
He had made me drop the knife. But he hadn’t told me not to pick it back up.
My fingers curled back around the hilt, and I moved, plunging the knife toward the Sultan’s throat. One final gesture to end everything.
‘Stop.’ The order came a second too soon. Seizing my muscles with the knife a hair’s breadth from his skin. I’d been a second from killing him.
For the first time Bahadur was watching me with interest.
The Sultan’s gaze flicked from the knife to me. I expected rage. I expected retribution. But none came. His lip just twitched up. ‘You’re a dangerous little Demdji, aren’t you?’ And then I knew why his mouth looked familiar.
His face was Ahmed’s, but that smile – that smile was all Jin.
Chapter 16
Traitor to the Throne Page 12