I was valuable.
That was why I was still alive.
That was why he’d stopped the knife.
I was going to be kept in the harem. That was what the Sultan said. Kept. Not like a prisoner. More like an especially nicely crafted gun. Stored until I was needed again.
Other orders came with it as I was handed over to a servant woman in a khalat the colour of pale sand, her dark hair bound up in a sheema. Like she might have to worry about the desert sun in the shaded halls of the palace.
‘You will stay in the palace,’ he instructed calmly. I wanted to fight. But while my mind might be able to rebel against it, my body wouldn’t be able to. ‘You won’t set foot beyond the walls of the harem without permission from a member of the palace.’ He understood Demdji too well. He chose his words carefully. Don’t leave the harem. Not, Don’t try to escape. Trying and succeeding were two different things to a Demdji.
I spared a glance down the steps as the Sultan ordered me back up. Towards Bahadur. My father – though the word felt unnatural. He watched us go from where he sat inside the small circle. Darkness folded around him as our lamp retreated but I could still see him long after I ought to have been able to. Like he still burned with his own fire, even in human form. He was a thousandfold more powerful than I was. He had lived countless lives before I was even born. But he was as trapped as I was here. What hope did I have of getting out if he couldn’t?
‘And you will not harm any person here. Or yourself.’ He worried that I’d kill myself. That I’d try to slip through his grip into nothingness. I didn’t want to know what he had planned for me that was so bad that killing myself might be better. ‘But if any harm comes to me – if I die – you will walk up to the highest tower in this palace and throw yourself off it.’ If he died, I died.
A dozen other orders took root inside my bones as I was led through more polished marble hallways by the woman dressed in the colour of false sand. My legs obeyed the Sultan’s last orders. ‘Go with her. Do what she says.’
We passed under a low stone archway. I could just make out figures of dancing women twined together carved into the stone. I felt steam in the air before we’d gone much further, the cloying scent of flowers and spices already winding their way to my body. As easy to get drunk on as liquor when you’d been in the dried-out desert for too long.
We emerged into the most immense baths I’d ever seen. The room was tiled in iridescent blues and pinks and yellows in wild, hypnotic mosaic patterns from floor to ceiling. The steam climbing from the heated pools gave everything a slick sheen, from the walls to the girls.
And there were a lot of girls.
I’d heard stories about the Sultan’s harem, where women were kept for the pleasure of the Sultan and the Sultim. And to breed future princes to fight for the throne, and princesses to be sold for political alliances. Here they were, running soap in long languid circles across their bare shoulders or floating at the edge of the water, eyes closed as attendants ran oils through their hair. A few lay on the nearby beds, long limbs being kneaded by clever hands as they dozed.
The attendant started to undress me without speaking, undoing the tiny clasps at the front of Shazad’s khalat as I stared. I let her.
And then I spied the man. He looked like a fox in the henhouse. And a hungry one, too. He lounged on a bed, propped up by a stack of pillows, stripped to the waist. Probably a year or two my senior, he looked like something hewn out of stone, with heavy square features without a single graceful subtlety to offset them. He ought to have been handsome, but there was a nastiness to the tilt of his mouth that meant he’d never be.
Three impossibly pretty Mirajin girls were draped around him, wrapped in nothing but long linen sheets, long dark hair hanging in thick wet waves around their bare shoulders. One of them sat at his feet, trailing her legs lazily in the steaming water, leaning into the knee of a slighter girl who was folded into his side. The last one lay with her head in his lap, eyes shut as he trailed his fingers through her hair absently, pouty lips pressed into a contented smile.
His attention wasn’t on any of them, though – it was fixed on two girls standing across from him, both bare as the day they were born, being inspected inch by inch by an attendant. Like the servants were looking for any flaw that might keep these girls from being admitted into this world of perfect, beautiful women. I recognised them, I realised as the attendant peeled away my khalat and wrapped me in a plain linen sheet, though it took my tired mind a moment to place them. They’d been on the ship with me, brought by the slavers to be offered to the harem.
What had happened to the girls not chosen for the harem? Had they been sold to other men in less prestigious houses? Or were the rumours true – that slavers drowned any girl rejected by the Sultan’s harem?
As if she sensed me staring, the small girl pressed into his side looked my way. Something passed over her face as she leaned in to whisper to the girl lounging across the man’s lap. The girl with the pretty pout. Her eyes snapped open, focusing on me so quickly it was plain as day she’d only been pretending to sleep. She pursed her full mouth pensively as she twisted so that she could whisper something to the other two. The laugh that followed bounced off the tiles around me.
It drew the man’s attention my way.
‘You’re new,’ he addressed me as the girls pretended to try to hide their smiles. I hated his voice instantly. It stuck to his words like it was tasting them, and in turn they seemed to cling to my skin.
‘You should bow to the Sultim.’ The pout-lipped girl yawned, stretching conspicuously across his body like a cat in the sun. So this was the Sultim – the firstborn of the Sultan’s sons. Prince Kadir. Heir to the throne we were fighting for. The son who had faced Ahmed in the last challenge of the Sultim trials.
I’d long since passed the time when I might’ve been impressed by a prince. In the last handful of days alone I’d kissed one and yelled at another. But this one was my enemy.
So I didn’t bow as the attendants carefully unwound my bandages, conscious of this man’s eyes on me, as more of my skin was bared to the air.
There were ugly red welts where the iron had been shoved under my skin. The girls let out a bark of laughter as they appeared. ‘Maybe the tailor Abdul made her, my love,’ the pout-lipped one said, considering me. The other two girls tittered.
That stung.
‘The Tailor Abdul’ was a story about a man who was too picky with his wives. He married his first wife because her face was so lovely. He married his second because her body was desirable; and the third because she had such a good heart. But he bemoaned that his first wife was cruel, that his second wife had an unsightly face, and that his third wife had an ugly body.
And so he hired the tailor Abdul to make him the perfect wife. The skilled tailor did as he was told without objection. He sewed the first wife’s head onto the body of the second wife, and then he sewed the good heart of the third wife into the body so neatly that he didn’t even scar her perfect chest. What was left of the women was tossed out into the desert. In the end the wives got their revenge, as the husband was eaten alive by a Skinwalker who wore all the discarded pieces of his wives.
I stopped my hand from drifting to the marks on my arms. I was a Demdji, a soldier of the Rebellion, the Blue-Eyed Bandit. I’d faced a whole lot worse than bratty harem girls.
But Kadir only smiled. ‘In that case, she was tailored for me.’
‘It looks more like he made her for the menagerie,’ another girl started, failing to read her Sultim’s mood. ‘Or he mixed her arms up with a monkey’s.’ The girls’ titters burst into laughter. But they had lost the Sultim’s attention. He pushed himself to his feet, almost spilling the girl in his lap off him.
‘You look Mirajin.’ The spark of interest in his voice was dangerous as he closed the short distance between us. ‘It’s so rare they’re able to bring me Mirajin girls. Your kind are my favourites, though. You’re western Mi
rajin, I suppose.’ I didn’t answer. He didn’t seem to need me to. He grabbed my chin, tilting my face to catch the light and looking me over like a merchant might look at a horse. I would’ve hit him but the Sultan’s orders kept my hands at my sides. ‘At least my brother’s rebellion is good for something. Wars mean more prisoners.’
It had long been known that the harem was a dangerous place to be. I’d heard in the days of Sultan Oman’s father some women did come to him by choice. But more were prisoners of war. Slaves bought from foreign shores. Women captured off ships like Jin’s mother. Now we had a war in Miraji. That would mean more slavers taking advantage of the chaos to take Mirajin women.
‘Has the blessed Sultima even seen you yet?’ the girl who’d been displaced from her Sultim’s lap called out, trying to regain his attention.
‘All the new girls for the Sultim are meant to be seen by the Sultima,’ the petite cohort agreed, like she was parroting something someone else had said.
‘Yes, she needs to deem you worthy.’ The girl who’d been at his feet butted in, too, eager to please.
‘Or not worthy.’ The pout-lipped girl smirked.
‘Be quiet, Ayet, there’s no need to disturb the Sultima.’ The Sultim’s hand left my face, travelling down my neck, across my collarbone, making my skin crawl.
‘She is off-limits.’ The servant with me spoke up just as Kadir’s hand reached the border of the white linen sheet that covered me. She had the clipped, matronly tone of a mother without much patience. The Sultim opened his mouth with a dismissal that never came as she cut across him. ‘Your father’s orders.’
Mention of the Sultan drew Kadir’s hand up short. For a second he seemed to blaze with defiance. And then it was gone, covered as he dropped his arm and shrugged, brushing past me instead, like that was what he’d intended to do all along. His wives gathered themselves up, following him. Ayet’s eyes dropped to Shazad’s discarded khalat as she passed. So fine a few days ago at the wedding. Before we were attacked. Before I was kissed and kidnapped and cut into. But still beautiful. Her left foot caught the fabric, flicking it and sending it flying into one of the pools, soaking the fabric through.
‘Oops.’ Ayet flashed me her teeth. ‘Sorry.’ She flicked one last droplet off her hair at me as she left, followed by a burst of giggles and whispers that bounced off the walls of the baths.
I felt the back of my neck go hot.
When Ahmed took this palace, I was going to burn the harem to the ground.
Chapter 17
The harem stripped me of the desert.
The attendants dumped water over my head and scrubbed at my skin until it was screaming and raw. Until they’d robbed me of the skin that’d been caked with sand and blood and sweat and gunpowder and fire and Jin’s hands.
They pulled me out of the steaming water. I let one of the girls wrap me in a big, dry linen sheet and lay me down gently next to the bath. Something warm dripped across my skin, like oil. It smelled of flowers I didn’t know. The other girl ran a comb through my hair, scraping gently at my scalp.
I’d spent my whole life fighting. Fighting to stay alive in Dustwalk as the girl with the gun. Fighting to escape death in that dead-end desert town. Fighting to get across the desert. The Blue-Eyed Bandit. Fighting for Ahmed. For the Rebellion. A new dawn. A new desert.
But as the comb scraped through my hair over and over again, I wasn’t sure I had any fight left in me.
I let sleep claim me.
Tomorrow. I’d fight tomorrow.
*
It didn’t take a whole lot of time for me to figure out that the harem was full of invisible chains and walls meant to look like they weren’t there.
It felt like a maze, designed to turn me around, over and over, until I wasn’t sure how I’d come in or if there was a way out any more. There were dozens of gardens, which fit together like honeycombs. Some of them were plain stretches of grass, with a single fountain gushing endless water and pillows scattered throughout. Others were so thick with flowers and vines and sculptures I couldn’t even see the walls any more. But the walls were always there.
I couldn’t count how many folk lived in the harem. Dozens of wives belonging to the Sultan and Sultim alike. And children, too – the princes and princesses born to the Sultan’s wives. All of them younger than sixteen. The age they were finally released from the harem. To pass from their father’s hands to their husbands’. Or to die for him on the battlefield like Naguib had. All of them Ahmed and Jin’s brothers and sisters.
Finally I found one of the borders: a gate crafted out of iron and gold that stood ajar. My legs stumbled to a stop as I tried to pass through. I fought against the feeling holding me back, but it was no good – my body seized like I’d been grabbed by some invisible hand. My blood turned to stone and a fist twisted in my gut, pulling me back.
I’d been ordered not to leave.
I couldn’t go any further.
I needed to get word back to the Rebellion. Even if I didn’t know exactly where the Rebellion was. Shazad’s family was in Izman, though. And Izman was on the other side of these walls. A few feet away. It might as well have been a whole desert between us.
There had to be a crack, some way out of the harem. Even if I couldn’t get out, there had to be some way to get out a warning, at least, that the Sultan had a Djinni.
That he had my father.
I pushed that thought away. He wasn’t my father any more than my mother’s husband had been.
If he were my father he would’ve cared if I’d died or not.
My mother had raised me on a thousand stories of girls who were saved by the Djinn, princesses rescued from towers, peasant girls rescued from poverty.
Turned out, stories were just stories.
I was on my own.
It ought to be a familiar feeling. I used to think I was on my own in Dustwalk, too. But that had never been true. I’d had Tamid back then. Now there were dozens of tiny incisions healing all over my body reminding me why I couldn’t trust my oldest friend. My fingers found one of the tiny pieces of metal under the skin of my arm. It hurt when I pressed my thumb against it. I pushed harder.
For the first time in my life I really was alone.
*
It was on my third day in the harem that I stumbled into the menagerie.
The noise was the first thing I noticed – a riot of different screams coming from iron cages crowned in intricate latticework domes. There were hundreds of birds perched among the iron bars, dressed in colours to make a Djinni jealous. The yellow of fresh lemons. Green like the grass in the Dev’s Valley before we fled. Red like the sheema I’d lost. Blue like my eyes. Only not quite. Nothing was really the same blue as my eyes. Except for Noorsham’s. And Bahadur’s. The ones that had watched, burning low with indifference, as the knife inched towards my skin. The ones that hadn’t even blinked or deigned to turn away. Like watching me wouldn’t cause him any pain.
I turned away from the birds.
Huge peacocks fanned their tails as I passed another cage. In another, a pair of tigers lounged in a patch of sunlight, sprawled across each other, yawning wide enough so I could see teeth the length of my fingers. There had been some painted on the walls of the secret door leading into the rebel camp, too. But those were pictures, a thousand years old, the size of my hand. These were far from that.
I stumbled to a stop at the furthest cage.
The thing inside was nearly as big as a Roc. A solid behemoth of grey skin and thick limbs and unnaturally large ears. I caught my body pressing up against the bars. Like I might be able to squeeze through and touch it.
On the opposite side of the cage was a girl, sitting with her knees drawn up to her chin. She couldn’t be more than fifteen. Too young to be one of the Sultim’s wives. She had to be the Sultan’s daughter, then. One of his brood of princesses, who were never spoken about half so much as the princes. Something about her reminded me of Delila, even though, I realise
d, she’d share blood with Jin, which Delila didn’t. But still, there was a softness in the curve of her cheeks, like she hadn’t fully finished unsticking herself from childhood yet, either. And she was handling something that looked like a toy she was modelling out of red clay around a metal skeleton, making a tiny model of the beast. She nudged one of the legs as I watched; it bent naturally, guided by small metallic joints inside.
‘What is it?’ I asked. She looked up, startled out of her work, staring at me through the bars of the cage. The words had slipped out without meaning to.
‘An elephant,’ she said quietly.
My heart twisted painfully as I thought of Izz and Maz excitedly explaining elephants to me.
This was what they had seen across our borders. A real live elephant.
‘Come to visit your family?’ The sneering voice behind me was far from welcome. I turned to meet it all the same. It was Ayet, the wife who’d kicked my khalat into the pool my first day in the harem. With her were the two other girls who always seemed to flank her like some sort of personal guard. I’d learned from overheard conversations they were called Mouhna and Uzma.
‘And your families are in the Sultan’s kennels, I suppose.’ I watched the insult dawn across all three of their faces at once. Ayet recovered fast.
‘You seem to think that we are your enemies,’ Ayet said. ‘But we can help you. Do you know where we are?’ She didn’t wait for me to answer. ‘This is the very menagerie where the Sultan’s wife Nadira met the Djinni who gave her a demon child.’ Nadira was Ahmed and Delila’s mother. Everyone knew that story. One day the Sultan’s wife was wandering the gardens of the palace, when she stumbled upon a frog that had accidentally leapt into one of the Sultan’s birdcages and could not find his way out again.
I glanced at the birds in the cage.
The birds kept pecking at him. Nadira took pity on the creature and, opening the cage, reached in with no care for the way the birds pecked at her own hands, turning them bloody and scratched. As soon as she set the frog back down, he transformed into his true form, that of a Djinni.
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