‘See, here’s the thing.’ Ayet and her girls circled me like a pack of roving animals. ‘Girls who don’t find their right place in the harem don’t tend to last long. The Sultim likes Mirajin girls.’ Ayet’s hand slammed into my chest, surprisingly hard, knocking me back towards the nearest cage. One of the tigers glanced up, curious. ‘But he’s only ever got room for three of us on display. So when someone new comes in, another one has to go. And none of us wants to disappear. Which means you don’t have a purpose here.’
‘I’ve got no interest in your idiot husband.’ I wanted to shove her hand away. But I couldn’t. The Sultan had given me orders. I couldn’t fight back.
Ayet wasn’t convinced. ‘Do you know what else happened here? This is where the Sultan killed Nadira after she gave birth to an abomination.’ She took a step towards me. ‘Because here, nobody can hear screams over the birds.’ Sure enough, the birds in the cages were in chaos now, their voices drowning out the rest of the harem just spitting distance away. ‘Go ahead. Call out for help.’
‘You should leave her alone.’ The voice wasn’t strong. It was barely a squeak among the chorus of wild-feathered birds. But it was loud enough to be heard. It was the girl with the toy elephant. She was watching this all play out from the opposite side of the cage. Her eyes were wide with fear. But she’d spoken up all the same.
Ayet sneered, but a sharp-tongued insult never came. ‘This is our business, Leyla. The Sultan hasn’t taken a new wife in a decade, which means she’s clearly here for our blessed husband the Sultim, not your father.’
‘If you’re so sure of that’ – Leyla got to her feet uncertainly, clutching the clay elephant like a child a dozen years younger – ‘I can just go ask my father.’
Invoking the Sultan was like uttering a magic word. The kind that summoned powerful spirits and opened doors in cliff faces. All Leyla had to do was mention him and it was as if he were here.
Ayet caved first. She rolled her eyes, like she wanted me to think I wasn’t worth her time, and turned away.
‘Consider this a warning.’ She tossed the words over her shoulder as she swanned out. I watched her go, hating her. Hating that I couldn’t break her nose like I wanted to.
Across the menagerie Leyla was winding the mechanism in her hands absently. ‘You’ll get used to them.’ I didn’t plan on having to get used to them. I was getting out of there before I had time to.
*
Since arriving in the harem, I’d stayed in my rooms when I wasn’t looking for a way out. The attendants brought me fresh clothes and a basin to wash in and meals, seeming to anticipate what I needed without me ever needing to speak a word. But that night, no food came.
I couldn’t help but think Ayet might have something to do with that. Just because she couldn’t tear me apart like a wild animal didn’t mean she was done trying to make me suffer for some imagined designs I had on her Sultim. The last thing I needed was another prince in my life. I had a hard enough time with the two I’d already acquired.
I waited until it was dark outside before finally giving in to my growling stomach. Even I wasn’t stubborn enough to starve to death.
Women were dotted all over the garden where the meal was served, sitting in tightly knotted clusters around dishes of food that they shared between them. So tightly knotted that it’d be impossible to untie one long enough to get to the food. I was suddenly back in my first night in the rebel camp, before I’d known everyone’s name. When I’d been an intruder. Except I’d been an intruder with Shazad and Bahi to guide me then.
I spied Leyla then, the only person I could see sitting by herself. She was almost done making the toy elephant, by the looks of things, and the modelled clay was taking shape around the articulated metal joints. As I watched her, she wound up a small key in the back of the toy. It marched with jolting, violent steps towards one of the small children sitting with the huddle of women nearest her. The little boy reached for it excitedly, but his mother snatched him away, pulling him onto her lap, knocking the thing over in the process.
The moment of joy that had bloomed on Leyla’s face at operating the tiny thing disappeared, as she ducked her head. A girl like that would be eaten alive in the desert. Then again, a girl from the desert could get eaten alive in the palace.
I picked up the toy from where it was now lying uselessly on the ground, legs still jerking forward. I held it out to her. She looked up at me with eyes that seemed to take up her whole face.
‘You helped me today, in the menagerie.’ She just stared at me. I wanted to say that I could’ve handled myself. And that would’ve been true if I weren’t trapped by a hundred tiny pieces of metal under my skin. ‘Thank you.’
She nodded and took the toy. I sat down next to her without invitation. I didn’t really have anywhere else to go. I was being nice to her because I was going to need allies in the harem. That was what I told myself. Not because she had big lost eyes that made me think of Delila’s.
Ayet and her two parasites were in a tight knot a little way off. Waves of disdain were rolling off them even from this far away. When they caught me looking back Ayet whispered something to Mouhna. They descended into fits of giggles like crowing birds.
‘They’re afraid of you,’ Leyla volunteered. ‘They think you’ll take their place with Kadir.’
I snorted. ‘Believe me, I have no interest in your brother.’
An attendant appeared, handing me a plate heavy with savoury-smelling meats. My stomach growled in grateful answer.
‘He’s not my brother.’ Leyla’s jaw set firmly. ‘I mean, yes, I suppose. We’re both children of my most exalted father the Sultan. But in the harem the only people we call brother or sister are those who share the same mother. I only have one brother, Rahim. He’s gone from the harem now.’ She sounded far away.
‘And your mother?’ I asked.
‘She was a Gamanix engineer’s daughter.’ She turned the small toy over in her hands. Jin had told me about that country. It was where the twinned compasses he and Ahmed each always kept had been made. A country that had learned to meld magic and machines. This explained how she’d learned to make little mechanised toys. ‘She vanished when I was eight years old.’ Leyla said it so calm and straightforward it caught me off guard.
‘What do you mean, vanished?’ I asked.
‘Oh, it happens in the harem,’ Leyla said. ‘Women disappear when they lose their use. That’s why Ayet is so afraid of you. She hasn’t been able to conceive a child for the Sultim. If you replace her, she could vanish just like the others. It happens every day.’
I took a bite of my food absently, listening to Leyla talk. It hit my tongue like an ember, igniting my mouth. Tears sprang to my eyes as I spat the food in the grass, coughing violently.
‘Can’t handle our fine food?’ Mouhna called from across the garden. Next to her Ayet and Uzma were doubled over in fits of giggles as Mouhna popped a piece of bread in her mouth, puckering her lips at me deliberately as she savoured it. ‘A present from the blessed Sultima.’
Leyla picked up something red from my plate. Her nose wrinkled. ‘Suicide pepper,’ she said, tossing it into the nearest fire grate.
‘What in hell is a suicide pepper?’ I was still coughing. Leyla pressed a glass into my hands. I downed it, cooling the burning on my tongue.
‘It’s a foreign spice. My father tries to keep it out of the harem, but it’s—’ She ran her tongue over her lips nervously. ‘Sometimes girls here use it … to escape.’ It took me a heartbeat to realise what she meant by ‘escape’.
Suicide pepper.
So some folk had found a way out. It wasn’t the sort of escape I had planned. But if those peppers were coming in from the outside, there had to be a way to get things out, too. Some way for the whispers to make it through these walls.
‘Who is the blessed Sultima?’ I’d heard her mentioned already. When I first arrived. In the baths.
‘The Sultim’s first wife.�
�� Leyla looked up, surprised. ‘Well, not the first that he took. He took Ayet as a wife the day after he won the Sultim trials. But the blessed Sultima is the only one of Kadir’s wives who has been able to conceive a child.’
They must hate her. My aunt Farrah had hated Nida, my uncle’s youngest wife. But Farrah’s place as first wife had been secured by three sons. It was Nida who had to kiss her feet to get anything. They might be talking about the Sultim instead of a desert horse trader, but they were still just jealous wives. And I understood how these things worked. The first wife was the most powerful woman in the household – in this case, in the harem.
‘Where would one find the Sultima?’
Chapter 18
The Sultima was a legend in the harem.
Chosen by God to be the mother of the next heir of Miraji. The only woman worthy of conceiving a child by the Sultim. She kept herself locked in her rooms most of the time. Women in the harem whispered that it was because she was praying. But I remembered something Shazad had told me once: if you could stay out of your enemy’s line of sight, they’d always count your forces stronger than they were.
And from the whispers I’d heard, the harem was full of the Sultima’s enemies.
But if there was one thing I knew about legends, it was that we were still flesh and blood. And flesh and blood had to come out of her rooms eventually.
Two days after Mouhna fed me the suicide pepper, Leyla woke me up with news. The blessed Sultima had finally emerged to bathe.
I spotted the Sultima before I’d even fully emerged from the hallway into the baths. She was sitting with her back to the entrance, dangling one leg in the water, with the other braced under her, twisted just enough towards me so that I could see the swell of her stomach. Her age singled her out. I’d seen other pregnant women in the harem, but they belonged to the Sultan. He’d stopped taking wives nearly ten years back; his wives were nearer in age to him now – most had seen at least three decades or close to it. Even from afar I could tell the Sultima hadn’t seen eighteen years yet. She was running her hands over her middle over and over in soothing motions, head tilted forward in thought.
From here, the blessed Sultima looked just like any other heavily pregnant desert girl. It wasn’t so much that I’d expected her to go to the baths draped in pearls and rubies, but after all the rumours and whispers, I figured I’d get something more than a girl in a thin white khalat.
She wasn’t alone. At the other side of the water, Kadir was sprawled, wearing a loose shalvar and nothing else. He was bare from the waist up. I hadn’t thought Jin shared anything with this brother, but the aversion to shirts seemed to be a family trait.
There were about a half dozen other girls I recognised from the harem in the water, too. A collection of Kadir’s wives, splashing around in the water, giggling, long white khalats sticking to them.
I’d been here long enough to realise that most of the women in the harem weren’t Mirajin. They were pale northern women stolen off ships, foreign-featured eastern girls sold as slaves, dark-skinned Amonpourian girls taken in border skirmishes. But there was no mistaking this girl for anything but desert born, even from behind. The linen stuck against her body from the steam that curled up from the baths; damp dark hair clung to her face. She didn’t exactly look like the all-powerful Sultima, the chosen vessel of the future Sultan of Miraji.
And then she looked up, startled by the sound of my footsteps, eyes darting over her shoulder towards me, and my heart leapt into my mouth.
Oh, damn every power in heaven and hell, what did I do to deserve this?
I was face-to-face with the Sultima I’d heard so much about. The only woman pure enough to conceive a child by the Sultim Kadir. The girl sent by God to assure the future of Miraji.
Only I knew her as my cousin Shira. And the only thing God had ever sent her to do was make my life a living hell.
Jin told me once fate had a cruel sense of humour. I was starting to believe him. First Tamid and now Shira. I’d crossed an entire desert but it was like I’d been dragged back home to face everything I’d left in my dust when I ran.
Shira looked as surprised as I was. Her mouth formed a small O before pressing tightly into a hard line. We stared at each other across the narrow stretch of tiles left between us. Our wills locked, the same way they’d done a hundred times across the tiny bedroom in my aunt’s house.
‘Well,’ Shira said. She’d lost her accent. I could hear it even in that one word. Or maybe not lost – smothered under something that passed for a northern accent. ‘Paint me purple and call me a Djinni if it isn’t my least favourite cousin.’
There was a retort on the tip of my tongue. I caught it from slipping out by the skin of my teeth. The Sultan has a Djinni, I reminded myself. He has a First Being trapped at his will and nothing is stopping him from using it against the rebels at any second. And then it could be over. For me. For Ahmed, Jin, Shazad, and the whole Rebellion.
I didn’t know much about other families, but I reckoned most of the time when you had to pretend to be nice to them, there weren’t this many lives at stake.
‘I thought you were dead,’ I said. You and Tamid both. Last time I’d seen Shira she’d been on a train racing towards Izman with Prince Naguib, taken captive because they figured there was a chance she’d know where I was going. And if they found me, they found Jin, and if they found Jin, they found the Rebellion.
After Jin and I had gotten off the train, she’d lost her use. Noorsham had told me she’d been left in the palace to die. Only she wasn’t just still alive. She was thriving. I wondered if she knew Tamid had survived being abandoned to fend for himself in this palace, too. If she knew what he was doing for the Sultan. If she even cared. She never had.
I shoved away thoughts of Tamid angrily. Shira was easier to face. It’d never been that complicated between us. We hated each other. Old hate was easier to face than Tamid’s new disdain.
‘You ought to know better than that.’ My cousin smiled that seductive smile at me. ‘Us desert girls are survivors. Although I’m curious about how you plan on surviving long here.’ I stepped under the iridescent stones of the archway and into the harem baths proper. I ignored the tendrils of steam curling around my body like clinging fingers. ‘Last time I saw you, weren’t you riding off with some rebel traitor? Traitors don’t survive long here.’ Her eyes darted across the baths pointedly towards where Kadir was lounging. The bathing hall was as wide across as the whole of Dustwalk, far enough that Kadir hadn’t noticed me yet. He picked something up from a pile at his elbow and tossed it in a high arc into the middle of the pool. As it caught the light I realised it was a ruby as big as my thumb.
It hit the water with a careless splash. A chaos of screeches and giggles followed as the six girls in the water dove towards where the ruby had disappeared under the surface, splashing and piling over each other as Kadir watched them hungrily. The shrieking and the splashing covered our voices.
‘Now, what do you think my prince would make of your allegiance to his traitor brother if I told him?’
My sudden fear must’ve been scrawled all over my face because Shira smiled like a cat who’d eaten a canary.
God damn her. I’d come here for help, not to get sold out by her. ‘Shira.’ I closed the last few steps between us from the entrance to the edge of the water, dropping down in a crouch next to her, lowering my voice. ‘If you tell Kadir I’m part of—’ I caught the words back before I said them out loud. ‘—what you know,’ I said carefully, eyes darting towards a girl who’d just surfaced near us in the water. ‘I swear to God, Shira, if you breathe a word, I’ll—’ I scrambled for something to threaten her with, just like the bargaining games we used to play in Dustwalk. She wouldn’t tell her mother I’d been out all night with Tamid and I wouldn’t tell her father she’d been in the stables letting Fazim get his hands under her clothes. Only this wasn’t Dustwalk any more, and if she told on me, I’d get more than a switch to t
he back – I’d get myself, and probably a few hundred other people, killed. And then it slipped out: ‘I’ll just have to go ahead and tell him that kid of yours isn’t his.’
Shira’s whole face went still.
‘Oh, God.’ The truth of my own words hit me. ‘The baby isn’t the Sultim’s.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ Shira hissed. Across the baths, one of the girls surged out of the water with a scream of triumph, her fist fastened around the ruby, tight as a noose. She kicked her way to the edge of the pool, showing the red stone proudly to Kadir, who leaned down to steal a kiss from her. She dropped the ruby into a small pile of colourful jewels on the side of the baths, keeping it separate from the piles of the other girls. When they were done, the Sultim would set their prizes into a necklace and gift it to them. It was like watching children play a game. Only the games in this harem could end with losing your head. The Sultim pulled another small yellow diamond from his dwindling pile.
‘What the hell were you thinking?’ Infidelity meant death in the harem – even I knew that. It had happened to Ahmed’s mother when she gave birth to Delila. And it had happened to other women, too; there were countless stories, too many to ignore. Men who slipped into the harem without permission. Servants, princes who were not heirs … in every single tale it cost everyone involved their lives. Shira was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them.
‘I wanted to survive.’ Shira’s fingernails clicked dully against the tiles at the edge of the bath. I realised they’d been filed down low. She always used to keep them longer in Dustwalk. ‘You left me and Tamid to die in Dustwalk so you could stay alive.’
She said Tamid’s name different from how she used to back in Dustwalk. It didn’t stick to the roof of her mouth with disdain. I supposed whatever they’d gone through together was the sort of thing that was bound to turn you into allies.
‘Is Tamid the one who—’ I started, already dreading the answer.
Traitor to the Throne Page 14