The Sultan turned his dark gaze on me. It struck me again how Ahmed had his eyes. Then he grinned, like he was surprised by a child doing something particularly clever. ‘You sound a lot like the folk who follow my rebel son.’
‘You asked me about Dustwalk.’ I diverted his attention away from Ahmed. ‘I’m from the deepest, darkest parts of your desert. I’ve seen first-hand what your alliances have done to folk. Cities under Gallan rule where it was the law to shoot a Demdji in the head. Everybody in Dustwalk working for as close to nothing as you can get without starving to make weapons for foreigners. It made for a poor, starving, frightened desert.’
‘How old are you, Amani?’
‘Seventeen.’ I pulled myself up to my full height. Trying to look it. Careful of the stolen papers sticking to my skin as I moved.
The bone of the duck leg on his plate cracked under his knife. ‘You weren’t even alive when I took my father’s throne. Even those who were have forgotten how things were back then. We were at war. And it wasn’t one that we should have been fighting – the war between the Gallan and the Albish. We were a prize in the race between all of our foreign friends. Half the countries in the world wanted to claim our land. But in the end it came down to those two ancient enemies and their never-ending war of false beliefs.’
The leg of the duck finally came free in a snap of cartilage and sinews ripping free under the sawing of the Sultan’s knife. There was something about the noise of cracking bone echoing around the polished marble halls and glass dome that set my teeth on edge. The Sultan calmly spooned orange sauce across the flesh as he spoke.
‘And my father let it happen. He was foolish and cowardly. He thought we could fight the same way our country had in my grandfather’s day. He thought we could stand against two armies and somehow not get annihilated. Even General Hamad advised my father he couldn’t win a war on two fronts. Well, Captain Hamad then. I made him a general after his advice proved to be so sound.’
He was talking about Shazad’s father. General Hamad had no loyalty to this Sultan. Shazad had always known her father despised his ruler. But he had backed the Sultan’s ideas twenty years ago all the same. There was a time when even a man on our side had thought our enemy was in the right.
‘The only way to win was to form an alliance, grant them access to what they wanted from us on our terms. My father wouldn’t do it. Neither would my brother who had won the Sultim trials. Just because he was able to best eleven of our brothers in an arena somehow that made him fit to decide the fate of this country?’
Not any more fit than Kadir was. But I didn’t interrupt. Getting myself turned out of the Sultan’s presence didn’t seem so important now. I’d learned history in school. But it was different to hear it from the Sultan’s own tongue. It would be like hearing the tale of the First Mortal from Bahadur, who would have stood with the other Djinn at the birth of mortality and watched him face down death.
The Sultan seemed to sense my attention on him all at once. He looked up from where he was sawing at his meat. Glancing between my empty hands and my still-full plate.
‘I did what needed to be done, Amani,’ he said calmly.
He had chosen a side to keep us from being torn apart between two of them. In one bloody night Prince Oman, a nobody among the Sultan’s sons, too young even to be allowed to compete for Sultim, had led the Gallan armies into the palace, killed his own father, and slain the brothers he knew would stand between him and the throne: the Sultim and the others who had fought in the trials. By morning he sat in his father’s place and the Gallan were our allies. Or our occupiers.
‘What I did twenty years ago was the only way to keep this country from falling completely into their hands. The Gallan have annexed enough countries. I couldn’t allow us to be next.’ He sawed at his food carefully as he spoke. ‘The world is a lot more complicated than it seems when you are seventeen, Amani.’
‘And how old were you when you turned our country over to the Gallan?’ I knew he hadn’t been all that much older than I was now. The same age as Ahmed, give or take.
The Sultan smiled around the piece of duck he was chewing. ‘Young enough that I spent the next nineteen years trying to find a way to drive them out. And I was very close to succeeding, you know.’ Noorsham. He’d been trying to use my brother, a Demdji, as a weapon to kill the Gallan, and never mind his own people who wound up caught in the crossfire. ‘A little more time and I could’ve rid this country of them forever.’ He picked up his wine, drinking deep from the cup.
A little more time. If we hadn’t interfered. If we hadn’t saved Fahali. Saved our people. Saved my brother. And he reckoned he could’ve saved the whole country. They would have been a sacrifice for the greater good.
‘You’re not eating.’
I wasn’t hungry. But I speared a piece of cold meat all the same. The orange had congealed into a sticky paste around it. It was too sweet when it hit my tongue now. You’re wrong. The words, too, were sticky on my tongue. I couldn’t spit them out. I wished Shazad were here. She knew more than I did. She’d read up on history and philosophy and had better schooling with her father’s tutors than I’d had in a busted-down schoolhouse at the end of the desert. She was better at debating things than I was. But we’d both been in Saramotai. A power play disguised in a just cause. ‘Awfully convenient how saving this country meant you becoming Sultan without the Sultim trials.’
‘The Sultim trials are another antiquated tradition.’ The Sultan placed his wine back on the table, carefully steadying it by the stem. ‘Hand-to-hand combat between brothers and riddles to prove a man had half a brain might’ve been the best way to pick a leader when we were just a collection of tents in the desert fighting the Destroyer of Worlds’ monsters, but wars are different now. Wit and wisdom are not the same. Neither are skill and knowledge. And Sultans don’t go out on the battlefield with a sword any more. There are better ways to lead.’
‘You held a Sultim trial anyway.’ I reached for another orange off the duck, moving slowly so as not to rustle the stolen supply route map hidden in my waistband.
‘Yes, and look how well that served me. I acquired a rebel son out for my throne as a result of it.’ He laughed to himself, as he pushed the gold platter closer towards me. A low, self-deprecating chuckle that reminded me of Jin. ‘I had to hold the trials, to show the people that though I had taken my throne by … other means, I was still upholding the traditions of our country. As antiquated as it is, it can still serve a purpose.’ He settled back in his seat again, watching me eat. ‘In some countries, the people love their royals best when they are celebrating weddings or new royal children. If only that were the case with my people, I would never run out of their love. But the Mirajin people are not so easily bought. They never love my family more than when we are fighting to the death for the right to rule them. They never love me so much as they do on Auranzeb when I remind them that I killed twelve of my brothers with my own hands in one night.’ He said it so calmly that whatever warmth his laugh had brought into the room drained out of it instantly. ‘I try not to remind them that it was the same night I handed them over to the enemy they hate so much. But really, this is a violent country, Amani. You’re proof of that. Our dinner is proof of that.’ He tapped the arrow through the duck’s neck. ‘I put a knife in your hand and your first instinct was to stab me.’
‘You tried to stab me first,’ I objected without thinking. That time he really did laugh, in earnest.
‘This is a hard desert. It needs a hard man to rule it.’ A harder man than Ahmed. The thought shot across my mind again. I shoved it away as forcefully as I could. The Sultan had said it himself, rulers were different these days. And what Ahmed lacked in strength he made up for by being good. A better man than most of us. He was so good, in fact, that Shazad and I hadn’t even hesitated when it came to taking Delila to Saramotai. We’d disobeyed our ruler without a second thought. Without any fear of consequences.
&nb
sp; Shazad would say it was a poor ruler who needed to rely on fear to make his people obey. I might not be so well versed in philosophy, but it seemed to me like without obedience a man was no ruler at all.
Was Ahmed really going to run this whole country if he couldn’t even get me and Shazad and his sister to fall in line?
‘There is nothing I wouldn’t do for this country, Amani. Still.’ He smiled indulgently. ‘I will grant you that Kadir would perhaps have not been my first choice to succeed me were it not for the trials.’ He played with the stem of his glass, seeming to drift far away.
‘Who would you have picked?’ I wasn’t sure if I meant it as an earnest question or a challenge of whether he actually knew any of his sons well enough to pick one. But the Sultan seemed to sincerely consider my question.
‘Rahim is a great deal stronger than I gave him credit for as a boy.’ Leyla’s brother. The prince who held himself like a military man and who had challenged Kadir in court and sat on the war council with him. ‘He might have made a good ruler, if I had kept him closer. And if he weren’t so ruled by his emotions.’ The light through the glass dome caught the rim of his glass as he spun it. ‘But truthfully, had he only been raised in my palace, Ahmed might be the best choice.’ That caught me off guard.
‘You mean the Rebel Prince,’ I said carefully, all too aware I was treading on dangerous ground now.
‘My son believes he is helping this country; I know he truly does.’ He called Ahmed his son. Ahmed always called the Sultan his father, too. Jin never did. To Jin he was always ‘the Sultan’. Like he was trying to sever any strings between himself and his father. But it seemed like Ahmed and the Sultan had less interest in severing those ties. ‘The trouble with belief is that it’s not the same as truth.’
The memory rose from the quiet part of my mind where most of my memories of Jin lived. A night in the desert. Jin telling me belief was a foreign language to logic. But what else did we have?
The Sultan let go of the stem of his glass. He wiped his fingers clean of grease and orange pulp before pulling a familiar piece of yellow paper from his pocket. It was folded into smaller squares, and it looked worn out from folding over and over again. From across the table, I looked at Ahmed’s sun on it upside down. A new dawn. A new desert.
‘These are all very fine ideas he has,’ the Sultan said. ‘But you sat in that council today, Amani. Do you think my son knows how many guns we can promise the Gallan without overtaxing our own resources? Do you think he knows that the Albish queen, the latest in a long line of sorceresses, is rumoured to have hardly any magic left to defend her country with? That the Xichian emperor has not picked an heir yet and their whole country is on the brink of civil war?’ He really seemed to expect me to answer.
‘I don’t know.’ It was the truth. I wasn’t privy to everything Ahmed knew. But if I were being more than truthful, if I were being honest, I’d give him a real answer. No. He doesn’t know.
‘If the world were simple,’ the Sultan said as he smoothed the tract out across the table, ‘we could be free of foreign powers, an independent nation. But we are a country with borders, with friends and enemies at all of them. And unlike my son I am not interested in conscripting this entire country to defend it. How many untrained men and women do you think have died fighting for his beliefs?’
Ranaa’s face invaded my mind. The little Demdji from Saramotai. The stray bullet. Watching the light in her hands extinguish as her power went, then her life.
The Sultan’s army had wanted her. But if it weren’t for us trying to save her, she’d be here instead of me. She might be sitting on soft pillows, hair clean and scented with lavender, mouth sticky with candied oranges. Instead of turned to ashes on a funeral pyre and scattered into the desert sand.
‘If the throne changes hands, we will be invaded. My son is an idealist. Idealists make great leaders, but they never make good rulers. So I’ll tell you what I believe, Amani. I believe that if my son’s rebellion were ever to succeed, or even to gain enough of a foothold to cast doubt upon my rule, we would be torn to shreds by foreign powers. It would destroy Miraji, just like my father would have destroyed it before us.’
Chapter 25
It was closer to dawn than dusk when I returned to the harem. I hated the quiet. I could hear my fears that much louder for it.
Back in the rebel camp there was no such thing as silence, even in the darkest hours of night. There was the clink of weapons on those keeping watch. Conversations whispered in the night. The riffling of paper from Ahmed’s tent as he worried long after the rest of us had stopped. Here, any night sound was covered by the gentle running of water or the patter of birds.
My fingers were slick with fat from the skin of the duck and sticky with the sweetness of the orange. I wiped my hands across the hem of my kurti as I stepped into my rooms, starting to pull the clothes over my head.
‘What kind of time do you call this, young lady?’ The voice made me jump violently. Dropping the hem of my shirt, I reached for a weapon I didn’t have. Exhaustion and confusion blurred my vision for a moment. There was a figure sitting on my bed in a khalat. A khalat I recognised … because it belonged to Shazad, I realised after a moment. Only the person wearing it was a head taller than Shazad, at least, and had wider shoulders that pulled at the fabric enough to make some of the stitching pop. The face was hidden by a sheema, one blond curl escaping underneath to drop lazily over pale blue eyes.
Sam.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I hissed, glancing around nervously as I dropped down on the mat across from him. ‘Someone might see you.’
‘Oh, plenty of folk have.’ Sam lowered his voice to a whisper to match me. He loosened the sheema around his face. It was tied correctly this time; I could only guess his way of knotting it haphazardly like an infant had bugged Shazad as much as it did me. ‘But who’s going to notice another woman in here?’ He had a point. Women seemed to appear and disappear in the harem without anyone batting an eye. ‘Shazad’s idea. She didn’t think it was a good idea for you to get caught with a man in your bed. Although I don’t know if I have the figure to pull off this khalat.’ He cinched it around his waist with his hands, like he was trying to make it fit him properly.
‘Don’t worry, none of us can fill out a khalat the way Shazad can,’ I said. But there was something nagging at me. ‘Jin’s not back yet.’ It wasn’t a question. I didn’t even have to test the truth out on my tongue before saying it. Because if Jin were back, Sam wouldn’t be here alone.
Sam kicked back, lacing his hands behind his head. ‘This is the Rebel Prince’s missing brother I keep hearing about? He’s the one you wish was waiting for you in your bed right now, I gather.’ He winked at me.
I dodged the comment. ‘He wouldn’t make nearly so convincing a girl as you do,’ I said. ‘Are you wearing make-up?’
‘Oh, yes, just a little. Shazad did it for me.’ He preened a little.
‘She must like you. I’m usually the only person she does that for.’
‘She was worried about you after you missed meeting me by the Weeping Wall tonight.’ I’d missed my meeting time with Sam by a long way after I’d given up trying to escape the dinner. ‘In particular she was concerned you might – and these are her words – “do something typically Amani-ish” and get yourself caught. She’s got the entire camp packed up and ready to move again if I didn’t find you by dawn.’
Somewhere in the midst of dining with the Sultan I’d stopped feeling afraid of him finding out who I was. Sam’s words were a sharp reminder that I wasn’t risking only my own life. We’d been found once already.
‘I’ve been waiting for so long I was beginning to think she was right and that I’d have to take up the mantle of the Blue-Eyed Bandit permanently. And after being filled in on what “something typically Amani-ish” means, I’m not sure I’m up to the task. Did you really throw yourself under the hooves of a Buraqi? I’d lose a rib doing that.’
I rolled my eyes, letting the joke in his voice burn away some of the guilt. ‘If there was ever motivation to stay alive …’ I trailed off. I couldn’t exactly tell him that Shazad had been wrong to worry. I had, after all, nearly been trampled by a Buraqi, twice. And I had sat across from our enemy and discussed Ahmed over dinner that night. ‘You can tell Shazad I’m still alive. And I have free rein in the palace now. You should lead with that.’ I dropped down next to him. ‘Before you tell her that I missed our meeting because I was dining with the Sultan.’
Sam burst out laughing so loud I was worried he might wake someone. The harem had thin walls. ‘So what does a rebel talk to the Sultan about these days? Though my mother always said to keep politics away from the dinner table – so perhaps you just discussed the weather? Though, best I can tell, you only have one type of weather here.’
I could still taste the orange on my lips when I ran my tongue across them. I considered what the Sultan had said about the fact that he was trying to stop a war. A war Ahmed was helping to instigate. That giving over this information would help the Rebellion but might hurt Miraji.
‘The Sultan is going after Saramotai.’ I reached into my shirt and pulled out the map of the supply route. The drawing of Noorsham’s armour was wrapped around my upper arm. ‘Five hundred men are to leave Izman in three days, marching on the city through Iliaz.’ Sam stayed quiet as I pulled confidential information out of my clothes. Which was commendable, really. ‘There are too many to stop. Izz or Maz can get there ahead of the Sultan’s troops with a warning easily and evacuate everyone.’
‘Evacuate them where?’ Sam said.
‘I don’t know.’ I finally pulled the map of Izman out from the waistband of my trousers and leaned back, sprawling my aching legs across the bed of pillows so that they tangled with the hem of his borrowed khalat. ‘But it’s either get them out or someone talks Ahmed into letting Delila try to make a whole city disappear long enough to baffle the Sultan’s troops. Tell Shazad. She’ll know what to do.’
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