And just like that, Shira had shifted from my shoulder to his, grabbing all his attention and weighing him down as I staggered back, out of his view. For a second his head turned to follow me, remembering his duty. But a new scream from Shira quickly drew him back.
And then I was gone, running as fast as I could. Shira’s screams faded behind me as I bolted across the courtyard and into the halls of the palace toward the mosaic of Hawa.
*
I’d been told that my eyes were the colour of the sea on a bright day. That they were the shade of the desert sky. Foreigner’s eyes. Traitor eyes.
But the truth was I’d never seen anything exactly the same colour as my eyes until I met Noorsham. We had our father’s eyes.
It was a foreign feeling for those same blue eyes to watch me from where Bahadur sat in the iron circle as I descended the steps into the palace vaults. He didn’t speak when I reached the edge of the circle. Neither did I.
‘You’re not meant to be here, are you?’ Bahadur finally spoke.
I’d only briefly wondered about my father in the years since I’d figured out that my mother’s husband wasn’t really my father. With my blue eyes, I’d always figured he was some foreign soldier, and I didn’t want to be half-foreign. So I didn’t think about it.
I’d been a bit more curious since finding out I was a Demdji. Since I’d learned my eyes were a mark my father left me along with my power. I’d wondered what I would feel when I finally came face-to-face with him, just the two of us.
I hadn’t expected that I’d feel so much anger.
‘I’m here because I need to know how to free you.’ I crossed my arms over my body, locking my anger inside my gut. There was no room for it here, no time. ‘Not because I especially care whether or not you ever get to go back to making me some more Demdji siblings who might destroy the world. But I might care if the Sultan uses you to burn all his enemies alive or bury their cities in sand.’
‘I only buried a city in sand once.’ He meant Massil, I realised. I’d been there, with Jin. Before I even knew what I was. Before we crossed the sand sea.
‘You didn’t think that might’ve been an overreaction?’ I asked.
Bahadur watched me carefully, never blinking those blue eyes. ‘I don’t need you to free me, Amani. I have existed since time began. This is not the first time I have been summoned and held by a mortal with more greed than caution. Eventually, I always find myself free, one way or another. When it happens doesn’t matter.’
‘Well, it matters to me.’ The words came out more violently than I’d meant them to. ‘You might live forever. But our kind is known for running out of time. This is all the time I have. This is all the time any of us has. And we’ve got a war to win before it’s over and lives that’ll get lost earlier if we don’t. So tell me, if you’ve been captured so many times before, are there words to free you?’
‘There are, though I do not know them. But there is another way. One you already know. Because you know the story of Akim and his wife.’
My mother had told me that story when I was young. I hadn’t thought of it in years. Akim was a scholar. A wise man, but a poor one. Knowledge did not often bring wealth, no matter what the holy texts said. And in his studies he stumbled across the true name of a Djinni.
He used this to summon the Djinni to him and trap him in a circle of iron coins.
One day while descending to get more sugar from the basement, Akim’s wife found the Djinni. She was much neglected by her husband in favour of his books. And so she was easily tempted by the Djinni. He told her that if she only freed him, he could give her the child she so desired.
So Akim’s wife broke the circle of coins that held the Djinni and freed him.
At this point in the story, my mother would usually pause dramatically before throwing a handful of gunpowder in the fireplace and letting it explode. Releasing the Djinni without banishing him with the right words was like releasing a dam of fire.
The Djinni burned Akim’s wife alive, and with her, the rest of the house.
‘You killed Akim and his wife.’ It wasn’t a question. It was a truth.
‘Yes.’ There wasn’t a hint of remorse there. ‘That might have been an overreaction,’ he admitted.
We would have to break the circle. Only this circle wasn’t made of coins. It was set into the ground. We’d need something powerful. Something like gunpowder.
Bahadur was my father. I didn’t think he’d burn me inside out. But there was no telling.
‘There were other ways for you to learn how to free me. There are others with this knowledge.’ Bahadur watched me from inside the circle. He was inhumanly still. He didn’t shift with restlessness or fiddle with his clothing as a human would. ‘Why did you really take such pains to come see me, Amani?’
‘Do you remember my mother?’ I hated myself for asking. For caring if he remembered one woman out of what I was sure were many in thousands of years. ‘Zahia Al-Fadi. From Dustwalk. Do you remember her?’
‘I remember everyone.’ Did I imagine the change in my father’s voice, the slight shift from the flat empty tone he’d addressed me with so far? ‘Your mother was very beautiful. You look like her. She was running away from her home. Through the mountains. She wouldn’t have made it very far. She had enough supplies for a few days, not a real escape. She would have been forced to turn back or die eventually. I had sprung one of your people’s ancient traps. The ones you set for the Buraqi. Crude, but, being iron, it did what it should have. Zahia found me in it. She released me.’
‘So why didn’t you save her?’ There it was. The question I’d really wanted to ask. Not whether my mother had made any kind of lasting mark on this immortal, powerful being, but why it hadn’t been enough for him to save her life. How he could leave her with me, a child who she’d eventually die protecting, and not have the decency to step in. ‘You could have, couldn’t you? You could have saved her.’
‘Yes. I could have appeared on the day your people chose to hang her and I could have cut her down and carried her away. Like in all those stories she told you as a child. But to what end? To keep her in a tower for a handful more years as my wife? She was mortal. Even you, who have a little bit of my fire, you will die, too, one day. Dying is what you do. It is the only thing that you all do without fault or fail. If I had saved her then, she would have died another way later.’
‘But she would have had longer.’ I could hear the tears in my own voice. ‘We could have escaped.’ Her death wouldn’t have been my fault.
‘You did escape,’ he said.
My temper snapped. ‘Don’t you find it tiring not caring about anything, ever, for all eternity?’ I didn’t want to cry in front of him. I hated how much I cared if I cried in front of him. But it was too late. Through the tears, I could hear footsteps now, distantly. Soldiers were coming for me. ‘You let my mother hang. You let me and Noorsham face each other in war – both of us your children.’ The footsteps were behind me now. I was screaming. ‘You stood there while I held that knife against my stomach! You made us. Why don’t you care about us?’ And then it was too late. The soldiers were grabbing me, yanking me away from my father, dragging me up the stairs as I fought against them, still shouting.
Something pricked the side of my neck. A needle, I realised, in the hands of the guard. There was something on the metal. I knew instantly. Something to make me sleep.
Suddenly everything rushed to my head. I felt the floor tip out from under me. I would’ve hit the ground except someone caught me. Strong arms.
‘Amani.’ My name punctured the storm of feelings. ‘I’ve got you.’
Jin.
No. When my vision cleared, the Sultan was the one propping me up. He was strong. I tried to struggle, but with one swift gesture, his hands went under my knees and he lifted me into his arms like I was a child. He started to walk, each step shaking me closer to his heartbeat.
‘I wanted—’ I struggled for som
e half-truth to cover what I had been doing. My mouth felt fuzzy as the drugs kicked in, the motion making me sick.
‘You wanted to see your father.’
I waited for the punishment. For the anger. We passed out of the cool shade of the courtyard, through another set of doors. Tree canopies spread out high above me, the sunlight dancing through their branches.
‘Yes,’ I admitted. And that was the simplest truth. I had wanted to face him. I’d wanted an explanation. I was swimming in and out of dreams now. I was starting to shake, too. Every part of me wanted to curl into the warmth of another body holding me. Like I was a small child being carried by my father.
But he wasn’t my father. He was Ahmed’s and Jin’s and Naguib’s and Kadir’s and Rahim’s and Leyla’s and he was a murderer.
I was dimly aware that we were in the harem. I felt the Sultan kneel down and then I was being laid down in a bed thick with scattered pillows that crowded around me.
‘Fathers often disappoint us, Amani.’
Chapter 27
There was a gift next to me when I woke up. It had been left while I slept, a conspicuously perfect tidy package of paper and ribbon amid the haphazard mess of pillows flung around my room. It swam into focus slowly as I emerged from the haze of drugs.
I pressed myself up onto my elbows, ignoring the pitcher of water next to me. No matter how dry my mouth was I wasn’t about to risk something that might send me back to sleep. I poked at the gift with my foot cautiously, half expecting some trick from Ayet. When nothing exploded, I finally picked it up.
Blue fabric appeared below the paper. It was a khalat. The fabric was the colour that the sea had been, the brief glimpse of it I’d had from the deck of the ship. And the hem and the sleeves were trimmed in gold stitching. When I looked at the embroidery closely, I realised it was the story of Princess Hawa, in tiny golden detail. On my right sleeve, where she rode the Buraqi across the desert, there were even tiny gold beads showing the dust kicked up under its hooves. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
I’d hated wearing blue most of my life. It just made my eyes more obvious than they already were. It was one of a thousand reasons I’d loved the red sheema Jin stole for me. Only I didn’t hate this khalat.
I slipped it on, revelling in the feeling of the fabric against my skin. It occurred to me that I’d never worn a piece of clothing that had never been worn by anyone else before. My clothes in Dustwalk were all cast-offs from cousins. I’d bought second-hand clothes in Juniper City when I fled there. Even my clothes in the rebel camp were Shazad’s. This was the first thing I’d ever worn that truly fit me. It had been made for me. And I knew what it meant.
It was forgiveness for going to see Bahadur.
*
In spite of the Sultan’s gift I didn’t know what I might’ve lost by tricking my way out of the harem. The Sultan’s trust, definitely. My freedom, too, probably. There was nothing stopping him from stripping away the freedom he’d given me with just a few words. He wouldn’t be wrong not to trust me to leave the harem. I ran my thumb over the raised golden thread of the sleeve as I headed for the edge of the harem. I was working to destroy him, after all.
But even though my step slowed the closer I got to the gates I didn’t meet any invisible barriers there. I passed through the archway that led towards the palace the same way I had yesterday, when Shira and I had been tricking our way out. Still, I didn’t quite dare drop my guard just yet. But there was no battalion of soldiers waiting for me at the gates, either. Just one man, same as always. Only it wasn’t a soldier. Or rather, it wasn’t just any soldier.
Prince Rahim, Leyla’s brother, wearing his commander’s uniform, was waiting for me outside the gates, hands clasped behind his back. The one who’d spoken that day in court as if he was born on a battlefield. The one who’d watched me with dark eyes that made me nervous so often during negotiations. He didn’t speak a whole lot, but when he did, it was always something worth hearing.
‘Well, at least I know you won’t be able to outrun me in that,’ Rahim said, taking in my khalat. He offered me his right arm.
‘Isn’t being my escort a bit below the station of a prince?’ I asked, pushing past him and heading towards the now-familiar path to the council chamber. He fell into step behind me.
‘I managed to convince my father that you might need someone with a little more experience to watch you. Possibly someone bright enough to know that the Sultima isn’t due to give birth for weeks. Not a bad trick, though.’
‘Am I supposed to be flattered,’ I asked as we passed under a blue-and-white mosaic archway, ‘that I get a commander watching me?’
Rahim’s lip twitched up. ‘You don’t remember me.’ It wasn’t a question.
We’ve never met before. It was on the tip of my tongue. But it wouldn’t go any further. I looked at him curiously out of the corner of my eye as we walked, my mind racing to place him. I thought he looked familiar when I first met him but I’d chalked that up to his resemblance to Leyla. And to their father. ‘Then again’ – he tapped the place my scar was, by my hip – ‘you did go down awfully fast with that bullet.’
A blast. The smell of gunpowder. A shooting pain in my side. Then darkness. In Iliaz. A soldier behind Jin raising a gun, finger already on the trigger. I knew him all at once.
I stopped short. ‘You shot me in Iliaz.’
‘I did.’ Rahim kept walking, apparently satisfied now that we were such old friends with a history of gunpowder and near death between us. ‘Although, luckily for us, it looks like I didn’t do an especially good job of it. So here’s hoping you can forgive me and we can start over.’
He knew. He’d seen me in Iliaz, which meant he knew who I was. He knew I wasn’t just a Demdji from the Last County.
Rahim realised I wasn’t following him any more. He stopped, too, turning back to face me. ‘I had my suspicions as soon as I saw you at court that day. But I wasn’t sure until my brother’s charming wife decided to … expose you a little.’ He looked embarrassed saying it, at least. But I still felt the heat of the old humiliation prickle across my skin. ‘I knew as soon as I saw the scar on your hip.’
‘So why am I walking to a council meeting with you instead of hanging by my ankles in a cell telling your father all the secrets of the Rebellion?’
‘We hang people by the wrists now instead of the ankles,’ Rahim said. ‘Keeps prisoners more lucid if all the blood doesn’t rush to their head.’ I couldn’t tell if he was joking.
‘You don’t have much of a way with words, anyone ever tell you that?’
‘That’s why I’m a soldier, not a politician. Or I used to be.’ Rahim drummed his fingers across the sword on his belt. ‘My father and I aren’t on the best of terms.’
‘And selling out the Blue-Eyed Bandit to him wouldn’t put you back in his good graces?’ I asked.
‘My father doesn’t have any good graces. He’s just very good at pretending he does when it suits him. Which puts you and me on the interesting same side of hating my father.’
I watched him carefully. This had to be a trick. Some ploy of the Sultan’s. Only I was at his mercy. He didn’t need to send me a fake traitor; he could just order me to tell him everything I knew about the Rebellion. You’re lying to me. I tried it out, but it wouldn’t get past my tongue. He wasn’t lying. But he wasn’t telling the whole truth, either.
‘What is it you want? From us being on the same side, that is.’
‘A new dawn.’ Rahim flicked one of the tracts that had fallen from the sky out at me between his fingers. It was creased from the pocket of his uniform. ‘A new desert.’
‘Are you saying you want to put Ahmed on the throne?’ It seemed Shira was dead wrong about him having designs on being the new Sultan.
‘I’m saying I want my father off the throne and I can help you. On one condition. I want you and your rebellion to get my sister out of the palace.’
‘Leyla?’ Little
round-faced Leyla who made toys for the children in the harem and who reminded me of my littlest cousins even though she had a decade on them. ‘Why? She’s as safe here as anywhere else and she told me herself it could be a lot worse.’
‘If I’m right, she’s in danger.’
I thought of Shira, asking me for Leyla’s secrets, watching her out of the corner of her eye, ready to take down any threats to her child before they could do the same to her. But somehow I didn’t think that was what Rahim meant. Men weren’t usually aware of the politics of women.
‘What kind of danger?’
He didn’t answer the question. ‘You’re a Demdji. I’ve seen you do your little trick every day in my father’s war meetings. So, am I telling the truth?’
‘Yes.’ It came out easily.
‘Am I trying to trick you?’
I tried yes again, but it wouldn’t come out. ‘No.’
‘Can you trust me?’
I don’t trust anybody in here. ‘Yes.’ But I wasn’t giving up that easily. ‘But I want to know why. A lot of folk don’t get along with their fathers.’ I’d learned that first-hand the day before in the vaults. ‘Doesn’t mean most want them dead.’
‘Fathers don’t usually send their children away to die when they’re twelve years old, either.’ Rahim said it so matter-of-factly it surprised me. ‘Or at least, that’s what I’ve heard. I don’t have much of a point of comparison.’ Rahim started walking again and this time I moved with him.
‘How’d you get sent away?’ I kept pace with him. ‘Seems like half the harem would kill for a chance at escape.’ Me included.
Rahim didn’t answer right away and when he did he picked his words carefully, deciding what to tell me and what to keep from me. ‘I tried to crack Kadir’s skull open with my bare hands.’ I hadn’t been expecting that answer.
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