It was a baby’s wail that ended it.
I let a sigh of relief escape. It wasn’t even all the way out of my lungs before there was another scream.
Not Shira’s this time.
I moved like a shot for the door, tearing it open. Shira was collapsed in a heap of sweaty hair and bloodied cloth, clutching a small swaddled bundle to her chest, her knees pulled up around the baby, like she could protect it. The three women around her were staring like they’d been turned to stone. A fourth was slumped against the wall, hands clasped over her mouth, shaking.
I took another step forward, until I could clearly see the small bundle Shira was holding. The baby didn’t have Sam’s blue eyes. He had blue hair. Like Maz’s hair. A bright violent blue. Like the hottest part of a flame.
This wasn’t Sam’s son. It was a Djinni’s. Shira had given birth to a Demdji.
Suddenly Leyla and Rahim weren’t the most important people to get out of here. ‘Shira.’ I dropped by her side. ‘Can you walk?’
Shira finally lifted her eyes from the baby. ‘I can run if I’ve got to.’ Whatever polish the city’d given to her accent, it was gone now. She sounded Dustwalk through and through. She pushed herself off the bed slowly, but without so much as shaking. I’d never seen Shira look so impressive before. She’d had an air about her when she stood as the Sultima, in her fine clothes and unearned arrogance. But that was different from the fierceness she wore now, wrapped in a ruined khalat and sheets, holding her son.
‘Let’s go, then.’
The lack of guards in the harem had made Shira scared for her life since she conceived, but it might be what saved her life now. There was no one to stop us as we pushed our way out of her rooms. Mothers, sisters, wives, sons, servants – they all gaped mutely, unsure of what to do. Though I was sure somebody’d had the sense to run for help.
We didn’t have much time. But we had some. My heart was racing.
‘Shira.’ I glanced around a corner. It was a quiet garden thick with flowers, and empty now. We were close to the Weeping Wall. I just prayed that Sam would be there to help us when we got there. ‘I need to know. What did you hold over Ayet all these months? What did you have that kept her away from you?’
Shira stumbled, and I caught her. ‘I’ll tell you if you get me out of here alive,’ she joked. Even now, with death on her heels, Shira was still the bargainer of the harem.
‘Shira, please.’
‘A husband,’ Shira said finally. ‘Another husband, outside the walls of the harem. She put poison in his food after he broke two of her ribs. She bribed her way though her … inspection.’ She tried to put it delicately. ‘A few words of truth in the Sultim’s ear and I could’ve made her disappear. Silk rope around the throat in her sleep and disposed of in the sea. That’s how they go when the Sultim wants to make them disappear quietly.’ I clung to the words. I had to get to Ayet before she got to Kadir. I had to let her know I could ruin her in return if she tried to blow my cover.
We were almost at the Weeping Wall. So close to freedom.
I heard the familiar click of pistol holsters against belts. The sound of boots hammering into the ground.
It was moments before we were surrounded by men in uniform with the Sultan and Sultim with them.
Kadir shoved his way through the ranks. He surged towards Shira. I started to move between the Sultim and my cousin. But two soldiers grabbed him first. Kadir started to fight them. ‘Stand down. She’s my wife. And a liar and a whore.’ He was struggling. ‘It is my right to do with her as I see fit. And I am going to make her bleed for her treason.’
Shira shifted her child against her chest, staring down Kadir, as fearless as I had ever seen her. ‘I did this to stay alive. Because you are a vicious, stupid, impotent man.’
Kadir lunged for her. The Sultan gave a flick of his wrist and Kadir was pulled back by the soldiers again. ‘Take my son somewhere he can regain a level head.’
‘My wife—’ Kadir started, but the Sultan cut across him.
‘This is business for rulers. Not petty husbands.’
I could hear Kadir’s protests as he was dragged across the garden.
‘You know what the penalty is for violating your marriage vows, Shira.’ The Sultan’s voice was calm as they disappeared. I had an image of a moment like this, fifteen years ago: Delila being carried away as the Sultan wrapped his hands around Ahmed’s mother’s throat.
‘Kadir will never father a child. He can’t. And I reckon you know that, too, Your Exalted Highness.’ Shira pulled herself up straight. ‘I did what I had to do for our country.’
‘I believe that some part of you thinks that you did,’ the Sultan said. ‘I always liked you, Shira; this is a shame. You were cleverer than most. I’ve heard that you like to strike bargains. I have one last one for you. Your son’s life, in exchange for the name of the Djinni who fathered him.’
‘Shira—’ I warned. But it was too late.
‘Fereshteh.’ She raised her chin in defiance, oblivious that she had just given the Sultan another Djinni’s true name. ‘He told me he would make me the mother of a ruler. A true prince. A great Sultan. A greater Sultan than Kadir could ever hope to be.’
I had never seen uncertainty on the Sultan’s face before. But I thought I saw it there for just a moment. And I couldn’t blame him. A truth out of a Djinni’s mouth was a powerful thing. If Shira wasn’t lying, she might be holding a future ruler.
‘Fereshteh,’ the Sultan repeated. ‘Good. Take the child, Amani.’ It was an order and I was already fighting my arms’ urge to obey.
‘What will happen to Shira?’ My arms were moving without my meaning them to. The Sultan had never looked so much like Ahmed as he did in that moment. It was the same face Ahmed wore when he told me something he knew I didn’t want to hear but that had to be done anyway. ‘Please,’ I said. Shira was whispering to her son, making him promises she wasn’t going to be able to keep. Clutching at the only moments she was going to have with her child. My mind was racing, trying to find something. An escape, anything. But we were trapped. Some things there was just no way out of. Her child was in my arms. ‘Please don’t kill her.’
My cousin’s eyes met mine. Her lips parted. The Sultan’s words came back to me. Shira was good at making bargains. And she had one last thing to trade. One last coin she could try to buy her life with. Me. She could offer the Sultan the Blue-Eyed Bandit and the whole Rebellion in exchange for her life.
She could destroy me now. I didn’t have anything.
‘His name is Fadi,’ she said. Fadi was our grandfather’s name. The name our mothers had before they were married.
‘Lock her away,’ the Sultan ordered dispassionately, already turning. Already forgetting her now that she was just another useless girl in the harem. ‘Amani, come with me. Bring the child.’
Fadi wailed louder in my arms the further away we got from his mother.
Chapter 32
The Traitor Djinni
In the days that only immortals remembered, the world was changeless. The sun did not rise or set. The sea had no tides. The Djinn had no fear, nor joy, nor grief, nor pain. Nothing lived or died. Everything just was.
Then the First War came.
It brought with it dawn and dusk. It brought with it high seas and new mountains and valleys. And more than anything, it brought mortality.
The humans were made with a spark of Djinni fire, but they were not endless. And that seemed to make all the difference in the world. That changed everything. They didn’t just exist. They were born and they died. And in between they felt so much that it drew the immortals to them, though they were only sparks to the Djinn’s greater fires.
As the war ended, the Djinn of the great desert gathered and gazed across a changed world. The land that had been theirs. The war had ended. The mortals had served their purpose. They had fought. They had died.
Then they multiplied.
The Djinn looked on incre
dulously as the humans built walls and cities and found a life outside of war. They found new wars to fight. The Djinn wondered if they should let the humans carry on. The Djinn had made the mortals; now the war was over, they could unmake them if they so chose.
Some of the Djinn argued that humanity had served its purpose. Humans would only cause trouble. Better to burn them now, all at once. Return them to the earth from which they had been made before they overran it.
The Djinni Fereshteh agreed with this. The world was simpler before mortals. He had watched his own son, born to a human woman, survive a dozen battles with the Destroyer of Worlds’s creatures, only to die in a brawl with another mortal. And though the Djinn had quickly forgotten to be afraid of death when the Destroyer of Worlds was defeated, they were slower to forget this new thing the humans called grief. It seemed like a feeling too great to contain for a Djinni who was eternal.
But the Djinni Darayavahush argued against destroying them. He said humans should be allowed to live. They had earned their right to share the earth by defeating the Destroyer of Worlds. They were remarkable; they had fallen in waves on hundreds of battlefields but had somehow continued to stand in the way of the Destroyer of Worlds’s armies. Such will to survive should not be ignored.
The Djinn argued as years passed and a generation of humans passed into another. They argued as cities rose where there had been none before and new rulers succeeded old ones for the throne. As the mortals slowly forgot the time of the Destroyer of Worlds.
Finally, when the last of the mortals who had lived to see the First War passed into death, the Djinn gathered at the home of one among them who had claimed an old battlefield as his domain, a place where the earth had been ripped into a great valley where no other Djinn wished to live. They decided on a vote. They would cast a black stone into the water if they believed it was best to end mortality, and a white stone to let the mortals live.
The stones piled up, black, then white, one after another, until the two sides were exactly equally matched and only the Djinni Bahadur was left to cast a vote that would decide the fate of all of humanity.
Fereshteh felt sure that Bahadur would cast for his side. Bahadur, too, had watched a mortal child of his die. A daughter with blue eyes and the sun in her hands who the humans called a princess, one of their foolish words to pretend any one of them was more powerful than another. Surely Bahadur had felt the same pain Fereshteh had. He would want to end it just as much.
And yet when Bahadur finally cast his stone, it was as white as bone. Fereshteh’s side lost. And thus all the Djinn made an oath – that none among them would annihilate mortality. And because they were Djinn that oath was the truth.
Centuries passed.
Fereshteh didn’t know how many, for only those whose days were numbered counted them. He tried to stay away from the humans at first. But they were constantly changing. It was hard not to watch them. Every time Fereshteh thought he had grown bored of them they did something new. They made something new, sometimes out of nothing. Palaces rose higher than before. Train tracks carried them across the desert. Music sprang seemingly from their minds to their fingers. And every so often Fereshteh could not resist temptation any more. But time taught him ways to avoid the grief. He never looked over the children he gave mortal women. He had no interest in watching little pieces of himself be destroyed by the world his fellow Djinn had allowed to continue.
Then there came a day when Fereshteh heard his name being called with an order he could not disobey. And so it was that he came to stand prisoner in front of a Sultan and a Demdji. A Demdji holding a child that Fereshteh had marked as his own, though he had already forgotten the child’s mother. It was easier that way.
But he remembered all his children. And he remembered the pain he had felt when each of them died. So when the Sultan held a knife above this child, and asked for the names of his fellow Djinn, he surrendered easily. He could not watch this spark of himself die.
He gave Darayavahush’s name first. He gave the Sultan only the names of the Djinn who had been stupid enough to think that humanity was harmless and worth saving. The ones who had cast a vote to let them live. Half the Djinn in the desert.
And he laughed as, one by one, they became trapped by the creatures they had chosen to let live.
Chapter 33
The Sultan had been dangerous enough with one Djinni. Now he had an army of them. They might’ve created humanity to fight their wars, but there were stories of what happened when immortals entered the wars of men, too. Cruel conquerors who leashed them in iron and turned their powers against helpless nations. The heroes who won Djinn over to their side by sheer virtue and flattened their enemies. No matter what the circumstances, immortals were unstoppable.
My thoughts were in a storm as the Sultan led me back to the harem, one firm hand on my spine. There was too much to do and not enough time.
I had to get news of the other Djinn to Sam. And I had to make sure Fadi, who was screaming in my arms, was safe in the palace. I had to find a way to save Shira. And I had to do it before Ayet betrayed me to the Sultan. Shira giving birth had distracted everyone, but it was only a matter of time now before Ayet got Kadir or someone else to listen to her and the Sultan found out I was the Blue-Eyed Bandit. And then it would be over. I had to do everything I could to help before it all ended.
‘Father.’ My thoughts were interrupted by Rahim. He was striding down the hallway toward us, his collar unfastened, hair dishevelled, trailed by two servants. Dawn was just breaking but he looked like he hadn’t had any sleep all night. He would be in trouble too when Ayet sold me out. What was he still doing here? ‘A word.’
He drew his father to one side, out of earshot from me, leaning in close to say something rapid-fire under his breath. I was suddenly nervous. He was still here, and there was no way Rahim would let Leyla’s life be put in danger. He’d choose her over me in a second. I had no doubt about that. Same as I’d do for any of the Rebellion over the two of them. I didn’t begrudge him that. But it hadn’t ever crossed my mind that he might save his own skin by selling mine out instead of waiting until Ayet could do it for us.
‘Forgive me.’ The two servants with Rahim stepped in front of me, blocking my view of my so-called ally. One was reaching for Fadi in my arms expectantly, her head bowed.
‘No.’ I pulled Fadi closer to my pounding heart. I wasn’t going to hand him over. I might not be able to do anything else before I got found out, but I wasn’t about to let another Demdji get swallowed up in the harem and disappear.
‘He needs to be fed.’ The second servant spoke up, a note of exasperation in her voice. ‘Now’s not the time to be difficult.’ It was the closest I’d ever seen to insolence in one of the harem servants. It made me look twice at her, but in spite of her voice, her head was bowed low in respect. She’d said it loud enough for the Sultan’s eyes to dart over.
‘Hand it over, Amani.’ The Sultan gave me a distracted order as he continued his conversation with Rahim. I tried to catch his eye over his father’s shoulder, but Rahim might as well never have known me for all the attention he was giving me.
‘It’s all right.’ The first servant, too, sounded familiar somehow, although I was sure I’d never seen her in the harem before. ‘We’ll take good care of him.’
In that moment, as the Sultan turned his back entirely on us, the first servant dared to lift her head fully and I was face-to-face with Hala.
She was hiding her golden skin from sight with an illusion but it was still umistakably her. It was unsettling; she was both wholly familiar and completely strange. Her high, arrogant cheekbones and long nose were unmistakable, but she looked younger and more vulnerable without her golden veneer.
And the other servant. I looked closer now. Her eyes were wrong. They weren’t the desert dark they ought to have been. Instead they were the colour of liquid gold.
Imin.
My heart sped up. Something was in motion. But
I wasn’t sure what.
Imin winked at me. It was so quick that even if the Sultan had noticed, it would’ve been mistaken for a blink. I loosened my grip on the baby in my arms as I passed him over to Hala. I’d been given an order, yes, but there weren’t many people in the world I’d trust with Fadi more than Hala. She might not scream maternal instinct, but Demdji took care of their own.
I didn’t have time to watch them disappear into the harem before Imin grabbed my arm. ‘Walk quickly. And don’t look back.’
‘What’s happening?’ I asked under my breath as we moved fast down the hallway. Too quickly, I realised. If the Sultan took his eyes off Rahim for even a second, he’d realise I was all but running.
‘Something that passes for a plan at short notice, that’s what. Take a right here.’ We turned the corner and then we were out of the Sultan’s view. Rahim wasn’t betraying us, I realised; he was a distraction. I felt suddenly ashamed for believing he’d turn on us so easily. By the time he was done talking to his father, the Sultan would think I was back in the harem. If he wondered at all.
‘Fadi, the baby,’ I started. ‘The Sultan will look for him, you need to—’ Imin’s eyes rolled to the sky, cutting me off.
‘Believe it or not, we can make a stab at executing a plan without you.’ Imin slowed down as we left the cool of the marble palace walls and passed into one of the huge, sprawling gardens. It was only early morning, so the unrelenting heat of the day hadn’t set in yet, but I still squinted against the sun after the dark of the vaults.
We stopped, ducking behind a tree, out of sight of anyone who might walk by. Imin yanked the servant’s clothes off in one quick gesture. Underneath was a palace guard’s uniform that had been made for someone a whole lot taller and broader. Imin started unrolling the sleeves and loosening the belt buckle, making room for a new body. ‘We can’t just walk a baby out of the harem. Someone would notice he was gone. Unless the Sultan thinks he’s dead, that is. If, say, half of the harem were to see Kadir drown the baby in a fit of rage, for instance.’
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