Hala could do that. That’s why they’d risk bringing her into the palace. All she’d have to do was take Fadi back to the harem and then play the scene out in the heads of whoever happened to be nearby. She could even put it into Kadir’s head if she wanted to. She could make him believe he’d really killed him. And even if she didn’t get to Kadir, who would the Sultan believe, a dozen wives and daughters in the harem who saw it happen, or a son with a violent temper? Especially when the child was nowhere to be found. ‘Then my dear sister can just walk him out the palace door to safety under the cover of an illusion.’ Imin shook out the long sleeves so they fell over the dainty hands of her female form. ‘It’s almost easy.’
Imin was right. This could work. We could save Fadi. ‘And his mother?’ I asked, anticipation building in my chest. ‘My cousin Shira – how do we get her out?’
‘We’re not going to—’ Imin started, then quickly stopped herself before she could truth-tell the future. But I knew what she had been about to say. We’re not going to save Shira. It didn’t matter whether she said it or not; it seemed like it was already decided.
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘If we can get Fadi out, why not Shira? Sam has clearly just walked you and Hala through the walls, he could—’
‘The prison is iron bars all the way through; there’s no way for Sam to walk in there and walk her back out.’ Imin didn’t meet my eyes. ‘But I can walk you in there to see her before she’s executed.’ So that was what the guard’s uniform was for. ‘She’s asking for you.’
‘That’s not a good reason not to save her.’ Imin was holding the truth back. I just didn’t know why. ‘If Hala wanted to, she could get a soldier to unlock Shira’s cell and walk her out under the Sultan’s nose. Which means there’s some other reason saving Shira’s not part of the plan.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘Why?’
Imin straightened. She was drowning in the guard’s uniform. She looked liked a child playing dress-up in grown-up’s garb. But her face was wise beyond her eighteen years. ‘Because we haven’t given up on saving you yet.’ Understanding hit me all at once. Because if Shira disappeared, I might as well turn myself in. An infant could disappear believably, but Shira’s death couldn’t be faked near so easy. If she was gone, she’d be counted as escaped. And sooner or later the Sultan’s eyes would turn to me, the girl who had already tried to help her once. And he would ask questions and I would sell out the whole Rebellion with a word.
It was Shira or everyone else.
‘But Ayet—’ I started to tell her that I was already done for. That I’d been stupid and careless and gotten myself caught. That it was over for me anyway.
‘You don’t need to worry about Ayet.’ Imin started to shape-shift, to fill out the uniform. He was a head taller than I was in a few seconds.
‘What do you mean?’
He didn’t answer, scratching at his chin angrily as it filled out with a beard. ‘I hate these things.’ Whichever soldier’s shape he was stealing had a voice for giving orders, deep and ponderous. ‘Navid has been growing a beard since we fled camp so now kissing him is like rubbing my face against burlap. You’re lucky Jin’s always been clean-shaven, you know.’
‘At least Navid doesn’t occasionally vanish to parts unknown on you,’ I offered back. I pressed my palms against my eyes, pushing back against the exhaustion. ‘So we’re supposed to just let Shira die?’
‘The way it seems to me, one of you has to,’ Imin said. ‘If you really wanted me to, I could save her. But I’d have to kill you here and now so that you couldn’t betray us.’ He drummed his fingers along the knife at his belt. I knew Imin meant it. He’d do anything for this rebellion, just like any of us. And that’d include killing me. ‘You can do a lot more for the Rebellion alive. And she—’ Imin hesitated, like he didn’t want to say it. But he was a Demdji. He had to be truthful. ‘She can do a lot more by dying.’
*
Even in summer it wasn’t warm in the palace prison. I felt the chill sink into my bones as Imin and I descended the worn stone steps. The guard at the door hadn’t even tried to stop us after one glance at Imin in uniform. We would be left alone down here.
Shira was shivering in a corner, wearing the same clothes she’d given birth in, her back turned to the door. I took a step toward her, but Imin stopped me, one hand on my shoulder. He pointed toward the cell neighbouring Shira’s.
It took only a few steps closer to the cell to realise that what I’d thought was a pile of discarded clothing was moving. Just barely. Only the faint rise and fall of breathing. It was a woman, collapsed on her side, dark hair spilling across her face. But I knew the khalat she was wearing, the colour of roses with stitching the same shade as overripe cherries. It was the same one she’d worn that day in the menagerie.
‘Ayet?’
‘It’s no good.’ Shira still had her back to us. ‘She doesn’t talk any more. She might as well be dead except she’s still breathing.’ Like Sayyida and Uzma. Driven mad. This was what Imin meant by saying that I didn’t need to worry about Ayet betraying me. Slowly Shira turned over, working her way to sitting with the help of the wall. ‘You wanted to know where girls disappear to.’ She waved one hand in a gesture so grand she might’ve been showing off a golden-domed palace. ‘This is where we go. I told you I had nothing to do with it.’ She dropped her arm; it fell limp to her side. ‘Good news is, only one of us has to die today.’
‘Shira—’
‘Don’t try to comfort me.’ Her tone was the same one she’d used when we shared a floor in Dustwalk, dripping with disdain. But she didn’t fool me that easy any more. She was a desperate girl. ‘And you,’ she shot at Imin, who was hovering behind me on the stairs, ‘you don’t have to watch us like that, you know. I’m already condemned to die. What else am I possibly going to get up to between now and sundown?’
Well, being condemned to death sure hadn’t made her any more polite. I thought about telling her that Imin was on our side. But that wasn’t what really mattered to Shira. I gave Imin the tiniest nod and he retreated back up the steps, out of earshot.
‘So.’ I slid down the wall next to the cell so we were sitting side by side. Seventeen years, I couldn’t think of a single time we’d sat together. Not in Dustwalk. Not in the harem. It’d been us facing off against each other every single time. Now we were sitting side by side with a row of steadfast iron bars between us. ‘You asked for me.’
‘Funny, isn’t it? The last person I ever want to see is the last person I get to see alive.’
‘You don’t have to explain, Shira.’ Half a year and I’d started realising every conversation I had with someone in the Rebellion might be our last. Sometimes it was. But it was harder to push that out of my head when I knew for sure that Shira was a dead woman. ‘Nobody wants to die alone.’
‘Oh, good God, don’t be so pathetic; it’s depressing.’ Shira rolled her eyes so far back I thought she might lose them inside her head. ‘There’s only one thing I want from you. Your rebel friends were here. They said—’ She swallowed hard, like she was trying to hide from me that she’d hoped, even just for a second, that this might not be the end. ‘They said they couldn’t get me out.’ A stab of guilt went through my heart. They could. But they were saving me over her. I was choosing my new family over my old. ‘But they said they would help Fadi.’ She opened her eyes, her fingers curling around the bars. ‘I didn’t become Sultima by trusting anyone and everyone. I want to hear it from you. You might not be much, but you’re still the only blood I’ve got here. Tell me my son is safe.’
‘Hala’s gotten him out of the palace.’ As the words spilled off my tongue I knew they were true. ‘We can protect him.’
A tension I hadn’t even realised was there fled her body as I spoke, a fear she’d been holding deep in her bones since the first time I’d seen her in the baths. Had she looked at me that day, my Demdji eyes, and understood that she was going to be done for on the day she gave birth? Before I knew
the harem, I might’ve asked why she’d taken the risk of lying with anyone other than her husband. If she was really stupid and arrogant enough to think that she wouldn’t suffer the same fate as Ahmed and Delila’s mother. Of every other harem woman who had ever strayed into another man’s arms. But I’d seen enough since entering the harem to know there were other ways to die here. Ayet was proof of that.
‘Why didn’t you try to sell me out to the Sultan in exchange for your own life?’ It slipped out. I never believed anyone ever did anything that wasn’t for themselves before the Rebellion. And there were parts of me I couldn’t shake from before the Rebellion. The parts that kept me alive. ‘You know who I am. You knew your life was all but forfeit. If survival in the harem is one big game, why not play your last piece?’
I knew the look she gave me from days together in the Dustwalk schoolhouse. The one she saved if you said something particularly stupid in class. The one that made sure that you knew not just that you were stupid but that she was a whole lot smarter than you. ‘The Sultan doesn’t make trades. Everyone knows that. He hasn’t traded anything since he traded Miraji’s freedom for a throne. That’s a mistake you only make once. He takes instead. And he would’ve taken the knowledge of your treachery from me and then we would’ve both been dead. And I want one of us alive. I’d rather it be me, of course, but you’ll have to do.’ A slight smile appeared on her face at her own joke at death’s doors. But it was gone quickly. ‘When I’m gone I want you still around with your idiotic idealist rebellion to gut the Sultan and Kadir.’ The more she talked, the more her accent leaked out through the cracks. Our accent from the Last County. ‘I hate them and I hate what they did. And I almost succeeded in taking their throne, too.’
‘Wait.’ I cut her off before she could chase her own thoughts too far away from me. ‘What do you mean you almost took their throne?’
‘Fereshteh promised.’ She said it with the certainty of a child repeating something she truly believed. Who didn’t understand that promises were just words. But Fereshteh was a Djinni. If it was dangerous for Demdji to make promises, how bad was one from a real live Djinni? A thousand stories of Djinni promises granted in horrifying torturous ways tumbled towards the front of my mind.
‘I figured out that the harem was an unwinnable game, early on. The only real way to win is by becoming the mother not just to a prince but a Sultim. Only Kadir can’t sire any princes. And Fereshteh was just there, in the harem gardens one day. Like he’d stepped out of a story and into my life to save me. And he said that he could give me a son. And just like that I had a way to win the unwinnable game. To survive past Kadir losing interest in me in his bed and become the Sultima.’ Her eyes were far away. ‘And when I touched him he turned from fire to flesh. And he asked what I would wish for our child.’
‘What do you mean, what you wished?’ My mouth had gone dry.
Shira’s bloodshot eyes snapped open, like she’d been startled from the edge of drifting to sleep. ‘He said he could grant me a single wish for his child. Every Djinni can.’
‘Shira.’ I chose my words carefully. ‘You’ve heard the stories as well as I have. A wish from a Djinni—’
‘In the stories men steal wishes. They trick and lie and cheat for an easy way to change their fortunes. That’s why the Djinn twist them. Thieves don’t prosper from wishes. But if the wish is given freely …’ Then there was no need to twist it. They could really give someone their heart’s desire.
‘You wished for more than a prince.’ But my mind wasn’t wholly with Shira any more. It was racing across the sands back to Dustwalk. To my own mother. If she’d been given the chance to wish for anything, what had she wished for me? What great boon had my father granted to me? ‘You wished for your son to be Sultan.’
‘The only way to win the game.’ Shira tipped her head back against the cold stone wall, a small sigh slipping through her lips. That was when the tears started to come. ‘I wished to be the mother of a ruler. I wouldn’t have to scrape to survive any more. I could have everything I ever wanted.’ A Djinni’s word was truth. If Fereshteh had promised Shira that Fadi would be Sultan one day, what did that mean for Ahmed? ‘But I lost.’ Tears rolled down her face. I’d never seen Shira cry before. It looked unnatural on her somehow.
‘Shira, do you want me to go?’
‘No.’ She didn’t open her eyes. ‘You’re right. Nobody wants to die alone.’
I expected to feel grief. But all I found inside was anger. And suddenly I was furious. And I didn’t know who I was angry at. At myself for not getting her out quickly enough. At her for being stupid enough to get caught. At the Sultan for doing this to both of us.
‘I should have wished for something else,’ she said finally as the tears stopped. When she opened her eyes again there was a fire there I’d never seen in her. One I suddenly realised had been there all along. Back in Dustwalk when I thought I’d been the only one who wanted to get out as badly as I did. In the harem when I thought I was the only one hiding something. She’d just veiled it a whole lot better than I had. ‘Tell me that you’re going to win, Amani. That you’re going to kill them all. That you’re going to take our country away from them and that my son will be safe in a world that doesn’t want to destroy him. That’s my real wish. Tell me that.’
I opened my mouth and then closed it again, fighting for the words. Truth-telling was a dangerous game. There were so many words I wanted to say. No harm will come to your son. I’m not going to let it. Your son will live free and grow strong and clever. He will live to watch this rotten rule crumble. He will live to see tyrants fall and heroes rise in their place. He will have the childhood we never could. He will run until his legs are tired if he wants to, just chasing the horizon, or he will grow roots here if he’d rather. He will be a son any mother would be proud of and no harm will ever come to him in the world that we are going to make after you are gone.
It was too dangerous to promise any of that. I wasn’t an all-powerful Djinni; I couldn’t make promises. All I could manage was, ‘I don’t know what will happen, Shira. But I do know what I’m fighting for.’
‘You’d better.’ Shira leaned her head against the cool metal. ‘Because I’m going to die for it. That’s what I traded your rebellion for.’ Her tears had dried now. ‘I promised them that if they got my son out, I would show this city how a desert girl dies.’
*
The crowd in the square outside the palace was restless and roaring with noise. I could hear it before I even reached the balcony at the front of the palace. It was nearly dusk and they’d taken Shira away. They had offered her fresh clothes, but she’d turned them down. She hadn’t been dragged; she hadn’t fought or wailed. She’d stood up when they came for her, like a Sultima going to greet her subjects instead of a girl going to die.
She’d made me promise I would stay with her until the end. I might not be able to follow her onto the execution platform, but I wasn’t about to break a promise to a dying girl. Nobody tried to stop me as I strode through the palace halls, Imin trailing me like
I stepped through the curtains and got my first good look at Izman since the day I’d arrived. The balcony was half-shielded by a finely carved wooden latticework screen so that we could see the city without the people of the city seeing us. It overlooked a huge square, twice the size the rebel camp had taken up in the canyon. And it was filled to bursting. News of the execution of the Sultima had spread quickly. People were crowding to see a harem woman die for giving birth to a monster. It was like something out of the stories, but they were going to witness it.
The crowds jostled for a view around a stone platform that sat directly below the balcony. Looking down on it from this angle, I could see the stone wasn’t as smooth as it would look from below. It was carved with scenes from the darkness of hell. Men being eaten by Skinwalkers, Nightmares feeding off a child, a woman whose head was being held aloft by a ghoul with horns. That would be the last thing anyone led
to the executioner’s block would see.
That was the last thing Shira was going to see.
I almost missed Tamid. He stood in the shadows of the corner looking miserable. Shira and Tamid had barely ever traded a word at home, no matter how small Dustwalk was. I got the feeling they would’ve hated each other if they had. But it occurred to me that Shira and Tamid had made it out of Dustwalk together. They had survived. They had survived what I’d done to them. They’d been together when I’d left them behind. That had to mean something.
‘It was a mistake to arrange this execution without consulting me, Kadir.’ I caught the edge of the Sultan’s conversation as I brushed by. He was furious. ‘The city is already restless. You should dispose of her in private. Like you did her child.’ Hala had succeeded in convincing the Sultan that the harem had watched Kadir murder Fadi. Good. He was safe.
‘She is my wife.’ Kadir sounded violent, even in the face of his father’s calmer anger. ‘She is mine to do with what I please.’
Kadir spotted me as he spun away on his heel from his father. A nasty smile spread over his face. ‘You’ – he shot the order to Imin – ‘you’re dismissed. Go find somewhere else to be.’
I sensed the other Demdji tense behind me. But he couldn’t refuse. He sketched a quick bow before ducking out.
‘I’m glad you’re here.’ Kadir sidled across the balcony towards me. My eyes darted for the Sultan, inadvertently, looking for help. But his attention was elsewhere. Rahim was nowhere in sight, either. Tamid was watching us. But there’d be no help from him. Even if he didn’t hate me, he was no match for a prince.
Kadir’s hand found the small of my back like he thought I was some puppet and he could pull all my strings. He shoved me past two of his wives, who were watching from behind the lattice screen, hiding from the crowd, out into the open at the edge of the balcony, where I was exposed. A few eyes from the crowd drew up towards us as we appeared.
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