‘You’ve overestimated the loyalty of your own people.’ I wasn’t going to give him Tamid’s name. ‘Do you really think this is going to save them? Make them rally to you again? Slaughtering anyone who stands in your way?’
‘It’s not about the dead foreigners downstairs, Amani. It’s about all the ones left alive overseas.’ The Sultan looked at me over the barrel of the gun. ‘Do you know what happens in a country when the throne changes hands, Amani? Turmoil. Civil war. Too much war for them to turn their minds to invading us again anytime soon. And by the time they do, I will have an army of Abdals ready to defend our borders.’
An army of clay men with Demdji powers. Put that at our borders and he was right, we’d never be invaded again.
‘The Demdji before you …’ He meant Noorsham. He never used his name, like he never had mine until the day I’d killed that duck. Like we were things to him. ‘He burned so bright. But I lost the protection he would’ve given this country.’ Because I set him free. ‘I wondered if I could re-create his fire. If I could create a bomb out of metal with the power of a Djinni. And instead I found the right fire to create life. Because that’s what the Djinni fire is. It’s life. It’s energy. It gave us life. And I have just harnessed it. Not to destroy. To power this country. The Gallan claim the time of magic is over and turn to machinery. The Albish cling to their old ways. We will be among the countries that unite the two.’
‘All at the cost of slaughtering our immortals.’
‘The First Beings made us to fight their wars. But where have they been in our wars? While our borders are harried by foreigners with their greater numbers? While my people make it easier for them by turning against each other at the urging of my son?’ He spoke patiently. Like he might do for his own children. Explaining a difficult lesson. Only he wasn’t my father. My father was a Djinni. My father was a Djinni trapped inside the palace at his mercy. And for the first time since the Destroyer of Worlds was defeated, at very real risk of dying. My father hadn’t cared when I had been about to die. Why should I care about him? But I did.
‘The time of the immortal things is long over. We have taken this world from them. There is a reason that Demdji like you are rarities now. This world belongs to us. And this country belongs to us. It is the role of children to replace their parents. We are the Djinn’s children.’ The Sultan smiled a slow, lazy smile. ‘And I think you’re out of bullets.’
And then Jin was across. He grabbed the edge of the wall and pulled himself up with a grunt of pain, and then his arms were around my waist. He half leapt, half dropped, his hand looping around the rope as he went. And we were falling. On the other side of the palace walls.
And I was free.
Chapter 39
Izman was blazing still with Auranzeb celebrations, even in the ruins of the Blessed Sultima’s Uprising. News hadn’t reached the city yet of what was going on in the palace. That we were free of foreign rule. That the Sultim was dead.
I trusted Jin to lead us through the unfamiliar streets. The journey was painstakingly slow as we laced our way under the shadows of windows spilling out light and noise, through the winding side alleys of the unfamiliar city. Avoiding the big streets flooded with drunks and celebrations.
‘Here.’ Jin pulled me to a stop finally, by a small door in a white stucco wall in an alley so narrow the wall before us almost touched the one behind us. A gutter ran from the door through the narrow paved streets.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting on the other side. For it to lead to another world maybe, like our old door. Or that it would spill down into a secret passage that would lead to wherever the rest of the Rebellion had set up since we’d lost the Dev’s Valley.
Instead we stepped into a large kitchen warmly lit by the embers of a dying fire. It was about the most normal kitchen I’d ever been in. Just like my aunt’s back in Dustwalk. Except this one didn’t seem to be in low supply of food. Gleaming pots and pans hung from the ceiling between drying herbs and spices. Tinned supplies lined the shelves.
I slammed the door shut on the night behind us. I didn’t have time to consider where we were, except safe. Jin and I collapsed next to the fireplace, his back against the wall. I was on my knees facing him.
‘You’re covered in blood.’ I eased him down off my shoulder. ‘I need to see.’
‘I’m fine.’ But he let me tug the hem of his shirt over his head all the same, wincing as his arms went up over his head. His bloodstained shirt hit the floor in a ball even as he rested his arms on top of his head, stretching his chest out and giving me unhindered access. He wasn’t lying to me, at least; the better part of the blood didn’t seem to be his. Some stained his skin, but aside from the wound in his side that had kept him from jumping to the wall and a huge bruise blooming like a cloud under the tattoo of the bird over his ribs, he didn’t seem too badly hurt.
I noticed it then. A bright red cloth wrapped around the top of his left arm like an armband. I might’ve thought it was a bandage, but I’d know my sheema anywhere.
I reached out without thinking, fingers skimming the edge of where the fabric met his skin. His eyes snapped open at the touch, and he looked down, like he’d forgotten he was wearing it. ‘This is yours.’ His fingers started to fumble with the knot on the inside of his arm.
I sat back on my heels. ‘I thought I’d lost it.’ It was stupid. It was nothing but a piece of cloth. It wasn’t the Rebellion; it wasn’t Jin. It was just a thing. A thing I didn’t think I’d ever get back.
‘I thought you’d left it.’ He didn’t look at me. He was still fiddling with the knot. It was fastened tightly. Like he’d been desperate not to lose it.
‘Left it?’ Finally the knot came apart in his fingers.
‘The morning after you vanished.’ His shoulders were taut as he unwound the red sheema from his arm. ‘You were gone, and this was outside my tent.’ I must’ve lost it in the scuffle with Safiyah. When I’d been standing outside his tent. Deciding whether to go in. ‘It seemed like a message.’
The skin under where it had been tied was paler. Like it hadn’t seen the sun in a while. He handed me the sheema. I took one end. Our history hung between us, a dozen tiny reminders of the first days we’d known each other. When things had been simpler. He’d been the Eastern Snake and I’d been the Blue-Eyed Bandit and it’d been just the two of us, not the two of us and a whole revolution. A whole country.
I started to say something about how stupid it was to think I’d leave and tell him with a discarded sheema. But then, we hadn’t been all that good at telling each other things.
‘You left first.’ I pulled at the edge of the sheema. ‘When I was hurt, you left me.’
‘You walked into the path of a bullet, Amani.’ He smoothed back a piece of hair from my face gently, his fingers running down it to where it ended bluntly from the wound inflicted by Ayet’s scissors. He looked at me like he was relearning my face. I didn’t need to memorise him again. He looked exactly the same as when I’d left him. Did I look different from my time in the harem? ‘You walked into it without a care for your own life.’
‘That’s what I do,’ I said. ‘That’s what you do, too.’
‘I know.’ Jin’s hands fell away from my hair, settling on my shoulders instead, lacing at the nape of my neck. ‘But that doesn’t mean I had to like it.’
‘You were mad at me for almost dying?’ I was so close to him that all I had to do was breathe for us to be touching. I felt like he was holding me together between his hands, but the heat of them made me feel like I might vibrate out of my skin.
‘At you, at Ahmed, at myself, at everyone.’ He was finally looking at me square on. The dying embers cast his face in a warm glow as his thumb ran circles over the back of my neck. ‘I’m not good at losing people, Amani, and you know I don’t give a damn about this country.’ The rest of him was still now, something solid to hang on to. But his fingers were sliding into my hair, making me shiver. ‘Not the way
Ahmed does and not the way Shazad does. I came here because I give a damn about him, and I give a damn about Delila, and they both love this place. I give a damn about you and you are this place. I thought I had to do without you if you were so determined to leave the world. But then you were gone and I would have torn the desert apart looking for you.’
I wanted to say something that would help. I wanted to say that he didn’t have to be scared of me dying. But that would be a lie. We were in a war. No lives were safe. I couldn’t promise him a future where I didn’t take another bullet and he couldn’t promise me one, either. The same reckless hope that had us fighting at all was as likely to kill us.
So I didn’t say anything as I closed the last of the distance between us.
He said he would have torn the desert apart looking for me. And I felt in that kiss his desperation as his mouth found mine.
It wasn’t enough with Jin; it was never enough. His hands were in the mess of my torn palace clothes, trying to find me under the too-heavy stitching and the weight of the gaudy khalat. One hand tangled into my hair, pulling away the delicate gold circlet that still clung there. He freed it from my hair, casting it aside, pulling pieces of the palace away from me, trying to return me to him.
It was like being caught in a wildfire, desperate for breath, like if we stopped we would extinguish. Without thinking, I pulled my hands away from his chest. It took one quick movement for my torn khalat to come off and join his shirt in the heap on the ground, until I was wearing nothing but the thin linen chemise underneath.
His fingers found the hem, pushing it up, and then they were against my stomach, grazing the scar on my hip. I suddenly realised I was shaking. I pressed against him, skin to skin, looking for some kind of warmth. His hands found the small of my back, stilling me against him.
I felt us slow. My heartbeat slow. The wildfire turned to embers as Jin held me flush against him. I realised how close we were to the edge of doing something more. His skin against mine, his hands climbing my body, sinking me into him.
The door to the kitchen clattered open, wrenching us violently apart. Sam stumbled into the kitchen carrying an unconscious Leyla.
‘What happened?’ I was on my feet in a second. Jin was easing himself up the wall carefully behind me.
‘She made the crucial error of resisting.’ Hala followed through the door, dropping the illusion of looking human as she did, her skin going back to its normal golden hue. ‘She was fighting us, saying she couldn’t leave her brother behind. Turns out she could.’ She took my still-glittering skin in with one sweeping glance, though half the gold dust had faded in the escape. ‘Well, this is a sorry sight,’ she said by way of greeting. Her eyes danced to Jin.
Some of the dust from my skin had rubbed off on Jin, a smear of gold from his left ear to his mouth. Jin wiped a hand absentmindedly across his jaw. It was no good; the gold from my skin was all over his hands, too. I might’ve been embarrassed if it wasn’t for the unconscious princesses and old friends in this tiny kitchen pulling my mind in other directions.
‘The others?’ Jin asked, giving up.
His question was answered before Hala could. Imin stumbled in, servant’s garb badly torn. Shazad pushed her way into the kitchen behind Imin. She had Tamid by the arm. He tried to shake her off angrily as she pushed him ahead of her. Shazad let him go slowly, making it clear she didn’t have to before she did. And then she saw me and that sloppy smile broke over her face as she closed the distance with a hug. I felt my own arms, like they were finally untethered, fling themselves around her.
‘Rahim?’ I asked.
‘Alive.’ She released me. ‘Captured. He’s a soldier through and through. We needed someone to cover our escape. And he wouldn’t run.’ She looked at me. ‘We’re going to fix this.’ And I believed her. Because I was back. I wasn’t a prisoner any more and we could do anything. Her hand tightened on my back. And then Imin was demanding her attention and she split away from me. And I was facing Tamid, who was staring at the ground intently, leaning wrong on his fake leg.
And then my arms were around him. Relief wracked through my body. ‘Thank you.’ I pulled him close.
But Tamid didn’t return the gesture. He pulled away. ‘I’m not a traitor, Amani. I didn’t do it’ – his eyes went to Jin – ‘for your rebellion.’ The only time Tamid had met Jin he’d been pulling me up onto a Buraqi while I left Tamid bleeding in the sand. My guess was that wouldn’t particularly endear him to my childhood friend.
‘Well, then.’ Shazad clapped a hand on his shoulder, as I swallowed the lump in my throat. ‘I guess we’ll be keeping both you and the princess under lock and key for a while. Come on.’
‘Where are we?’ I asked finally, glad my voice sounded normal as we started towards the door leading out of the kitchen and into the house.
‘My house,’ Shazad said. I tripped on the bottom step of the kitchen. Jin steadied me. ‘My father is away and I sent my mother and my brother to our house on the coast. I didn’t want to put them in danger.’
‘We’re camping out in General Hamad’s house?’ I asked.
‘No.’ Jin’s hand was at the base of my back. ‘That would be like asking to get caught. We are using it, but most of the camp—’ He winced as he reached for the door, grasping his side. I opened it for him. A fine dining room, dark now, waited on the other side. ‘There’s a garden, not far from here,’ Jin explained as we crossed slowly. ‘It’s linked to this house by a tunnel.’
Jin led me through another door, his hand looping tighter on my waist. I realised he’d scarcely let me go since we’d left the palace. We were propping each other up.
The tunnel started in the cellar, behind two huge boxes that were labelled as being flour but that sounded a lot like guns when I disturbed one of them as we pushed by. Shazad struck an oil lamp to life and led the way.
I wasn’t sure how far we walked. It was more than twice the length of Dustwalk, though. I counted my paces for that long before giving up. And then a pinprick of light appeared ahead of us. Another door, I realised.
I hesitated. Dozens of memories of coming home to the Dev’s peace flooded in. Of standing outside the door in the cliff face, and waiting for it to let me leave the desert dust and come home. That was gone now. That home wouldn’t be waiting for me on the other side of this door. It wouldn’t spill open onto an oasis that had been built out of magic and turned into the Rebellion’s refuge. The people who had died in our escape wouldn’t be on the other side waiting for me. I didn’t know what to expect. But I wanted to come home all the same.
I stepped through.
It was quieter than the old camp. That was the first thing I noticed. And I realised why in an instant. The huge walls that stretched up around the property might block everything from sight except the sky, but we were still in the middle of a city. There were ears all around.
But the place was still blazing with light and with movement.
It wasn’t the desert, but the memory of the desert was still there. Tents were scattered among the campfires and a makeshift armoury had been set up against one of the walls. Lanterns and laundry crisscrossed patterns over the sky. It almost looked like hope.
‘Amani!’ Delila was the first person to see me. She was sprinting across the garden and flung her arms around me, pulling me from Jin’s grip. ‘You’re alive! They got you out! What happened to your hair? I like it, though! You look older. I wanted to come and help, too, but no one would let me.’
I realised as she pushed her hair behind her ears that it looked darker. And not just by some trick of the light or because of an illusion she was casting. It had been dyed black with henna, hiding the telltale Demdji purple. A safety measure in the big city. Ahmed was taking no risks with his little sister.
‘We’ve been over this,’ Shazad said. ‘We need to keep one of you two in the camp at all times just in case we need to hide it.’ She gestured between Delila and Hala, who smiled tightly.
/> ‘And somehow I’m always the expendable one.’
‘Nice to see you, too, little sister,’ Jin joked as she pulled away from me. With a foolish grin Delila flung herself at Jin. I was sure the greeting I was getting was a pale shadow in comparison to what Jin had had when he finally returned.
Navid was on us, grabbing Imin, still in the bloody servant’s garb, in a tight embrace. All those days with Imin roaming the palace and no news couldn’t have been easy on Navid. But Imin had been right – the beard didn’t suit him.
And then I was being passed from hand to hand, friends and rebels I barely knew alike patting me on the back, hugging me, congratulating me on staying alive. On escaping. Thanking me for my sacrifice when I’d stayed so long in the harem. The twins turned into two cats and twined themselves around my legs, almost tripping me with every step I took. I felt like a piece of myself was being returned to me with every person, pulling me out of the harem, pulling away the grief over Shira, the anger over my aunt, everything that had happened in the last few months, as I slipped from one hand to another.
And then like the parting of a curtain I was standing face-to-face with Ahmed. I was sure that every moment of doubt I’d had in the past months, all of it, was scrawled across my traitor eyes. Every time I’d seen his father decide more quickly. Every time I’d feared that the Sultan was right and Ahmed wasn’t ready. Every time I’d been stupid enough to listen to a murderer and a tyrant.
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