‘Welcome back to being human,’ Shazad said. ‘I’ll get you some guns.’
*
‘Sam.’ I caught him as the kitchen emptied He was peeling an orange stolen out of one of the baskets hanging from the ceiling. ‘I need your help.’ I stopped speaking as Shazad brushed past me, calling out to someone quickly about the weapons supply. That earned me a raised eyebrow from Sam.
‘Something your general can’t help you with?’
I lowered my voice as I pulled him into an out-of-the-way corner. ‘I think I know somebody who might be able to help get the iron out of my skin. Not a Holy Man. A woman. My aunt.’
Sam paused, orange wedge halfway to his mouth. ‘The woman who drugged you and kidnapped you and sold you to the harem? Yes, she seems very trustworthy.’
‘Please, Sam, I need help. You walked in and out of the harem at will for months. You have no idea what it’s like to be in there and feel powerless to leave or defend yourself.’ I tugged up my shirt, showing the scar on my hip, the same one I’d shown him the first time we met. ‘This happened even when I had my power. If I have to, I’ll walk into the palace again without it, but I’m twice as likely to get killed doing that and you know it. But I’d take just about any risk not to. Now, will you help me?’
Sam considered, peeling off another piece of the orange. ‘How much?’
‘How much what?’
‘How much are you going to pay me to find your oh-so-very-trustworthy aunt?’
My shoulders sagged. ‘Really? After all this, you want to keep pretending you’re doing it for the money?’
‘Why else would I be doing it?’ he asked. ‘I’m a bandit, remember?’
‘Because you want to be something more than that,’ I said finally. It had been a gamble. A guess. But the way it fell off my tongue so easily I was sure I was right. I’d watched Sam walk through walls with injuries for this rebellion. Walk into Auranzeb as a traitor to his own people for this rebellion. He wasn’t doing this for money any more. ‘That’s why you’re still here.’
‘That’d be an awfully stupid reason.’ Sam scratched his eyebrow. I stayed silent. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Chapter 42
As it turned out, the Hidden House wasn’t all that hidden. It was a bathhouse at the intersection of two twisting streets lined with colourful awnings in the middle of Izman. To me, they looked exactly like every other street we’d passed through on the way there. The city was an immense maze, and if it wasn’t for Ahmed gently nudging me around twists and turns, I’d have gotten lost sooner than I’d ever been in the desert.
As we got closer, steam heavy with the smells of flowers and spices curled out of lattice windows, sliding its fingers into my hair, taunting me with memories of the harem. Ahmed gave me a small nudge, indicating I should look up. As I did, the name finally made sense. All the buildings in this corner of Izman seemed to stand an even three storeys tall. The Hidden House stretched up two storeys higher than any of the others around it. And the roof was shielded by canopies of vines and desert flowers that tumbled down the walls, hiding it from prying eyes.
Shazad had picked this place for the meeting with Lord Bilal. Except she’d told him to meet her elsewhere first. With no guards and no weapons. It was up to Shazad to meet him there and bring him here. We were taking our precautions. We were asking him to put an awful lot of faith in us.
Jin had gone first, out in the open, to see if he drew any attack and to sweep the place for traps. Ahmed and I followed, looking like an ordinary couple walking the streets of Izman instead of a prince and a bodyguard with a gun secreted in the folds of her khalat. But we made it as far as the house without incident.
Ahmed pushed open the door and let himself in. At a desk a girl’s head darted up. ‘Well, if it isn’t our Rebel Prince.’ She flicked a book shut and shot me a look. ‘You can take your finger off that trigger – you’re safe here.’ I hadn’t even realised I’d been gripping my gun. I eased my finger off. But I didn’t reholster it. ‘Your brother is on the roof,’ the girl said to Ahmed.
‘What is this place?’ I asked, as we started up the stairs.
‘It’s a safe haven.’ Ahmed stepped aside, letting me go first. I wasn’t sure if he was being polite or if that was what I was supposed to do as his guard. ‘Not ours. Sara’s.’ He tilted his head backwards at the girl at the desk. ‘She was married at sixteen. Widowed at seventeen. Nobody but Sara knows what her husband died of, since no one could prove that it was poison, but he left her with broken bones and a great deal of money.’ My mind darted to Ayet without meaning to. If she’d wound up here instead of in the palace she might not have been my enemy. She might have been one of us. She might still be all right. Or she might have taken a bullet for the Rebellion and died outright. ‘She took the money and made this. It’s a place for women who might not want to be with their husbands. For whatever reason. A place that keeps women safe from them. Sayyida came from here. And we found Hala here, too.’
‘Hala’s married?’ I almost tripped on the step.
‘Who do you think took her fingers?’ Ahmed steadied me. ‘You all right?’
‘Fine.’ I waved him off. ‘So how come it looks gaudier than a whorehouse at Shihabian?’ I asked.
Ahmed laughed, catching me off guard. Ahmed had a good laugh; I’d forgotten that. It’d been a damn long time since I’d heard it. ‘Sara’s theory is that if folk think they know what you’re up to, they don’t dig much deeper and risk finding the truth. And everybody thinks they know what we’re up to, with a house full of women, with men coming in and out every day, and the occasional child appearing.’ Sara. Now I remembered why that name rang a bell. Standing on a mountain in a desert, the day before Bahi died, Shazad teasing him about a child with a woman named Sara. ‘She likes to say she just added some pillows. We sent Fadi here. He’ll be safe.’
We climbed four flights of stairs until we reached the roof. Jin was there, waiting, shadowed under a canopy of greenery. His shoulders eased visibly when he saw us. ‘No trouble on the way?’
‘We’re fine,’ I said. ‘No trouble here?’ He shook his head.
We lapsed into tense silence as we waited for Shazad. It was meant to be a half hour before she arrived. It was closer to a full hour and panic had my guts wrapped in a knot wondering what had happened to her when she emerged at the top of the stairs with Bilal, hooded and blindfolded.
We’d told him to meet Shazad unarmed and alone. We’d set almost all of the terms of our meeting and we’d set them high, expecting a negotiation. But Shazad said he hadn’t even flinched. He’d agreed to come to us, defenceless. That was the sort of thing that made you suspect a trap. Shazad kept scanning the skies around us warily as she pulled the hood from his head and uncovered his eyes.
‘Don’t worry,’ Bilal said lazily, ‘I don’t have anything up my sleeves. You can ask any one of your Demdji if you don’t believe me.’
Everyone looked at me. So he knew what I was. ‘He’s telling the truth,’ I said. I could tell what Shazad was thinking. There was something wrong with a man who had so little regard for his own life.
‘Good.’ Bilal stuck his hands in his pockets. He was wearing an ugly purple-and-gold kurta that was too loose on him and billowed around his arms. He fit right in with the gaudiness of the Hidden House. ‘So you’re the famous Rebel Prince.’ Bilal looked Ahmed over. ‘I thought you’d be taller.’
‘You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,’ Ahmed said.
‘I hear you might actually be able to topple your father,’ Bilal offered. ‘With some help from my army.’
‘That,’ Ahmed said, ‘you should believe.’
‘Good,’ Bilal said. ‘I want to end this parade of invaders. It’s tiresome. If my army can topple your father, it is yours to command. I never had much interest in commanding anyway. That was always Rahim’s strength. He was like a second son to my father. But I will want something in return.’
‘When I am Sultan’
– Ahmed was prepared – ‘I will declare Iliaz independent. You can be the ruler of your own kingdom, as long as you are prepared to swear allegiance to the throne of Miraji.’
‘Oh, I don’t care about that.’ Bilal shook his head. ‘That was just a pretext to feed your pretty general something big enough to get me face-to-face with you. If I’d told her what I was truly after outright, I had the feeling she’d turn me down on the spot on your behalf. Women – they can be so unreasonable.’
‘And what is it that you’re after?’ Ahmed asked. He was careful with his wording. He didn’t say, Name it. Even though we all knew how desperate we were.
‘You can keep your kingdom, every last piece of it.’ Bilal said. ‘In exchange for my army, all I want is one of your Demdji as a wife.’
The silence that filled the moment that followed was tangible. It was the silence of shock from all of us on the roof. It was the silence in which Ahmed didn’t immediately refuse him.
‘The Demdji are not mine to offer,’ Ahmed said finally, picking his words carefully. ‘Iliaz, on the other hand—’
‘I have no interest in being the king of my own country.’ Bilal waved a languid hand. ‘An independent Iliaz was my father’s dream. He was an ambitious man. A great man. I’m a dying man. The Holy Men say it’s in my blood. I have a handful of years left to live. If I’m lucky.’
I saw it now, in the loose-fitting clothing, the pallor of his skin, the way he held himself like he was always tired. It wasn’t arrogance. It was illness. ‘Even if you did win the war and grant me my own kingdom, I would rule over it for how long? One year, two?’
‘So where do we come in?’ I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer. Not when he was negotiating for one of us. ‘If you just want a wife to give you a son before you die, I’m sure you can find someone who’s not a Demdji.’
Bilal smiled wanly. ‘Everyone has this notion that the Demdji have powers to heal. That is why on the black market you can buy scraps of hair or strange skin. Or floating blue eyeballs to heal you.’ His eyes travelled across us. ‘But that is a watered-down story. Some will say that the true healing power lies in taking a Demdji’s life.’ I remembered Mahdi holding his knife to Delila’s throat, trying to drag her to Sayyida, to save her life. Saying Delila would die so she could live. ‘It’s a mistranslation from Old Mirajin, you see.’ Bilal looked at us. ‘The true phrase is not whoever takes a Demdji life, but whoever owns a Demdji life. Whoever is given a Demdji’s life. Surely you know the story of Hawa and Attallah.’
Hawa and Attallah had made oaths to each other.
The stories said that theirs was a love so great that it shielded Attallah in battle. But if she was a Demdji …
Wedding vows. It hit me like a punch in the gut.
I give myself to you. All that I am I give to you. And all that I have is yours. My life is yours to share.
Until the day we die.
They were nothing but ritual for most. But in the mouth of a Demdji, they were truth-telling. That was how the legend had been born – Hawa had kept Attallah alive with her words. So long as she watched him on the walls, her life tied to his, he lived. When she fell, he fell, too. He didn’t die from grief. He died from a Demdji truth.
Dead silence had fallen around us as that understanding sank in.
‘Give me one of your Demdji,’ Bilal said, and his eyes scraped across me. ‘She will be treated well. I will not harm her. Though I will expect her to perform all her wifely duties.’ I saw Jin’s hand tighten. ‘I will ask only one son of her. And in return, I will honour her by taking no other wife. I want to live to see my hair turn grey and meet my grandchildren. And I will give you an army and a country. One girl, in exchange for a throne.’
He let the weight of his words settle over us. ‘I see you need to consider this. I ride for Iliaz in the morning. If you want an army, come find me there with a wife. If you don’t—’ He shrugged. ‘I will watch you and your rebels burn under your father’s new weapons from my fortress and die in my own bed long before the war is over and the Sultan comes for me. And if you hate me for it, we can settle that after death.’
Chapter 43
I missed the desert nights like an ache. Shira had been right, you couldn’t see the stars from Izman. The city was too flooded with noise and light, too bright to make out the constellations of the dead.
But I knew it wasn’t really the stars I missed. Everything had changed. We weren’t an upstart rebellion in the desert any more. I missed the simplicity of being sure that what we were doing was right. That it was worth it.
We were starting a war. And a war demanded sacrifice. I could feel the uneasy restlessness in the camp.
‘There’s an easy way out of this, you know.’ When Jin talked, with my head leaning against his chest, I felt it in my bones before I truly heard him. It was long past dark and we were both already half-asleep.
It’d been a long, quiet walk back after Bilal’s proposal. Even Shazad hadn’t had anything to say. Ahmed and Jin had fallen into step ahead of me, deep in an angry conversation. They were working it out at the same time as everyone else was. Hala and Imin were both already married. Which left me and Delila. The two of us were the only ones who were able to offer ourselves up to Bilal in sacrifice if we wanted that army. If we wanted to make this a real fight, not a slow massacre.
I knew what Jin meant. If he and I got married, I was off the table, too.
‘I know,’ I said. I didn’t say anything else. I didn’t say that I knew Jin would never forgive himself if he saved me over Delila. That if Ahmed tried to force my hand he wasn’t the kind of ruler I’d want leading an army anyway. I didn’t say that I’d walked across the entire desert to not wind up having marriage chosen for me, even if it was to Jin.
But my silence spoke for me.
He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me against his chest. He was warm and solid. I tucked my head low, my mouth resting against his heartbeat, over the sun tattoo.
He fell asleep eventually. I didn’t.
After a few restless hours I pulled myself out of his arms. We were mostly sleeping without tents in the warm summer air. I picked my way through the bodies that were strewn across the grass. Like dead on a battlefield. The house was quiet as I made my way back to the kitchen.
It looked a lot bigger without half of the Rebellion stuffed into it. I started rifling through the tins on Shazad’s shelf. Looking for coffee.
The door to the kitchen crashed open, making me jump so violently I knocked a glass bottle to the ground with an ear-splitting shatter. An unfamiliar man staggered into the kitchen. I was about to go on the attack when he got close enough to the fire that I saw yellow eyes. ‘Imin?’ I relaxed, even as he collapsed into a chair by the fire, breathing hard. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I had to run all the way here,’ he panted. He was wearing a young man’s face and his beardless cheeks looked flushed. ‘The city is swarming with those Abdal things. One nearly saw me a few streets back. But I couldn’t get out of the palace all day and I had to tell someone. Rahim …’
That name got my attention. ‘Is he all right?’
‘No,’ Imin deadpanned. ‘He’s a prisoner. He’s obviously not all right. But he’s not dead, either. And judging by all the talk in the kitchens, he’s not going to be. Rahim is respected in the Sultan’s army. Executing him would be bad for morale, they’re saying. And bad for the Sultan among the people. So he’s being sent away, transported to some work camp where he can die quietly.’
That sounded like good news, the first in a long while, but I didn’t get my hopes up yet. ‘When are they moving him?’
Imin treated me to another eye roll. ‘Do you think I ran through Abdal-infested streets for my health? Tomorrow night.’
*
I found Ahmed in the general’s study. There was one flickering lamp that leaked its light under the bottom of the door. It made me think of the story of the jealous Djinni who flickered a temp
ting light in the night, luring children out of their parents’ homes, making them chase the fire far enough into the night that he could snatch them up and keep them as pets.
I could hear voices from halfway down the hallway.
‘Delila …’ Ahmed sounded tired. ‘You can’t—’
‘Yes, I can!’ Delila raised her voice. I paused, just shy of the threshold. ‘You’re the one who can’t, Ahmed. There wouldn’t even be a war if it wasn’t for me. This whole thing started because I was born. That’s why Mother – I mean Lien – had to run. That’s why you two had to start working when you were younger than I am now to feed us. I’m the reason you and Jin grew up in Xicha and that’s why this whole revolution started in the first place. That’s why Bahi is dead, and Mahdi and Sayyida and everyone else. I started this war and you will not even let me fight it. So I’m going to help finish it.’
I stepped back just as Delila stormed out of the study, the door hitting the wall loudly enough to wake half the house. She didn’t even see me as she pushed her way down the hallway. I waited until she was out of sight before I stepped into the light on the threshold.
Ahmed’s head shot up as my shadow crossed into the study. It had been resting on his palms, his elbows propped on the desk. His gaze struggled to focus on me. There was an empty bottle next to him. I wondered how full it’d been when he started.
‘Amani.’ He stretched up, and the candlelight travelled across his face, flicking one side into light then the other, so he looked like two people. I’d never seen Ahmed drunk before, I realised. ‘If you’re here to do the selfless thing and offer yourself up to Lord Bilal for an army, I’m afraid my sister just beat you to it.’
‘Doing the selfless thing doesn’t sound a whole lot like me.’ I sank down into the chair across from him without being invited.
‘Jin would never forgive me if I were to let you go.’ Ahmed shook his head. ‘If I let Delila go, he won’t, either, but I’ll probably never forgive myself, so at least we’ll both hate me equally then.’ Let you go, he said. Not make you go. Ahmed was my ruler; he could order me to do the selfless thing. To surrender myself instead of his sister. But that hadn’t even crossed his mind.
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