We were all outside in the space of a few heartbeats. The little girl stood in the doorway of the house we’d taken rooms in. She was about eight years old, her dark hair in a tightly coiled braid around her head, and she was thrashing and screaming as our guards hung on to her. ‘I need to speak to the commander! Please!’
‘Mara.’ Rahim pressed out into the small town square, where he could see the little girl properly. Her head twisted at the sound of her name.
‘Commander Rahim!’ She wrenched forwards to meet him, though one of our rebels still held her. ‘Let me go!’ She turned, and with all the force in her tiny body, she slammed her heel down on his instep, forcing him to let her go with a violent string of curses far from fit for a little girl’s ears. Not that she was listening anyway. She was already bolting towards us.
‘I like her,’ Shazad said. ‘Here’s hoping she’s on our side.’
‘I taught her that,’ Rahim said, with a hint of pride in his voice. I could imagine he had. Separated from his little sister, whom he would’ve given anything for, he’d found another young girl to replace Leyla. He dropped to his knees to meet Mara at eye level as she barrelled straight for him.
‘You have to help!’ She was breathing hard, her tiny face flushed. ‘I ran all the way here. He’s going to kill them! He’s going to kill them all!’
Rahim looked at her, brow furrowed. ‘Who is?’
‘Lord Bilal.’ She swallowed, trying desperately to spill out all the words fast enough. ‘He knows you’re coming. He knows he doesn’t stand a chance. And there’s this girl, a princess, they say, who’s been whispering terrible things into his ear for weeks.’ Leyla. Damn her. We’d taken her out of Izman to keep her from causing trouble, but somehow she’d managed anyway. ‘He’s going to poison the whole garrison so you can’t turn them against him.’
We all stared at the little girl as the words sank in, the horror of what she was telling us. And then we started to move as one.
We pieced it together as we went.
Mara worked in Lord Bilal’s kitchens. She was the little sister of a young soldier in the Iliaz command. Lord Bilal had seen us coming. Using a ship as a battering ram wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. He’d announced to the garrison that there’d be a feast that evening in our honour.
Mara had been hard at work in the kitchens with another servant. The other girl was new. She didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to sample the wine. Or she didn’t care. Mara had watched the girl drop dead right in front of her.
It seemed Bilal had decided that if we weren’t about to give him a Demdji to save his life, he wasn’t going to let us take his army. He was ready to kill hundreds out of spite.
We wouldn’t be able to make it on foot. Jin, Sam, Shazad and I scattered, looking for Izz and Maz, as Ahmed started to leave instructions for what to do while we were gone. Rahim stayed with Mara. We found the twins quickly enough, and it took a handful of words for them to burst out of their human shapes into those of giant Rocs. By the time we returned, Shazad had grabbed the weapons we needed. I caught the gun she tossed me almost without looking as Jin pulled me on to Maz’s back.
Rahim also climbed up, settling Mara with us. The little girl let out a scream as we launched into the sky.
It was a matter of moments before we were soaring over the walls of the fortress, the last of the sun touching the horizon as we did.
The courtyard was eerily empty when we landed, and the walls we’d flown over were unmanned. But it wasn’t deserted. Ahead of us, doors that led into the main hall were flung wide open. Light and noise and celebration spilled out invitingly into the gloom as we slid off the twins’ backs.
‘Is it me,’ Sam voiced what we were all thinking, ‘or does this seem like a trap?’
‘It’s not you,’ Shazad said.
‘Well, waiting won’t change anything,’ Ahmed said, making the decision. ‘We go in now.’
We fell into a formation naturally: Rahim and Ahmed taking the lead, little Mara still clinging to Rahim’s sleeve, Shazad and me flanking them on either side, Sam and Jin taking up the rear, with the twins slipping in and out between us, now in the shape of cats.
We passed below a huge arch made of the same red stone as the rest of the fortress. Two heavy wooden doors sat propped open, guiding us into an immense stone hall. Inside, it stretched up two levels, painted wooden beams supporting the ceiling high above us. By the light of hanging oil lamps, I could see faces and animals carved into the beams, gazing down on the scene below. Two dozen tables set up in a great horseshoe curved around the hall. They were lined with soldiers and heavy with food and pitchers of wine. I hadn’t seen this hall when we’d been here before, when I’d been invited to Bilal’s private rooms. But now he’d emerged, it would seem, and he sat at the very end of the hall on a dais above the rest of his men, in a chair that was more like a throne, a huge, twisted seat made of wood painted to look like gold and stacked heavy with pillows.
It took a moment for the first of Rahim’s men to see us.
‘Commander Rahim, sir!’ a young soldier at the far end of the table exclaimed, standing up and knocking over his chair. It crashed on to the tiled floor loud enough that several other heads turned our way. Shazad’s hand strayed to her side at the same time as I touched the trigger on my gun for comfort. But the soldier strode forwards, embracing Rahim, as he let out a relieved laugh and then, seeming to remember himself, released him and offered a lopsided salute. ‘We thought you were dead, Commander.’ The hall was quietening down now, and almost every pair of eyes in the place was turned towards us. Including Bilal’s.
His eyes were sunk so deep that all I could see were shadowed pits there. His hollow-looking face made him look crueller than he ever had. Bilal was fading fast. He was so emaciated that he looked like a small boy sitting in a too-big seat his father had left him, trying to hold it against a prince, who held more power than he ever would.
For a moment I felt a stab of pity for him. But as I looked around, I could see that the men’s wine cups were full but untouched. They had been well trained, most of them by Rahim. And Bilal was ready to kill them all.
‘It’s not that easy to get rid of me,’ Rahim said, clapping his soldier on the back. His words were jovial, but his eyes, fixed on Bilal, were anything but. ‘What’s happening here?’
Looking at his crumbling body, I hadn’t been entirely sure Bilal would be able to stand, but he rose to his feet gingerly. ‘A celebration,’ he declared, his voice still carrying across the halls in spite of his illness, ‘in anticipation of your arrival. And your annihilation of the foreign threat.’ He signalled to one of the servants, who rushed forwards with a tray of wine glasses for us.
‘Funny, that.’ Rahim took a full wine glass without hesitation. ‘Because I’d heard rumours about you striking alliances with foreigners. I’m sure your father would have marvelled at that.’
Bilal’s eyes danced to me and Jin and Sam. I felt the memory of the burn of Zaahir’s kiss on my mouth. If I was going to say anything, do anything, now was the time. I could save Bilal; I could end this without bodies. I glanced down at the wine glass that was being offered to me and kept my lips sealed.
‘Yes, well,’ Bilal said, after letting Rahim’s accusation hang a long moment in the air. ‘I am in good company, making alliances our fathers would not be pleased at.’
Rahim started to advance towards the dais, walking slowly, deliberately. ‘A toast, then,’ he said.
We all watched as hundreds of men raised their glasses obediently, Rahim’s army falling in line. ‘A toast,’ Bilal agreed. ‘To our esteemed commander, Rahim, on his victory and return.’
‘To the commander,’ the crowd echoed, bringing the glasses up. I was about to cry out, to stop them, to warn them. But Rahim got there first.
‘Wait.’ He held up his hand. It was an order called out in a room full of soldiers, and it had been issued by their leader. Their true one. Every single one of them
stopped in an instant.
And surrounding Lord Bilal stood an entire room of men silently reminding him where their true loyalty lay. That this was Rahim’s army. He held out his cup to Lord Bilal. ‘You don’t have a drink, my lord. You can’t drink to my health without it. Besides, it would be rude of your men to drink before you.’
Rahim stepped on to the dais, pulling himself up to his lord’s level. Except Rahim stood a head taller than Bilal, at least. He didn’t break his gaze as he held out his own glass for his one-time friend.
Finally Lord Bilal reached for the cup. As both their hands closed over it, Rahim leaned in close to Bilal. I saw his lips move, saying something to him in a low voice. A sad smile spread over Bilal’s face, but he didn’t say anything. He just pulled back, prising the glass from Rahim’s fingers.
He raised the glass. ‘To your victory,’ he said again. ‘And long life.’
And then he drank, deep and long. He hadn’t finished draining it before his legs gave out. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Chapter 33
I found Leyla in Bilal’s rooms.
I hadn’t expected to. I didn’t need to be involved in the aftermath of Bilal’s death. Rahim and Ahmed and Jin and Shazad could take care of that. So I’d gone to Bilal’s rooms looking for his books. I was hoping that he had more on the man in the mountain. That I might find answers about the Sin Maker.
It had been an easy thing to think of giving away Zaahir’s kiss to Bilal. But now … if I was going to give it to someone I really cared about, I needed to know if it was a trick. He’d promised they would live to an old age. But I knew Djinn’s ways. It could mean that whomever I gave his gift to would age a hundred years when I kissed them. It could mean I would grant them a cripplingly ancient life so they were forced to watch everyone around them die. I couldn’t do that to Ahmed. Or to Jin.
I came desperate for answers.
Instead, I found a princess curled up like a little girl on Bilal’s bed, letting the smoke from his funeral pyre billow through the open window.
I paused in the doorway, looking at her tiny figure in the dark, knees tucked to her chest, bare feet burrowing into the stitching of the heavy blanket covered in hunting scenes that was sprawled over the bed. I knew she was aware of me, but she didn’t turn around.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ I asked Leyla’s back. ‘You poisoned his mind into the idea of killing all those soldiers so that we couldn’t have them. So that your brother couldn’t go to war against your father. How did you do it?’
Leyla’s shoulders shook silently, like in a laugh. It was the first sign of life I’d seen from her. ‘You have seen me fool and manipulate you and others dozens of times. You have seen where I grew up, within those walls, with women who used their bodies and their minds like weapons.’ Slowly she turned to face me. She looked different from the girl we’d left here. The burning, indignant anger in her had turned to a twisted, ugly kind of rage. ‘And yet, after all this, you still think I’m too innocent to play this game?’
Her eyes were rimmed with red. I didn’t know whether it was from crying or from the smoke. I strode across the room, past the bed, to the other wall. From the window I could see down on to Bilal’s pyre. It was surrounded by soldiers. Doing their duty to him even though he hadn’t done right by them.
‘I guess the Rebellion has made me more of an optimist about folks than I used to be,’ I offered. I closed the window and turned back to Leyla.
‘Have you come to kill me?’ she asked.
‘No. Your brother will probably come looking for you soon. It would be too obvious who’d done it.’ It was a joke. Mostly.
I considered Leyla on the bed. I’d come here looking for information.
We’d had a plan back in Izman. Before Ahmed had been captured and Imin executed. Get an army, disable the Sultan’s machine, take the city.
We had the army.
We had the words to free Fereshteh’s captured soul from the machine and bring down the wall, and the Abdals with it.
Now we just needed the city. And for that, we needed to disable the machine.
I might as well ask. ‘If I free Fereshteh’s energy, that machine’s not just going to quietly turn itself off, is it?’
‘Who knows.’ Leyla slid back down on to the bed, like she was suddenly exhausted, propping her head on one arm. ‘It’s never been tested before. It’s all just a theory until you test it. That’s what my mother taught me. Rahim thinks I don’t remember her. But I think I’ve proved that I am more of both my mother and my father than he will ever be.’
‘And if you were theorising?’ I pressed, before she could stumble down some path I couldn’t bring her back from.
‘If I were theorising –’ she closed her eyes – ‘I would say no. I don’t think it will.’
Tamid and Leyla were both smart. And now that they’d told me the same thing, it was a safe bet they were probably right. It had seemed far away until now. But suddenly it seemed very near.
I felt myself reaching out for something to hang on to as everything seemed to spin around me. My hand closed around an earthenware pitcher next to the bed. It did nothing to keep me standing when it slid off the table and into my hands. Anger rushed in. Sudden, violent, irrational rage took over. Without thinking, I hurled the pitcher across the room, sending it splintering against the wall before I stormed out.
I wasn’t sure who I was looking for as I headed back into the courtyard, on the opposite side from the funeral pyre. Jin, maybe.
Instead, I ran straight into Sam. He caught me by the arms as I walked into his chest. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘isn’t this very Leofric and Elfleda of us?’ The love story he’d been babbling about back in Sazi. The one that ended with them both dying. ‘Meeting in secret in the dark …’ And then he trailed off as he saw my face. That I was in no mood for jokes. ‘Are you all right?’
I glanced over his shoulder. The twins were standing there, looking at me anxiously. I must really not look all right. ‘What are you three doing out here?’ I asked instead of answering.
‘Oh, well.’ Sam stepped away from me, releasing my arms. ‘Rahim got the news from one of his soldiers. After we left here, my former queen, long may she reign, struck an alliance with the Gallan king, may he die a painful death and rot in a ditch.’ For once, Sam sounded serious.
So the alliance had gone through. Since we hadn’t taken the captain’s deal, they had gone and made another ally. Made Miraji their enemy. The Gallan hated our kind, hated anything that wasn’t wholly human. Sam might’ve turned traitor on Her Highness, but his queen had betrayed a whole lot of her people by striking this alliance, too. ‘Captain Westcroft and the rest of all those nice fellows who want me dead marched down to join the siege three days ago.’
‘So we’re going to scout things out,’ Izz interjected, chipper as ever. He was clearly glad to be moving; the twins hated being in one place too long.
‘Shazad said we needed to use all our advantages now,’ Maz added.
‘How come you both get to be the Blue-Eyed Bandit and we’re known as advantages?’ Izz asked.
‘Yeah,’ Maz agreed. ‘We demand a better legendary nickname.’
I forced a smile and got the satisfaction of the pair of them grinning back, pleased that they’d amused me.
I glanced at Sam, understanding. ‘You’re going with them?’ The twins didn’t need an escort to report to Shazad. Maybe Sam thought this would impress her, acting like a real soldier. But then I saw the troubled look on his face. He might be one of us now, but he was born in Albis. Those were his people laying siege to our city. He needed to see it.
‘All right.’ I moved towards Izz. ‘Let’s go.’
They didn’t need me with them any more than they did Sam. But they didn’t question me coming with them either. The twins burst into Rocs as Sam and I wrapped our sheemas around our faces against the wind. I had to see whatever was awaiting us down in the city.
&n
bsp; Night had fallen completely by the time we reached Izman, but we could still see everything from the air. The light from the dome of fire made it glow faintly in the dark. But more than that, the ground around the city burned like an ember.
The siege camp had been destroyed. The Gallan tents, which had stood in perfect military lines when we’d left just a few weeks back, were now smouldering ash. The bodies of the Albish who had joined forces with them would be among them, too. Thousands of men who’d lined up around the walls had been annihilated, the ground still burning from the force that had destroyed them: the Abdals turned against our enemies.
I couldn’t see Sam’s expression in the dark, but he would mourn his people, no doubt. In a way I couldn’t. The Sultan might be our enemy, but he had dispelled Miraji’s enemies.
Maybe it was right that it should end like this. This was a war between the people who belonged in this desert. Not the people who wanted to own it.
We would decide it for ourselves – no one else.
All I could hear were Izz’s wingbeats as we soared over the city. It reminded me of the destruction Noorsham used to cause. Fire. Annihilation. A force that wasn’t natural, that came from the Djinn, sweeping across armies and destroying everything in its path.
They’d dared to try to take power from the Sultan. So he’d shown them his true power.
This was what would happen to us if we tried to face the Sultan while he still controlled the Abdals. If we went to face armies of metal with an army of men.
We would burn, too. Everyone would: Jin, Ahmed, Shazad, Delila, Sam, Rahim, the refugees from Sazi, the soldiers from Iliaz, the hopeful men and women who had joined us in village after village.
Unless I dispelled Fereshteh’s power. Unless I used the words Tamid had given me. The first language, in a voice that could tell no lies. The same tongue that had trapped the Djinn, used to free him.
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