by Amber Lough
“Training.” He leaned close, as though he was going to kiss me, and then cleared his throat and looked down at the stone. “So, this crystal we’re on is called tourmaline. It’s not usually this big, but I caught some boys wishing on it this morning. They were trying to make a secret hideaway high up the wall and hidden in plain sight. Anyway, they ran off and I found myself all alone. And no one wants to be alone in a secret place.”
I started to feel warm all over and inched closer. “Want to know what had me upset earlier?”
“Always.” Again, his lips were close. Too close.
“Melchior is my grandfather.”
Atish made a sound halfway between a cough and a squeal. “What?”
“It’s true. He is my mother’s father. He’s the man who exiled her. He’s the jinni who made Hashim so angry that he spent his whole life getting even. He started the war. He ruined my life. And Najwa’s. And everyone else’s who died in the war.”
“Zayele, no one is that powerful. Not even a magus like Melchior.”
“But he’s ruined so many lives. And he’s my grandfather. And he’s here, in the Cavern, holding Yashar hostage.”
He exhaled slowly and gazed over the expanse of the Cavern. “I’m not certain, but I doubt you have too much to worry about. Melchior won’t hurt him, because he may prove to be valuable.”
I dragged my fingernails quietly against the crystal. “A human who sees something no one else can see…”
“Like I said, valuable.” He picked up my hand, pulled the sleeve back, and rubbed his thumb over the soft skin of my wrist. “What you need is a strategy.”
“Right. I need to get him to trust me so he’ll let me get close to Yashar.” I tried to ignore the tingling I felt beneath his fingers. “First, I need to surprise him with how quickly I can learn my lessons, and then I need to convince him I’m a loyal jinni. After that, I’ll get to Yashar and take him out of here.”
He lifted my wrist and brought it to his mouth. A soft moan escaped from my lips, and his eyes brightened at the sound. “Do you realize you’re forcing me to be an accomplice? Are you sure you want me to know everything that goes on in your half-human brain?”
I pulled my arm back to my side and rubbed briskly at the tingling. “You’ll have to know everything about me soon enough.”
“And why is that?”
“Because you’re going to be my dyad. Or else.”
“Or else what?” He reached for my wrist again but I slapped softly at his hand and he shook it, feigning pain.
“Or you’ll never get to kiss me again.” I twisted my torso toward him and pressed my hands against his chest, leaning in close to his face. His eyes were inches from mine and they were aimed on my mouth. “Someone needs to properly motivate you, or I might end up with Samir for the rest of my life.” At the moment, the thought of spending all of my time with Atish sounded more like a gift than a prison sentence. I had to hold myself back from leaning closer and kissing him.
“Trust me, I’m motivated,” he said huskily.
Then he kissed me anyway, the fool.
I SAW THE first one beside a pale pink crystal. He was crumpled against it, chin tucked into his chest, with a mass of beaded braids falling over his face. He didn’t move except to breathe, which lifted his head slightly.
He would have looked like any other jinni jumping into a Memory Crystal if it weren’t for his sallow cheeks, the crusty edges of his sleeve hems, and nails long enough to curl over the tips of his fingers. A bowl sat beside him with a white residue indicating the water had not been consumed but instead had evaporated.
In one of his hands, he clutched a small wooden soldier that had long ago lost any traces of paint.
Carefully, I stepped around him, crunching as quietly as I could on the black gravel path. He was one of the Haunted, those jinn who wasted their lives away down here. It was sad that so many were lost, unable to live their own lives. Unable to break free of the memories. They hadn’t been here before, when everyone was at the Breaking festival.
I would never be like them. I was only here to see Faisal. There was so much he meant to tell me before he died, and the only way he could teach me now was through the recordings of his life. I wasn’t here to mourn him. At least, not primarily. I was here to learn from him.
Did that man by the pink crystal have any other family, or was the child he mourned all he had left to cling to? I dug my fingernails into my palms. They would never be as long as that man’s. I wasn’t the sort of person who let herself waste away in the shadows of the Cavern.
Quickly, I found my way to Faisal’s and Mariam’s crystals, passing two other Haunted jinn and a few who looked like they only came here once a year. Those jinn had faces that glowed, and they carried a basket of leftover pies from the festival.
Faisal’s crystal was taller than he had been in life. I stared at it, wishing I could feel the smoke that swirled inside. I had seen thin, wispy clouds like this in Baghdad, and I hadn’t been able to run my fingers through those either. Both were mesmerizing, and I could not look away.
Without meaning to, I found myself kneeling before Faisal’s crystal with my nose and palms pressed against it. It was as cold as Mariam’s had been, but where hers had been foreign, his was familiar. I knew Faisal better than I knew my own mother.
“Tell me what to do, Faisal,” I whispered. My words were absorbed by the green swirls within. “My sister is a magus, and I am not. I’m not even that good at being an Eye in the Corps. Or a…a consul. And the one person alive who I feel happy with doesn’t want me there with him.” I swallowed away a hardness in my throat and knocked my forehead onto the crystal. “Faisal, I miss you.”
When I closed my eyes, I felt his presence and I was pulled in.
—
My head was full of haze, and after a moment, I realized I was in Faisal’s memories. I was seeing the world through his eyes. He blinked, and I felt my mind shrink like a grape in the sun. I became Faisal, and his memory was my memory. His thoughts were my own.
My arms—Faisal’s arms—were thick and strong. I flexed them out in front and tightened my fists. Why haven’t the magi chosen a path for me?
I would do well in the Shaitan. Or even the regular army. Everyone else had been selected for specific training, and I was left with nothing to do after the group lessons were over for the day.
Today, I managed to convince the captain to let me train with the soldiers by claiming a need to “test my strength.” It was ridiculous, and I could tell she thought so too, but she allowed me to line up with the students who were training to enter the Shaitan.
The captain walked down the line of students. She was a fit, older woman with basalt-straight hair and eyes that could sharpen a dagger. We stood and allowed her cold gaze to pick over every infraction in our clothing or manner of attention. When she stopped in front of me, I stared at the empty space behind her. I desperately, hungrily wanted to impress her and I could not afford to lose my composure.
“Faisal, you’re putting my other students to shame,” she said. Her voice was dry, but friendly. “We’ll have to see if you’d fit in with us. From what I’ve heard, the reason you haven’t been chosen for any marked path is that everyone is fighting over you.” I blinked. What was she talking about? No one seemed to even notice I existed, except for the Transportation instructor. “You didn’t know?” she asked.
“No, ma’am.”
“Interesting,” she said. Then she continued down the line, leaving me to settle my own mind. I was wanted? By whom?
After she was done, Captain Aga split us into pairs, partnering me with the one girl I had hoped to avoid. Mariam knew I couldn’t keep my eyes off her, and now she would think I was only here to be with her. The truth was, I had avoided asking to train with the Shaitan because I didn’t want to be near her. She unsettled me. I couldn’t understand why I naturally tracked her whenever she entered a room. I tried to ignore Mariam, but I couldn
’t.
As I expected, Mariam raised a brow at me before gesturing with her head where we were to stand. “Fighting over you, huh?” she asked.
“I think she was just kidding.”
“Aga doesn’t do that.” She strapped on a set of leather pads, covering her arms, chest, and thighs until she looked like an overstuffed lizard. She tossed me a set of pads, and I did the same.
“Well, maybe she’s wrong then, because no one has shown any interest in me.” I cringed, knowing I sounded desperate.
“Faisal, they don’t tell us anything. I had no idea I was going to be a Shaitan. I thought my father would insist I join the Eyes, like him, or something equally dull, like…building things. But here I am, about to pummel a jinni who doesn’t know how to strap on his chest pads.” I looked up just as a bolt of fire hit me in the shoulder. I stumbled a few steps back, caught my balance, and turned to glare at her.
“I wasn’t ready.”
“But Aga already blew her whistle. Didn’t you hear?” Mariam was grinning.
“How do you do that?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “Just something Shaitan can do. If you can do it, then I guess that means you get to stay with us. I’m sure we’re always open to having a magus in our midst.” She was teasing, but it stung anyway. I was the odd one, the one jinni in our year who would always be separated, and I’d done nothing to deserve it.
She spent the rest of the lesson talking me through fireballs, but I wasn’t able to get anything more than a spark, and once, I made the air shimmer, which did nothing but make everyone laugh at me. When we were leaving, Mariam bumped her shoulder into mine.
“I hope Aga gets to keep you. Knowing her, she probably will.” Then Mariam ran off with the other students, leaving me standing alone and covered in goose bumps in front of the Shaitan gate.
—
I found myself—just me now, without any of Faisal’s mind forcing me out—huddled in a ball. My knee was pressing into my chest, my chin was tucked, and it was hard to breathe. Gasping for air, I pushed off the ground and leaned my back against the emerald crystal.
Faisal hadn’t always been so sure of himself. It was strange to think of him as a student, before he joined the Eyes of Iblis Corps, and before he became Mariam’s dyad. He hadn’t known where he belonged. He hadn’t known anyone cared about him.
I took another deep breath and left him behind, smiling at myself. On the way out, I made sure to look away from the Haunted. They were to be pitied, surely, but I could not understand how they let themselves rot.
At the top of the stairs, just before I emerged onto the Cavern floor, I looked down at the burial chamber and decided I had had enough memories for now.
WHEN I ARRIVED in Iblis’s Palace for my second day of magus training, I was ready to take on whatever Taja threw my way. I entered the palace, ignored the flowers and the giant feather impression on the wall, and marched down the corridor to the iron gate that led to the magi-only training area.
I pressed my hand hard against the black glass plate, and when it began to slide into the wall, I pressed my lips together, took in a deep breath, and stepped out into the little garden. Taja was already there.
“Welcome back,” she said, raising one eyebrow at me. The gate scraped the ground behind me and latched with a firm click.
“What’s my task today?” I said, making sure to keep my voice level. In truth, I was excited to learn more, but I didn’t want her to know. I had turned myself into a wallcreeper again the night before, after everyone had fallen asleep. It wasn’t just to prove to myself that I could do it on command; it was also because it was fun to hop up the wall sideways, weighing no more than an apricot.
“Today you have to be focused and alert,” she replied.
“Is that what Melchior’s teaching Yashar? Or is he skipping that part and going straight to torture?”
“Melchior is not unfair. He knows Yashar is young, even if he is human. You have changed his capabilities, and now he’s our responsibility. It is because of this that Melchior had to bring him here. He’s safe, and he’s being taught how to handle his…alteration.”
I wanted to take a few steps and shake her into telling me more, but I wasn’t brave enough. She was grinning as she gestured at a table. “This was my favorite lesson. It’s similar to some of the training the Shaitan do.” The table held a lump of reddish-brown clay, a corked pot, and a long, metallic box.
“A pottery lesson?” I guessed.
“Why would a magus ever need to make a pot? Anyway, for this lesson, you have to make a horse out of that clay. This is easy—if you can keep your mind agile and focused.”
“Why would a magus ever need to make a clay horse?” I asked, smirking at Taja.
Taja rolled her eyes. “I will show you how it’s done. Then you can try it.”
She moved to the center of the garden, away from the crystals and benches. Then she pointed at the objects on the table and hissed something in the older jinni language. A moment later, the objects rose into the air and moved toward Taja. They became a twisting ring of items, with Taja at the center, the clay held between her hands.
Two alarming things happened at once. First, the box opened up to reveal a quiver of flaming arrows, and second, the jar upended, the cork dropped to the ground, and several dozen hornets crawled out and began to swarm around their orbiting ceramic home. Taja kept an eye on the objects spinning around her while her fingers worked the clay, pushing and pulling it into something that was quickly starting to look like a horse. She was close to being done when one of the hornets flew a little too close. She pointed at it with her smallest finger and it dropped to the ground, legs bent and stiff. Then she whispered to the clay and it glowed red-hot for a breath or two before she looked up and held it out to me.
“There,” she said. “Now you try.”
I took the horse from her, and the moment my fingers wrapped around it, it melted back into formless clay.
“Good luck,” she said before walking out of the circle. She timed it so that she could fit right between the hornets and the arrows without getting stung or burned.
I tried to keep an eye on the hornets and the flaming arrows while I kneaded the clay, but it didn’t take me long to realize I couldn’t make a horse. I’d never made anything but bowls out of clay before. How could I make a horse without looking down at my hands?
I pulled the clay into two pieces and rolled one into a ball, then stuck it on the other, which I began to pull on to make what could, in some other world, be thought of as horse legs. I was starting to get it, and I smiled at myself.
“Have you thought about the name?” she asked. I flicked my eyes at her and saw that hers were trained on the arrows. “Oh, I forgot to tell you: The objects will stay put if your mind is focused. If it wanders, they will attack.”
“Right,” I said, and started to mold the horse again, this time without taking my eyes off the hornets. Holding up one hand to ward off any flying objects, I rolled the clay over my thigh and then began to shape the body.
As I kept an eye on the swarm of hornets spinning past, I imagined a horse’s body and tried to make it with my fingers. Why couldn’t I wish the clay into the right shape? Would she even know if—
One of the arrows lifted up out of the box. Yellow and black flames sprouted from the arrowhead. It aimed straight at my hands, and I froze. How could I focus on the clay with something like that pointing at me? The arrow pulled back, as if caught on an invisible bowstring, and let loose.
Without thinking, I held up the half-formed lump of clay to stop the arrow’s approach. With a swish, the arrow embedded itself into the clay, which then caught on fire and began cracking in my hands. Its work done, the arrow fell to the floor and another one began to lift itself out of the box.
The clay was turning to powder. Quickly, I squished it together and spat on it, trying to get the clay back into something resembling, well, clay. From what I’d learned
so far, the arrows only aimed for the clay. If I spun around quickly, they wouldn’t have time to aim.
I was at the storm’s center, but I was not calm. My heart was thumping in my chest now; I was eager to get this horse made and scatter the rest of the objects. The horse was coming along, and the remaining two arrows stayed in their box. The hornets, however, were starting to leave their ceramic hive. A few ventured away from the pot, some staying outside the circle but others coming alarmingly close to the center. I wasn’t focusing hard enough.
I pulled out the legs, not caring at all that they were more wormlike than leglike. I smoothed out the neckline, cementing the head to the body, and began pulling out little bits for the ears. And then three hornets took off from their hive and flew toward me, fast as falcons. I pulled the horse up against my chest and pointed at the hornets. What had Taja wished earlier, when that first hornet came after her?
I didn’t have time to think. When the hornets were almost within arm’s length and as loud as a river, I closed my eyes. I could not think of them. I could not let myself hear them. I could only think of the clay in my fingers.
While my pulse beat fast at my temples, I finished the horse. Or what might, in some places, be considered a horse. Now I had to seal it with fire.
I wished again, pressing the energy into the clay. I wanted it to stay together, without cracking, and I wanted it to glisten. It flared brightly, but it didn’t hurt my hands. A moment later, I turned to face Taja and held up my horse.
The head fell off and smashed into pieces around my toes. I swallowed. “When I’m done with training, do I get to show my sister all the little things I’ve made?” It was a bit much, but the twitch at the corner of her mouth was worth it.
“If you can make it through the rest of your training,” she said simply. Then she waved a hand at the arrows and they dropped to the ground. The hornets returned to their pot and crawled inside.
I set the headless horse on the ground beside the other, powdered fragments and stood back up. “Did I fail?” Part of me wouldn’t have minded being released from the magi, but with the sting of failure came something else. Determination, maybe. I wanted to stay in, and finish the training. I wanted the challenge.