A dozen other orders took root inside my bones as I was led through more polished marble hallways by the woman dressed in the colour of false sand. My legs obeyed the Sultan’s last orders. ‘Go with her. Do what she says.’
We passed under a low stone archway. I could just make out figures of dancing women twined together carved into the stone. I felt steam in the air before we’d gone much further, the cloying scent of flowers and spices already winding their way to my body. As easy to get drunk on as liquor when you’d been in the dried-out desert for too long.
We emerged into the most immense baths I’d ever seen. The room was tiled in iridescent blues and pinks and yellows in wild, hypnotic mosaic patterns from floor to ceiling. The steam climbing from the heated pools gave everything a slick sheen, from the walls to the girls.
And there were a lot of girls.
I’d heard stories about the Sultan’s harem, where women were kept for the pleasure of the Sultan and the Sultim. And to breed future princes to fight for the throne, and princesses to be sold for political alliances. Here they were, running soap in long languid circles across their bare shoulders or floating at the edge of the water, eyes closed as attendants ran oils through their hair. A few lay on the nearby beds, long limbs being kneaded by clever hands as they dozed.
The attendant started to undress me without speaking, undoing the tiny clasps at the front of Shazad’s khalat as I stared. I let her.
And then I spied the man. He looked like a fox in the henhouse. And a hungry one, too. He lounged on a bed, propped up by a stack of pillows, stripped to the waist. Probably a year or two my senior, he looked like something hewn out of stone, with heavy square features without a single graceful subtlety to offset them. He ought to have been handsome, but there was a nastiness to the tilt of his mouth that meant he’d never be.
Three impossibly pretty Mirajin girls were draped around him, wrapped in nothing but long linen sheets, long dark hair hanging in thick wet waves around their bare shoulders. One of them sat at his feet, trailing her legs lazily in the steaming water, leaning into the knee of a slighter girl who was folded into his side. The last one lay with her head in his lap, eyes shut as he trailed his fingers through her hair absently, pouty lips pressed into a contented smile.
His attention wasn’t on any of them, though – it was fixed on two girls standing across from him, both bare as the day they were born, being inspected inch by inch by an attendant. Like the servants were looking for any flaw that might keep these girls from being admitted into this world of perfect, beautiful women. I recognised them, I realised as the attendant peeled away my khalat and wrapped me in a plain linen sheet, though it took my tired mind a moment to place them. They’d been on the ship with me, brought by the slavers to be offered to the harem.
What had happened to the girls not chosen for the harem? Had they been sold to other men in less prestigious houses? Or were the rumours true – that slavers drowned any girl rejected by the Sultan’s harem?
As if she sensed me staring, the small girl pressed into his side looked my way. Something passed over her face as she leaned in to whisper to the girl lounging across the man’s lap. The girl with the pretty pout. Her eyes snapped open, focusing on me so quickly it was plain as day she’d only been pretending to sleep. She pursed her full mouth pensively as she twisted so that she could whisper something to the other two. The laugh that followed bounced off the tiles around me.
It drew the man’s attention my way.
‘You’re new,’ he addressed me as the girls pretended to try to hide their smiles. I hated his voice instantly. It stuck to his words like it was tasting them, and in turn they seemed to cling to my skin.
‘You should bow to the Sultim.’ The pout-lipped girl yawned, stretching conspicuously across his body like a cat in the sun. So this was the Sultim – the firstborn of the Sultan’s sons. Prince Kadir. Heir to the throne we were fighting for. The son who had faced Ahmed in the last challenge of the Sultim trials.
I’d long since passed the time when I might’ve been impressed by a prince. In the last handful of days alone I’d kissed one and yelled at another. But this one was my enemy.
So I didn’t bow as the attendants carefully unwound my bandages, conscious of this man’s eyes on me, as more of my skin was bared to the air.
There were ugly red welts where the iron had been shoved under my skin. The girls let out a bark of laughter as they appeared. ‘Maybe the tailor Abdul made her, my love,’ the pout-lipped one said, considering me. The other two girls tittered.
That stung.
‘The Tailor Abdul’ was a story about a man who was too picky with his wives. He married his first wife because her face was so lovely. He married his second because her body was desirable; and the third because she had such a good heart. But he bemoaned that his first wife was cruel, that his second wife had an unsightly face, and that his third wife had an ugly body.
And so he hired the tailor Abdul to make him the perfect wife. The skilled tailor did as he was told without objection. He sewed the first wife’s head onto the body of the second wife, and then he sewed the good heart of the third wife into the body so neatly that he didn’t even scar her perfect chest. What was left of the women was tossed out into the desert. In the end the wives got their revenge, as the husband was eaten alive by a Skinwalker who wore all the discarded pieces of his wives.
I stopped my hand from drifting to the marks on my arms. I was a Demdji, a soldier of the Rebellion, the Blue-Eyed Bandit. I’d faced a whole lot worse than bratty harem girls.
But Kadir only smiled. ‘In that case, she was tailored for me.’
‘It looks more like he made her for the menagerie,’ another girl started, failing to read her Sultim’s mood. ‘Or he mixed her arms up with a monkey’s.’ The girls’ titters burst into laughter. But they had lost the Sultim’s attention. He pushed himself to his feet, almost spilling the girl in his lap off him.
‘You look Mirajin.’ The spark of interest in his voice was dangerous as he closed the short distance between us. ‘It’s so rare they’re able to bring me Mirajin girls. Your kind are my favourites, though. You’re western Mirajin, I suppose.’ I didn’t answer. He didn’t seem to need me to. He grabbed my chin, tilting my face to catch the light and looking me over like a merchant might look at a horse. I would’ve hit him but the Sultan’s orders kept my hands at my sides. ‘At least my brother’s rebellion is good for something. Wars mean more prisoners.’
It had long been known that the harem was a dangerous place to be. I’d heard in the days of Sultan Oman’s father some women did come to him by choice. But more were prisoners of war. Slaves bought from foreign shores. Women captured off ships like Jin’s mother. Now we had a war in Miraji. That would mean more slavers taking advantage of the chaos to take Mirajin women.
‘Has the blessed Sultima even seen you yet?’ the girl who’d been displaced from her Sultim’s lap called out, trying to regain his attention.
‘All the new girls for the Sultim are meant to be seen by the Sultima,’ the petite cohort agreed, like she was parroting something someone else had said.
‘Yes, she needs to deem you worthy.’ The girl who’d been at his feet butted in, too, eager to please.
‘Or not worthy.’ The pout-lipped girl smirked.
‘Be quiet, Ayet, there’s no need to disturb the Sultima.’ The Sultim’s hand left my face, travelling down my neck, across my collarbone, making my skin crawl.