I grabbed my cousin’s arm and pulled her away from the wall, out of earshot of Sam, the Blue-Eyed Bandit impostor. She shook me off with a roll of her eyes that needled at me, but this wasn’t the time to get annoyed at her. ‘Can I trust him? Truthfully, Shira – can I trust him with something important? A whole lot of lives?’
‘I’ve had him send letters for me to Dustwalk,’ she said after a moment. ‘To my family.’ I wondered if I was imagining the hardness in the way she said my. Even now she couldn’t help but remind me that, though we shared blood and had lived under the same roof, I’d never truly be part of her family. ‘Well, letters and some money.’ I’d barely given any thought to Dustwalk in months, except to thank God that I was out of there. But I cast my mind back now. Dustwalk without a factory, with nothing, destroyed. It would be a miracle if the whole town hadn’t decamped or starved to death by now.
Shira trusted this man with her family. I could trust him with mine. I turned back to Sam, who was incompetently trying to tie his sheema back up. ‘Could you carry a message out for me?’
‘Of course.’ I winced as he tucked the edge of his sheema in all wrong. It was painful to watch. A toddler could do better than that. ‘How much?’
‘How much what?’
‘How much will you pay me to carry this message?’ He repeated it carefully, like it might be his Mirajin that was at fault.
I glanced at Shira, who splayed empty hands at me pointedly. ‘The Sultim thinks I’m too modest to wear any of the jewellery he gives me.’ Now that I thought about it, I realised she was surprisingly unadorned for the harem. Ayet wore gold bangles from wrist to elbow some days. She clacked with metal with every gesture. ‘Truth is, I just put them to very good use. Everything that happens within the walls of the harem is a trade. The sooner you figure that out, the more likely you are to survive.’
‘I don’t have any jewels,’ I said to Sam. ‘You’ve already taken my reputation. Isn’t that enough?’
‘Well, you weren’t making very good use of it. I think I’ve done you a favour. Besides, stories belong to the people,’ he said. ‘And considering you are very much trapped, it’s going to take more than that.’
I ran my tongue across my teeth, thinking. I could probably get something to trade with if I had a few days. Some of the girls in the harem weren’t all that careful. It wouldn’t be that hard to take a bangle off them when they slept. But I wasn’t sure I had that much time to waste. And there might be another way. ‘The message I need you to carry, it’s for Shazad Al-Hamad, General Hamad’s daughter, he’s—’
‘I know who General Hamad is,’ Sam said, and for a moment the cocky, smiling man was gone.
‘Then you ought to know he’s got money. A lot of it. And so does his daughter.’ I paused, then added, ‘His breathtakingly gorgeous daughter.’ Shazad would have my head if she could hear me describe her like this to some foreign thief. I wasn’t even sure she was in Izman, but she was still my best shot.
‘I like her already,’ Sam said. But there was a note of sarcasm under there. He rubbed a spot on the base of one of the fingers of his left hand. It was a distracted gesture, far away. I got the feeling he didn’t even wholly know what he was doing. ‘Why should she believe me? The general’s rich, spoiled daughter.’ Shazad would definitely have Sam’s head for calling her spoiled. Here was hoping he had the good sense not to do it to her face.
‘Just tell her the Blue-Eyed Bandit is in the palace.’ I didn’t dare give him anything else to pass on to her. Not about the Sultan having a Djinni or anything else. Not yet, anyway. I’d risked enough by giving him my identity. ‘The real one. And that she needs someone to watch her back.’
Chapter 20
The Nameless Boy
In a kingdom across the sea, a farmer and his wife lived in a hovel with their six children. They were so poor, they had nothing to give their children but love. And quickly they learned that love was not enough to keep their children fed or warm. Three of their children died in their first winter, too weak to survive the cold. So when their seventh child was born, a son, on the darkest, coldest day of the bleak winter, they did not give him a name, so prepared were they for him to die.
But their nameless son survived that darkest day. And the one that followed. He lived through his first winter and into the spring. And he lived through his second winter. And, in his second spring, he finally earned a name.
The once-nameless boy was quick and clever and had a talent for going places he was not meant to be, so long as the walls were made of stone. And he saw that his family was poor while others were rich and he did not think this was fair. So when his mother became sick, in the boy’s seventh winter, he took food from kitchens with more shelves than his to feed her and he took silver from other houses to buy her medicine. That was how he walked into the castle on the hill that belonged to the lord of that county, and into the life of the lord’s young daughter.
The lord’s young daughter was lonely in the great castle, but she was rich, too, and she had learned she could have anything by asking for it. So when she asked for the boy’s friendship, he gave it to her gladly. He taught her games and she taught him to read. She learned she was gifted at skipping stones across a pond on a bright summer day and he learned he was gifted at languages spoken in distant corners of the world.
As they grew older, he became healthy and strong and handsome. So handsome that the lord’s daughter noticed. She was still rich and there had never been anything in the world that she could not get simply by asking. So when she asked for the boy’s heart, he gave that to her gladly, too.
The two met secretly in all the hidden places they had found together as children.
The once-nameless boy’s brothers warned him against the lord’s daughter. They had all married poor girls who lived in the shadow of the great castle and though they were poor, they were all happy enough. But the once-nameless boy had read too many stories of worthy farmers’ sons who married princesses, and highwaymen who stole rich ladies’ hearts, to heed his brothers’ warnings. He believed that he had stolen the girl’s heart as well as gifted her his.
So the boy was greatly surprised when it was announced to the whole county that the lord’s daughter was to be married to the second son of the lord from a neighbouring county.
The once-nameless boy left word for the lord’s daughter asking her to meet him in their secret place by the water. He waited there all night, but she did not come. He waited the next night and still she did not come; and the next night after that, too. Finally, the night before the lord’s daughter was to be wed, the once-nameless boy walked through the walls of the castle and, there, he found the lord’s daughter, pale hair spread across a white silk pillow, beautiful and fair in the moonlight. He knelt by her bed and woke her from her slumber and asked her to come away with him, to run away and marry him. He was on his knees, but he did not beg because he never thought he would need to. He never imagined she would refuse him. But the lord’s daughter did not take his hand. Instead she laughed at him and called her guards, handing him back his heart on the way out of the castle.
And so he learned then that girls with titles did not marry once-nameless boys.