‘The Sultim trials are another antiquated tradition.’ The Sultan placed his wine back on the table, carefully steadying it by the stem. ‘Hand-to-hand combat between brothers and riddles to prove a man had half a brain might’ve been the best way to pick a leader when we were just a collection of tents in the desert fighting the Destroyer of Worlds’ monsters, but wars are different now. Wit and wisdom are not the same. Neither are skill and knowledge. And Sultans don’t go out on the battlefield with a sword any more. There are better ways to lead.’
‘You held a Sultim trial anyway.’ I reached for another orange off the duck, moving slowly so as not to rustle the stolen supply route map hidden in my waistband.
‘Yes, and look how well that served me. I acquired a rebel son out for my throne as a result of it.’ He laughed to himself, as he pushed the gold platter closer towards me. A low, self-deprecating chuckle that reminded me of Jin. ‘I had to hold the trials, to show the people that though I had taken my throne by … other means, I was still upholding the traditions of our country. As antiquated as it is, it can still serve a purpose.’ He settled back in his seat again, watching me eat. ‘In some countries, the people love their royals best when they are celebrating weddings or new royal children. If only that were the case with my people, I would never run out of their love. But the Mirajin people are not so easily bought. They never love my family more than when we are fighting to the death for the right to rule them. They never love me so much as they do on Auranzeb when I remind them that I killed twelve of my brothers with my own hands in one night.’ He said it so calmly that whatever warmth his laugh had brought into the room drained out of it instantly. ‘I try not to remind them that it was the same night I handed them over to the enemy they hate so much. But really, this is a violent country, Amani. You’re proof of that. Our dinner is proof of that.’ He tapped the arrow through the duck’s neck. ‘I put a knife in your hand and your first instinct was to stab me.’
‘You tried to stab me first,’ I objected without thinking. That time he really did laugh, in earnest.
‘This is a hard desert. It needs a hard man to rule it.’ A harder man than Ahmed. The thought shot across my mind again. I shoved it away as forcefully as I could. The Sultan had said it himself, rulers were different these days. And what Ahmed lacked in strength he made up for by being good. A better man than most of us. He was so good, in fact, that Shazad and I hadn’t even hesitated when it came to taking Delila to Saramotai. We’d disobeyed our ruler without a second thought. Without any fear of consequences.
Shazad would say it was a poor ruler who needed to rely on fear to make his people obey. I might not be so well versed in philosophy, but it seemed to me like without obedience a man was no ruler at all.
Was Ahmed really going to run this whole country if he couldn’t even get me and Shazad and his sister to fall in line?
‘There is nothing I wouldn’t do for this country, Amani. Still.’ He smiled indulgently. ‘I will grant you that Kadir would perhaps have not been my first choice to succeed me were it not for the trials.’ He played with the stem of his glass, seeming to drift far away.
‘Who would you have picked?’ I wasn’t sure if I meant it as an earnest question or a challenge of whether he actually knew any of his sons well enough to pick one. But the Sultan seemed to sincerely consider my question.
‘Rahim is a great deal stronger than I gave him credit for as a boy.’ Leyla’s brother. The prince who held himself like a military man and who had challenged Kadir in court and sat on the war council with him. ‘He might have made a good ruler, if I had kept him closer. And if he weren’t so ruled by his emotions.’ The light through the glass dome caught the rim of his glass as he spun it. ‘But truthfully, had he only been raised in my palace, Ahmed might be the best choice.’ That caught me off guard.
‘You mean the Rebel Prince,’ I said carefully, all too aware I was treading on dangerous ground now.
‘My son believes he is helping this country; I know he truly does.’ He called Ahmed his son. Ahmed always called the Sultan his father, too. Jin never did. To Jin he was always ‘the Sultan’. Like he was trying to sever any strings between himself and his father. But it seemed like Ahmed and the Sultan had less interest in severing those ties. ‘The trouble with belief is that it’s not the same as truth.’
The memory rose from the quiet part of my mind where most of my memories of Jin lived. A night in the desert. Jin telling me belief was a foreign language to logic. But what else did we have?
The Sultan let go of the stem of his glass. He wiped his fingers clean of grease and orange pulp before pulling a familiar piece of yellow paper from his pocket. It was folded into smaller squares, and it looked worn out from folding over and over again. From across the table, I looked at Ahmed’s sun on it upside down. A new dawn. A new desert.
‘These are all very fine ideas he has,’ the Sultan said. ‘But you sat in that council today, Amani. Do you think my son knows how many guns we can promise the Gallan without overtaxing our own resources? Do you think he knows that the Albish queen, the latest in a long line of sorceresses, is rumoured to have hardly any magic left to defend her country with? That the Xichian emperor has not picked an heir yet and their whole country is on the brink of civil war?’ He really seemed to expect me to answer.
‘I don’t know.’ It was the truth. I wasn’t privy to everything Ahmed knew. But if I were being more than truthful, if I were being honest, I’d give him a real answer. No. He doesn’t know.
‘If the world were simple,’ the Sultan said as he smoothed the tract out across the table, ‘we could be free of foreign powers, an independent nation. But we are a country with borders, with friends and enemies at all of them. And unlike my son I am not interested in conscripting this entire country to defend it. How many untrained men and women do you think have died fighting for his beliefs?’
Ranaa’s face invaded my mind. The little Demdji from Saramotai. The stray bullet. Watching the light in her hands extinguish as her power went, then her life.
The Sultan’s army had wanted her. But if it weren’t for us trying to save her, she’d be here instead of me. She might be sitting on soft pillows, hair clean and scented with lavender, mouth sticky with candied oranges. Instead of turned to ashes on a funeral pyre and scattered into the desert sand.
‘If the throne changes hands, we will be invaded. My son is an idealist. Idealists make great leaders, but they never make good rulers. So I’ll tell you what I believe, Amani. I believe that if my son’s rebellion were ever to succeed, or even to gain enough of a foothold to cast doubt upon my rule, we would be torn to shreds by foreign powers. It would destroy Miraji, just like my father would have destroyed it before us.’
Chapter 25
It was closer to dawn than dusk when I returned to the harem. I hated the quiet. I could hear my fears that much louder for it.
Back in the rebel camp there was no such thing as silence, even in the darkest hours of night. There was the clink of weapons on those keeping watch. Conversations whispered in the night. The riffling of paper from Ahmed’s tent as he worried long after the rest of us had stopped. Here, any night sound was covered by the gentle running of water or the patter of birds.
My fingers were slick with fat from the skin of the duck and sticky with the sweetness of the orange. I wiped my hands across the hem of my kurti as I stepped into my rooms, starting to pull the clothes over my head.
‘What kind of time do you call this, young lady?’ The voice made me jump violently. Dropping the hem of my shirt, I reached for a weapon I didn’t have. Exhaustion and confusion blurred my vision for a moment. There was a figure sitting on my bed in a khalat. A khalat I recognised … because it belonged to Shazad, I realised after a moment. Only the person wearing it was a head taller than Shazad, at least, and had wider shoulders that pulled at the fabric enough to make some of the stitching pop. The face was hidden by a sheema, one blond curl escaping underneath to drop lazily over pale blue eyes.
Sam.