She could destroy me now. I didn’t have anything.
‘His name is Fadi,’ she said. Fadi was our grandfather’s name. The name our mothers had before they were married.
‘Lock her away,’ the Sultan ordered dispassionately, already turning. Already forgetting her now that she was just another useless girl in the harem. ‘Amani, come with me. Bring the child.’
Fadi wailed louder in my arms the further away we got from his mother.
Chapter 32
The Traitor Djinni
In the days that only immortals remembered, the world was changeless. The sun did not rise or set. The sea had no tides. The Djinn had no fear, nor joy, nor grief, nor pain. Nothing lived or died. Everything just was.
Then the First War came.
It brought with it dawn and dusk. It brought with it high seas and new mountains and valleys. And more than anything, it brought mortality.
The humans were made with a spark of Djinni fire, but they were not endless. And that seemed to make all the difference in the world. That changed everything. They didn’t just exist. They were born and they died. And in between they felt so much that it drew the immortals to them, though they were only sparks to the Djinn’s greater fires.
As the war ended, the Djinn of the great desert gathered and gazed across a changed world. The land that had been theirs. The war had ended. The mortals had served their purpose. They had fought. They had died.
Then they multiplied.
The Djinn looked on incredulously as the humans built walls and cities and found a life outside of war. They found new wars to fight. The Djinn wondered if they should let the humans carry on. The Djinn had made the mortals; now the war was over, they could unmake them if they so chose.
Some of the Djinn argued that humanity had served its purpose. Humans would only cause trouble. Better to burn them now, all at once. Return them to the earth from which they had been made before they overran it.
The Djinni Fereshteh agreed with this. The world was simpler before mortals. He had watched his own son, born to a human woman, survive a dozen battles with the Destroyer of Worlds’s creatures, only to die in a brawl with another mortal. And though the Djinn had quickly forgotten to be afraid of death when the Destroyer of Worlds was defeated, they were slower to forget this new thing the humans called grief. It seemed like a feeling too great to contain for a Djinni who was eternal.
But the Djinni Darayavahush argued against destroying them. He said humans should be allowed to live. They had earned their right to share the earth by defeating the Destroyer of Worlds. They were remarkable; they had fallen in waves on hundreds of battlefields but had somehow continued to stand in the way of the Destroyer of Worlds’s armies. Such will to survive should not be ignored.
The Djinn argued as years passed and a generation of humans passed into another. They argued as cities rose where there had been none before and new rulers succeeded old ones for the throne. As the mortals slowly forgot the time of the Destroyer of Worlds.
Finally, when the last of the mortals who had lived to see the First War passed into death, the Djinn gathered at the home of one among them who had claimed an old battlefield as his domain, a place where the earth had been ripped into a great valley where no other Djinn wished to live. They decided on a vote. They would cast a black stone into the water if they believed it was best to end mortality, and a white stone to let the mortals live.
The stones piled up, black, then white, one after another, until the two sides were exactly equally matched and only the Djinni Bahadur was left to cast a vote that would decide the fate of all of humanity.
Fereshteh felt sure that Bahadur would cast for his side. Bahadur, too, had watched a mortal child of his die. A daughter with blue eyes and the sun in her hands who the humans called a princess, one of their foolish words to pretend any one of them was more powerful than another. Surely Bahadur had felt the same pain Fereshteh had. He would want to end it just as much.
And yet when Bahadur finally cast his stone, it was as white as bone. Fereshteh’s side lost. And thus all the Djinn made an oath – that none among them would annihilate mortality. And because they were Djinn that oath was the truth.
Centuries passed.
Fereshteh didn’t know how many, for only those whose days were numbered counted them. He tried to stay away from the humans at first. But they were constantly changing. It was hard not to watch them. Every time Fereshteh thought he had grown bored of them they did something new. They made something new, sometimes out of nothing. Palaces rose higher than before. Train tracks carried them across the desert. Music sprang seemingly from their minds to their fingers. And every so often Fereshteh could not resist temptation any more. But time taught him ways to avoid the grief. He never looked over the children he gave mortal women. He had no interest in watching little pieces of himself be destroyed by the world his fellow Djinn had allowed to continue.
Then there came a day when Fereshteh heard his name being called with an order he could not disobey. And so it was that he came to stand prisoner in front of a Sultan and a Demdji. A Demdji holding a child that Fereshteh had marked as his own, though he had already forgotten the child’s mother. It was easier that way.
But he remembered all his children. And he remembered the pain he had felt when each of them died. So when the Sultan held a knife above this child, and asked for the names of his fellow Djinn, he surrendered easily. He could not watch this spark of himself die.
He gave Darayavahush’s name first. He gave the Sultan only the names of the Djinn who had been stupid enough to think that humanity was harmless and worth saving. The ones who had cast a vote to let them live. Half the Djinn in the desert.
And he laughed as, one by one, they became trapped by the creatures they had chosen to let live.
Chapter 33
The Sultan had been dangerous enough with one Djinni. Now he had an army of them. They might’ve created humanity to fight their wars, but there were stories of what happened when immortals entered the wars of men, too. Cruel conquerors who leashed them in iron and turned their powers against helpless nations. The heroes who won Djinn over to their side by sheer virtue and flattened their enemies. No matter what the circumstances, immortals were unstoppable.
My thoughts were in a storm as the Sultan led me back to the harem, one firm hand on my spine. There was too much to do and not enough time.
I had to get news of the other Djinn to Sam. And I had to make sure Fadi, who was screaming in my arms, was safe in the palace. I had to find a way to save Shira. And I had to do it before Ayet betrayed me to the Sultan. Shira giving birth had distracted everyone, but it was only a matter of time now before Ayet got Kadir or someone else to listen to her and the Sultan found out I was the Blue-Eyed Bandit. And then it would be over. I had to do everything I could to help before it all ended.
‘Father.’ My thoughts were interrupted by Rahim. He was striding down the hallway toward us, his collar unfastened, hair dishevelled, trailed by two servants. Dawn was just breaking but he looked like he hadn’t had any sleep all night. He would be in trouble too when Ayet sold me out. What was he still doing here? ‘A word.’