The Sultan looked up at me calmly, wiping his firstborn’s blood onto the dead prince’s shirt. And suddenly I was sitting across the table from him again. Listening to him tell me that his sons would drive this country into dust under foreign heels. That Kadir wasn’t any more fit to rule than Ahmed.
There is nothing I wouldn’t do for this country, Amani. The Sultan turned to face me. He wasn’t stupid. He was going to figure out I was out of bullets pretty fast. I had to keep him busy, just a few moments. Until Jin made it across.
‘You know, it’s been a while since I went to prayers.’ There was a weight crushing my chest as I spoke. I had hated Kadir. But, God, seeing him like that, with his eyes staring glassily up at the night sky, blood still gushing from his throat … ‘But I’m pretty sure God frowns on killing your own son.’
‘Ah, yes.’ The Sultan smiled placatingly. ‘Cursed is the one who kills his own blood. Remember what we are celebrating, Amani: my ascent to this throne. I think I am past being able to escape that curse. Besides, Kadir would not have made a good ruler. It’s my own fault, really. He was born too early in my reign. I was scarcely older than he is – was.’ He spared a glance down at the body bleeding out on the balcony. ‘I’d planned that the throne would pass him by, go straight to my grandchild, but of course, that wasn’t to be. I hadn’t counted on that power-hungry little wife of Kadir’s to be so resourceful.’ Shira. She had been dead a few days and already her name was being erased. When they told the stories of what happened in this war, was that all she would be, the power-hungry Sultima? He looked back at me. ‘And I have to admit, I had not anticipated you managing to get yourself free.’ He almost looked impressed. ‘How did you do it?’
‘You’ve overestimated the loyalty of your own people.’ I wasn’t going to give him Tamid’s name. ‘Do you really think this is going to save them? Make them rally to you again? Slaughtering anyone who stands in your way?’
‘It’s not about the dead foreigners downstairs, Amani. It’s about all the ones left alive overseas.’ The Sultan looked at me over the barrel of the gun. ‘Do you know what happens in a country when the throne changes hands, Amani? Turmoil. Civil war. Too much war for them to turn their minds to invading us again anytime soon. And by the time they do, I will have an army of Abdals ready to defend our borders.’
An army of clay men with Demdji powers. Put that at our borders and he was right, we’d never be invaded again.
‘The Demdji before you …’ He meant Noorsham. He never used his name, like he never had mine until the day I’d killed that duck. Like we were things to him. ‘He burned so bright. But I lost the protection he would’ve given this country.’ Because I set him free. ‘I wondered if I could re-create his fire. If I could create a bomb out of metal with the power of a Djinni. And instead I found the right fire to create life. Because that’s what the Djinni fire is. It’s life. It’s energy. It gave us life. And I have just harnessed it. Not to destroy. To power this country. The Gallan claim the time of magic is over and turn to machinery. The Albish cling to their old ways. We will be among the countries that unite the two.’
‘All at the cost of slaughtering our immortals.’
‘The First Beings made us to fight their wars. But where have they been in our wars? While our borders are harried by foreigners with their greater numbers? While my people make it easier for them by turning against each other at the urging of my son?’ He spoke patiently. Like he might do for his own children. Explaining a difficult lesson. Only he wasn’t my father. My father was a Djinni. My father was a Djinni trapped inside the palace at his mercy. And for the first time since the Destroyer of Worlds was defeated, at very real risk of dying. My father hadn’t cared when I had been about to die. Why should I care about him? But I did.
‘The time of the immortal things is long over. We have taken this world from them. There is a reason that Demdji like you are rarities now. This world belongs to us. And this country belongs to us. It is the role of children to replace their parents. We are the Djinn’s children.’ The Sultan smiled a slow, lazy smile. ‘And I think you’re out of bullets.’
And then Jin was across. He grabbed the edge of the wall and pulled himself up with a grunt of pain, and then his arms were around my waist. He half leapt, half dropped, his hand looping around the rope as he went. And we were falling. On the other side of the palace walls.
And I was free.
Chapter 39
Izman was blazing still with Auranzeb celebrations, even in the ruins of the Blessed Sultima’s Uprising. News hadn’t reached the city yet of what was going on in the palace. That we were free of foreign rule. That the Sultim was dead.
I trusted Jin to lead us through the unfamiliar streets. The journey was painstakingly slow as we laced our way under the shadows of windows spilling out light and noise, through the winding side alleys of the unfamiliar city. Avoiding the big streets flooded with drunks and celebrations.
‘Here.’ Jin pulled me to a stop finally, by a small door in a white stucco wall in an alley so narrow the wall before us almost touched the one behind us. A gutter ran from the door through the narrow paved streets.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting on the other side. For it to lead to another world maybe, like our old door. Or that it would spill down into a secret passage that would lead to wherever the rest of the Rebellion had set up since we’d lost the Dev’s Valley.
Instead we stepped into a large kitchen warmly lit by the embers of a dying fire. It was about the most normal kitchen I’d ever been in. Just like my aunt’s back in Dustwalk. Except this one didn’t seem to be in low supply of food. Gleaming pots and pans hung from the ceiling between drying herbs and spices. Tinned supplies lined the shelves.
I slammed the door shut on the night behind us. I didn’t have time to consider where we were, except safe. Jin and I collapsed next to the fireplace, his back against the wall. I was on my knees facing him.
‘You’re covered in blood.’ I eased him down off my shoulder. ‘I need to see.’
‘I’m fine.’ But he let me tug the hem of his shirt over his head all the same, wincing as his arms went up over his head. His bloodstained shirt hit the floor in a ball even as he rested his arms on top of his head, stretching his chest out and giving me unhindered access. He wasn’t lying to me, at least; the better part of the blood didn’t seem to be his. Some stained his skin, but aside from the wound in his side that had kept him from jumping to the wall and a huge bruise blooming like a cloud under the tattoo of the bird over his ribs, he didn’t seem too badly hurt.
I noticed it then. A bright red cloth wrapped around the top of his left arm like an armband. I might’ve thought it was a bandage, but I’d know my sheema anywhere.
I reached out without thinking, fingers skimming the edge of where the fabric met his skin. His eyes snapped open at the touch, and he looked down, like he’d forgotten he was wearing it. ‘This is yours.’ His fingers started to fumble with the knot on the inside of his arm.
I sat back on my heels. ‘I thought I’d lost it.’ It was stupid. It was nothing but a piece of cloth. It wasn’t the Rebellion; it wasn’t Jin. It was just a thing. A thing I didn’t think I’d ever get back.
‘I thought you’d left it.’ He didn’t look at me. He was still fiddling with the knot. It was fastened tightly. Like he’d been desperate not to lose it.
‘Left it?’ Finally the knot came apart in his fingers.