‘Why else would I be doing it?’ he asked. ‘I’m a bandit, remember?’
‘Because you want to be something more than that,’ I said finally. It had been a gamble. A guess. But the way it fell off my tongue so easily I was sure I was right. I’d watched Sam walk through walls with injuries for this rebellion. Walk into Auranzeb as a traitor to his own people for this rebellion. He wasn’t doing this for money any more. ‘That’s why you’re still here.’
‘That’d be an awfully stupid reason.’ Sam scratched his eyebrow. I stayed silent. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Chapter 42
As it turned out, the Hidden House wasn’t all that hidden. It was a bathhouse at the intersection of two twisting streets lined with colourful awnings in the middle of Izman. To me, they looked exactly like every other street we’d passed through on the way there. The city was an immense maze, and if it wasn’t for Ahmed gently nudging me around twists and turns, I’d have gotten lost sooner than I’d ever been in the desert.
As we got closer, steam heavy with the smells of flowers and spices curled out of lattice windows, sliding its fingers into my hair, taunting me with memories of the harem. Ahmed gave me a small nudge, indicating I should look up. As I did, the name finally made sense. All the buildings in this corner of Izman seemed to stand an even three storeys tall. The Hidden House stretched up two storeys higher than any of the others around it. And the roof was shielded by canopies of vines and desert flowers that tumbled down the walls, hiding it from prying eyes.
Shazad had picked this place for the meeting with Lord Bilal. Except she’d told him to meet her elsewhere first. With no guards and no weapons. It was up to Shazad to meet him there and bring him here. We were taking our precautions. We were asking him to put an awful lot of faith in us.
Jin had gone first, out in the open, to see if he drew any attack and to sweep the place for traps. Ahmed and I followed, looking like an ordinary couple walking the streets of Izman instead of a prince and a bodyguard with a gun secreted in the folds of her khalat. But we made it as far as the house without incident.
Ahmed pushed open the door and let himself in. At a desk a girl’s head darted up. ‘Well, if it isn’t our Rebel Prince.’ She flicked a book shut and shot me a look. ‘You can take your finger off that trigger – you’re safe here.’ I hadn’t even realised I’d been gripping my gun. I eased my finger off. But I didn’t reholster it. ‘Your brother is on the roof,’ the girl said to Ahmed.
‘What is this place?’ I asked, as we started up the stairs.
‘It’s a safe haven.’ Ahmed stepped aside, letting me go first. I wasn’t sure if he was being polite or if that was what I was supposed to do as his guard. ‘Not ours. Sara’s.’ He tilted his head backwards at the girl at the desk. ‘She was married at sixteen. Widowed at seventeen. Nobody but Sara knows what her husband died of, since no one could prove that it was poison, but he left her with broken bones and a great deal of money.’ My mind darted to Ayet without meaning to. If she’d wound up here instead of in the palace she might not have been my enemy. She might have been one of us. She might still be all right. Or she might have taken a bullet for the Rebellion and died outright. ‘She took the money and made this. It’s a place for women who might not want to be with their husbands. For whatever reason. A place that keeps women safe from them. Sayyida came from here. And we found Hala here, too.’
‘Hala’s married?’ I almost tripped on the step.
‘Who do you think took her fingers?’ Ahmed steadied me. ‘You all right?’
‘Fine.’ I waved him off. ‘So how come it looks gaudier than a whorehouse at Shihabian?’ I asked.
Ahmed laughed, catching me off guard. Ahmed had a good laugh; I’d forgotten that. It’d been a damn long time since I’d heard it. ‘Sara’s theory is that if folk think they know what you’re up to, they don’t dig much deeper and risk finding the truth. And everybody thinks they know what we’re up to, with a house full of women, with men coming in and out every day, and the occasional child appearing.’ Sara. Now I remembered why that name rang a bell. Standing on a mountain in a desert, the day before Bahi died, Shazad teasing him about a child with a woman named Sara. ‘She likes to say she just added some pillows. We sent Fadi here. He’ll be safe.’
We climbed four flights of stairs until we reached the roof. Jin was there, waiting, shadowed under a canopy of greenery. His shoulders eased visibly when he saw us. ‘No trouble on the way?’
‘We’re fine,’ I said. ‘No trouble here?’ He shook his head.
We lapsed into tense silence as we waited for Shazad. It was meant to be a half hour before she arrived. It was closer to a full hour and panic had my guts wrapped in a knot wondering what had happened to her when she emerged at the top of the stairs with Bilal, hooded and blindfolded.
We’d told him to meet Shazad unarmed and alone. We’d set almost all of the terms of our meeting and we’d set them high, expecting a negotiation. But Shazad said he hadn’t even flinched. He’d agreed to come to us, defenceless. That was the sort of thing that made you suspect a trap. Shazad kept scanning the skies around us warily as she pulled the hood from his head and uncovered his eyes.
‘Don’t worry,’ Bilal said lazily, ‘I don’t have anything up my sleeves. You can ask any one of your Demdji if you don’t believe me.’
Everyone looked at me. So he knew what I was. ‘He’s telling the truth,’ I said. I could tell what Shazad was thinking. There was something wrong with a man who had so little regard for his own life.
‘Good.’ Bilal stuck his hands in his pockets. He was wearing an ugly purple-and-gold kurta that was too loose on him and billowed around his arms. He fit right in with the gaudiness of the Hidden House. ‘So you’re the famous Rebel Prince.’ Bilal looked Ahmed over. ‘I thought you’d be taller.’
‘You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,’ Ahmed said.
‘I hear you might actually be able to topple your father,’ Bilal offered. ‘With some help from my army.’
‘That,’ Ahmed said, ‘you should believe.’
‘Good,’ Bilal said. ‘I want to end this parade of invaders. It’s tiresome. If my army can topple your father, it is yours to command. I never had much interest in commanding anyway. That was always Rahim’s strength. He was like a second son to my father. But I will want something in return.’
‘When I am Sultan’ – Ahmed was prepared – ‘I will declare Iliaz independent. You can be the ruler of your own kingdom, as long as you are prepared to swear allegiance to the throne of Miraji.’
‘Oh, I don’t care about that.’ Bilal shook his head. ‘That was just a pretext to feed your pretty general something big enough to get me face-to-face with you. If I’d told her what I was truly after outright, I had the feeling she’d turn me down on the spot on your behalf. Women – they can be so unreasonable.’
‘And what is it that you’re after?’ Ahmed asked. He was careful with his wording. He didn’t say, Name it. Even though we all knew how desperate we were.
‘You can keep your kingdom, every last piece of it.’ Bilal said. ‘In exchange for my army, all I want is one of your Demdji as a wife.’
The silence that filled the moment that followed was tangible. It was the silence of shock from all of us on the roof. It was the silence in which Ahmed didn’t immediately refuse him.
‘The Demdji are not mine to offer,’ Ahmed said finally, picking his words carefully. ‘Iliaz, on the other hand—’