‘I have no interest in being the king of my own country.’ Bilal waved a languid hand. ‘An independent Iliaz was my father’s dream. He was an ambitious man. A great man. I’m a dying man. The Holy Men say it’s in my blood. I have a handful of years left to live. If I’m lucky.’
I saw it now, in the loose-fitting clothing, the pallor of his skin, the way he held himself like he was always tired. It wasn’t arrogance. It was illness. ‘Even if you did win the war and grant me my own kingdom, I would rule over it for how long? One year, two?’
‘So where do we come in?’ I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer. Not when he was negotiating for one of us. ‘If you just want a wife to give you a son before you die, I’m sure you can find someone who’s not a Demdji.’
Bilal smiled wanly. ‘Everyone has this notion that the Demdji have powers to heal. That is why on the black market you can buy scraps of hair or strange skin. Or floating blue eyeballs to heal you.’ His eyes travelled across us. ‘But that is a watered-down story. Some will say that the true healing power lies in taking a Demdji’s life.’ I remembered Mahdi holding his knife to Delila’s throat, trying to drag her to Sayyida, to save her life. Saying Delila would die so she could live. ‘It’s a mistranslation from Old Mirajin, you see.’ Bilal looked at us. ‘The true phrase is not whoever takes a Demdji life, but whoever owns a Demdji life. Whoever is given a Demdji’s life. Surely you know the story of Hawa and Attallah.’
Hawa and Attallah had made oaths to each other.
The stories said that theirs was a love so great that it shielded Attallah in battle. But if she was a Demdji …
Wedding vows. It hit me like a punch in the gut.
I give myself to you. All that I am I give to you. And all that I have is yours. My life is yours to share.
Until the day we die.
They were nothing but ritual for most. But in the mouth of a Demdji, they were truth-telling. That was how the legend had been born – Hawa had kept Attallah alive with her words. So long as she watched him on the walls, her life tied to his, he lived. When she fell, he fell, too. He didn’t die from grief. He died from a Demdji truth.
Dead silence had fallen around us as that understanding sank in.
‘Give me one of your Demdji,’ Bilal said, and his eyes scraped across me. ‘She will be treated well. I will not harm her. Though I will expect her to perform all her wifely duties.’ I saw Jin’s hand tighten. ‘I will ask only one son of her. And in return, I will honour her by taking no other wife. I want to live to see my hair turn grey and meet my grandchildren. And I will give you an army and a country. One girl, in exchange for a throne.’
He let the weight of his words settle over us. ‘I see you need to consider this. I ride for Iliaz in the morning. If you want an army, come find me there with a wife. If you don’t—’ He shrugged. ‘I will watch you and your rebels burn under your father’s new weapons from my fortress and die in my own bed long before the war is over and the Sultan comes for me. And if you hate me for it, we can settle that after death.’
Chapter 43
I missed the desert nights like an ache. Shira had been right, you couldn’t see the stars from Izman. The city was too flooded with noise and light, too bright to make out the constellations of the dead.
But I knew it wasn’t really the stars I missed. Everything had changed. We weren’t an upstart rebellion in the desert any more. I missed the simplicity of being sure that what we were doing was right. That it was worth it.
We were starting a war. And a war demanded sacrifice. I could feel the uneasy restlessness in the camp.
‘There’s an easy way out of this, you know.’ When Jin talked, with my head leaning against his chest, I felt it in my bones before I truly heard him. It was long past dark and we were both already half-asleep.
It’d been a long, quiet walk back after Bilal’s proposal. Even Shazad hadn’t had anything to say. Ahmed and Jin had fallen into step ahead of me, deep in an angry conversation. They were working it out at the same time as everyone else was. Hala and Imin were both already married. Which left me and Delila. The two of us were the only ones who were able to offer ourselves up to Bilal in sacrifice if we wanted that army. If we wanted to make this a real fight, not a slow massacre.
I knew what Jin meant. If he and I got married, I was off the table, too.
‘I know,’ I said. I didn’t say anything else. I didn’t say that I knew Jin would never forgive himself if he saved me over Delila. That if Ahmed tried to force my hand he wasn’t the kind of ruler I’d want leading an army anyway. I didn’t say that I’d walked across the entire desert to not wind up having marriage chosen for me, even if it was to Jin.
But my silence spoke for me.
He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me against his chest. He was warm and solid. I tucked my head low, my mouth resting against his heartbeat, over the sun tattoo.
He fell asleep eventually. I didn’t.
After a few restless hours I pulled myself out of his arms. We were mostly sleeping without tents in the warm summer air. I picked my way through the bodies that were strewn across the grass. Like dead on a battlefield. The house was quiet as I made my way back to the kitchen.
It looked a lot bigger without half of the Rebellion stuffed into it. I started rifling through the tins on Shazad’s shelf. Looking for coffee.
The door to the kitchen crashed open, making me jump so violently I knocked a glass bottle to the ground with an ear-splitting shatter. An unfamiliar man staggered into the kitchen. I was about to go on the attack when he got close enough to the fire that I saw yellow eyes. ‘Imin?’ I relaxed, even as he collapsed into a chair by the fire, breathing hard. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I had to run all the way here,’ he panted. He was wearing a young man’s face and his beardless cheeks looked flushed. ‘The city is swarming with those Abdal things. One nearly saw me a few streets back. But I couldn’t get out of the palace all day and I had to tell someone. Rahim …’
That name got my attention. ‘Is he all right?’
‘No,’ Imin deadpanned. ‘He’s a prisoner. He’s obviously not all right. But he’s not dead, either. And judging by all the talk in the kitchens, he’s not going to be. Rahim is respected in the Sultan’s army. Executing him would be bad for morale, they’re saying. And bad for the Sultan among the people. So he’s being sent away, transported to some work camp where he can die quietly.’
That sounded like good news, the first in a long while, but I didn’t get my hopes up yet. ‘When are they moving him?’
Imin treated me to another eye roll. ‘Do you think I ran through Abdal-infested streets for my health? Tomorrow night.’
*
I found Ahmed in the general’s study. There was one flickering lamp that leaked its light under the bottom of the door. It made me think of the story of the jealous Djinni who flickered a tempting light in the night, luring children out of their parents’ homes, making them chase the fire far enough into the night that he could snatch them up and keep them as pets.
I could hear voices from halfway down the hallway.
‘Delila …’ Ahmed sounded tired. ‘You can’t—’
‘Yes, I can!’ Delila raised her voice. I paused, just shy of the threshold. ‘You’re the one who can’t, Ahmed. There wouldn’t even be a war if it wasn’t for me. This whole thing started because I was born. That’s why Mother – I mean Lien – had to run. That’s why you two had to start working when you were younger than I am now to feed us. I’m the reason you and Jin grew up in Xicha and that’s why this whole revolution started in the first place. That’s why Bahi is dead, and Mahdi and Sayyida and everyone else. I started this war and you will not even let me fight it. So I’m going to help finish it.’