Murmurs arose from the group. Loulie wondered at their disgruntlement. Was the prince so close with these men that they expected his presence? Or did they see him as a celebrity?
Ahmed clapped his hands, quieting them. “At ease! We don’t need the high prince to have a good time.” He waved a hand, and the servants waiting in the wings laid out a feast. Loulie’s stomach growled as they set down plates of halloum and pita, bowls of baba ghanoush and fattoush, skewers of chicken and lamb shish tawook, and dolmas stuffed with rice and onions.
“Please, let us eat and talk! You are in good company tonight.”
Loulie was happy to oblige. Without Omar bin Malik there, she was apparently the most interesting person, and the hunters asked her constant questions. They asked her about her goods and her travels, her bodyguard—Loulie snorted when they called him mysterious—and her history. She told them an echo of the truth, a flimsy but interesting half lie.
Then, when they’d devoured the food and moved on to dessert, she showed them her relics. There were only a few—she had sold most of them in Madinne’s Night Market—but there were enough to sate their curiosity.
“How in the world do you find enough relics to sell them?” This question came from the scarred hunter as plates of baklava and kunafah were served. Loulie declined the latter and took two plates of the first. Baklava was her favorite, and the treats prepared at Ahmed’s manor were some of the best she’d ever had.
She turned to the hunter and, speaking around mouthfuls of honey and dough, said, “I’m afraid that’s a trade secret.”
“Hmm.” Another hunter—Snub Nose, Loulie called him—thoughtfully ran the sleeping beads through his fingers. “Why sell them at all when you could have the most valuable collection in the country?”
“Collections are a hobby.” Loulie raised a brow. “I run a business.”
Besides that, what point was there in gathering enchanted items that would simply sit on her shelves and collect dust? It was the relics’ uses that made them valuable—and which allowed her to make a living. A forbidden collection would gain her nothing.
The irritable young hunter cocked his head. “Isn’t what you’re doing illegal?” He glanced at Ahmed, and as if on some invisible cue, the other hunters looked at him too.
Loulie scowled. “I can speak for myself, shukran.” Still, she glanced at Ahmed, curious about his response. She was taken aback by the steeliness of his gaze.
The look did not go unnoticed by the others. The irritable hunter frowned. “Ahmed?”
“Is something amiss?” said another hunter.
Ahmed blinked. He had the look of someone coming out of a dream. “Mm? Oh, no. I apologize; I was a prisoner to my thoughts.” He smiled, but it was only a halfhearted twitch of his lips. “We were talking about relics, yes? Collecting and selling them as if they were tools?”
Loulie frowned. “They are tools.”
“Do you truly believe that?” The wali’s feeble smile disappeared. “Have you at all considered, merchant, that your business capitalizes on suffering?”
His barbed words made her flinch. Relics were items that had been enchanted by jinn and forgotten in the desert. Where was suffering involved?
“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean.” She felt a twinge of unease as she slid away from the wali, wary of the blankness that had settled across his features. She had never seen that look before. Unthinkingly, she clasped her hands—and cringed when she felt the heat of her rings through her bandages.
Ahmed laughed. A soft, humorless chuckle. “Of course you do not.” He turned his attention to the circle. “Tell me, friends.” His lips twisted into a sharp, slanted smile—an awful, foreign grin that made Loulie’s blood freeze. “Do you kill jinn because you hope to steal their magic? Or do you do it for the blood? For the thrill of the kill?” He held up a hand. “No, do not speak. The answer does not matter.”
Loulie stared at the wali, nonplussed. Who was this grinning stranger sitting before her?
A seed of fear took root in her chest as she watched the hunters reach for concealed knives and weapons. Instinctively, her hand went to the compass in her bag—her guiding relic. “Sayyidi?” she said softly.
He set a hand on his scarf, smiled. “Hello again, jinn killer. Would you like to sing with me?” He began before she could respond, singing a song she recognized. A nostalgic song, Qadir had called it. But to Loulie it sounded like a lamentation for a never-ending, fruitless journey.
She was only vaguely aware of the singing. It was becoming difficult to focus. She recognized the voice of one of the hunters. Saw something flash through the air—a blade, perhaps—but then her vision was gone and there was only her heartbeat, growing louder and louder, and it was strange because it almost seemed as if it were coming from the compass and…
She was barely able to breathe as the hunter clasped the iron shackle around her throat. Pain, hot and sharp, lanced through her veins and punctured her bones.
The hunter stepped closer, dark eyes narrowed. “How old do you suppose this one is?”
“At least a hundred years,” said his companion. “Perhaps older.”
“An ancient monster,” the hunter mused. “I expected her to put up more of a fight.”
The hunter’s companion moved to stand beside him. The only feature she could make out on his veiled face was his eyes, which looked like shards of gold. “Can you speak, monster?”
She did not bother responding. She’d heard stories of jinn who had their tongues removed for speaking. She lowered her head and started praying. She tried not to think of the grass beneath her feet—of the blood the hunters had spilled from her veins to make it.
She forcefully altered the pathway of her thoughts until she was thinking about Him instead. If He woke and saw her with these humans, He would, He would… well, He would try to save her and die. And she had not resigned herself to this fate just for Him to perish. She had freed Him. She would not let Him be captured again.
When the hunters realized they would not be able to make her scream, they secured the chains holding her to the boulder and unceremoniously pushed her into the lake. Even then, as death drew nearer, she did not stop praying. Did not stop remembering.
She thought of the haunted look in His eyes, the blood on His hands. The way He had stood, back so straight, when they tortured and scarred Him.
And then she thought of His future, which unfurled in her mind like a map. She saw a desert camp. Robes glittering with stars. A band of killers. Him, shifting through the flames like smoke, approaching a crying girl with a compass in her hands. And she knew, suddenly, that the compass was hers—was her. She felt the weight of it in her pocket and thought, If I cannot guide Him through the desert hand in hand, then I will use this arrow to point him toward His fate. She held the shape of Him in her mind as the last of the air left her lungs. And then…
Loulie opened her eyes with a gasp. The world before her was tilted on an axis. She shifted her suddenly heavy head and realized she was lying on the ground, clutching the compass. Every time she breathed, she heard the echo of her heartbeat in the wooden instrument.
No, not her heartbeat. The relic—it was a living thing.
Not just a compass, but a soul. A life.
Her mind drifted, and for a few moments she was back beneath the water, unable to breathe, dying. She released the compass. The vision collapsed, plunging her back into a reality where Ahmed bin Walid loomed above her with a dagger, eyes shining with hatred. His scarf hung askew on his neck, revealing the gleam of a golden collar at his throat. “Now you know how it feels for my kind to die,” he said. “But it is not enough to redeem you.”
Loulie squinted against the blurriness of her surroundings. She saw the other hunters sprawled nearby, looking just as bleary-eyed.
“How many jinn have you killed? All so you could steal our magic and paint your world with our blood?”
None, she thought. I have killed no jinn. But her lips refused to form the words.