Is he one of the prince’s thieves?
Imad was still talking, his voice an undercurrent to her confusion. “There was treasure at your camp, merchant. A relic so valuable we were ordered to kill any in the vicinity so they would never reveal its existence. It was a jinn king’s relic.”
Loulie’s mind clouded over with memories. There are many mysterious things in the desert, Sweet Fire, her father had once said. If ever you find such items, you must take great care of them, for they may be relics enchanted by jinn.
She remembered her skepticism. Is this compass filled with magic, then?
His laughter. It does not work for me, but perhaps it will guide your way.
And then: a jinn kneeling before her, pointing to that same compass after everyone she loved had perished. Layla Najima al-Nazari, it seems saving your life was my destiny.
A relic that could locate other relics. That could foresee a future yet to pass. A relic so powerful it could belong only to a jinn king. An ifrit. Loulie forgot how to breathe.
Imad’s eyes twinkled with mirth. “Ah, so you remember. Will you tell me what it looks like?” He patted her bag. “I’d rather save myself the trouble of testing all your supplies.”
Loulie was at a loss. What should she do? He would take the damned bag with him either way, and she was helpless to stop him. She tried pulling on her shackles, but the metal was unyielding, cutting into her wrists without mercy.
“No?” Imad sighed. “I’m afraid our conversation is over, then.” He hefted the bag over his shoulder and walked toward the cell door.
“Wait.” She surged upright. “Wait! You promised me answers!”
Imad paused just long enough to say, “I promised you answers for answers. But since you have given me nothing, I will try my luck elsewhere.”
How dare he! She was no one’s prisoner. She was the Midnight Merchant, Loulie Najima al-Nazari, and she would get revenge on this man who had killed her family and…
Qadir.
The weight of his death descended on her in full then, until she was bowed beneath its weight, body racked with sobs. Qadir wasn’t coming for her. No one was. She was stuck in this godsforsaken place in the middle of nowhere, and she had no magic and no blade, and gods, had she always been so weak? So useless?
The last sound she heard before she was trapped in silence was the thief’s footsteps echoing through distant, empty halls.
42
MAZEN
Mazen traversed decrepit corridors that were fortunately empty and unfortunately dark. He tripped over rocks, lost his footing in sunken patches of sand, and stumbled into ghouls moments after learning of their existence. The creatures could not see him beneath his shadow cloak, but they could smell the magic on him when he was nearby, and Mazen was beginning to realize they had very good noses.
And yet for as useless as his shadow was, he could not bring himself to shed it. While it did not offer the same security as Omar’s body, it was an invigorating illusion all the same. He had always felt most confident in disguise—no matter if that camouflage was a name, a body, or a magic shadow.
Thankfully, the skirmishes were quiet, and the prison he wandered was empty of humans. Still, he was extremely suspicious of how easy it was for him to stay alive. So much so that by the time he reached the doors marked Makhraj, he was certain it was a trap.
Please don’t let there be ghouls on the other side of this door, he thought.
Unsurprisingly, there were ghouls on the other side of the door.
Mazen sprang forward before they could react, shoving one to the ground and plunging his blade through the second’s throat. It toppled, but before Mazen could pull out his sword, the other ghoul recovered and swung its blade at him. Mazen ducked with a yelp. He landed on his knees, scrambled backward toward the second corpse, and yanked his sword out with a gag. When the first ghoul came at him again, he attacked its legs and tackled it to the ground. He ran the blade through its chest. Once, twice. A third time, just to be sure.
By the time he silenced the two guards, his body was shaking with adrenaline.
He took a deep breath, steadied his trembling hands, and forced himself down a corridor thankfully brighter than the one he’d come from. As he walked, he became aware of the wind whistling through cracks in the ceiling. Eventually, those cracks widened into holes large enough for him to make out the sky, the moon. And then the ceilings vanished altogether, revealing an endless expanse of star-speckled black.
Mazen glanced at the walls: the only stretch of color in the ruin’s otherwise plain interior. There was one wall so spectacularly detailed it forced him to a stop. This mosaic depicted the seven jinn kings he’d seen in the Queen of Dunes’ ruin. There was the shapeshifting jinn in the form of a flaming bird, and beneath it was the jinn with the dara’a cut into two halves. He spotted the fish jinn with the luminescent scales, the jinn made of wood and flowers, the jinn crafted from mist, and—there, a jinn leading an army of ghouls. The Queen of Dunes. He glanced at the last figure, who in the dune had been a shadow with gleaming eyes.
He had assumed this last king was the shadow jinn, but the figure in this much clearer depiction made it evident he’d been mistaken. Here, the jinn king was a cloaked figure with a jeweled turban who stood stoically amidst the chaos, hand raised toward the fiery sky. The color reminded Mazen of the color Qadir’s eyes had flashed during the ghoul attack.
At least now he knew he wasn’t crazy. The man’s—jinn’s—eyes really had been on fire. The thought sobered him. If he wasn’t careful, Imad would kill him too. Mazen did not think the thief would make the mistake of underestimating him twice.
He resumed walking, following the corridor around a bend and into a dead end. No… an open end? Sure enough, he found himself at a hole in the wall, one large enough to climb through. He carefully slid through and abruptly found himself on the threshold of the desert. He inhaled sharply as sand crunched beneath his boots. It was real. He was outside.
But his joy was short lived, for he realized he had not truly escaped. He had been in only one of many ruins; the crumbling landscape stretched on for miles, a labyrinth of broken walls and winding stone roads that led to a barely standing palace. Farther out, Mazen spotted the telltale shapes of ghouls, and beyond that…
Oh gods.
The dunes surrounding the ruins were shifting. No, not so much shifting as falling. There was no base—the sand simply spiraled into an endlessly churning void that surrounded the ruins like a river of quicksand.
Somehow, these ruins stood in the center of the Sandsea. Not the Western Sandsea, where they were headed, but an unplotted segment of the sea Mazen didn’t remember seeing on Hakim’s map.
Mazen took many panicked, stilted breaths. And then, in an effort to calm himself, he took a few slightly less panicked deep breaths. Imad can leave this place. There must be an exit.
Cautiously, he wove his way through the ruins. He was on the lookout only for creatures of the damned, so when he snuck up to the ruined heart of the palace and saw a man—a human man—standing outside, he nearly had a heart attack.
The man was tall and barrel-chested, with arms and legs that were corded with muscle. His face looked as if it had been chiseled by an incompetent sculptor; jagged hook-shaped marks marred his cheeks, and his nose was so crooked it looked broken. Mazen was not sure what scared him more: the fact that the man was human or that he was not Imad.
The dread was still sinking in when he heard a voice, distinctly human, yell, “Yalla! The meeting’s going to start without you if you don’t get your ass in here.”