Mazen bristled. “And possessing an innocent man and killing his friends—that’s the way of the world too?”
Aisha scowled. “If by ‘innocent man and friends’ you mean murderers who slaughter jinn for no reason, then yes.” She never broke eye contact as she stood. “I would even go so far as to say that killing them is justice,” she said coldly, and then she walked away.
Qadir tilted his head. “You are very adept at digging yourself into holes, Prince.” He rose with a sigh. “I still do not trust you, but I trust your brother less. I do not know what he is plotting, but know this.” His eyes darkened with smoke. “If your family tries to harm Loulie, I will sink your city. And if you breathe a single word of my history to them…” He smiled. An unfeeling smile that sent a shudder down Mazen’s spine. “I will personally make you regret it.”
The deadly promise hung in the air, thick as the smoke clouding the ifrit’s eyes as he exited the cave. Mazen had to force himself to follow. He had chosen this, and he had no choice but to see this hellish journey through.
After that, it did not take them long to reach the road to Ghiban. Aisha banished the ghouls with a command as they stepped onto the dirt path, disintegrating them into sand with a snap of her fingers. Mazen was unsure whether he ought to be relieved or nervous that Aisha could so easily control the queen’s magic.
His anxiety dampened somewhat as they joined other journeyers on the main road. After days of isolated travel, it was a relief to see other people. Mazen felt more at ease amongst the crowds. The merchant, on the other hand, was forced to doff her starry layers. She looked smaller without them, reduced to a plain tunic, a pair of trousers, and shoes that were so dusty they looked more brown than gold.
They meandered through cliffs and up rocky inclines until they came to the city. Spires and domes made of stone stretched across a rocky plateau lush with vibrant gardens and crystal blue lakes. The city sat in the center of a small valley, surrounded on three sides by waterfalls that emptied into the settlement’s surrounding silver rivers, which glowed beneath the moonlight.
Mazen managed a soft, awed exhale.
Finally, they had arrived at Ghiban.
The final city before the lamp.
51
LOULIE
Unlike in Madinne or Dhyme, where nature was reserved for the elite, Ghiban was chock-full of natural delights. Even the steep decline into the city was filled with green; sunflowers peeked out between cliffs, yellow grasses sprouted between cracks in the ground, and wooden lanterns woven through with flowers hung above them, illuminating the pathway. This high, one could see all the city districts: plots of land divided by streams and connected by bridges.
It was beautiful. So beautiful it made Loulie’s heart ache. For this natural beauty, like the rest, had been born of jinn blood. Stories were told of the battle that had waged on these cliffs between the humans and the marid, the fabled wish-granting jinn said to have remained in the human world after their cities sank into the Sandsea.
Loulie’s mother had told her the story once: after many years of being taken advantage of, the marid revolted against the humans, positioning themselves at the tops of the cliffs so they could call down waterfalls to crush the human army in the valley. But the humans were ruthless; they employed thousands of men as a distraction, sacrificing them to the marid’s magic to buy the rest of them time to scale the cliffs from the other side.
Legend had it that after slaughtering the marid, the humans hung their corpses from the tops of the cliffs, and there had been so much silver blood running down the rocks, it had transformed into a cascading stream of water. Sometimes, when Loulie stared hard at the streams winding around the city, she thought they glittered like stardust.
It was beautiful, and it was horrible.
The path led down into Ghiban’s main souk, a space made up of small brick and stone shops with outdoor displays and stalls. Loulie turned toward the crowds littering the square. She normally detested packs of people, but now she slipped gratefully into the hordes, wanting to put as much distance between herself and the others as she could. Mostly, she sought to escape from Qadir, who was constantly watching her with that beseeching gaze. She would not, could not, talk to him. Because the moment she did, she would remember the past. She would remember her own uselessness. And she would unravel.
She bit down on her lip as a surge of self-pity gripped her. These damned emotions would be the end of her. The world descended into a palimpsest of blotchy colors without her permission, pressing in as she elbowed her way through throngs of people.
“Layla!”
Merchants shoved jewelry in her face; marketgoers smiled at her beneath the shadows of their hoods. She bumped into a man. A pickpocket. He apologized even as he snuck a hand into her pocket.
“Layla!”
She slapped his hand away, tried to pretend she was angry. But the realization was there, unavoidable: There’s nothing for him to steal. Her heart sank.
“Layla!” She felt a hand on her shoulder and swatted it away on instinct. She realized belatedly that it belonged to the prince. She opened her mouth to yell at him—and stopped.
He’d remembered to use her name. The one she donned when she entered the souk as a customer. It was meant to be a shield, so why did his saying it aloud make her want to cry?
“Should I call you something else?” He eyed her warily as he rubbed his hand.
“No.” She inhaled sharply, hating how small her voice was. “What do you want?”
“Mostly, I want to know where we’re going.”
“An inn.” Saying it aloud gave her a goal to keep her focused. But the calm was short lived, for when they finally made it to one, she realized they had no gold. The panic had just returned when Aisha slammed a fistful of coins on the table.
“You forget I’m a thief,” she said by way of explanation. She set a hand on the prince’s shoulder and steered him away, through the inn’s tavern and into the single corridor where the guest rooms were located. The prince glanced over his shoulder. Loulie flinched at the pity on his face. She hated him, this lying prince who pretended to have a heart of gold. But mostly, she hated herself for inspiring that sympathy in him.
“I’m going to the hammam,” she said to Qadir, and left before he could stop her.
The nearest communal hammam was a spacious place, a collection of smaller chambers filled with medium-sized baths carved directly into the stone floors. The last time Loulie had been here, it had been packed with women meeting for some weekly gathering. She was relieved to see that crowd was absent today; she wouldn’t have been able to carry on a conversation even if she’d tried.
She stored her clothes at the vestibule, passed the first bathing chamber—she was keen on avoiding the laughing women inside—and made her way to the middle archway, wherein lay the chamber with the most amiable temperature, neither too cold nor too hot. The room smelled of jasmine and was dimly lit with lanterns placed at every corner of the bath. Some of the tension eased from Loulie’s limbs as she slid into the water and closed her eyes.
For a time, her mind was blissfully blank.
She did not know how long she sat there before she opened her eyes and noticed the ceiling vents had been opened to let in air. Gazing up at the starry sky, she was reminded of how long the day—the journey—had been. And it was at that point the memories she had been trying to suppress surfaced. Tentatively, she began to sift through them.