‘Hear me now, my subjects.’
Sudden terror bloomed in my chest. I would know the Sultan’s voice from a single word. I would know it if I heard it in my ear in the middle of nowhere on the other side of the world. I knew that voice better than I knew even Jin’s. And right now there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that it was his voice coming from immediately below our window. He had found us.
We – I – had taken his daughter and I’d led him straight to us, and now we were done for. He would execute Jin on the stage, another rogue son to be rid of. And he would enslave us Demdji. And the rest of the Rebellion would die in some desert prison with no rescue ever coming for them.
For a second I was rooted. All the blood had rushed out of my body and I was just a shell of fear. Almost as if I was standing outside myself, I looked around the room, seeing equally frozen expressions on every other face.
Jin moved first, drawing his gun as he pressed himself into the space next to the window. I moved to follow him as the blood returned to my body, drawing my own weapon as I plastered myself to the wall, glancing outside. I prepared to see the Sultan standing below our window, shouting up at us. Like Bashir the Brave from the legends, calling up to Rahat the Beautiful when she was locked in the Djinni’s tower.
Instead, on the street below us was an Abdal in all its gleaming bronze glory, staring straight ahead with its sightless eyes. The Sultan’s mechanical soldiers, lit with Djinni fire.
‘I speak to you now not as your ruler but as a father.’ The Sultan’s voice was coming from the Abdal. The machine was speaking, although its metal lips never moved. ‘A father to you, my people, and to my innocent daughter, your princess Leyla. Who has been kidnapped from the very heart of the palace by dangerous radicals acting in the name of the dead traitor prince.’ He didn’t say Ahmed’s name, stripping him of all identity except that of traitor.
The Sultan’s voice was louder than any normal man’s ought to be. As I craned my neck to peer down the street I could see another Abdal on the corner, the same voice presumably speaking out of it. People still on the streets were pressed against the walls as if they could retreat into them, taking in every word that was being spoken …
This was not just happening here. My guess was that the Sultan had dispersed his mechanical soldiers across the city to stand in every neighbourhood and speak this same message. Our exalted ruler was talking to thousands of people in his city at once with one voice we all had to heed.
‘How is he doing that?’ I hissed under my breath. I wasn’t sure whether the Abdals could hear us or not.
Jin’s gaze was fixed on the street. He looked grim, the lattice window casting strange patterns on his face. He shook his head.
‘Some of you will understand the grief of losing a child.’ The Sultan’s voice echoed out of the machine. Across the room I caught Hala’s gaze just as she rolled her eyes so far back in her head I thought she might lose them there. ‘If you stood in my place now,’ the machine went on, ‘there is nothing any of you would not do that was within your power to retrieve your own daughters.’ The unspoken words seemed to echo just as loudly as those that spilled from the Abdals’ unmoving lips: and there is nothing that is not within my power. ‘Any person who retrieves my daughter from these radicals and returns her to me will be rewarded with their weight in gold.’ My finger, which had been tightly wound around the trigger, eased a little. Bribes of gold were nothing new. There was no one in the Rebellion who would betray us for the Sultan’s money. If this was all he had to offer his people …
‘But,’ the voice spoke again, stopping the creeping relief in its tracks, ‘for every dawn that my daughter has not been returned to the palace, another man’s daughter will die.’
The ground tilted below me so suddenly that for a moment I had to squeeze my eyes shut and lean back against the wall to keep myself steady. But the words didn’t stop coming from outside. And with my eyes shut it sounded like the Sultan was speaking within my own mind.
‘I have forgiven you, my people who allied yourselves with my traitor son. Your crimes were put aside with his death. A new dawn – a fresh start for traitors …’ The voice trailed off mockingly as it turned Ahmed’s words against us. ‘But do not mistake my forgiveness for ignorance. I know which of you turned your backs on me for the false promises of those renegades. And it is within my power to take your daughters’ lives in exchange for the absence of mine.’
It wasn’t a lie or a bluff. The Sultan was a man of his word. I didn’t know what I had imagined would happen as a consequence of kidnapping Leyla. I hadn’t really thought much about it in that moment of diving down into the harem. I’d been reckless. Like I always was. And this time Shazad wasn’t here to sweep up behind me. Or Ahmed to take the consequences of it.
‘My message is simple. Return my daughter or yours will start dying tomorrow at sunrise,’ the Sultan’s voice finished below us. ‘The choice is yours.’
A long moment of silence stretched out from the streets. I opened my eyes. Below us the Abdals stood still, sightless and pitiless, as if they were waiting for their message to sink in. And then the machine below our window took a step, and I heard the crash of a dozen more metallic feet against stone, as the Abdals began to march in perfectly timed step. Returning to the palace to wait for the city’s reply.
I pushed away from the wall, as the sound of thousands of mechanical feet echoed through the streets. I was still gripping the gun as I moved across the room. I didn’t have to shove Hala aside; she knew exactly where I was going. She stepped away from the door that led to Leyla.
I slammed the door open. Our princess had moved as close to the window as she could with her hands chained to the frame of the bed. Her head snapped around as I entered.
‘What the hell was that?’ Behind me I heard Fadi start to cry. I’d woken him up. I cast a glance over my shoulder. Sara gave me a reproachful look as she picked him up, bundling the baby out of the room.
‘I could’ve told you taking me was a mistake,’ Leyla gloated. She’d heard it, too, every word.
‘What the hell was that?’ I repeated, taking a threatening step towards her. But Leyla didn’t flinch.