‘And here I thought the rumours that Sara was running a brothel out of here were supposed to be false.’ The bitterness in Hala’s voice split Jin and me apart.
‘I’m no expert, but I figure doors in brothels have locks. So people have to knock,’ I retorted. Jin hadn’t let me go, and with his back to Hala I was the only one who could see the smile that danced over his face before he stepped away, leaving me to get my feet back on solid ground.
She was leaning in the doorway, flanked by the twins. They were wrapped in robes, their blue and black tousled hair sticking up at strange angles, but grinning at the spectacle all the same.
‘Is this you two coming up with a plan?’ Hala asked, rolling her eyes and pushing into the kitchen.
‘I have a plan.’ I could feel my face still flushed with heat as I straightened my shirt. ‘We don’t return Leyla, we save the girls instead.’
‘Good plan,’ Izz chimed in cheerfully.
‘Great plan,’ Maz chorused. ‘I love that plan.’
‘Yes, wonderful, what else could we possibly need other than a vague statement.’ Hala looked annoyed. ‘That’s not a plan; it’s barely an idea. Besides, what makes you think we can save anyone else when you couldn’t even save Imin?’ That blow was meant to sting and it did, but I wasn’t going to stand here and argue with Hala. She couldn’t be argued with lately; all she did was spit back the grief over losing Imin like poison.
‘That’s why you’re here,’ I said, turning towards everyone. ‘To hash out the details.’ Night had fallen outside, and the only light in the kitchen was from the embers of the fire that cast everyone in a half-light, making them look like they were only half there. I needed to draw them back. ‘Now do you want to help, or do you want to just let them die?’
Nobody wanted to see anyone else die.
We put together something that was about halfway between a vague idea and a real plan with a few hours left to go until sunrise. A few precious hours in which we agreed we all ought to try to get some sleep. The Hidden House was quiet when we left the kitchen. Hala and I retreated to Sara’s room through darkened hallways while the boys went the other way.
We were about midway up the many flights of stairs when I noticed light flooding from under one door: Tamid, reading late into the night.
My old friend wasn’t a true rebel. He just had nowhere else to go after Leyla betrayed us. He’d claimed a whole room to himself, which most thought was petty when space was so valuable. But I’d allowed it because he had a job to do, burning oil between dusk and dawn as he searched for the words to free Fereshteh’s energy and disable the Sultan’s machine. And I’d allowed it because I didn’t need to give him more reasons to despise me.
I paused on the landing that headed towards his room. Hala stopped climbing when she realised I wasn’t beside her any more. She gave me a withering look from three steps above me. ‘He doesn’t want to talk to you,’ she told me, not for the first time. I knew that. Hala had revelled in telling me that, since he did want to talk to her.
Tamid and I hadn’t spoken in weeks, and I’d steered clear of his room. But this was different. This wasn’t about what either of us wanted. It was about what we needed to do.
‘Get some sleep,’ I said to Hala by way of dismissal.
She looked like she might say something else for a moment, then she threw her hands up above her head as if to say she couldn’t help it if I was going to do something stupid, and she left me.
When I couldn’t hear her footsteps, I rapped gently at the door. ‘Come in,’ Tamid’s voice said sharply from the other side, seeming unsurprised by a visitor in the middle of the night. Still, when I pushed the door open, I could see all over his face that he hadn’t expected me.
He’d probably thought the knock was Hala bringing him more books to study. The collection she’d already acquired for him was strewn around the room. I could barely see the floor under stacks of open tomes piled one on top of another, or discarded in frustration in a corner. The books were lifted from libraries at the university or from the vaults of prayer houses. Hala’s Demdji gift meant she could walk out of any building in Izman with a pile of books in her arms without drawing so much as a glance her way. And she’d been putting it to good use, with minimal complaining. I reckoned she just liked being kept busy. Or she half enjoyed the possibility that she was walking into peril. It distracted her from her grief.
Against all odds, Hala and Tamid seemed to get along decently enough. Maybe because they were both angry at me – Tamid for dragging him into this rebellion, Hala because I couldn’t save Imin. I knew they’d been talking about me behind my back. How else would Hala know he didn’t want to see me?
Tamid looked back down at the book sprawled open on the desk in front of him. He was sitting at an uncomfortable-looking angle, his amputated leg propped on a stool. His fake leg was leaning up against a wall, not even in reach. He’d been using crutches instead. The beautifully engineered bronze leg that Leyla had made for him was lost when we escaped the Sultan. After our exalted ruler had taken it off him, revealing the device Leyla had hidden inside to guide her father to our hiding place. His new leg was a simple piece of wood, measured and cut to the right length to fit into the gap where his articulated bronze leg had been, designed to be attached by a crude system of leather straps. It was far from as sophisticated as Leyla’s. But then it had the advantage that it couldn’t be used to sell us out to our enemy. I’d call that an even trade.
I glanced down at a book cast aside on the corner of the desk. It was open to an illuminated picture of the fall of Abbadon, in all its glory of flames and tumbling stones. ‘Any luck?’ I asked, trailing a finger absently along the outline of the flames consuming the city.
‘It’s not about luck,’ Tamid said sharply. ‘If I had any of that, I wouldn’t be here.’
‘I’ll take that as a no,’ I said. Tamid had been scouring the books for weeks now, looking for the words we needed to free the Djinn.
Words in the first language, which existed before lies were invented. And a Demdji tongue that couldn’t tell a lie.
It was a powerful combination: with the right words in the first language, a Demdji like me could make anything happen. By just saying it like it was the truth, I could make money fall from thin air, or topple kings, or raise the dead.
But the first language was fragmented and lost. So I would settle for the words to disable the machine and stop our army from being burned alive. Once we had an army.
We’d had the shape of a plan before the ambush and the execution and the city being locked down around us: to get Rahim to Iliaz and take control of men that were once his. They were still loyal to him as their one-time commander.