I might know better than anyone the distance between legends and the truth, that stories were not always told whole. The monsters in them were less fierce in reality, the heroes less pure, the Djinn more complicated. But there were some things you didn’t prod at to find out if their teeth were really as big as the stories said. Because on the off-chance that the stories were really true, you were about to lose a finger. The Destroyer of Worlds was at the top of the list of things I didn’t want to find out the truth about. ‘I don’t know how close you’ve read the Holy Books, but there are a whole lot of reasons why letting her out of that prison is a bad idea. Starting with the destruction of all of humanity.’
‘Oh, he doesn’t want to let her out,’ Leyla said earnestly. ‘He wants her for the same reason he wants the Djinn. My father is a hero. He’s going to end her once and for all. And use what’s left of her for good. Just like Fereshteh.’
He was going to kill her, turn her immortal life into power that he could use. I remembered something he had said to me once: that the time for immortal things was over. Now was the time for us, time to stop living so attached to our legends and to magic. And sure enough, he was destroying our legends one at a time, dragging Miraji into a new age, whether it wanted to come or not. Whether letting great evils out of the earth was a good idea or not.
‘He can’t do it without you, though, can he?’
Leyla’s satisfaction drifted back to fear. ‘If you kill me, he will find another way. My mother’s homeland is full of people like me, makers of new ideas and new inventions.’ Some who would even be prepared to defy the laws of religion and good sense, too, I was sure.
I didn’t want to kill her. But we couldn’t keep her either. We might have a way out, but we couldn’t just vanish from the city without doing something about Leyla – not with girls dying every dawn in her name.
The beginning of a plan had started to form in my mind. Only we were missing someone if we were going to pull it off.
I needed to get Sam back.
Chapter 7
It took me the better part of the day to track Sam down, which didn’t exactly do a whole lot for how angry I was at him. I started imagining creative ways to kill him sometime around midday, when the sweat had soaked into my shirt in earnest and my hair was sticking to my sheema from the heat. By the time I finally ran him to ground just before sunset, I had built a very vivid image of how he’d meet his end at my hands.
We’d been damn lucky that Sam hadn’t bled to death that day he’d tried to slip into the palace. After he’d got himself shot, it was only thanks to Hala and Jin that we’d got him back to the Hidden House still breathing. The hours that followed had been a frenzy of trying to keep our foreign friend alive, as well as getting everyone ready to flee if we had to. I didn’t know if we’d been followed from the palace. But I’d already led the Sultan to one of our hideouts once. I wasn’t taking chances.
Finally Sam had stopped bleeding and kept breathing. Though barely on both counts. And no soldiers came knocking at the door of the Hidden House.
I’d spent the night keeping watch over him while everyone else kept watch over the streets. If we had to flee, I wasn’t sure we’d be able to take Sam with us, wounded as he was. So we’d waited and kept watch. I’d prayed a whole lot.
Then, three days after Sam got shot, I woke up next to an empty bed. My face had been pressed so hard into the stitching of the blanket that it had left a mark on my cheek. Where Sam had been, there was nothing but tangled sheets faintly stained with blood. My first thought was that Sam had died sometime in the night and Jin had moved the body to spare me. But then I saw the golden cuff set with emeralds, slipped on to my wrist while I slept. It was Shazad’s, one of the pieces of jewellery she’d paid Sam with, back when he was running information between the palace and the Rebellion.
I read it for what it was, a farewell note. No amount of money is worth dying for, it said. He wasn’t wrong, either. Money was a damn stupid thing to die for. I’d just been figuring Sam was still with us for something more.
Still, leaving me the bracelet seemed like it was more symbolic than anything, since he took everything else Shazad had paid him, down to the very last of her rings.
Shazad’s jewellery was how I found him in the end. There was a goldsmith on the corner of Moon Street who was known to trade coin for material without questions. It took a bit of bribery, but he told me Sam had been by. He was on his way to the White Fish, a bar on the docks that normally served sailors of all sorts passing through Izman. It’d become glutted with the same sailors lately, seeing as no one was getting in or out of the city. The barricade of fire even plunged deep into the sea.
Only there was a rumour going around that there was a man who knew how to get through the barricade, and for the right price he’d give you passage. He was rounding up anyone with the right money at the White Fish.
I’d heard that rumour, too. I’d ignored it since it was so obviously a scam. Only it seemed Sam was stupid enough to fall for it.
The heat of a long day of trawling the city streets clung to me as I pushed through the doors of the White Fish. A dozen pairs of men’s eyes joined it. I knew what they were seeing. It didn’t matter that I was dressed in sturdy desert clothes or that I was armed: I was a woman in a place where only men belonged. I half missed the days when I was a scrawny girl from Dustwalk and could still pass for a boy when I needed to. But it had been a year of decent meals, and there was too much of me to hide what I was now.
Most of the men turned back to their drinks and their gambling, shrugging me off as I pressed further into the bar, searching for a familiar face. But one man stepped square in my path, quickly enough that I had to pull up short to keep from running straight into him.
‘How much?’ he asked without preamble.
‘For you to get out of my way?’ My hand was already on the gun at my belt. ‘I’ll do you a favour, and until the count of three, I’ll let you move for free. After that, I might start charging you in toes.’ When he looked down, the pistol was pointed at his boot. It was an easy shot to pull off in close quarters.
I recognised Sam’s laugh a second before his arm draped itself over my shoulder. ‘Don’t mind my lady friend.’ His voice was too bright, like he was trying to cut through the tension, like sun through clouds. ‘She’s too much for you to handle anyway.’ He winked at the man across from me. In a low voice, in Albish, slow enough so I could understand, he said, ‘Put your gun away before he does something stupid and you and I have to do something heroic.’
I bit my tongue angrily, but he was right. I wasn’t here to draw attention to myself by starting a bar brawl. The man gave us a once-over before taking a step back. Sam pulled me around, turning me towards a table lined with men holding cards, watching us with interest. ‘Sorry about that interruption, boys,’ Sam declared too loudly. ‘Just had to go get my good luck charm.’ He sat back down abruptly, pulling me into his lap so fast I didn’t think about swatting him away until I was already sitting.
I moved the most painful means of death to the top of the list I’d spent this afternoon constructing.