‘Zaahir.’ I recognised him, disguised in this new human shape. ‘What do you want?’
‘I wanted to know what you would do.’ He stood, gliding his back up the stone wall behind him. ‘But I’m also here to keep my promises,’ he said. As he spoke, his body shifted, morphing from the old beggar into a young man who bore an uncanny resemblance to Ahmed. ‘You wanted a way to put your prince on the throne, and I promised to give you one. Except that you just walked away from it.’
Jin told me once that coincidence didn’t have the same cruel sense of humour as fate. The Djinn, they had a cruel sense of humour, too – and enough power to open a mountain. To turn a boy into a wall of fire. To lead me here, across a desert, and give me exactly what I’d asked for: a way to keep Ahmed alive.
‘They’re children.’
‘So are you,’ he said. ‘Does it really matter whether a life lasts one handful of years, or two, or three?’ He was really asking me, I realised. He had been out of the mortal world as long as it had existed. He didn’t understand us at all. Didn’t understand the difference between being ten and being twenty and being a hundred. They were all young to him. ‘Would it be easier to kill him if he were a man?’ he asked. ‘No, that can’t be it, because then you could have killed the other two princes you travel with. But they are men you need. Each in his own way.’ When he smiled his face shifted again, this time turning to one that resembled Jin’s. ‘You’ve killed others before, daughter of Bahadur. Don’t deny it.’
‘Killing people to save—’ I cut myself off as a sly smile spread across the face that looked unsettlingly like Jin’s. ‘Killing people in battle is different.’
‘And this is a war. But if you insist, there is another gift I can give you.’
He moved quicker than I could see. He didn’t step towards me, just disappeared from the air where he stood, reappearing directly before me. I didn’t even have time to stagger back before he caught me, holding me tighter than any mortal thing could. It was more like being trapped in the stones of a mountain than being held by arms made of flesh and blood. ‘This is my new gift to you, daughter of Bahadur.’
He kissed me then, before I could pull away. He didn’t kiss me like a mortal man, either. But his mouth wasn’t stone; it was fire. My mouth was scalding under his. And then, just as quickly, it was over.
For a moment, as he pulled away, something changed in his face. The certainty shifted to the same bewildered madness I’d seen on his face in the mountain. I remembered something he had said. That I looked like her. The First Hero. He had lived with mortality as long as the other Djinn, but he had lived out of the world. He had not been blunted by time, nor by the deaths of thousands, the way they had.
‘What was that?’ I brought my hand to my mouth, but when I touched my lips, they were the same temperature they always were.
‘A gift, of life.’ His grip didn’t feel like warm skin – it felt like air and stone and fire. ‘You can’t keep it for yourself. But you can pass it on to one person, and I promise you that they will live to see old age.’
First he’d given me the chance to kill someone, and now he was giving me the chance to save someone with a kiss. To save Ahmed, if I wanted to.
Or I could save Jin. The selfish thought crept in faster than I could expel it.
And then I had another thought. Bilal. If I used it on him, we might be able to take Iliaz as bloodlessly as we had this city. I could give Bilal his escape from death after all.
Chapter 30
I hated the sea.
We set sail the next morning, Haytham supplying us with one of the ships from his reclaimed city and a crew to man it.
Last time I’d been on a ship, I’d been drugged and a prisoner on the way to the palace. It turned out that not being shackled wasn’t much better. The deck of the ship was never steady, and after I lost sight of land, a strange panic set in. Ahmed found me the first night below deck with my head in a bucket. He sat patiently next to me, running a hand gently up and down my spine as I retched up the contents of my stomach.
I waited until I was sure I had nothing left before speaking to him. Even if I didn’t quite dare lift my head from the safety of the bucket.
‘How did you find me?’ My mouth tasted like bile.
‘Sam sold you out,’ he said as I slowly lifted my head. Ahmed handed me a skin of water. I took it with shaky hands and rinsed out my mouth, spitting into the bucket. ‘He said he hadn’t seen you eat anything today.’
‘Should I be flattered he tore his eyes off Shazad long enough to notice anyone else?’ I peeled a strand of my still-too-short hair away from my face.
‘Here.’ He handed me a flat green leaf. ‘Chew on it. It’ll settle your stomach. I got some from the Holy Father in Tiamat. I thought we might need it. It took me a while to find my sea legs, too, back when Jin and I first set off seafaring.’
Tentatively, I put the thing in my mouth. It didn’t taste bad – sweet and cool as it hit my tongue. I chewed slowly. Ahmed watched as I tried to get my feet under me.
‘Amani, I need to ask you something.’ If Ahmed had more guile, I might’ve thought he’d deliberately come looking for me when I was shaky and vulnerable. But it was Ahmed. ‘After this is all over, I’m not going to take the throne.’
That got my attention. ‘What?’
‘At least not the way my father took it,’ Ahmed hurried on before I could start berating him. ‘Not by force, without giving the people a choice in who governs them. You were right what you said in Sazi. I ought to listen to the people who know this desert. I’m going to hold a vote. Like they do in the Ionian republics, to let the people choose their ruler. Any man or woman who thinks they would make a better ruler than me can put their name forward, and if the people agree they would be better than me, they can choose that person instead.’
I stared back at him, trying to take this all in. ‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because –’ Ahmed rubbed at the scar on his forehead thoughtfully; it was a habit of his when he was thinking – ‘I want to know what you think.’
‘Why?’ I realised I was speaking mostly in single words. I didn’t sound smart enough to lace up my own boots, let alone advise a ruler on this. But I had told him back in Sazi that he didn’t know everything. That he ought to listen to me.
‘Amani, you know this country better than anyone else. Do you think it will work?’
I thought about it. ‘What would you do about the Sultim trials? They’ve been used to determine the next ruler since the beginning. It’s a hard tradition to break.’