‘It’s not that easy to get rid of me,’ Rahim said, clapping his soldier on the back. His words were jovial, but his eyes, fixed on Bilal, were anything but. ‘What’s happening here?’
Looking at his crumbling body, I hadn’t been entirely sure Bilal would be able to stand, but he rose to his feet gingerly. ‘A celebration,’ he declared, his voice still carrying across the halls in spite of his illness, ‘in anticipation of your arrival. And your annihilation of the foreign threat.’ He signalled to one of the servants, who rushed forwards with a tray of wine glasses for us.
‘Funny, that.’ Rahim took a full wine glass without hesitation. ‘Because I’d heard rumours about you striking alliances with foreigners. I’m sure your father would have marvelled at that.’
Bilal’s eyes danced to me and Jin and Sam. I felt the memory of the burn of Zaahir’s kiss on my mouth. If I was going to say anything, do anything, now was the time. I could save Bilal; I could end this without bodies. I glanced down at the wine glass that was being offered to me and kept my lips sealed.
‘Yes, well,’ Bilal said, after letting Rahim’s accusation hang a long moment in the air. ‘I am in good company, making alliances our fathers would not be pleased at.’
Rahim started to advance towards the dais, walking slowly, deliberately. ‘A toast, then,’ he said.
We all watched as hundreds of men raised their glasses obediently, Rahim’s army falling in line. ‘A toast,’ Bilal agreed. ‘To our esteemed commander, Rahim, on his victory and return.’
‘To the commander,’ the crowd echoed, bringing the glasses up. I was about to cry out, to stop them, to warn them. But Rahim got there first.
‘Wait.’ He held up his hand. It was an order called out in a room full of soldiers, and it had been issued by their leader. Their true one. Every single one of them stopped in an instant.
And surrounding Lord Bilal stood an entire room of men silently reminding him where their true loyalty lay. That this was Rahim’s army. He held out his cup to Lord Bilal. ‘You don’t have a drink, my lord. You can’t drink to my health without it. Besides, it would be rude of your men to drink before you.’
Rahim stepped on to the dais, pulling himself up to his lord’s level. Except Rahim stood a head taller than Bilal, at least. He didn’t break his gaze as he held out his own glass for his one-time friend.
Finally Lord Bilal reached for the cup. As both their hands closed over it, Rahim leaned in close to Bilal. I saw his lips move, saying something to him in a low voice. A sad smile spread over Bilal’s face, but he didn’t say anything. He just pulled back, prising the glass from Rahim’s fingers.
He raised the glass. ‘To your victory,’ he said again. ‘And long life.’
And then he drank, deep and long. He hadn’t finished draining it before his legs gave out. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Chapter 33
I found Leyla in Bilal’s rooms.
I hadn’t expected to. I didn’t need to be involved in the aftermath of Bilal’s death. Rahim and Ahmed and Jin and Shazad could take care of that. So I’d gone to Bilal’s rooms looking for his books. I was hoping that he had more on the man in the mountain. That I might find answers about the Sin Maker.
It had been an easy thing to think of giving away Zaahir’s kiss to Bilal. But now … if I was going to give it to someone I really cared about, I needed to know if it was a trick. He’d promised they would live to an old age. But I knew Djinn’s ways. It could mean that whomever I gave his gift to would age a hundred years when I kissed them. It could mean I would grant them a cripplingly ancient life so they were forced to watch everyone around them die. I couldn’t do that to Ahmed. Or to Jin.
I came desperate for answers.
Instead, I found a princess curled up like a little girl on Bilal’s bed, letting the smoke from his funeral pyre billow through the open window.
I paused in the doorway, looking at her tiny figure in the dark, knees tucked to her chest, bare feet burrowing into the stitching of the heavy blanket covered in hunting scenes that was sprawled over the bed. I knew she was aware of me, but she didn’t turn around.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ I asked Leyla’s back. ‘You poisoned his mind into the idea of killing all those soldiers so that we couldn’t have them. So that your brother couldn’t go to war against your father. How did you do it?’
Leyla’s shoulders shook silently, like in a laugh. It was the first sign of life I’d seen from her. ‘You have seen me fool and manipulate you and others dozens of times. You have seen where I grew up, within those walls, with women who used their bodies and their minds like weapons.’ Slowly she turned to face me. She looked different from the girl we’d left here. The burning, indignant anger in her had turned to a twisted, ugly kind of rage. ‘And yet, after all this, you still think I’m too innocent to play this game?’
Her eyes were rimmed with red. I didn’t know whether it was from crying or from the smoke. I strode across the room, past the bed, to the other wall. From the window I could see down on to Bilal’s pyre. It was surrounded by soldiers. Doing their duty to him even though he hadn’t done right by them.
‘I guess the Rebellion has made me more of an optimist about folks than I used to be,’ I offered. I closed the window and turned back to Leyla.
‘Have you come to kill me?’ she asked.
‘No. Your brother will probably come looking for you soon. It would be too obvious who’d done it.’ It was a joke. Mostly.
I considered Leyla on the bed. I’d come here looking for information.
We’d had a plan back in Izman. Before Ahmed had been captured and Imin executed. Get an army, disable the Sultan’s machine, take the city.
We had the army.
We had the words to free Fereshteh’s captured soul from the machine and bring down the wall, and the Abdals with it.
Now we just needed the city. And for that, we needed to disable the machine.
I might as well ask. ‘If I free Fereshteh’s energy, that machine’s not just going to quietly turn itself off, is it?’
‘Who knows.’ Leyla slid back down on to the bed, like she was suddenly exhausted, propping her head on one arm. ‘It’s never been tested before. It’s all just a theory until you test it. That’s what my mother taught me. Rahim thinks I don’t remember her. But I think I’ve proved that I am more of both my mother and my father than he will ever be.’
‘And if you were theorising?’ I pressed, before she could stumble down some path I couldn’t bring her back from.
‘If I were theorising –’ she closed her eyes – ‘I would say no. I don’t think it will.’