‘That’s enough.’ Ahmed held up his hand, stopping both of them. He looked at me. He wanted to hear what I thought. I’d seen the city. The destruction. I knew what we were facing.
I still had Zaahir’s gift. I could decide this battle here and now if I gave it to Ahmed. It wouldn’t matter what we did, he would live. He would survive even if it were a massacre. But if I gave it to him, I couldn’t give it to Jin.
‘I reckon you should listen to Shazad,’ I said. ‘Don’t throw bodies in your father’s way to slow him down.’ They weren’t just bodies. They were the too-eager farmers’ sons and daughters, who had laughed when Shazad tossed them in the dust like war was a game. The people of the desert who came to us because we were offering better than they had, and all we were asking in return was that they lay down their lives.
‘We still need greater numbers.’ Rahim shook his head. ‘We might be able to win this fight if we’re very smart and very lucky. But I don’t like counting on luck.’
‘Well, lucky for us, I am very smart.’ It was Shazad’s turn to interrupt him this time. A flicker of a smile flitted over Sam’s face. He had been quiet since we’d seen the destruction outside the walls of Izman, but he was clearly enjoying Shazad and Rahim arguing.
‘What about the people in the city?’ I asked. I was thinking about the machine. About what disabling it would mean if it really did go up in flames. If a Djinni’s dying energy really had razed cities and armies in the past.
‘Amani’s right,’ Shazad said. ‘There are still rebels in the city, and others who are loyal to us.’ That hadn’t been what I’d meant, but the result was the same.
‘We can’t spread the word in Izman that we’re coming,’ Rahim said. ‘If we lose the element of surprise, my father can annihilate us before we even reach the walls.’
‘But if we can get them out, then they can fight,’ Jin said, understanding what Shazad was saying where Rahim didn’t.
‘Fine.’ Ahmed nodded. ‘Sam and Delila –’ he turned to the two of them – ‘take a small number down to the city with you and start evacuating.’ I knew why he’d picked them: Sam to get people through the tunnels and Delila to hide what they were doing. ‘Get as many people out as you can. Leave now.’
I realised suddenly that this might be the last time we were all together like this. Some of us definitely weren’t going to survive the battle that was coming. We’d already lost so many to the war.
But as I looked from them to Ahmed to Jin to everyone else around the table, I suddenly knew exactly who was most likely to die: the one of us who was least afraid. The one who needed to be saved the most.
When we were finished, everyone dispersed, leaving just me and Shazad behind.
‘You should tell him, you know,’ she said when we were alone. I didn’t need to ask what she meant. She wanted me to tell Jin what I was walking into under that city: possible death.
We’d made a habit of saving each other, Shazad and I, of having each other’s back. Except I couldn’t watch her back on the battlefield this time. And she couldn’t save me from my fate.
‘Yeah,’ I said, leaning towards her, looping my arm around her shoulders. I leaned my head against hers and dropped a quick kiss on her cheek. Like a gesture between sisters when one of them was headed away from home for a little while.
Except we weren’t sisters. We’d chosen each other. And now that I’d given her that kiss from Zaahir, and the promise of a life longer than this battle, she wouldn’t be coming anywhere with me. ‘I probably should.’
Chapter 34
The Young Princes
Once, there were two princes who did not live like princes. Instead of a palace, they lived in three small rooms in a city far away from their father, the Sultan. Instead of fine clothes, they wore castoffs from other children that their mother sewed to fit them. Instead of fine, spiced meats, they ate plain soups and bread.
And instead of food being plentiful, it was running out quickly. Their mother had no money, and soon she could no longer feed the children more than once a day.
One day, the two young princes were especially hungry. They had scarcely slept for their infant sister crying in the night. That evening they sat at the table. The first young prince watched his mother cook, and he saw her pull out only two bowls instead of three, since she knew there wasn’t enough for two hungry children and a hungry mother.
Seeing this made the first young prince angry, because she was his mother – his true mother. His brother’s mother was long dead in another country. And when the first prince looked across the table into his brother’s bowl, he saw that his brother had got a spoonful more of rice.
The first prince saw this as a great injustice, and he said things that no brother ought to say to another. That it wasn’t fair that one brother should get more food at the cost of another. That he wasn’t even his mother’s true son or his own true brother. That if anyone went hungry, it should be the other prince. That it was his fault that they were here and starving anyway. That they should send him away on one of the many boats in the harbour, back to the desert where they came from, and let someone else feed him.
The prince had never seen his mother grow so angry as she did at those words. She told her son that she was never to hear him talk like that again. That they were a family and that he should never be looking into his brother’s bowl to see if he had more, but only ever to make sure he had enough. And in punishment, she sent her son to bed without food.
The young prince raged. He decided that he had had enough. If his brother would not leave, he would. He was halfway through packing up his pitiful collection of belongings when his brother returned to the small room they shared. He turned out his pockets on to the bed, revealing that they were full of rice.
The second prince, feeling sorry that his brother had not eaten dinner, snuck every mouthful of his own into his pockets to bring to his brother later. The first prince was astonished to see that his brother was ready to go hungry himself and give everything he had to another – and to one who had wished him away only moments before.
It was in that moment that the first prince understood the goodness of his brother. That the second prince had a kinder, more selfless heart than the first prince could ever hope for. And he vowed that though he might never be as good as his brother, he would do all he could to protect him.
It was many years later that the girl known as the Blue-Eyed Bandit came to him, far from that table in the little home where they had grown up. And she asked him what he believed happened after death.
And he understood what it was that she meant to do.
He wanted to rage. To rage that his brother would get her life and that the Foreign Prince would be deprived of her in turn.
But he had made a vow on that day long ago.
And he would keep it.
Chapter 35