Noorsham looked unmoved. ‘I believe that if God had wanted them to save people, he would have given them a gift like mine—’
‘We are not gifted by God,’ I snapped, the truth boiling over on to my lips. ‘You and I, we’re not chosen for anything. We’re just born like everyone else. We’re just a side effect of immortals not being able to resist mortal women. And these so-called gifts they give us are just powers that are bound to tear us up or get us killed before we get old enough to do anything at all. Great or terrible.’ I felt the tears start, even though I didn’t know if they were anger or bitterness or grief. ‘Ashra was probably a Demdji, just like us, who died in a war she shouldn’t have been fighting. Princess Hawa was, too.’ I was breathing hard. ‘She was also our sister – did you know that? And she died doing something great. And Hala died, and Imin died. And if Tamid is right, I might be dead soon, too. I’m not going to let all of that be for nothing. I have to save them.’
Noorsham embraced me unexpectedly, cutting off my tirade of tears as he pressed me to his chest. ‘I’m sorry, sister,’ he said close to my ear. ‘I see your pain.’ He drew away and clasped my tearstained face with his hands. ‘But I cannot let you release the Destroyer of Worlds.’
His hands were pleasantly warm at first. Then hot – too hot. And I knew. He had made the decision to protect his people over saving mine.
It was the choice I would have made, too. I couldn’t begrudge him that.
His hands were scalding now.
I shifted, just barely, dropping the peach I had been clutching. My hand slipped into my pocket. I found the single bullet I had saved when we’d handed over our weapons. It was seemingly useless without a gun – unless you knew what we really were. We weren’t chosen by God, we were children of immortal beings, vulnerable to iron just like they were.
I knew that. Even if my brother didn’t.
I clasped my hand over Noorsham’s, pressing the bullet to his skin. Immediately the heat in his hands vanished. He blinked in confusion as he felt his gift leave him. His blue eyes met mine, looking for answers.
‘I’m so sorry, Noorsham,’ I said. And then I punched him in the face.
Chapter 22
‘This was your plan all along, wasn’t it?’ Sam had his arms wrapped around me, pressing me to his chest so I couldn’t escape him talking. ‘Lure me down to the dead end of nowhere with promises of heroic deeds, all just to get close to me.’
‘That’s an awfully convoluted plan.’ I was trying to find a comfortable place to settle my arms that wasn’t his shoulders, but there really weren’t a whole lot of options. ‘If I was going to take advantage of you, I could’ve done it back in the harem.’
We were standing together, chest to chest, trying our hardest to choke out any air between us. It might’ve looked romantic if it weren’t for Jin looping a rope around us, securing us like we were some ship’s anchor about to be pushed overboard.
My brother was in the corner, unconscious and bound up in the shackles we’d taken off Sam after his brush with the firing squad. We needed to get this done before dawn came and Noorsham’s disciples woke up and wondered where he was. They would find him and free him eventually, but I was planning on being long gone by then.
Tamid was fretting anxiously at the mouth of the tunnel. My one-time friend might’ve thought he was done with our rebellion when we got here, but he was the only person I trusted to drug my brother safely. And more than that, I’d needed him to read the words in the first language scrawled over the door.
‘But isn’t this so much more romantic?’ Sam went on wistfully. ‘Braving near-certain death with me.’ The rope tightened so that I was pressed with my ear against his shoulder. I couldn’t see his face, but I was sure he was laughing at me. ‘Just like Cynbel and Sorcha or Leofric and Elfleda.’
‘I have no idea who those people are,’ I said into his shirt.
‘Albish love stories,’ he said. ‘You’d like Leofric and Elfleda. He’s a thief, she’s a powerful sorceress. They both die tragically at the end. That’s what happens in all great love stories.’
‘Well, it’s a good thing we’re not in love, then.’ Sam’s flirting had got a whole lot less outrageous the further south we’d got. Half of me thought it was because he and Jin were actually getting along. Better than I’d seen Jin get along with Ahmed in months, now I thought about it. Sam was only back to flirting with me now because he was trying to lighten the mood.
We were about to walk through solid mountain into unknown territory.
I’d made Tamid read the words carved above the doorway to me. ‘They’re in the first language,’ he had said, furrowing his brow as he read them by torchlight. ‘Something about … a prisoner?’ We all felt that simple word settle over us as he said it.
The man in the mountain. Monster or mortal maybe. But definitely not just myth.
Well, we’d come here looking for powerful help, and we might’ve found it.
‘We’ll need a name to open the door,’ Jin had said. ‘Like back … back in the Dev’s Valley.’ He cut himself off before he said back home. But I heard it.
‘There’s no name.’ Tamid squinted at the words above the doorway. ‘But there is something else, I think it’s …’ I saw the realisation settle over him a moment before he said the next words, low and reverent. ‘I think they’re the words to free a Djinni.’
There it was. The thing Tamid had been looking for in books. Our salvation. Not recorded on any paper in a northern library but buried in the mountains here far in the south. It was an answer, too. What to expect beyond that door. Not a man. A Djinni.
It didn’t matter that we didn’t have the right words to get the painted door to open for us. We had alternative ways in.
Nobody asked who would be going through with Sam. Nobody needed to.
Now, standing tied to Sam, I made Tamid read the words above the door out to me again. I repeated them back carefully.
‘Good,’ he said, like a patient teacher. He really would’ve made a good Holy Father. ‘And then at the end, you would say the Djinni’s true name—’
‘I know,’ I cut him off. ‘I’ve called Djinn before.’ Tamid looked away, shamefaced, that brief moment between us breaking as I reminded him that he was at least partly responsible for the Djinn currently imprisoned under the palace.
Jin pulled on the knot, dragging Sam and me together a little tighter. ‘That’s the best I can do without running out of rope,’ he said. The last thing I needed was to get separated from Sam halfway through the mountain. And the rope gave us something to guide us back out. Jin ran his hand along his jaw, a nervous gesture.
‘I was going to say, Just imagine it’s like diving through deep water.’ He smiled at me ruefully. ‘And then I remembered that you’re from—’
‘Here?’
‘I’m going to teach you how to swim someday,’ he promised. ‘Just try to stay alive long enough.’
It was time to go.
‘Take a deep breath,’ Sam said, sounding serious for the first time since we got here. ‘And whatever you do, don’t stop walking.’ I did as I was told, taking in all the air my lungs would hold, and he did the same. And then he took one big step, and we were submerged in stone.
There was dark and then there was the dark of being inside a mountain wall.