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.’
Tamid and Leyla were both smart. And now that they’d told me the same thing, it was a safe bet they were probably right. It had seemed far away until now. But suddenly it seemed very near.
I felt myself reaching out for something to hang on to as everything seemed to spin around me. My hand closed around an earthenware pitcher next to the bed. It did nothing to keep me standing when it slid off the table and into my hands. Anger rushed in. Sudden, violent, irrational rage took over. Without thinking, I hurled the pitcher across the room, sending it splintering against the wall before I stormed out.
I wasn’t sure who I was looking for as I headed back into the courtyard, on the opposite side from the funeral pyre. Jin, maybe.
Instead, I ran straight into Sam. He caught me by the arms as I walked into his chest. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘isn’t this very Leofric and Elfleda of us?’ The love story he’d been babbling about back in Sazi. The one that ended with them both dying. ‘Meeting in secret in the dark …’ And then he trailed off as he saw my face. That I was in no mood for jokes. ‘Are you all right?’
I glanced over his shoulder. The twins were standing there, looking at me anxiously. I must really not look all right. ‘What are you three doing out here?’ I asked instead of answering.
‘Oh, well.’ Sam stepped away from me, releasing my arms. ‘Rahim got the news from one of his soldiers. After we left here, my former queen, long may she reign, struck an alliance with the Gallan king, may he die a painful death and rot in a ditch.’ For once, Sam sounded serious.
So the alliance had gone through. Since we hadn’t taken the captain’s deal, they had gone and made another ally. Made Miraji their enemy. The Gallan hated our kind, hated anything that wasn’t wholly human. Sam might’ve turned traitor on Her Highness, but his queen had betrayed a whole lot of her people by striking this alliance, too. ‘Captain Westcroft and the rest of all those nice fellows who want me dead marched down to join the siege three days ago.’
‘So we’re going to scout things out,’ Izz interjected, chipper as ever. He was clearly glad to be moving; the twins hated being in one place too long.
‘Shazad said we needed to use all our advantages now,’ Maz added.
‘How come you both get to be the Blue-Eyed Bandit and we’re known as advantages?’ Izz asked.
‘Yeah,’ Maz agreed. ‘We demand a better legendary nickname.’
I forced a smile and got the satisfaction of the pair of them grinning back, pleased that they’d amused me.
I glanced at Sam, understanding. ‘You’re going with them?’ The twins didn’t need an escort to report to Shazad. Maybe Sam thought this would impress her, acting like a real soldier. But then I saw the troubled look on his face. He might be one of us now, but he was born in Albis. Those were his people laying siege to our city. He needed to see it.
‘All right.’ I moved towards Izz. ‘Let’s go.’
They didn’t need me with them any more than they did Sam. But they didn’t question me coming with them either. The twins burst into Rocs as Sam and I wrapped our sheemas around our faces against the wind. I had to see whatever was awaiting us down in the city.
Night had fallen completely by the time we reached Izman, but we could still see everything from the air. The light from the dome of fire made it glow faintly in the dark. But more than that, the ground around the city burned like an ember.
The siege camp had been destroyed. The Gallan tents, which had stood in perfect military lines when we’d left just a few weeks back, were now smouldering ash. The bodies of the Albish who had joined forces with them would be among them, too. Thousands of men who’d lined up around the walls had been annihilated, the ground still burning from the force that had destroyed them: the Abdals turned against our enemies.
I couldn’t see Sam’s expression in the dark, but he would mourn his people, no doubt. In a way I couldn’t. The Sultan might be our enemy, but he had dispelled Miraji’s enemies.
Maybe it was right that it should end like this. This was a war between the people who belonged in this desert. Not the people who wanted to own it.
We would decide it for ourselves – no one else.
All I could hear were Izz’s wingbeats as we soared over the city. It reminded me of the destruction Noorsham used to cause. Fire. Annihilation. A force that wasn’t natural, that came from the Djinn, sweeping across armies and destroying everything in its path.
They’d dared to try to take power from the Sultan. So he’d shown them his true power.
This was what would happen to us if we tried to face the Sultan while he still controlled the Abdals. If we went to face armies of metal with an army of men.
We would burn, too. Everyone would: Jin, Ahmed, Shazad, Delila, Sam, Rahim, the refugees from Sazi, the soldiers from Iliaz, the hopeful men and women who had joined us in village after village.
Unless I dispelled Fereshteh’s power. Unless I used the words Tamid had given me. The first language, in a voice that could tell no lies. The same tongue that had trapped the Djinn, used to free him.
Either I died or we all did.