“No,” Hala added, sounding bitter. “You might say Ahmed will win the Sultim trials but neglect to say that he will take the throne. For instance. And if you’d just left it alone, then he’d have been a great Sultan and ruled until he was old and gray.”
The look on her face was the kind that only came from experience. I thought of all the stories I knew of men making foolish demands and wishes of Djinn that were granted to them in some misshapen way that robbed them of their happiness. The Gallan soldier hadn’t found us in the canyon. He’d been eaten alive instead. Bahi paused, like he was making sure I understood, before taking his hand away from my mouth.
When I looked at Hala, she was staring at her feet. No wonder she hadn’t forgiven me for the red-haired Demdji. She’d been holding a grudge against herself for a year now. And just because she’d tried to cheat the universe into Ahmed becoming Sultan by saying that he would. “I reckon I would’ve done the same thing.”
Hala treated me to an image of my hands catching fire, the agony of it searing through me before it vanished. Whatever sympathy I felt vaporized. “Yes, but you didn’t. I did. And if I hadn’t, we might never have needed a war and people might not have needed to die.”
And without another word, Hala stormed off.
Bahi clapped his hands together. “You know, I think now would be a great time for that break.”
? ? ?
DELILA AND I made our way slowly back into camp, through the preparations for Shihabian. Folks were stringing lanterns between the trees, and the whole of the camp was rich with the smell of roasting meats and cooking bread. Even when I’d dreamed of Izman, I’d never imagined a place like this. Everyone seemed to fit easily into their roles, working with one singular purpose: putting Ahmed on the throne. To make the rest of Miraji like this tiny part of the world.
“How come Jin didn’t compete in the Sultim trials?” I asked, breaking the uneasy silence that had fallen between us since Hala’s outburst. “Tradition claims the twelve eldest princes are to compete.”
“Ahmed is the fifth born, and Jin is sixth, so he had the right. If he’d come forward as another surviving son.” Which meant he’d chosen not to. That Ahmed had decided to step up and claim his chance at his birthright and Jin hadn’t. But then, the stories didn’t mention Jin at all. Not the disappearance of another son on the night that Ahmed and Delila’s mother was beaten to death, let alone his return.
“Why are you asking me and not my brother?” Delila had been chewing on her thumbnail nervously. She pulled it out of her mouth self-consciously.
Because I’m avoiding him. “Your brother has a bad habit of not telling me things straight.”
“They fought about it,” she admitted finally. “Shazad said it would be a tactical advantage to have an ally in the trials to watch Ahmed’s back. Hala said no one would believe either one of them if we suddenly started claiming it was raining returned princes. Jin said no one would believe him because he didn’t look a thing like the Sultan. Bahi said it would distract from Ahmed’s impact. Then Shazad said the Holy Order had given him too much of a flair for dramatics. And they went on and on,” she said shyly. “But in the end, nobody’s ever been able to make Jin do something he didn’t want. And the truth was, he never wanted anything to do with Miraji.” She reached up, plucking an orange from a tree as we passed under, and started peeling it, avoiding looking me in the eye. “Ahmed fell in love with Miraji the moment he came back. Like a piece of his soul he’d almost forgotten had been returned to him, he said. When Ahmed decided to stay behind, Jin never understood why. I didn’t understand until I saw it myself. It just . . . feels like home. They fought when Ahmed decided to stay as well. Jin sailed away without him. He always figured that Ahmed would change his mind and go back out to sea. Then our mother, Lien—Jin’s mother really, but mine, too.” She looked uncomfortable, like she’d spent a long time fighting with that fact. “She died, and Jin and I came to Ahmed instead. It was only a few months before the Sultim trials. Jin had been waiting for Ahmed to change his mind, and in the meantime he’d built up this following in Izman. I thought Jin might break his nose when we finally tracked him down with the compass. Shazad broke Jin’s nose first.”
Jin had told me a girl broke his nose and his brother set it. I’d just figured on some lover’s quarrel in a foreign port, not Shazad. Nice to know it wasn’t all lies, though.
“He figured the best we could hope for was for Ahmed not to get killed in the Sultim trials. And then we’d leave and Ahmed would stop fighting.” She gestured around herself at the camp. “He was wrong.”
“So why does Jin stay?”
“Jin has fought for Ahmed since they were boys. He’d throw a punch whenever anyone would call Ahmed a . . .” She stumbled over the translation of the Xichian word. “It means ‘dirty foreigner,’ I suppose. He’ll do the same now. I still don’t think he’s forgiven Ahmed for falling in love with something outside of our family, though. Well . . . it might be he’s starting to now.” That small shy smile was back on her face. I felt the back of my neck get hot.
“It’s not . . .” I stumbled over the words. “Jin and I aren’t . . .”
“If it were true,” Delila singsonged in a little girl’s voice, “you’d be able to say it.” She laughed as she spun away from me, jumping over a small campfire, leaving me even more confused.
? ? ?
IT WAS LATE afternoon, which meant Shazad would likely have finished training and be back in our tent. Or rather, her tent. I’d slept there the first night, too drained from the revelation of being a Demdji to put up much of a fight. And then I’d just stayed. She still hadn’t kicked me out, and there was a small pile of her clothes that she had loaned me piling up in a heap on the floor on my side, dividing me from her militarily clean side. It was almost like home.
Stepping into the tent, I was greeted by a flying cloth bundle to the face.
“Catch,” Shazad said too late. I picked it up off the floor. A bright swathe of gold cloth with deep red stitching unfurled between my fingers.
“What is it?” I asked.
“A rare occurrence for which it’s traditional to wear your finest clothes.” I realized Shazad was already dressed for Shihabian. It couldn’t be natural to be as pulled together as she was. Her dark hair was piled in tight waves against her head, golden pins catching the dimming light, a khalat—so green it made the trees look dull—draped across her.
“I didn’t think to grab my finest clothes while running for my life.” I ran my hands across the fabric and imagined putting it on and turning into some phoenix creature from the stories, fire and gold.
“Well, in this case, your friend’s finest clothes,” Shazad said.
Friend. The simple word grabbed my attention. I’d been shedding friends since Tamid.