Shazad must’ve caught my hesitation. “I have other khalats. If you don’t like it,” she added quickly, pushing a loose piece of hair back behind her ear like she was nervous, only that was impossible.
“Is Imin back yet?” I asked. No matter what Delila said, I was nervous about the yellow-eyed Demdji in the Gallan camp.
“No.” Shazad became serious. “Not yet. I’m giving her until the end of Shihabian, and then tomorrow we’re going to look for her.” To make sure she hadn’t wound up like the red-haired Demdji.
“Who’s we?” I asked, starting to undress.
“Me and Jin, and you if you want.”
My hands faltered on my buttons, Delila’s words fresh in my mind. “I don’t think I’m meant to leave camp before I figure out my powers.” I didn’t sound that convincing even to myself, and Shazad made a disbelieving noise at the back of her throat.
“However short our lives might turn out to be if this revolution fails, you can’t avoid him forever, you know.”
“Want to watch me try anyway?”
? ? ?
THE HOLY TIME of Shihabian started when the sun vanished, a reminder of the night when the Destroyer of Worlds came and brought darkness with her. Last year Tamid had spun me in place until I was dizzy, and we both laughed until we had to hold each other up, tipsy-turvy from drink and dancing. We celebrated until midnight, when the whole world would turn black in memory of the first night. And then, when the stars and the moon came back, we prayed until dawn.
But Dustwalk’s celebrations had nothing on those at the Rebel camp. Lanterns were strung between the trees so thick, I could barely see the branches for the light. Figs plucked straight from the trees, cakes so sweet my fingers stuck together. The air smelled of oil and incense and smoke and food and the desert and being alive in the desert.
I was fiercely conscious of the way the silk and muslin of my borrowed khalat felt on my skin. The golden cloth draped and clung like nothing I’d ever owned. I’d cinched it at the waist. Shazad’s figure was better filled out than mine, but I wasn’t going to be mistaken for a boy in this, especially not when she opened the top three clasps at my throat. I’d put up a bit of a fight, but Shazad was a better born fighter than I was, and in the end I had to let her loose on me. I’d figured she’d try and fail to turn me into something as bright and polished as she was. Instead, when she’d held up the mirror, a wild thing stared back.
My hair was twisted and half-bound, coming apart in waves that kissed the edge of my jaw and my neck like I’d been caught in a sandstorm. She’d painted my lips red enough that I imagined I could taste blood. My eyes were so dark around the blue that I feared for anyone caught in their crosshairs.
I looked like something that belonged in a revolution.
The pair of us drifted from one fire to another, people catching us to talk, sweeping me up in camp chatter as easily as Shazad. I ate honey cakes and washed them down with sweet wine. I spotted Jin across the campfire, playing some game or other with his sister and laughing as he lost.
There was a pair of cats by a fire. One blue, the other gray with a blue tuft on its head. I knelt down to scratch the blue one absently, and instead of a cat I found my hand on the stomach of a very naked, very blue boy.
“Happy Shihabian, General.” The boy saluted Shazad, who barely bothered to look down as she stepped over him. I tried to keep my eyes on his face and off any other part of him.
“Izz,” Shazad replied, nodding to the blue-skinned boy, “meet Amani. Amani, meet the twins. Or one of them. They just got back from doing a supply run for us this morning.”
I flushed and looked away, catching Shazad looking too damn amused. The other cat turned into a boy, too. He was identical to Izz, but his skin was dark. Only his hair was the same pale blue as his brother’s skin.
“And this is Maz.” Shazad gestured.
Maz grinned. “The one and only.”
I glanced from him to his twin. “Who taught you to count?”
The twins beamed at me. “So you’re the new Demdji,” Izz said, standing to inspect me with no mind to how bare he was. “We wanted to meet you.”
“We were wondering if you might be our sister,” Maz said. “On account of your eyes.” He gestured to his hair, an unnatural blue, a few shades off from my eyes. If we’d both inherited it from our Djinn fathers, it might be that we shared one. The realization that I might suddenly have a brother after seventeen years unsettled me.
“I’ve always wanted a sister,” Izz said brightly. “Have you met Imin? She and Hala had the same Djinni father, you know. Their mothers lived on the same street in Izman.” So I was responsible for Hala’s golden-eyed sister risking her life in the Gallan camp. It seemed I couldn’t stop doing things to make her hate me.
“Amani’s not our sister, though.” Maz looked faintly disappointed as he said it. “Or else we wouldn’t be able to say that she’s not our sister.”
“Still!” Izz said, perking up. “You might be able to change your shape like us. That would be just as good.”
“Do you want a drink?” Shazad blessedly pulled me away from the naked twins.
The dancing started soon after. I’d never danced properly at Shihabian before. Not with Tamid’s injured leg. I couldn’t stand to leave him out. But my body loosened soon enough and was weaving through the sparks from the fire, from one partner to the next. As drink flowed more freely and people got sloppier, we spun more wildly. I careened round Shazad dancing with Bahi, and a pair of hands belonging to my next partner grabbed me, spinning me around to face him.
I was chest to chest with Jin. We both stopped, letting the dancing go on around us. I could feel the warmth of his hands through the delicate fabric of the khalat. After weeks of my being a boy around him, everything that made me a girl was in his hands. His eyes traveled over me slowly, resting for just a second on the red sheema tied around my waist. It was the one he’d given to me. All the way back in Sazi. “You look like you were born out of fire.”
“Jin—” I started. I never finished. Midnight dropped like a cloak over the sky like it always did on Shihabian. One moment there were fires and lanterns and stars and moonlight, and then there was just blackness.
No matter that the Buraqi were fewer and the Djinn didn’t live alongside men anymore, no matter how many factories rose up filled with iron and smoke: this was magic that didn’t fade. It lived in the memory of the world itself. The first true dark, when matches wouldn’t strike, tinder wouldn’t catch, and stars hid. Jin’s hands slipped away from me, and I felt even his presence fade. I couldn’t follow him. Not in this kind of dark. All of us stood completely still where we’d stopped. Waiting for the light to come back.