‘And right now it’ll be too well defended. There’s no way we can get anywhere near it,’ Shazad said. ‘Not unless we draw the Sultan and his whole army away from guarding it. Which, as it turns out, wars are very useful tools for.’
Everyone stared at Shazad. ‘Are you suggesting we start a war just to get Amani into the palace?’ someone said from the back of the room.
‘No,’ Shazad said. ‘We need to start a war anyway. I’m suggesting we use the war to make our odds of winning a little better by giving Amani the opportunity to sneak into the palace.’
Even if I could get inside I wouldn’t be able to deactivate the machine without the right words to free the Djinn in the first language. Words not even Tamid knew.
‘Bringing us to our final problem,’ Ahmed pressed on. ‘Which is that Amani is currently … incapacitated.’ That settled the room soon enough. I self-consciously rubbed the spot on my arm where I could feel one of the pieces of iron sewed into my flesh. It was like prodding at a loose tooth. An instinct, a tic, feeling that little shoot of pain when I pressed it in, reminding myself this wasn’t truly part of me. Reminding me I was useless with my body riddled with iron scars.
‘Where are we on finding a Holy Man we can trust?’ Shazad asked, leaning her knuckles on the table. ‘Someone to cut the iron out of Amani?’ I knew what the words cost her. In the months since Bahi had died, I didn’t know if I’d truly heard Shazad talk so plainly about Holy Fathers. Not even when I’d been shot through the stomach. But then again, I had been unconscious for most of that.
‘More or less exactly where we were the last three times you asked me that,’ said Sam. He was on edge. ‘Holy Men are largely in the pockets of your Sultan. They’d all sell you out in a heartbeat sooner than they’d help you.’
And Tamid couldn’t be trusted not to stick a blade in me either, given how he felt about the Rebellion.
‘Can’t we take a chance?’ I rubbed my finger along my forearm, worrying at the piece of metal below there. I wanted to claw it out of my skin myself.
‘No,’ Jin said without hesitation, speaking for the first time. Everyone’s head swivelled towards him. Jin didn’t tend to speak up at war meetings, unless he had something that needed saying. Which meant folk tended to listen. Only there was an uneasiness among the rebels now. He hadn’t disappeared on just me. He’d abandoned the whole Rebellion. ‘We’re not taking chances with you.’
‘So either we find someone,’ I concluded, ‘or I’ve got to walk into the palace more or less defenceless.’
‘Welcome back to being human,’ Shazad said. ‘I’ll get you some guns.’
*
‘Sam.’ I caught him as the kitchen emptied He was peeling an orange stolen out of one of the baskets hanging from the ceiling. ‘I need your help.’ I stopped speaking as Shazad brushed past me, calling out to someone quickly about the weapons supply. That earned me a raised eyebrow from Sam.
‘Something your general can’t help you with?’
I lowered my voice as I pulled him into an out-of-the-way corner. ‘I think I know somebody who might be able to help get the iron out of my skin. Not a Holy Man. A woman. My aunt.’
Sam paused, orange wedge halfway to his mouth. ‘The woman who drugged you and kidnapped you and sold you to the harem? Yes, she seems very trustworthy.’
‘Please, Sam, I need help. You walked in and out of the harem at will for months. You have no idea what it’s like to be in there and feel powerless to leave or defend yourself.’ I tugged up my shirt, showing the scar on my hip, the same one I’d shown him the first time we met. ‘This happened even when I had my power. If I have to, I’ll walk into the palace again without it, but I’m twice as likely to get killed doing that and you know it. But I’d take just about any risk not to. Now, will you help me?’
Sam considered, peeling off another piece of the orange. ‘How much?’
‘How much what?’
‘How much are you going to pay me to find your oh-so-very-trustworthy aunt?’
My shoulders sagged. ‘Really? After all this, you want to keep pretending you’re doing it for the money?’
‘Why else would I be doing it?’ he asked. ‘I’m a bandit, remember?’
‘Because you want to be something more than that,’ I said finally. It had been a gamble. A guess. But the way it fell off my tongue so easily I was sure I was right. I’d watched Sam walk through walls with injuries for this rebellion. Walk into Auranzeb as a traitor to his own people for this rebellion. He wasn’t doing this for money any more. ‘That’s why you’re still here.’
‘That’d be an awfully stupid reason.’ Sam scratched his eyebrow. I stayed silent. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Chapter 42
As it turned out, the Hidden House wasn’t all that hidden. It was a bathhouse at the intersection of two twisting streets lined with colourful awnings in the middle of Izman. To me, they looked exactly like every other street we’d passed through on the way there. The city was an immense maze, and if it wasn’t for Ahmed gently nudging me around twists and turns, I’d have gotten lost sooner than I’d ever been in the desert.
As we got closer, steam heavy with the smells of flowers and spices curled out of lattice windows, sliding its fingers into my hair, taunting me with memories of the harem. Ahmed gave me a small nudge, indicating I should look up. As I did, the name finally made sense. All the buildings in this corner of Izman seemed to stand an even three storeys tall. The Hidden House stretched up two storeys higher than any of the others around it. And the roof was shielded by canopies of vines and desert flowers that tumbled down the walls, hiding it from prying eyes.