At some point I became aware that something had changed. I was being moved. And I could hear voices. Like I was listening from the bottom of a well.

‘You know the Sultim likes Mirajin girls.’

The Sultim. I knew that name. Far away, I knew what it meant.

‘This one isn’t for the harem.’ Another voice. A woman’s. One I knew. It made me want to reach for my power. I stretched out my mind for it. The darkness started to creep in again. I lost my grip on the sand and the voices. The last thing I heard before it swallowed me again was ‘—dangerous.’

A spark of consciousness woke at the very back of my mind.

Dangerous.

They’d better believe I was.

*

I came to all at once, a dozen bits of awareness competing for my attention. The cold of the table under me, the sharp pain riddling my body. The crystal-white glare of sunlight on my eyelids, a cacophony of birds, and something else, something that tasted unnatural. More drugs, I realised.

But I finally managed to open my eyes. The room was bright and airy and flooded with light reflecting brightly off a marble ceiling above me. The stone was the colour of every sky I’d ever seen all at once. It was the pink and red of the wounded dawn, the dark violet of a calm dusk, and as brilliantly unsettling as the clear blue glare of high noon.

I’d never been anywhere this rich before. Not even the emir’s house in Saramotai.

The palace. I was in the Sultan’s palace.

We’d spent long hours trying to figure out ways to get more spies into the Sultan’s palace. Months easing people from our side in through the kitchens. And I’d just been carried unconscious over the threshold like it was nothing.

And now I needed to get out.

I might’ve laughed at the irony of it if I didn’t think it’d hurt so much.

The world was starting to put itself back together as I took stock of the situation. I was weaker than I ought to be. And I could already feel my eyelids getting heavy again, wanting to return to sleep. I had to sit up. I pressed my elbows into the cold marble slab and tried to push myself up. Pain stabbed across my entire body at the movement. I hissed air through my teeth and the sheet that’d been covering me slithered away.

I grabbed at it, and pinpricks of pain screamed back at me across my arms. Then I caught sight of myself for the first time. Under the soft white sheet I was wrapped in bandages. They covered almost every part of my body. Wrists to shoulders. Around my chest and all the way down my back. Tentatively I reached down and grazed my fingers over my legs. My hand met cloth instead of skin. I looked like a doll sewn out of linen. Only dolls didn’t usually spot fresh blood like I was.

And here I’d been figuring nothing would be worse than waking up shackled on a ship.

I didn’t exactly like being proven wrong.

And as the pain of whatever was under the bandages subsided, I realised I was alone. That was a nice surprise. I spied a familiar blue khalat flung over a nearby chair. The one Shazad had given me before Imin’s wedding. I didn’t even know how many days it’d been since then.

Moving awkwardly with my sore muscles and bandaged limbs, I retrieved the stained fabric and pulled it on, fumbling with the tiny buttons that ran up the front. At least my hands seemed undamaged. Now I just wished I had a fistful of sand or a pistol to fill them. Hell, at this point I’d even take a knife. But I couldn’t see any weapons among the clutter of the room.

Gauzy pink curtains fluttered from a huge archway. I moved gingerly toward them. Wind that tasted of familiar desert heat rippled them as I passed out onto the balcony.

Izman sprawled out below me.

It was like nothing I’d ever seen. A flat, blue-tiled roof with a gushing fountain on it leaned close enough to its neighbour to whisper city secrets. Beyond that, yellow flowers tumbled down sun-baked walls that were competing for space in the shade of their neighbours. Purple canopies crowned another house, and a golden dome pressed against minarets that jutted up like spears challenging the sky.

Jin said once that I couldn’t understand how big Izman really was. If I ever saw him alive again, I might even be glad enough to admit that he’d been right.

It looked like a jumble of rooftops that went all the way to the end of the world. Only I knew that wasn’t right. Somewhere out there was the desert I’d come from. I reached for it with my mind. For the sand and grit. But I couldn’t feel anything. The desert had been ruthlessly polished out of here. I’d have to reach beyond the palace walls for that.

I gauged the distance between the top of the wall and the balcony.

I could probably make that jump on a good day. The throbbing pain in my body reminded me today was not a good day. But all it would take was one leap of faith, and I could be in the city. If I made it. If not, I would be a broken body in the garden below. Which still might be better than getting stuck here.

No. I was going to live to see Shazad again, like she’d asked me to promise. I was going to live to see Ahmed on the throne. And I was going to live to make Jin explain just why he thought he could kiss me after leaving me.

I’d have to go through the door. Only I wasn’t about to try to walk through it like I was a guest instead of a prisoner. There would be a guard outside, no doubt about it.

There were no weapons in the room, but there was a glass jar filled with dried flowers. I picked it up off its shelf and positioned myself with my back flat against the door. And then let it go. It shattered on the colourful tiles.

That ought to get someone’s attention.