There were about a half dozen other girls I recognised from the harem in the water, too. A collection of Kadir’s wives, splashing around in the water, giggling, long white khalats sticking to them.

I’d been here long enough to realise that most of the women in the harem weren’t Mirajin. They were pale northern women stolen off ships, foreign-featured eastern girls sold as slaves, dark-skinned Amonpourian girls taken in border skirmishes. But there was no mistaking this girl for anything but desert born, even from behind. The linen stuck against her body from the steam that curled up from the baths; damp dark hair clung to her face. She didn’t exactly look like the all-powerful Sultima, the chosen vessel of the future Sultan of Miraji.

And then she looked up, startled by the sound of my footsteps, eyes darting over her shoulder towards me, and my heart leapt into my mouth.

Oh, damn every power in heaven and hell, what did I do to deserve this?

I was face-to-face with the Sultima I’d heard so much about. The only woman pure enough to conceive a child by the Sultim Kadir. The girl sent by God to assure the future of Miraji.

Only I knew her as my cousin Shira. And the only thing God had ever sent her to do was make my life a living hell.

Jin told me once fate had a cruel sense of humour. I was starting to believe him. First Tamid and now Shira. I’d crossed an entire desert but it was like I’d been dragged back home to face everything I’d left in my dust when I ran.

Shira looked as surprised as I was. Her mouth formed a small O before pressing tightly into a hard line. We stared at each other across the narrow stretch of tiles left between us. Our wills locked, the same way they’d done a hundred times across the tiny bedroom in my aunt’s house.

‘Well,’ Shira said. She’d lost her accent. I could hear it even in that one word. Or maybe not lost – smothered under something that passed for a northern accent. ‘Paint me purple and call me a Djinni if it isn’t my least favourite cousin.’

There was a retort on the tip of my tongue. I caught it from slipping out by the skin of my teeth. The Sultan has a Djinni, I reminded myself. He has a First Being trapped at his will and nothing is stopping him from using it against the rebels at any second. And then it could be over. For me. For Ahmed, Jin, Shazad, and the whole Rebellion.

I didn’t know much about other families, but I reckoned most of the time when you had to pretend to be nice to them, there weren’t this many lives at stake.

‘I thought you were dead,’ I said. You and Tamid both. Last time I’d seen Shira she’d been on a train racing towards Izman with Prince Naguib, taken captive because they figured there was a chance she’d know where I was going. And if they found me, they found Jin, and if they found Jin, they found the Rebellion.

After Jin and I had gotten off the train, she’d lost her use. Noorsham had told me she’d been left in the palace to die. Only she wasn’t just still alive. She was thriving. I wondered if she knew Tamid had survived being abandoned to fend for himself in this palace, too. If she knew what he was doing for the Sultan. If she even cared. She never had.

I shoved away thoughts of Tamid angrily. Shira was easier to face. It’d never been that complicated between us. We hated each other. Old hate was easier to face than Tamid’s new disdain.

‘You ought to know better than that.’ My cousin smiled that seductive smile at me. ‘Us desert girls are survivors. Although I’m curious about how you plan on surviving long here.’ I stepped under the iridescent stones of the archway and into the harem baths proper. I ignored the tendrils of steam curling around my body like clinging fingers. ‘Last time I saw you, weren’t you riding off with some rebel traitor? Traitors don’t survive long here.’ Her eyes darted across the baths pointedly towards where Kadir was lounging. The bathing hall was as wide across as the whole of Dustwalk, far enough that Kadir hadn’t noticed me yet. He picked something up from a pile at his elbow and tossed it in a high arc into the middle of the pool. As it caught the light I realised it was a ruby as big as my thumb.

It hit the water with a careless splash. A chaos of screeches and giggles followed as the six girls in the water dove towards where the ruby had disappeared under the surface, splashing and piling over each other as Kadir watched them hungrily. The shrieking and the splashing covered our voices.

‘Now, what do you think my prince would make of your allegiance to his traitor brother if I told him?’

My sudden fear must’ve been scrawled all over my face because Shira smiled like a cat who’d eaten a canary.

God damn her. I’d come here for help, not to get sold out by her. ‘Shira.’ I closed the last few steps between us from the entrance to the edge of the water, dropping down in a crouch next to her, lowering my voice. ‘If you tell Kadir I’m part of—’ I caught the words back before I said them out loud. ‘—what you know,’ I said carefully, eyes darting towards a girl who’d just surfaced near us in the water. ‘I swear to God, Shira, if you breathe a word, I’ll—’ I scrambled for something to threaten her with, just like the bargaining games we used to play in Dustwalk. She wouldn’t tell her mother I’d been out all night with Tamid and I wouldn’t tell her father she’d been in the stables letting Fazim get his hands under her clothes. Only this wasn’t Dustwalk any more, and if she told on me, I’d get more than a switch to the back – I’d get myself, and probably a few hundred other people, killed. And then it slipped out: ‘I’ll just have to go ahead and tell him that kid of yours isn’t his.’