‘Then we may look weak. I had considered that and I don’t in fact need a lesson in political strategy from my son.’ The Sultan cut him off impatiently. ‘If we are lucky, it may give the Gallan soldiers who come with him some incentive to help keep the peace in Izman leading up to Auranzeb. The only alternative is to turn you over to Gallan justice. Perhaps you’d prefer that.’

Rahim’s jaw screwed itself shut.

‘Rahim saved my life.’ I couldn’t keep quiet any longer. The Sultan’s attention swung to me and immediately I regretted talking. But I was already going now. ‘He ought to be rewarded, not threatened.’ The Sultan didn’t speak and I didn’t back down. I couldn’t afford to now. ‘I figured I was here to tell the truth.’

Finally he seemed to check his temper. ‘She’s right. Your soldiers did well today, Rahim.’ Somehow it still didn’t sound like praise. ‘At your orders, no less.’ More like veiled suspicion.

‘Yes, they did.’ Rahim was as smart as his father. He didn’t offer excuses for his men obeying his orders over Kadir’s. He kept his answers short. Like a good soldier would. Or a traitor. Waiting to be dismissed.

‘The rebels raided an incoming shipment of weapons at the south gate yesterday.’ The Sultan spoke again. ‘How do you think they knew where those were, Rahim?’

I was sure the Sultan could hear my heart speed up. I knew exactly which shipment he meant. They knew because Rahim had told me and I’d told Sam. Did he suspect us? Was it an accusation? Or was he asking his son’s military advice as a peace offering? I prayed wildly that he wouldn’t turn the question on me, that it wouldn’t be in this moment that we lost everything.

‘There is a war going on.’ Rahim kept his eyes straight ahead, over his father’s head, like a soldier at attention. ‘Your soldiers are unhappy. Unhappy soldiers drink and they talk.’ He chose his words so carefully that they were true. That I could have repeated them without hesitation. Though not carefully enough not to insult his father’s rule.

‘We killed two rebels in the raid,’ the Sultan said. My stomach clenched. A list of possible rebels I knew cascaded through my head. Imagining them all dead. Suddenly I desperately wanted to run to the Weeping Wall and Sam and find out who. Find out if I’d never be seeing Shazad again. Or Hala. Or one of the twins. But the Sultan wasn’t watching me. His gaze was on Rahim. Waiting for a reaction? ‘Next time I want one alive for questioning. Your soldiers from Iliaz seem well trained. Have Lord Bilal designate half of them to join the city guards on patrol.’ My shoulders eased in relief.

‘As you wish, Father.’ Rahim didn’t wait to be dismissed. He just offered his father a quick bow before turning on his heel.

And then it was just me and him. A long moment passed in silence. I half thought the Sultan had forgotten me. I was about to point out that I hadn’t been dismissed when the Sultan spoke again.

‘You’re from the end of the desert.’ It wasn’t what I’d been expecting.

‘The very end,’ I agreed. There was nothing after Dustwalk but uninhabitable mountains.

‘They say your people’s blood runs thicker with the old stories than elsewhere.’ That much was true. That was how Tamid had known how to control Noorsham. How to trap a Djinni. All the things that the north had forgotten. ‘Do you know the stories of the Abdals?’

I did.

In the days before humans the Djinn made servants out of dirt. Simple creatures made from clay and animated only when they were given orders by a Djinni. Good for nothing except to follow orders from their immortal masters.

‘The Abdals were as much their creation as we are, and yet the holy texts refer to humans as the first children of the Djinn. I understand why now.’ He riffled his hands through his hair as he leaned back in his chair. It was an exasperated gesture that looked so much like Ahmed it made me homesick. ‘The Abdals didn’t have it in them to be nearly so difficult as children.’

‘Abdals would be a fair bit harder to leave a country to, though.’ It slipped out before I could bite my tongue. I was too comfortable with him. He might look like him, but he wasn’t Ahmed. But the Sultan surprised me by laughing.

‘True enough. Though it would be easier to govern over a country full of Abdals. I wouldn’t have to constantly try to convince them I am doing what is best for them.’ One of the maps pinned up on the wall showed the whole world. Miraji was in the middle. Amonpour crowding our borders on one side. Gallandie looming over the north, swallowing countries as it went towards Jarpoor and the Ionian Peninsula and Xicha, the country that had sheltered Ahmed, Jin, and Delila for years. Albis a fortress holding against Gallandie’s expansion in the sea and Gamanix on land. It was a big world. ‘The people of Miraji are rising up in protest of the Gallan, of the Albish, of the Xichian, of all our foreign friends and enemies.’

I swallowed and felt the pain in my throat from where I’d almost just been choked to death by one such foreigner. ‘So don’t renew an alliance with them.’

I knew I’d overstepped. I knew as soon as the words left my mouth. But the Sultan didn’t rage at me the way he had at his sons. He didn’t sneer at me. He didn’t try to explain to me like he had when we sat across from each other over dinner in the next room.

‘You’re dismissed, Amani.’ And somehow that was worse than anything else he could’ve said.