‘This was your plan all along, wasn’t it?’ Sam had his arms wrapped around me, pressing me to his chest so I couldn’t escape him talking. ‘Lure me down to the dead end of nowhere with promises of heroic deeds, all just to get close to me.’
‘That’s an awfully convoluted plan.’ I was trying to find a comfortable place to settle my arms that wasn’t his shoulders, but there really weren’t a whole lot of options. ‘If I was going to take advantage of you, I could’ve done it back in the harem.’
We were standing together, chest to chest, trying our hardest to choke out any air between us. It might’ve looked romantic if it weren’t for Jin looping a rope around us, securing us like we were some ship’s anchor about to be pushed overboard.
My brother was in the corner, unconscious and bound up in the shackles we’d taken off Sam after his brush with the firing squad. We needed to get this done before dawn came and Noorsham’s disciples woke up and wondered where he was. They would find him and free him eventually, but I was planning on being long gone by then.
Tamid was fretting anxiously at the mouth of the tunnel. My one-time friend might’ve thought he was done with our rebellion when we got here, but he was the only person I trusted to drug my brother safely. And more than that, I’d needed him to read the words in the first language scrawled over the door.
‘But isn’t this so much more romantic?’ Sam went on wistfully. ‘Braving near-certain death with me.’ The rope tightened so that I was pressed with my ear against his shoulder. I couldn’t see his face, but I was sure he was laughing at me. ‘Just like Cynbel and Sorcha or Leofric and Elfleda.’
‘I have no idea who those people are,’ I said into his shirt.
‘Albish love stories,’ he said. ‘You’d like Leofric and Elfleda. He’s a thief, she’s a powerful sorceress. They both die tragically at the end. That’s what happens in all great love stories.’
‘Well, it’s a good thing we’re not in love, then.’ Sam’s flirting had got a whole lot less outrageous the further south we’d got. Half of me thought it was because he and Jin were actually getting along. Better than I’d seen Jin get along with Ahmed in months, now I thought about it. Sam was only back to flirting with me now because he was trying to lighten the mood.
We were about to walk through solid mountain into unknown territory.
I’d made Tamid read the words carved above the doorway to me. ‘They’re in the first language,’ he had said, furrowing his brow as he read them by torchlight. ‘Something about … a prisoner?’ We all felt that simple word settle over us as he said it.
The man in the mountain. Monster or mortal maybe. But definitely not just myth.
Well, we’d come here looking for powerful help, and we might’ve found it.
‘We’ll need a name to open the door,’ Jin had said. ‘Like back … back in the Dev’s Valley.’ He cut himself off before he said back home. But I heard it.
‘There’s no name.’ Tamid squinted at the words above the doorway. ‘But there is something else, I think it’s …’ I saw the realisation settle over him a moment before he said the next words, low and reverent. ‘I think they’re the words to free a Djinni.’
There it was. The thing Tamid had been looking for in books. Our salvation. Not recorded on any paper in a northern library but buried in the mountains here far in the south. It was an answer, too. What to expect beyond that door. Not a man. A Djinni.
It didn’t matter that we didn’t have the right words to get the painted door to open for us. We had alternative ways in.
Nobody asked who would be going through with Sam. Nobody needed to.
Now, standing tied to Sam, I made Tamid read the words above the door out to me again. I repeated them back carefully.
‘Good,’ he said, like a patient teacher. He really would’ve made a good Holy Father. ‘And then at the end, you would say the Djinni’s true name—’
‘I know,’ I cut him off. ‘I’ve called Djinn before.’ Tamid looked away, shamefaced, that brief moment between us breaking as I reminded him that he was at least partly responsible for the Djinn currently imprisoned under the palace.
Jin pulled on the knot, dragging Sam and me together a little tighter. ‘That’s the best I can do without running out of rope,’ he said. The last thing I needed was to get separated from Sam halfway through the mountain. And the rope gave us something to guide us back out. Jin ran his hand along his jaw, a nervous gesture.
‘I was going to say, Just imagine it’s like diving through deep water.’ He smiled at me ruefully. ‘And then I remembered that you’re from—’
‘Here?’
‘I’m going to teach you how to swim someday,’ he promised. ‘Just try to stay alive long enough.’
It was time to go.
‘Take a deep breath,’ Sam said, sounding serious for the first time since we got here. ‘And whatever you do, don’t stop walking.’ I did as I was told, taking in all the air my lungs would hold, and he did the same. And then he took one big step, and we were submerged in stone.
There was dark and then there was the dark of being inside a mountain wall.
It pressed in on all sides of me as we moved, fighting against the ancient stone trying to settle back into the place it had occupied for thousands of years as we squeezed through. It felt like hands pressing against me, trying to pulverise me. We took another step, and then another. The further we went, the worse it got. I could feel my eyelashes being pressed against my cheek. My lungs were going to burst from not breathing. I was going to die entombed in a mountain.
And then air hit my body, my left arm first, then the rest of me, as we half stumbled through, plunging to the ground, ripping our bodies free of the stone. Sam collapsed on top of me, gasping for breath. We were still in the dark, but at least there was air here, even if it tasted stale, like it had been trapped in this stone chamber forever.
For a second, all I could hear was our heavy breathing echoing around cave walls. The chamber we were in was big, judging by the sound of it. I heard Sam take a breath, like he was about to say something. To ask if I was all right or make some joke.
But the voice that slid out of the darkness wasn’t his. ‘You are very late indeed.’
I fought to keep my heart slow as I fumbled for the knot that attached me to Sam. My shaking fingers finally found it and I struggled to untie it. I needed at least to face whatever this was standing up.
‘I must say,’ the voice came again, echoing around the chamber unsettlingly as my fingers worked frantically, ‘your predecessors usually took the door.’
Finally the rope came apart. Sam rolled off me, his warmth and solidity disappeared, and suddenly I was alone in the dark. I fumbled for the matches in my pocket as I sat up.
I struck one, sending up a small flare of light against the total blackness. It was enough to see by. To see Sam, only a few feet away, slumped on the ground, exhausted from dragging me through stone. And, just beyond him, a man.
I stepped back instinctively, heart leaping in fear as the stranger smiled at us from the other side of the cave. I knew instantly even as he did that he wasn’t mortal. He was a Djinni. I’d summoned a whole host of immortals under the palace. I knew now how to recognise them. Their human shapes were too polished, too perfect, like they were made of burnished bronze instead of flesh. They somehow looked both ancient and young at the same time, like they’d seen a great deal but still forgotten to give their bodies the nicks and wear that made mortals look human. And this Djinni, his clothes were something out of another age, one so long gone it had been forgotten.
And then there were the burning red eyes, which had a slightly wild look in them. Like a quickly catching fire that might consume everything at any moment.
I held the match higher. Tight iron shackles were strapped around his arms and legs, darkened with age but strong all the same. And around him, there was a circle of iron to contain him. It looked identical to the ones where I’d trapped the Djinn under the palace. Like it had been made by the same hands.
‘Who are you?’ I asked. My voice sounded raspy and unsteady even to myself as it echoed around the chamber.
‘Who am I?’ he rasped back in an unkind imitation, making those burning red eyes go wide. And then they narrowed, fixing on me suspiciously. ‘Who are you that you come here without knowing me?’ I didn’t answer. There was something about him that made me not want to give him my name. I didn’t know what he might do with it. ‘And what is that?’ He nodded towards Sam, who was watching from one step behind me, like he was ready to bolt back through the wall at a moment’s notice. ‘He’s not one of ours.’ He sniffed as if he could suss Sam out. ‘He smells like damp earth. He’s a child made by our cowardly brethren in the green lands.’ He talked like the Holy Books, in ancient, labyrinthine language designed to ensnare the listener. ‘He doesn’t belong here. I don’t trust him.’
‘Always nice to be wanted,’ Sam muttered.
Silence descended. And lasted.
This Djinni, he wasn’t going to be any use to us if he was wary of Sam. He might talk to me though. I turned back towards my foreign friend, but I didn’t need to say anything. Sam started shaking his head as soon as he saw my expression in the flickering of the match. ‘No, I’m not leaving. You’ve lost your mind.’
‘Don’t you still owe me one for saving your life?’ I tried for lightness. Like the prospect of being imprisoned in this cavern with an immortal creature alone wasn’t terrifying.
‘Oh, sure, I see, because if I leave now, it would make us even. Since Jin will kill me if I come back through that wall without you, thus making you saving my life entirely moot.’ He ticked off the life or death count on his fingers like he was doing arithmetic.
I leaned in close to him, the match flickering close between us. ‘And other folks might die if we don’t get some help.’ The flame reached my fingers now, almost scalding them before I dropped the match quickly, extinguishing it on the cavern floor. ‘Sam,’ I said in the dark, fumbling for a new match. ‘Please.’
By the time I’d lit a new one, Sam looked resigned. ‘I’ll give you two measures of “Whistling Jenny”, and then I’m coming back for you.’
‘What’s a Jenny?’ I asked.
‘It’s not a … she’s … Never mind.’ He sounded frustrated, even though I wasn’t the one who was talking gibberish. ‘It’s a working song we use to measure time in the fields. There are ten measures of “Whistling Jenny” in an hour.’
‘Give me seven measures.’
‘Three,’ Sam haggled.
‘Five, and I agree not to tell Jin or Shazad about that time you tried to kiss me.’
‘Deal.’ Sam grabbed my hand, shaking it firmly. He picked up the lingering end of the rope that stretched back through solid stone all the way to the other side, where it was anchored by Jin. He quickly looped it around my waist, tying a hasty knot. ‘So I can find my way back to you.’ He grinned at me. But just before he let go, seriousness sank over him. ‘You’d better still be in one piece.’
And then he turned away, stepping out of the narrow pool of light cast by my match, keeping hold of the rope, and with one quick look back he was gone. And I was alone. Alone in the dark with a Djinni.
He was looking at me with wide, unblinking eyes. ‘Who is your father, little Demdji?’ he asked.
‘Why does that matter?’ I asked.
‘You asked me who I was.’ He hadn’t blinked at all; it was unsettling. ‘Mortal memories are short, but surely not so short that you’ve already forgotten that. Tell me who you are and I’ll tell you who I am.’ So it was a trade he wanted. Except I knew better than to take it at face value. Djinn traded in tricks and deceit. If I gave him anything, he might gain the upper hand on me. But if I didn’t give him anything, I might not gain anything. I didn’t have a whole lot of time to waste debating. On the other side of that wall, Sam was counting the minutes.
‘Bahadur. My father is Bahadur.’ A sly smile came over his face, like he’d finally solved a puzzle he’d been working at for a long time. ‘Your turn,’ I said quickly.
‘Well, daughter of Bahadur –’ he drew out my father’s name – ‘I used to have a name, it’s true. A long time ago. Before you were born. Before even your oldest ancestor was made,’ he said. ‘But it was taken from me some time ago. I am known without a name now. I am called only the Sin Maker.’