I sucked in a breath so quickly the match went out. The Sin Maker’s laugh filled the darkness that rushed back in around us, bouncing off the walls as I fumbled to find another.
There were stories of all the Djinn going by a hundred different names. Bahadur was also known as the Once King of Massil, the Maker of the Sand Sea, and the Breaker of Abbadon. But the Sin Maker wasn’t just another campfire story. His tale wasn’t that of a greedy mortal outwitted by a First Being, or a wish granted to a worthy beggar, or even a Djinni falling in love with a princess.
The Sin Maker was from the Holy Books.
After the Destroyer of Worlds brought death into an immortal world, and the Djinn created mortality, one Djinni created sin. He betrayed all of humanity. Though he stood with the other Djinn when they created the First Hero, he did not celebrate with his brethren when they succeeded in making mortals to challenge their enemy. Instead, while the others revelled in their victory, the Sin Maker slipped away and sought to kill the First Hero before he could challenge the Destroyer of Worlds. If he had succeeded, he would have stopped the world’s only hope. But the other Djinn caught him before he could slay their creation. And when they did, the Djinn knew one of their own must’ve made a deal with the Destroyer of Worlds behind their backs to challenge them thus.
He was a traitor to his own kind. The first traitor the world ever knew.
I finally found another match. I struck it, trying to keep my hands steady. It was useless; the flame trembled.
‘They say …’ I hesitated, not sure what to ask first. They say you’ve been banished to be imprisoned among the stars. But I could see that wasn’t true. ‘They say you betrayed the First Hero.’ It came out an accusation.
‘They do say that,’ he agreed. He tilted his head, those fiery eyes raking across me. ‘You look a little bit like the First Hero, you know,’ he said. ‘You would think that after thousands of years I could forget her face. But I see her every moment I sit here in the dark. That is a worse punishment than these chains.’
Had he just said her? I thought of every image I’d ever seen of the First Hero, illuminated on manuscripts, painted on tiles in prayer houses. All of them a dark-haired, armoured man, wielding a sword. But the Sin Maker had been there. ‘The First Mortal was a woman?’
‘Of course. My immortal brethren lost their lives in the thousands when we faced the Destroyer of Worlds. We knew we were no match for her. So we didn’t create a soldier in our own image; we made one in hers.’ His ember eyes took on a far-off look. ‘Her hair was like the night, her skin was like the sand, and for her eyes, we stole the colour from the sky itself.’ He drifted back to the present. ‘And I didn’t betray her. I loved her.
‘I loved her before any of my brethren knew love. So I tried to keep her away from death. She was too brave for her own good. I feared she would die trying to face the Destroyer of Worlds. But my brethren didn’t know what it was to love yet, especially not to love something that would die.’ His eyes swept across me. ‘And now the whole world is marked by their hypocrisy.’ He despised me, I realised. Because of what I was. Proof that one of the Djinn who had punished him for loving a mortal woman had found a mortal woman to love, too. ‘I suppose they know now what it is to be afraid for another. But back then they only knew selfish fear. Fear of their own death, not of the death of another. And she was a shield from that. Made to be used, not saved.’
The flame had burned down to my fingers without me noticing. The snap of heat made me drop the match in surprise, and it snuffed out as it hit the ground.
The Sin Maker didn’t stop speaking as I fumbled for a fresh match.
‘My brethren locked me in here to keep me from protecting the First Hero at the cost of their own lives.’ His voice echoed through the dark. ‘They set a mortal guard outside, and they left him with an endless supply of food and drink so that he never left his post.’ The chest that Noorsham had found. ‘The guard was to visit me once a year and ask me if I was sorry for betraying my own kind.’ I knew the story. The Sin Maker was doomed to be apart from the earth until the day he atoned for his sin. ‘Only when I said I was sorry would I be released.’
I struck a fresh match.
‘I was not sorry in the short life of my first guard. Especially when he told me that she had died. He told me my son was fighting in her place now, using the name of the First Hero as she had. I was not sorry in the lifetime of my next guard either, or the one who came after that. After a time, they stopped coming as often as they had. Then they stopped coming altogether. They forgot about me. Now it is only my so-called brothers who come to see me, when they remember. They bring me news. Bahadur was the last.’ His eyes scraped over me. ‘Bahadur never changes. He tries to hide his children, ever since the first one died. The princess with the sun in her hands who fell from the walls. He gives you all those eyes like hers….’ He trailed off. I didn’t know if he meant Princess Hawa or the First Hero now. ‘But he never can hide you, because he gives you all far too much power. He thinks it will help keep you safe. But all it does is make you burn too brightly and too quickly, and then you snuff out.’ The flame in my fingers wavered; it was burning low, but it had some life left to it. ‘He’s so desperate to protect you that he gets you all killed.’
‘The Bahadur you’re talking about sounds real different from the one I know,’ I said, trying not to sound bitter. I remembered my father watching me mercilessly as the knife plunged towards my stomach, ready to let me die. I remembered railing at him for letting my mother die and finding no remorse there. I remembered the stories of Princess Hawa, his first daughter, who had died long ago fighting in the war the Djinn were too cowardly to fight on their own. She’d received no help from him.
I had wanted to know why he couldn’t save them. I had my answer. Djinn who tried to save humans ended up here. Like this.
The Sin Maker smiled, like he could read some of what I was thinking in my traitor eyes. ‘Your father came to ask me if I was sorry. That was nearly two tens of years past,’ he said, like he was trying to decide how old I was. ‘Nearly.’
Nearly. But not quite. I could guess the true number. I was seventeen. So was Noorsham. Our father had come here for the Sin Maker’s penance and found our mothers instead.
‘You owe me gratitude, daughter of Bahadur.’
A small, almost hysterical laugh bubbled up in my chest. ‘Because your imprisonment made me?’
He rattled his chains conspicuously just as the light snuffed out again, leaving only his voice in the dark. ‘I might know a way to thank me.’
The silence in the cave was palpable as the matches in the box rattled together. I slid one of them over the sandpaper so I could see him again.
Truth was I wanted to release him. We were going up against an impossible barrier. We needed an ally like him. But I had to ask all the same. ‘Are you sorry?’
The Sin Maker got to his feet slowly, bringing himself to his full height as he faced me. ‘Have you ever been in love, daughter of Bahadur?’ I was suddenly keenly aware of the rope around my waist, stretching through solid stone back to Jin’s hand. I didn’t answer. ‘Is there anything you wouldn’t do to save them if you could?’
I was still silent. This time I really didn’t know the answer. I would take a bullet to hold on to Jin; I had once, and I had a scar to prove it. But the Sin Maker would have doomed the whole world for the First Hero. I didn’t know if I was selfish enough to doom the whole world for Jin. I didn’t know that I was selfless enough not to.
‘No,’ he said finally, watching me struggle. ‘I’m not sorry.’
‘How would you like to be freed anyway?’
I had the satisfaction of catching him off guard. The Sin Maker tilted his head to the side just a little. ‘And why would a daughter of Bahadur the noble do that?’ he asked warily.
I ran my tongue across my dry lips before finally settling on the part of the truth I wanted to tell. ‘There are some people I care about, and there’s a good chance they’ll die if I don’t get to them soon. I want to save them.’ Like you wanted to save her. It hung unsaid between us.
‘So it’s a trade you want? My help for my freedom?’
‘Something like that.’ I could already see him burning a little brighter. But for once, I had the advantage on him. I might not have been alive as long as he had, but I had lived in the world with mortality a whole lot longer. And I knew centuries of stories about making deals with Djinn. Only the gifts given willingly by Djinn ever brought good. The rest – cheated or bargained out of them – brought ruin. One misplaced word brought disaster instead of fortune. One slippery, undefined turn of phrase left all the room the Djinn needed for us slower, stupider mortals to slip off the edge.
The Sin Maker hated me. I could see it written all over him. He hated me because I was mortal, because I existed through the sacrifice of a hero he had loved long, long ago. And I was the child of one who had chained him up. He wouldn’t give me anything willingly. Not even in exchange for his freedom after centuries. And if he tried, I couldn’t win. I couldn’t outsmart him. ‘You’re thinking that you’ll trick me,’ I said, stilling the thoughts roiling in his mind. ‘That I’ll try to bind you to me, to give you orders. But I don’t want to do that.’
‘What do you want then, daughter of Bahadur?’
‘I don’t want to fight you.’ I wanted to rest. I was tired. I was wrung dry by this war. By leading. By everything. ‘I don’t want to play games where I weigh every word I say to check for loose footing and you prod at them to find the cracks to slip through. So here’s my offer: I want you to agree to do what I want.’
What I wanted was different from what I asked for. I might ask for our friends to be freed, but what I wanted was them alive, in one piece, not freed through death. I might want a way through Ashra’s Wall, but I didn’t want to release the Destroyer of Worlds, if she really was trapped behind it. I was asking him to agree not to the letter of my orders but the heart of them. ‘I want help,’ I said finally.
‘Help?’ The Sin Maker sounded interested.
‘Yes, agree to my terms and I will free you from this cave now, and from servitude to me when it is done.’
‘You drive a hard bargain.’ He was watching the match in my fingers burn down. ‘That’s your last match.’
‘It is,’ I said. ‘And it’ll be my last offer, too. I can leave here without you. But you can’t leave here without me.’
‘Then I agree,’ the Sin Maker said simply.
‘Say it.’
‘Amani Al-Bahadur.’ His tone wasn’t without sarcasm, but it was his words that mattered. ‘Your wish will be my command. I will honour what you want in exchange for my freedom from here. And eventually from you.’
I turned it over carefully. But he was right, we were running out of time. It was my last match. ‘Tell me your name,’ I said.
‘My name.’ It was my first want, my first order. I saw his jaw work, like it was unused to the word that was coming forwards. ‘It was given to me a very long time ago. My name is Zaahir.’
‘Zaahir, the Sin Maker,’ I repeated. And then I saw the rest of the words, the ones that had been carved into the arch above the door, which Tamid had read off for me. I spoke them out loud, carefully, painstakingly, ending with his name.
I finished almost breathless. Waiting for something to happen. For the circle around him to break, maybe. Or for his chains to shatter. A flash of light or fire. Or a clap of thunder to shake the mountain.
But all that happened was that Zaahir smiled at me as the flame of the match reached my fingers, close to extinguishing. The last thing I saw was him stepping over the line of the circle before the match died, plunging us both into darkness.