‘The stories make it sound easy – you can simply call a First Being so long as you have their true name.’ Like princesses and paupers alike in the stories, calling for help at their hour of need with a true name earned through some virtuous deed at the start of the tale. ‘But you need so much more than that. You also need to be able to call them in the first language.’ The Sultan pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket. ‘And you need one more thing. Care to venture a guess?’

I didn’t take the paper. ‘If I were taking a stab in the dark’ – I heard the bile on my own tongue – ‘I’d say it was a Demdji.’

So this was why he was willing to pay a Demdji’s weight in gold. This was why he’d shoved iron under my skin. He didn’t need my powers. He was going to order me to summon a Djinni.

I knew the stories of the wars that the Djinn had fought alongside humanity. Adil the Conqueror who leashed a Djinni in iron and brought cities to their knees before he came face-to-face with the Grey Prince. The Djinni who built the walls of Izman in a single night as a gift to his beloved. A Demdji’s power was nothing compared to what I knew a Djinni could do.

I thought he’d order me to take the paper. But the Sultan just smiled indulgently. ‘A true language.’ A language without lies. ‘A true tongue.’ A Demdji who couldn’t lie. Who could say You will come to me in the first language and make it so. ‘And a true name. In this case, the same one buried under your skin. Part of your true name.’ My eyes shot to the paper without meaning to. ‘Your father’s name.’

My father’s. My real father. The Sultan hadn’t ordered me to take the paper. But still my hand twitched towards it against my judgement. My father was in my reach.

‘Take it,’ the Sultan ordered finally. ‘If you want to.’

My fingers closing around the paper at the order betrayed me. I wanted to let go of the paper. I wanted to fight it. But I wanted to know, too. I raised the paper so I could see it in the light from the well.

And there it was.

Black ink scrawled onto white paper. My father’s name.

Bahadur.

For the first time in my seventeen years I knew my real name. The same one that was etched into bronze and slipped beneath my skin.

I was Amani Al-Bahadur.

‘Read it aloud.’ It was an order. And I couldn’t disobey.

My mouth moved against my will, reciting the ancient language written on the paper. The words almost fell out, so easily for a language I didn’t speak, like they belonged there. Like the Djinni half of me recognised this language better than any other.

I got to the end too quickly, and my father’s name slid across my tongue as easily as fat over a fire. And then I was done. I fell silent.

Nothing happened for a moment.

Then the iron circle burst into flames.

Chapter 15

I staggered back as a huge column of blue fire rose up from the circle in front of me. It was higher than the low-vaulted ceiling, filling the well all the way up to the sky. It burned hot and quick and brighter than any flame I’d ever seen. It fought for a few moments at the edges of the iron circle, at some invisible barrier, before, just as suddenly as it had appeared, pulling itself into the centre of the circle, taking a shape.

I blinked against the light floating in my eyes, like I’d just stared straight at the sun and gone blind for a moment.

Then my vision cleared and I saw my father for the first time.

Bahadur looked like a man who had been made out of fire.

No. That wasn’t right. I might not be so devout as some, but I knew my holy stories. Djinn weren’t humans made out of fire. We were Djinn made out of dirt and water with just a hint of their flame to give us life. A spark from a bonfire. We were a far duller version of them.

Bahadur’s skin shifted and moved with dark blue flames. Flames the same colour as my eyes.

I didn’t feel heat pouring off him. But I could feel something else, something that I couldn’t name but that went past my skin and struck me in the soul. He stood as tall as one of the huge pillars down here in this ancient palace vault. Only he wasn’t just holding up a palace. He was holding up the world. One of God’s First Beings who had made the First Mortal. Who had made all of mankind.

Who’d made me.

I realised that what I was feeling was power. True, raw power, the kind that didn’t come from a title or a crown but from the soul of the world itself.

He kept shifting as I stared at him. And I realised he was shrinking and shifting at the same time, changing his appearance. It reminded me of the way Imin shifted when changing shape. Until he wasn’t blue fire and light any more. He was dark skin and dark hair, as much flesh and blood as any desert dweller. Still, even blunted to look like us, there was no mistaking that he was different. He was too handsome, too carefully carved, too perfect to look like a mortal man. And he hadn’t made his eyes look human. They were made of the same changing fire as the rest of him, except they burned more steadily. They burned white-hot around the edges, and bright blue around a perfect black pupil. And they seemed to scrape me inside out.

‘You called me.’ Three such mundane words that carried so much weight. His attention shifted slowly to the Sultan. ‘Though not, I see, for yourself.’

The Sultan was a powerful man. But he was a man just the same, and standing next to a Djinni he looked like nothing more than a spark hovering around a bonfire.

‘Now.’ Bahadur sounded almost bored as he spoke to the Sultan. ‘What would you ask of me? Is it gold? Power? Love? Eternal life? All four, perhaps?’