‘I don’t want anything brought in.’ I kept an eye on Kadir, getting closer now. ‘I need to get a message out. Can you do that?’

‘I suppose so.’ Shira ran her tongue over her teeth, deliberately slowly. She was trying to keep me here. ‘I’d need some time.’

‘I don’t have a whole lot of that. Can you help me or do I tell your husband that you climbed into another man’s bed and get you hanged?’ He was halfway across to us now.

‘I can help.’ Shira set her jaw angrily, resting her hand on her middle. ‘If you—’

‘Come to join the game?’ Kadir called, interrupting whatever Shira had been about to say next. He was close enough to be heard. His eyes travelled up and down my body. ‘You’re a little overdressed.’

I pushed myself to my feet. Shazad had taught me enough to know that you didn’t stand against an enemy from lower ground. ‘I’m dressed just fine for leaving, Your Exalted Highness.’

Kadir made a noise at the back of his throat, like a hum of agreement. Except it sounded an awful lot like a laugh. ‘You are free to leave, of course.’ He was rolling a perfect white pearl between his thumb and forefinger. He circled around in front of me, standing between me and the way out. Then he tossed the pearl carelessly aside, letting it land in the water. The girls, who’d been watching the exchange, didn’t scramble for it. ‘As soon as you bring me back that pearl.’

‘I can’t swim,’ I said. Anywhere else I’d be able to stand up for myself. I’d be able to fight him. But I was helpless. I tried to hold myself like I wasn’t.

‘Then you can’t leave.’ He smirked. ‘That pearl is very precious to me.’

I couldn’t fight him. Just the thought of raising my fist and putting it in his too-pleased-with-himself-looking face made the tug of the Sultan’s orders twinge in my stomach. And I wasn’t sure what he’d try to do if I walked out. What he could do. Or whether the Sultan had warned him against hurting me.

If the Sultan cared whether his Demdji prize got hurt. I didn’t even know why I was still alive. He had his Djinni.

The silence was broken by a splash as one of the other girls dove under the water and sprang back up a moment later, the pearl between her fingers. ‘I got bored waiting,’ she said, pouting prettily, her pale hair sticking to her forehead as she brandished the pearl. But there was a tightness to her smile. And I understood what she’d done. For me. The risk.

The tension broke as Kadir lounged over to her. Shira was on her feet, grabbing me by the elbow, pushing me out of the baths. ‘Tonight.’ She shoved me back towards the safety of the gardens. ‘Meet me by the Weeping Wall after dark.’

Chapter 19

The Weeping Wall was the easternmost wall of the harem, a small, closed-off part of the garden dominated by the biggest tree I’d ever seen in my life. It would’ve taken three of me to get my arms all the way around it, and the branches stretched so far they touched the top of the walls on either side.

According to the women of the harem, it was the place where Sultima Sabriya had waited for Sultim Aziz a thousand years ago. He had gone to war on the distant eastern border and left his love in the harem. The Weeping Wall was the closest she had been able to get to him while he was away in battle. She stood there every day, waiting for him, her tears watering the tree so that it grew higher and higher every day. Until one day it was finally high enough for her to climb to see over the walls of the harem to where her husband’s army was. That day, the other women found her on the ground, screaming and wailing and clawing at the wall. She couldn’t be consoled and she cried until her voice left her; and the tree grew greater still.

Three days later the news came that Aziz had been killed in battle. That was what Sabriya had seen from the top of the tree, across the walls, across deserts and cities and seas.

The wall looked just like every other in the harem in the dim light of my oil lamp. Ivy blooming with flowers all the colour of the setting sun climbed from the earth up the stone wall, trying to hide the fact that we were in a prison. I pushed the ivy aside, setting my hands against the solid stone. My fingers met an uneven surface. When I held the lamp up I realised it looked like a gouge – several of them. The kind fingernails might leave.

‘And her wailing carried on for seven nights and seven days.’ I jumped at Shira’s voice behind me. She was draped in a dark blue khalat that made her melt in with the shadows. ‘Until the Sultan could listen to her grief no more, and he strung her up where only the stars could hear her wail.’

I dropped my hand. ‘Who knew such love could exist in the harem.’

Shira didn’t miss the sarcasm in my voice. ‘Anyone less self-centred than you.’ I was about to retort that she didn’t love Kadir, no more than she’d loved Naguib. But then I realised that her hands had drifted to her pregnant stomach as she spoke. Folk did terrifying things for the ones they loved. That, I’d learned from stories. I even had a bullet wound scar across my hip from Iliaz to prove it.

‘So what now?’ I raised an eyebrow at her expectantly, a trick I’d learned from Jin.

‘Oh, now we wait, cousin.’ Shira leaned against the huge tree, tilting her head back.

I was going to have to play along with Shira’s game. I flopped against the tree next to her. ‘How long?’

Shira tipped her head back further. ‘It could be a while. I can’t tell. It’s hard to see the sky properly from the city.’