‘You know better than to ask a Demdji to make a promise.’ This might be the last I ever saw of her. That was true every time we parted. But this time more than ever. Now I was on enemy ground. ‘And you know better than to believe I’m going to stay out of trouble.’

Chapter 23

I had a plan. Well, plan might be a strong word. Shazad was the plan maker between the two of us. This was more like the beginnings of an idea that I was hoping wouldn’t get me killed. Which was more my style.

I could figure out the rest of it later. For now, I didn’t need to get free of the palace. I just had to get out of the harem. And there was only one man who could make it happen.

‘Why do you want to leave?’ Leyla was making another toy for the harem’s children, though I wasn’t sure why. Most of their mothers wouldn’t let them play with the toys she’d already made. Was this just her way of keeping herself sane in this place where she fit so badly? This one looked like a tiny person. He lay forgotten in her hands, clay limbs splayed, as she looked at me with her huge, earnest eyes. ‘The harem is nicer than a lot of other places you could wind up.’

I liked Leyla. A part of me wanted to blurt out the honest truth, make her a real ally here in this place. But she was still the Sultan’s daughter. And big innocent eyes weren’t a good enough reason to gamble with the lives of everyone I loved. Jin’s face flashed across my mind. The way I’d last seen him, half-shadowed in the tent, on the run, uncertainty hanging between us as the kiss ended. His face was quickly chased away by others’. Shazad. Ahmed. Delila. The twins. Even Hala.

‘It’d be nice to be able to get out of the path of your brother,’ I said finally. ‘I mean Kadir,’ I corrected, remembering what she’d told me about her only real brother being the one who shared her mother. Prince Rahim, the soldier among scholars in the Sultan’s circles. I’d mentioned seeing him in court the day before to Leyla, but she’d shifted the subject quickly. ‘Not to mention Ayet and Uzma, who have it in for me.’ Watching Shazad frighten Uzma might’ve been satisfying, but the humiliation still burned hot and fierce. ‘If I could convince your father to give me the run of the palace, we could stay out of each other’s ways.’

Leyla’s eyes dashed back to the ground, and she chewed at her lip anxiously. I knew her well enough by now to recognise when she was thinking something over. I also knew better than to interrupt someone smarter than me when they were thinking. Something else I’d learned from Shazad.

‘Bassam turns thirteen the day after tomorrow.’ Leyla spilled the words out in a rush. Whatever I’d been expecting her to come out with, that wasn’t it. ‘Bassam is one of my father’s sons by his wife Thana. My father has a tradition – for every one of his sons on their thirteenth birthday, he teaches them to shoot a bow. As my grandfather did for his sons. And his father before him. They are not to eat again until they eat something they have killed themselves. He has done it with every one of his sons.’

Not every single one. How had Ahmed and Jin spent their thirteenth birthdays? They hadn’t been hunting with their father. Had they been on a ship, or some foreign shore? Had they even known what day it was to be able to mark it?

I had an image of a scene that never was. The two of them standing side by side with their father’s hands on their shoulders, bowstrings drawn back, competing to impress him.

‘He’ll come to the harem for Bassam.’ Leyla returned her eyes to her work, the small clay man. She was sculpting a face for him. ‘If you wanted to ask him for something.’

*

The largest of the harem gardens was twice the size of the rebel camp – a huge swathe of green crowned with a blue lake that rolled down from the walls of the palace, across the cliff that overlooked the sea, before slamming hard into another wall. Another border, the edge of the palace. The water was dotted with fat birds, flapping their glaringly pale feathers lazily, sending water droplets sprawling in a bright arc through the sun.

From my position sitting by the iron gate that led back into the heart of the harem, it looked like a picture printed in a storybook. The Sultan was standing on the shore with a boy I guessed was Bassam. This son was thin and wiry and trying hard to look older than he really was. He held a longbow drawn back across his body, arms shaking just a little bit from the effort, clearly trying to hide it from his father.

I’d watched him miss a dozen shots already, the arrows splashing uselessly into the water. After each shot came an exercise in patience as Bassam tossed a handful of bread into the lake and then withdrew to wait for the birds to come back and settle. Until they felt safe enough again for him to try to kill them. Now his father reached out, resting one reassuring hand on his shoulder. The way the boy swelled happily under his touch, I half wondered if he’d been missing on purpose, to steal a bit more time with his father.

I imagined a younger Jin standing there in Bassam’s place. I’d never seen a person need anyone else less than Jin did. It was hard to picture how he would react to his father’s hand on his shoulder, if he would have held himself straighter, too, eager for his father’s pride.

Bassam loosed the bowstring with one easy gesture. I knew with the practised eye of a girl from Dustwalk that this shot was different from the others.

The arrow flew true, passing straight through the neck of the nearest duck. The bird let out a pained squawk that sent the rest of the flock darting up in the air in a panic. A servant scrambled forward, pulling the bird out of the water by its long neck.